Some more progress on the baseboard frames for My Last Great Project. The last frame is half built complete with a dropped are where the viaducts will go. Much head scratching and back of envelope calculations to get to this stage but hopefully my calculations and measurements are correct! 

Looking through the gift box of old model railway stuff that I got last week I found this rather nice GWR open cab Pannier.

I thought that this would be a great runner only dating back from the 1980's. However on the track nothing - not even a buzz of a stuck motor. Time to investigate. This is serious dismantling!

I traced back through the parts to find that the motor was not working which was strange given how well it looked. Putting some power to it it would turn a third of a resolution and then stop. I took it apart and cleaned the commutator.

Back together still no different. Then I looked more closely. What I actually found was that one of the wires to an armature had broken (see the photo below) meaning the motor would not run and probably never will as it is next to impossible to repair - for me anyway!

Time to start searching the internet for a replacement!