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Hello Ian,
All this about new layouts seems a good time to introduce 'Henry' to the world at large. Henry is a GN Atlantic in O gauge and was first constructed about 20 years or a bit more ago to run on a proposed garden railway, nothing complicated it being only to be a simple continuous circuit of the longest that could be squeezed in the space available. Henry ran for some time along the home made rails hauling up to 6 of the Triang Big Big Train carriages (anyone else remember them?) until a major fault resulted in him being put into the back of the shed.
At this time we were blessed (?) with two young boys who thought it a good idea to play Dr. Beeching and lift the track so although Henry was slowly being worked upon like many brach lines our passed into history. Just before Xmas Henry came to the fore again due perhaps to something Trev had said to me and so an expedition was made to the depths of the workshop back end and Henry plus innards slowly came back into the light of day.
The search resulted in an oily chasssis, tender and most importantly all the near ready for final assembly boiler parts which on checking will only need a different throttle assembly making, Oh I had not mentioned that Henry is steam powered with a true loco boiler based upon the GN large boilered Atlantics. Originally he was meths fired but the intention is to try and coal fire the new boiler as I was encouraged to do by John Shawe when he was working with me. So this is to be the first project of the new year and in front of the Gauge 1 J15 mainly because of very little work or expense being involved other than saving the pocket money for a few yards of new O gauge track.
How many others are thinking or are starting a new model rail project this year I wonder?
Happy New Year everyone.
John
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