Well it was Fathers day today and I hope all you Dads had a great day. I woke up this morning and was greeted by my wife and kids with a bunch of presents one of which was......
An Ezi Kits D334!!!!
Oh yeah, how goods that? I'll have to do some mods to it like fitting a Belpair boiler and coal rails to the tender as these were features in the era I model. I can picture the D piloting a saturated P with a string of dogboxes on the hill up to Hill Top. One day!!!
Seeing as it was Fathers Day, I didn't have to cook dinner (I love cooking) which gave me a couple of hours in the Cave after doing some more painting and playing soccer and Frisbee with the kids. I managed to get some work done on 3 BLV's that I'm working on alongside the MLV's and LV's. I'm keeping 2 of the BLV's as Andrew and Ian intended but the third I've decided to model with the earlier king post truss rods. So far so good.
BLV with King Post Truss Rods
And here's the 4 truss rod BLV
Still have to add the truss rods
I also went to the Early Days Convention last week and another excellent day of train nerdiness was had by all. It's not often you get blown away by a modelers efforts but when you see the work of Ross B, who built Central, you know why. Ross gave a talk on how he researched and built Central as well as how he's going with his next project, Newcastle in the 1890's. You have to see this up close to see how beautiful his modeling is and the effort he puts in. And its all in N scale too.
Also of interest to me was Tony P's talk on the history and restoration of the ARHS Canberra's AL Sleeping Car. It will be a beautiful carriage again once it's restored back into AL configuration rather than the DCC version that the ARHS purchased 30 odd years ago.
My only complaint about the Early Days is that its not long enough and you don't get to talk to everyone that you'd like to. It's a small price to pay but I love going every year and wouldn't miss it for anything in the world.
It's the best.
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