Coal her up....
There is never enough time on weekends to get all things done. Since the arrival of 3827 to the south coast fleet two weeks ago I have only had time to coal up the 38.
Baseboards generally serve two purposes. One to hold a layout up from the ground and to provide a cover for all the junk that hides underneath.
I can self assess myself and admit it don't fall into the real neat freak category. I have most of the rail related books sitting on a book shelf and even have the books on locomotives arranged in numerical order, the rest fall into a fit by size category.
Then down the far end is all the scenery bits and pieces. Bags of foam, coloured plaster, dry branches hanging out for the day when they will be instructed to look like a tree. There are even paper bags full of strange looking items that needs a look in every now and then find out what it is.
One such item is some lichen that I have had from way back in 1976 when me and my then girlfriend (now mrs) went to New Zealand for a tour. I collected it from fences stuffed it into a paper bag then it came back home with me. I'm glad Border Security is a recent tv show as it has allowed me to get away a fine or gaol sentence for smuggling in plant products. The exercise actually futile as I discovered the same product was available on our own trees up in the New England area. It will eventually get used.
Another item associated with under baseboard 'cupboards' is the cloth draped down in front of the layout in an attempt to not only to hide the junk but to make it all look more attractive. It does both jobs well. To well some times when I start looking for something and can't remember where its hiding. Maybe I should put post-it notes on the cloth 'Ballast behind here'.
It was this cloth yesterday that had me looking for at least twenty minutes for a tin that held my real coal supply for filling tenders. Eventually it was found hiding behind some gyprock saved from a rainy day project for the next rainy day project.
The DJH 38 has a shallow area thankfully for the coal bunker so it was an easy job to just pile in the coal until it was heaped and looked right as regards to size. Once the profile was looking right I sprayed it with water mixed with some detergent then some diluted white glue to fix it together. I made sure there was some spilled coal towards the back of the tender forward of the water hatch.
So tonight I took a dozen shots of the coal in the tender. I must admit only one reasonable shot turned out and have included it.

So the next project now is to get the headlight put in. As they say watch this space.