To hot and dry for steam!

Rocks by Rail was where I was today. It was scheduled to be a steam day with at least one steam engine in operation. However the reality is that with the tinder dry conditions in the UK at the moment which are a result of the now declared drought, to have steam engines running past agricultural land would be somewhat irresponsible. However being prepared for such contingencies the Museum got out Betty the diesel Sentinel where visitors could have rides down the line in the cab or even drive it as part of the Driver for a Fiver ticket. WE had a fair few visitors and the coolness of the cafe saw much food and drink being bought and consumed. All in all a great day and many happy people who had a memorable day.

Staying in the coolness of the cafe I took time to look at the various models that are on display. Firstly we have the Hornby Family Fun Project as built by Phil Parker of British Railway Modelling (BRM) magazine fame. He took the Hornby Family Fun Project (see the Hornby website here for details of the products) and built it with a few modifications - see here and here for details. Once complete and following its use on various media it needed a home and when the BRM team visited last year they brought along the layout so we could give it a home. It has proved very popular with the younger visitors although some of the more mature visitors have been seen taking on the controls as well! AS a credit to Phil's building skills, apart from a level crossing gate that needed gluing, a loading gauge that has been broken and some people that have been moved from their original glued locations, the layout has survived well. 

The other models are related to the iron stone quarrying that the Museum is all about and they are incredibly useful in giving a sense of scale of operations that were still active up to just over 50 years ago as well as illustrating the techniques used.

The model of Sundew, the World's largest walking drag line excavator at the time (until our American friends built one bigger), is perhaps the most dramatic. The work that went into it is amazing and the whole model is very detailed.

There is also another quarry model based on the nearby quarry at Market Overton. Not so large or detailed but never the less a great illustrative model in its own right. You can see the size of the excavator when compare to the steam locomotive at the far left of the train.

Finally we have what I term as an engineering model of an excatator. Not sure of the history of this but never the less another superb model.

All this puts my model making skills to shame! Never mind though its been too hot and dry to model as well as run steam trains!