Good evening all... Now how many of you remember that? Jack Warner, Dixon of Dock Green. 1960's...

This is the ChufferDuffers, 2022, sixty years later.

First of all, a reminder that there is a Cardi-Bach Society meeting at Y Bont public house in Llanglydwen next Tuesday, March 8th. Hope to see everyone there - a presentation on Glogue, and a discussion on the upcoming Cardi-Bach event in April at Theatr Mwldan.

On to the Duffers. We met a couple of days ago here at Pentrecagal. On Sunday Pat, Mary and myself brought our 7mm Narrow guage layout out of Pats lock-up garage in Cilgerran and unloaded it into the garage here.

Over the next couple of days, I packed up Teifi Gorge ready to take to the show in Pembroke Dock, and carried the 7mm layout up into the spare bedroom and set it up.

Tuesday evening Pat and Colin arrived and we cleaned up the layout, plugged in the electrics... half an hour later, with some delicate soldering by Colin, we had an operating Layout.

You may recall it from some pictures three years ago, but just to refresh here it is:

After cleaning the track, we ran a couple of trains around, and despite the three year layup, it performed very well.

I shall try and up load a video of the goods train, hauled by No II diesel:

This was followed by a passenger train in the opposite direction:

The locos and stock have been built by Patrick, in 7mm to the inch, whereas Colin much prefers the more diminutive 2mm - seen here on a revamped Penllyn

He had also recently purchased a minitrix chassis, but wasn't happy with the motor it was originally fitted with, so changed it for a better 6 pole motor. Here you can see the chassis with the new motor, the original one alongside:

Back to 7mm, Pat has now painted up the engine crew:

and brought along some logs and wood-cutting tools to show us:

After a very satisfactory 90 minutes of playing trains, we repaired to the dining room for a chicken vindaloo and the necessary liquid to cool the throat.

The laptop is hooked up to the TV so we can all enjoy Youtube!

Finally to end, further exploits in the overseas oil industry. 1982 I was in the middle of Nigeria, at Kaduna, commissioning a refinery. Crude oil was pumped up from the coast, and most of the finished product went out by road tanker. Several hundred queued for days at a time.

All work and no play? we had the requisite swimming pool:

and unfortunately a bar... not my finest portrait!

Cherrio,

Shaun.