March 2026 Forth and Clyde Area Group meeting

 Almondell saw only six stalwarts attend the March meeting of the august Forth and Clyde Area Group of the, even auguster, 2mm Scale Association on Saturday 7th March. Unfortunately neither the Press Officer or the Assistant Press Officer was present so the POTUS* was forced to record the meeting.

Despite the shortage of attendees, it was a productive meeting. James was working on sorting out someone else's class 37 which is not running. (I've forgotten who that someone else is, but J does know...) He also had in front of him, his own Poole era class 37 to which he had added a DCC chip.

James had also been doing his homework, completing the viewblocker warehouse building for Mearns Shed.

A nice building but a tad clean for being located next door to a loco shed. By the end of the meeting it had been carefully weathered, but the POTUS forgot to take a photo. (By the way, the big stick in front of the shed, is actually a bit of rail in the process of being used for creating doorstops along the front of the shed.)

Talking of Mearns Shed, Alisdair was preparing it for its next outing to Model Rail Scotland, with buildings being fixed in place with repair of the surrounding terrain to follow up as homework. 

Across in the other corner of the room, Alistair was applying colour to a brake van. He was using modellers' acrylics for the first time and was expounding on the difference between those and the artists' acrylics he usually espouses.

And in yet another corner, yet another Al, this one with the moniker, Alastair, was continuing work on planning the support structure for his wee NBR layout CAD. 

He did shamefacedly admit that progress was being slowed by his concentration of his scratchbuilding of a racing motor car (the make and model names flew over the POTUS' head as its it's irrelevant to wee train lovers). The body being shaped out of thin wood, the photos shown to POTUS impressed with the workmanship. But, come on laddie, a scale of one to twenty-five and a half - what sort of madness does that represent? Everyone knows, the One True Scale is one to one hundred and fifty two and two fifths. Nice and easy to work out in the head...

Alastair had also brought along a Unimat SL lathe (from a deceased member of ESME, I think),as Simon had expressed an interest in acquiring a lathe, but Simon had the gall not to be there. The machine might be a bit dirty and perhaps the cable could do with being replaced but the bearings feel fine and all the bits seem to be there.(There was box of bits which hid from the camera, as it was very shy.)

Last but not least, by any means, Jim was working on a couple of brake vans made by the absent Simon from Jim's etches. As Simon had only been using them for soldering practice he has given them to Jim for him to add AJs and to do the lettering. Here's a  somewhat fuzzy photo of the little beasts.

And that was that for a productive day.

Our next event will be Model Rail Scotland in Glasgow on Friday 27th March to Sunday 29th March. We'll have the 2mm Roadshow along with Mearns Shed. If you're at the exhibition, come along and say hello.

Our next Area Group meeting will be on Saturday 11th April, when we should be having a demonstration on DG couplings.

*POTUS - Press Officer Totally Useless. Mind you, wouldn't it be nice if only the other POTUS could be persuaded to spend all his time 2mm modelling...