Our April meeting took place at Almondell on a sunny but cool Spring morning. Jim, James, Alistair, Alastair, Alasdair, Simon, Stuart, Graham, John, Angus and Andy worked away on their individual projects.
Stuart was adding livery details to 16T mineral wagons, using Woodland Scenics dry transfers to add the end-door loading stripes.
He'd finished quite a few by the end of the afternoon.
Simon was working on Gresley bogies for BR-era observation cars.... somewhere in his box of bits...
The group's mini-layout "Mearns Shed" performed quite well at Model Rail Scotland last month but there were one or two things to fix. Alisdair was wielding a soldering iron doing something, possibly, to the trackwork. Jim was removing checkrails from the fiddle-stick cassettes, which he'd found frustrating to use during the show. They'll be replaced by a simpler styrene central strip to aid re-railing of locomotive bogie and pony wheels.
James was fixing assorted problems on various Class 37 diesel-electric models, both his own and other peoples'.
Alastair was working on the baseboard design for his South Queensferry layout. He'd aimed to buy a large sheet of ply from a DIY warehouse with a cutting service, and turned up there early one Saturday morning, cutting list and wallet in hand, only to find that the bandsaw operator would not be available until the end of the afternoon.... his rapidly-formed plan B was to buy smaller sheets (so they would fit in his car) and do his own cutting with a circular saw at home. This was duly done, and he was rehearsing on his laptop how to assemble them.
Angus was also planning with a laptop, aiming to ensure the curves and transitions on his nascent Callander and Oban extravaganza will definitely fit in the available space without going below minimum radius. Graham was busy with keyboard and screen as well, slowly advancing a design for 3D printing. Alistair was planning (without a laptop) another layout backscene.
John had brought with him the bits for his J39 (based on a D&S Huddersfield/BH Enterprises whitemetal kit plus a 2mmSA etched chassis)... he'd discovered the tender axle centres of the etch and the whitemetal parts did not quite coincide and canvassed opinions for the best solution... the consensus was to align the centre axle of the etch with the centre axleboxes of the casting, and live with the fact that the outer axleboxes will be misaligned by a fraction of a millimetre with the axles themselves. The etch may also require to be shortened slightly so it does not extend beyond the tender ends. All good experience-building stuff.
After lunchtime, the Short Talk was from James, on the subject of DCC keep-alives, their theory and practical construction. This was based on the article he penned for a recent issue of the 2mm Magazine (October/November 2025) ... the printed version had some unfortunate errors introduced in the production process, but a corrected online version is available in the 2mmSA magazine archive (members-only link here). There followed a discussion with contributions from those who'd tried keep-alives. All very informative.
After that we went back to our tables for the rest of the afternoon. Next month's meeting will be a week later than usual due to the 2mmSA Derby expo, which several FCAG members plan to attend.
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