Today saw the re-establishment of the locomotive name plates for LNER A4 class 60034 ‘Lord Faringdon’. The name plates were obtained from the company Fox Transfers based in Leicestershire and are in etched brass.

The locomotive was recently purchased at auction and was missing its name plates. When introduced to running conditions on the layout it displayed poor movement, and subsequently had its moving parts oiled – but to no avail. It will now be sent away for specialist inspection to see if it can be restored to its former glory and (hopefully) will return to the layout as a ‘visiting’ locomotive to the GWR lines.

Yesterday there was an electrical problem that left me completely baffled and it has taken me 24 hours to discover the underlying cause.

The problem concerned electrical power to the down GWR lines. Trains had been running normally but suddenly I saw the down train slow and stop. I tried to cajole it to restart but it was not interested in running normally on any part of the lines.

I swapped locomotive but that did not help. That made me suspect the controller and so I swapped controllers. It didn’t help when using the ‘up’ controller. I decided to try running a locomotive along the station straight (an isolated section of track) but using a pair of new wires from the controller and applied directly to the rails. This did not overcome the problem.

I stopped investigation yesterday at that point – deciding to sleep on the problem. Today I started from basics and used a new, separate short section of track sitting on the station platform and attached to the controller via the pair of wires. The locomotive ran OK in this configuration but not when transferred back to the layout. So I knew the problem lay with the track layout.

I turned my attention to a set of points feeding the station lines, and I isolated the power feeding through those points by inserting wooden cocktail sticks to prevent the point blades from making contact to the rails. This did the trick and the locomotive ran around 3/4 of the layout but then suffered a similar problem towards the end of the fiddle yard. I did the same trick with the exit set of points and the locomotive was fine.

It was at this stage that I noticed a set of carriages in one fiddle yard lane had rolled forwards and too near the end of its isolated section of track. I pushed it back to its normal position and that completely fixed the problem.

I now understand the electrical fault. The  front set of carriage wheels had bridged the isolation gap in the rails. When the points upstream of this position were switched for the running of the locomotive this action triggered a polarity change in the rails and a short circuit was generated.

Here is the latest GWR locomotive purchased today at auction. It is castle class number 7004 Eastnor Castle. It has had a few trips around the layout and will be a worthwhile addition to the GWR loco shed.

Tomorrow sees another nearby auction of toys – which includes N gauge railway items. I hope to buy some useful additions for the layout after looking at the auction catalogue and taking part in today’s viewing session.

Yesterday I discovered another problem when running an ‘up’ GWR train into the through line at the General Station. The locomotive could not receive power into that section of track.

The day before I had been gluing sleepers into the gaps throughout the up lines in the station area. This must have caused the problem although it was difficult to find why. I looked closely at the power feed joiners in the affected section – they looked OK to the naked eye but using a short length of wire I was able to show that the ‘red’ connection was causing the problem.

There was no other way forward than to get the soldering iron out and solder the two pieces of track together. That action restored electrical connectivity to the whole length of line within the section, and once again I was able to run the trains normally through the station.

It really does pay to continually test the layout when attempting to perform the finishing touches to track laying (i.e. before you glue the ballast in position).

A problem was identified yesterday when GWR locomotives on the Down track failed to run around the bend on exit from the General station.

A short piece of wire was used to investigate whether the problem was arising from an electrical issue and it was quickly identified as an issue with the power feed to the internal rail.

Further checks of the wiring to that section of track did not reveal the cause of the problem. So today a new wire was introduced from the controller to that same track section – with wire being soldered to the problematic rail. The result was successful: trains now run normally around the layout.

The exact cause is still unknown but at least the circumvention allows the layout to be enjoyed once again.

Today was spent gluing spare sleepers into track running through the GWR General station. This work is necessary for the places where rail lengths are joined together because the track sections have to be paired back by a few sleepers to enable the rail joiners to be fitted.

The gaps need to be filled before ballasting can be started.

More work of this nature is required in the coming days. Hopefully, the track sections through the station area can be completed quite quickly.

Over the last few days the LMS side of the layout has received more ballasting work with its tracks. The whole section between ‘Coventry’ and ‘Rugby’ is now complete, and future work will involve the link between the LMS and GWR tracks.

Meanwhile, the GWR side has been used to maintain the locomotives in good running order. Both Clun Castle (on the left of the photograph) and Powderham Castle have been hauling passenger trains around the layout. Clun Castle started to make sounds like it needed a little oiling and so it got the treatment – now running more smoothly as a result!

The photograph shows Clun Castle standing at platform 3 of the Leamington General Station awaiting departure for Paddington whilst Powderham Castle charges along the stations Down through line.

The three GWR goods wagons purchased at Trainwest.

This afternoon I travelled five miles down the road to Corsham to visit the model railway exhibition ‘Trainwest’ which is held annually at the Springfield Community Centre in Corsham, Wiltshire.

It was a large exhibition of displays and trade stands. There were a couple of N gauge layouts to take my interest, but for me the major attraction was an OO layout of Moor Street Station, Birmingham. The layout is able to display different eras; the one I watched was set in the late 50s/early 60s and had running DMUs and a few steam locomotives from the same period as my layout. In fact I mentioned to one of the modellers that some of his trains were setting off in the direction of my GWR station!

The trade stands were interesting and there were a few items that I purchased. I was rather pleased to buy three GWR weathered coal wagons that were sitting in a large box of other second hand N gauge wagons – all priced at £6.50. They will be ideal for my exchange sidings.