As predicted, things didn't go quite according to plan today because of the heat. The loft takes a long time to heat up in the morning, so a pleasant few hours can be had even when the sun is already scorching the lawns outside, but afternoons are something else altogether. As my soldering gear was down at the fiddle-yard end of the loft, behind the water tanks, I squeezed through in order to retrieve it, a process that doesn't seem to be getting any easier despite my rigorous adherence to a calorie-controlled, Guinness and Madras diet. So having got down there, I decided to do a spot of tracklaying and wiring - I prefer to lay track when it's starting to get hot as it reduces the risk of heat-expansion problems later on.
The top level in the photo has been bare board since late last year, so it's high time some progress was made. I've now got some of the track nailed down and about half of the wiring installed, not a bad start given the temperature. Note the pin-vice across the rails on the middle level, I'll inevitably leave it there and then spend an hour trying to find out what's causing the short circuit during the next operating session.
The lower-level fiddle-yard is just visible in the bottom left-hand corner of the shot, and the Wills Finecast box only holds my soldering odds'n'ends, honest! I don't build whitemetal kettles, really I don't. Especially not GWR ones.
Once the heat became unbearable, I retired downstairs and fiddled with various wagons whilst listening to some good music in one of the cooler parts of the house. I'm often asked why modelling doesn't feature on these pages as much as it used to, and the simple answer is that most of the things I've been doing in recent times are repetitive and uninteresting from a website point of view. Building Parkside kits or swapping wheels and couplings on RTR wagons is as laborious as it is necessary, but if you've seen one photograph of the process then you've seen them all - it's not worth repeating on here ad infinitum. I'm making an exception today, however, as I needed to take the photos for something else anyway...
So there you have it, before and after shots of a Hornby PCA, firstly with original tension-lock horrors and then with replacement Smiths Instanter couplings. I've also removed the various mould lines in the buffer beam area.
See, I told you it wasn't very interesting.
Currently On My Stereo: Peter Hammill - pH7