Mates
Last night was my turn to host a group of mates to our irregular what we call our 'film night'. We call it that because thats how long we have been meeting over the years. Most of the guys in the group were old school mates and that was over forty years ago.
We probably hold the gatherings about every three or four months apart and all but one is a modeller. (Never too late to start Chris).
The usual pattern is meet at the hosts place, go have a look and run on their layouts, then go inside for a cake or two or three and then sit back and watch a dvd, rail based always. Then usually around midnight we head off home. It is decided on the night where the next meeting will be and when it gets closer a few emails and a date is settled on.

I did the usual thing going round the layout moving all the tools and generally tidying up before they got here. On the night one of the guys brought his new model of 3801 and we were anxious to see it operate. It was duly hooked up to a set of passenger cars, controller cracked open and off she went.

3801 in full steam through the valley

I was not over impressed with the whistle, but the sound otherwise was good. Ross had ordered a weathered model and I think is a waste of money. It seems like they just queue the locos up on a track and drive them past the spraygun. Save your money guys and get someone else to do it if you can't do it yourself. I was caught out with the garratt the same way. The cylinders were 'dirtied' up but the rear drivers were still virgin out of the box. I have since had it done by a sprayer at a local hobby shop with a fantastic result. There are other photos of it on this blog.

3801 gets ready to take on water at Bodalla

Another mate Kev on the night had brought along a logging train worked by an articulated loco. All was going well until it came across the first tunnel and the headlight snagged on the portal ending its run for the night. I offered him some pliers to snip off the offending light but he declined.

3229 shares the shed at Bega with a CPH railmotor