Another brick in the wall?

Well some good news and some bad news today in respect of the conservatory rebuild. The good news is that the floor slab is laid.

The bad news is that the bricks sent for the outer wall are not only rejects with damage but the wrong face to match the existing bricks. Not good. No doubt there are reasons why all this has happened and my measure of how good companies are is by how well they resolve problems when they arise. I will probably have to wait until Monday to find out though. Certainly for the moment there are no bricks in the wall!

On a more relaxing front and not needing any bricks in walls I had a half hour in the man cave. 

I originally talked about my Hornby Northern Rail RAF Class 156 back in November.

At the time I said it looked better on the layout then in the box and it did.

The only thing was at the time it could not run as there was no DCC chip in it. That has changed!

It should be a simple task to put a chip in but to actually get the body off the chassis is a horrible task. I thought it was all going to break at one point. The issue is that there is no way to access the middle four clips to release them so you literally have to force the body and chassis apart and hope nothing breaks.

 Luckily for me I got enough separation to allow me access to the motor and DCC socket. Excuse the screwdriver being used like a car jack!

With the socket revealed on top of the motor the blanking plug could be removed and the DCC chip plugged in.

Its simple once you get in! On the layout it runs but probably needs running in to get smoother movement. At the moment at slower speeds there is the slights of jerkiness unlike me where a slow speed I just jerk!

Infilling.

It is slow progress but the polystyrene formers for the valley sides are just about done on my 00 gauge layout. All that was left to do was infill the arches of the two viaducts. Using the templets that I had made from the Cornflake box (other cereals for your breakfast delight are available) to cut the main valley sides I was able to get more or less the right profile. Luckily I found the bread knife!

The two middle arches need a little more work on the profiles but I have ideas in my mind (never a good sign as Mrs. Woody would say) for a canal/river and road/lane so that will probably develop over the next few days.

That train in the background is a Hornby model of Northern Rail's Royal Air Force 100th Anniversary Class 156 DMU. A fantastic model of the real thing and with a real relevance to me as my Dad spent most of his working life in the RAF.

I bought this back in 2020 during the pandemic and recall thinking whether Hornby and other manufactures would ever produce more models. At the time I don't think any of us really knew what the future would hold.

It looks good in its box and but its even better on the layout which is where models really belong.

Better get that bread knife back to where it belongs or Mrs. W will be infilling me!