So. after a long time since its last show. Republic Steel has a couple of shows this fall The 60th anniversary Furness Model Railway exhibition organised by the Barrow Model railway club was held last weekend. I had set the layout up in the workshop to test it and get some dust off it a couple of weeks ago. Finally got round to fitting GX16 plugs and sockets onto the main electrical feeds into the layout and finally fitted the rest of the pipework on the Open hearth Furnace building The fascia board, where we put the commerative show plaques awarded by the host club, is getting a bit full. All well when we fired it up at the show opening, then 1 hour in the Blast furnace lights went out. All the others were still working. tried a different power pack but no joy Anyway. This was the chance to test in service the Class 158 DMU with its 'cut and shut' Rokuhan Shorty chassis. This 3D printed design by CMAC on Shapeways worked well on the test track in the office but there is no substitute to operating it in a show environment The other big test was the the rake of British Rail Mk IIf coaches finished in Intercity executive livery and fitted with my own design magnetic couplers. These are Ivan Industries on Shapeways and ran way better than I could have hoped The video shows these and others including the Class 37s in action and at the end is a role call of some of the British trains you can achieve by various means (3D, resin, Kit bashing etc) Video Due at Workington show in November. I hope to get the Metro Cammel two car DMU and the Class 71 75oV DC electric loco completed in time. Both of these will have a modified Roukuhan Shorty chassis and the Class 87 25KV A.C electric just needs the two sets of pickups wiring up to be good to go Every time this layout goes out it creates a huge amount of interest and I expect that to continue Kev
