Welcome to this month's somewhat belated blog, celebrating the gathering of that fine group of folk, the Forth and Clyde Area Group of the 2mm Scale Association, on 11th June. For those regular readers who have been so on edge with the late delivery of this blog posting, I apologise, but real life got in the way. As a result, The Press Officer released the announcement of a few members of the Group visit to the enormously enjoyable DJ+2 in Derby (held a week later). His efficiency he has shown this writer up to be the tardy and indolent chap what he is.
Incidentally - Derby! What a cornucopia of delights! The organisers did a remarkably fine job, which cannot be found fault with. Really top-notch organisation and great to meet all those people from South Britain and, indeed, from the Antipodes.
The meeting was held, as usual, at the Almondell premises of the Edinburgh Society of Model Engineers (ESME), who have acknowledged our monthly interruption of their, normally peaceful, activities on their website:
https://edinburgh-sme.org.uk/alternative-interests
We in FCAG appreciate the hospitality being shown by ESME and are very grateful. The size of the premises is such that we are thinking about using it for housing an Association Supermeet next spring. Watch this space...
The numbers were slightly depleted again, at seven attendees, but still more than double last month's attendance. Only two Als (#1 being held against his will in Skye), Graham, J#1, country member Mick, and Stephen were present. Andy showed up briefly, but had commitments elsewhere.
We had hoped to have the shell and baseboard of the new Group demonstration layout present. Nigel had designed it, passing the design to Chris, who had then laser cut the ply which Nigel then constructed. Holidays had intervened and transport arrangements could not be made to deliver it in time, so the bulk of us are agog, to see the beast. It must be admitted that some are agoger than others, as is always the way when agoging is so much in fashion, with much competition to see who can be the agogest. Andy had brought along the full size track plan, just in case anyway, and here is a picture for your delectation.
It's to be a bit of a locomotive depot, based very loosely upon that at Forfar.
Speaking of the new layout, some members had been busy building turnouts. We had a duplicate of the key tandem turnout and had to settle on which one to use. Poor Mick, being the only person present who did not know who had built which, had the unenviable task of judging which one to use. (He could have had prior warning, but that would have given him a chance to back out...) It was a very close call, but one was selected based on a very minor shoogle on the losing beast, which would only take minutes with a soldering iron to rectify. Here's the two tandems, along with the victim sitting in judgement:
Another couple of turnouts appeared, with Graham showing his second attempt at a fully soldered chaired beast. He had obviously got the knack, this time, as it fair looks the part.
Stephen had made one of the pegged Easitrac point kits. Except that the crossing needed a wee tweak for alignment, he found construction to be a doddle. (So much so, that he bought a few cwt of the beasts being sold off at bargain prices at the Association shop, the following week in Derby.)
Continuing on the track theme, Alastair was putting together some Easitrac for the Group layout.
Jim had brought along his finished Caley Conner 2-4-0. A splendid (very wee) beast!
He also brought along his etch for his next project - a Caley 6-wheel bogie first class carriage to diagram 102. This is to allow the etches of the body, shot down from 4mm by Jim Smellie of Caley Coaches, to be pulled along in style. Apparently the bogies had been Nigel Hunt's design, amended slightly by Jim (Jimised?) to suit his own preferred means of construction:
Alisdair had brought along his finished his exNBR class M (LNER class C15), in push-pull mode for the Cragendoran to Arrochar service, complete with mysterious gubbins hanging from the smokebox:
The next Group meeting will be held on July 9th.
Before then, we will be manning the 2mm Roadshow at Perth Model Railway Exhibition in the Dewar's Centre in Perth on 25th/26th June. Come and talk to us, if you're there. We don't (often) bite and will even talk to N Guagers in the hope of delivering them from perdition by converting to the much more logical scale of 1:152. It's part of our mission on Earth.
