Our September Meeting was a relatively small affair, with just three regular members, Martin, James and Stuart attending, although our numbers were bolstered with the attendence of Tony, a stalwart of the Grampian Area Group who had decided to travel down to the Central Belt to join us.
It was reported that the Highland Railway Association held their AGM conflicting with this meeting, and with some of our members dual (or more) hatted, they had attended this AGM over our meeting. "Tsk, Tsk" I hear you intone, what could be more important than 2mm Modelling?
There was no overarching theme for the meeting, and for the first time in a long while, Mearns Shed was not in attendance, and as such, we were all labouring on our own projects.
Stuart was continuing work on his very impressive Mill building. He was continuing adding roofing strips, manufactured to custom order by York Model Making to Stuart's specifications.
Our guest Tony, was working on finescaling a Farish 4F. This will form part of the fleet for running on the Grampian Area Group's layout, Dunallander - see the Grampian Area Group Blog for more details on Dunallander.
James was working on some PCB soldered pointwork. He had eschewed chairs, and was instead, soldering rail straight to the sleepers. He intends to build a short dockside shunting plank/test track to fit in a Really Useful Box nominally designed to take wrapping paper. James has previously built chaired turnouts for Mearns Shed, and decided that these turnouts and plain track will be buried in the concrete and/or cobbles of the dockside, and thus, that level of detail is probably not required.
Martin was also working on PCB soldered pointwork. He intends to use Easitrac for plain track, and soldered construction for turnouts, even considering classic Scottish interlaced turnouts in the Goods Yard for a bit of additional visual interest. Martin spent most of the meeting making up a pair of common crossings which will form the main element of the crossover. He uses the crossing nose web etches available from the association, necessitating the use of chairs, which, whilst he has with him, have not yet been deployed in anger.
(Martin swears he took a photograph of his work, but it isn't on the camera reel for his phone. He may take a photo at home and add this to the blog later...)
After a few hours of modelling, and the ingestion of lunch, the tools were gradually put down and conversation began on topics such as life, the universe and everything, interspaced with more modelling and more conversation.
Our next meeting will be once again at Almondell on Saturday 19th October (note the later than usual meeting month). Further details in the Association Newsletter.
(Updated for spelling and grammar - Martin's first language is allegedly English...)
