'Evening all... Monday August 22nd already. Chuffers tomorrow at Pat's, so I thought I'd get this post out of the way.

Two Chuffer meetings have come and gone, as well as the Walk'n'Talk through Cilgerran last week.

That proved very successful - I don't know what the final count was, but I believe it was well over 20 walkers. Colin joined them, whilst Pat and I set up the Kilgerran Layout in the Village Hall.

Everyone returned tired, thirsty and hungry - and my word did the catering ladies look after them! a teapot that never ran dry, and more cakes than even Pat could tackle. The ladies were ably assisted by some of the younger generation, and it was a real pleasure to see such polite and helpful youngsters (though as I'm approaching eighty, perhaps they weren't as young as I imagined!)

 

Films of the Cardi-Bach were shown during tea, and the layout performed faultlessly, despite it's age.

No pictures of the hall, but we do have one courtesy of Michael Hine of the walkers posing in the grounds of MicroPharm before trekking through the undergrowth to the permanent way hut remains.

 

 

 

Back with the ChufferDuffers, we haven't really done a great deal, the mini heatwave that we experienced slowed things down somewhat!

At Pat's he showed us his latest acquisition - the very latest version of Stephenson Rocket and train. An exquisite model, ready for DCC (which us dinosaurs still well clear of...)

 

Herewith a still picture, with the train on Pat's 'Heritage' layout:

 

 

 

I have a short video clip of it running, which I'll tack on to the end of this post. For some reason they take an age to transfer, so I like to finish off with them - I can walk away and let it get on with it.

We were treated to a jug of iced pink gin before settling down to railway videos and grilled chicken joints with stir-fried vegetables and rice, washed down with some liquid from France made from grapes.

Following week we were here at Pentrecagal.

Up into the spare bedroom-stroke-railway room to check over the two layouts, Teifi Gorge and the un-named 7mm narrow gauge.

Despite the heat of the last couple of weeks, they had suffered no effects at all, and both ran remarkably well from the off, requiring very little track cleaning. Loco's needed a bit of wheel cleaning and TLC, but overall we are quite pleased.

Back downstairs I showed Colin and Pat my first tomato from the greenhouse, which was cause for some ribald hilarity:

Pat has been messing about with a very old white-metal 7mm tram loco body, as we had discovered a 00 gauge loco amongst some of my stuff - it needed Colins attention to get it operable, and we decided it would be a good donor chassis for the body that Pat is fettling.

Here we have it:

We finished the evening with a Chicken Korma and Cobra lager (for authenticity, you understand) and for a change watch some Youtube videos on guided tours of obscenely priced 'super' yachts. Prices being in the millions, rather than thousands. How the rich spend their money...

Here is that video clip:

Thats it for now - more in a few days time (perhaps...)

Nos da,

Shaun.