Oil Burner 3711

Business as usual, being messing around with Panniers. Warley is this coming weekend and it’ll be the layouts last showing in public. I usually try and do a couple of new items, usually rolling stock or motive power, and this is the new arrival for this weekend. I tend not to bend the rules to ‘Its my trainset and I’ll run what I want’ at shows, keeping the layout pretty firmly established in its late 50’s to early 60’s time frame. With that theme I also tend not to have ‘guest’ locomotives or stock, staying with the art of the mundane rather than going for the ‘glitter monkey’ shiny, shiny, specials that some layouts run. This weekend I wanted to add a bit of a change, and to this end I’ve mocked up pannier 3711 which was converted to an oil burner in the late 1950’s. The loco stayed in the Swindon Paddington area, and was thought to be a successful and powerful conversion. By the time the loco was in service the cross over between steam and diesel was well underway, so the writing would have been on the wall even then, for any further conversions. It isn’t an exact replica, I’m still hoping to get drawings or better photos of the engine to make a more authentic conversion, however it captures the look, and for the last show, it’ll be nice to add a little variety, with the loco ‘on trials’ out of Gloucester.

Last year I wrote on return from Canada about a band I’d seen out there, Dawn & Marra, playing at  Hamilton’s Festival of Friends http://Canada-post/  I’m pleased to say they appear to be doing as well as I thought and hoped they would, Scooping the HMA Folk Recording of the Year award for 2013.

Any Canucks reading this,  put them on your bands to see list, https://DawnandMarra