When things don't always go as planned...

As we're nearing the end of the year I thought I'd share a few of the things that haven't quite gone as hoped. Many of these were never caught on camera, including getting impatient while waiting for the glue to dry on an EMU roof, using a hairdryer to speed up the process (the rest you can probably work out) and testing the layout in sections, forgetting which direction is which and sending a locomotive flying off the end of a board. These are but a few of the many things that haven't quite gone to plan over the course of the last couple of years and here are a few more examples:

Designing.

Probably the biggest and most fundamental cock-up is the size of the layout we built - intended to stack in the back of a VW Touran (as the old one had stacked perfectly in a BMW 3 series saloon) the first frame fitted but of course I never allowed for the aerodynamic design of the car, which gets shorter and narrower as you stack upwards. Alternative transportation arrangements had to be made.

The first frame fitted fine of course.

Storage.

Always make sure that you have adequate storage that can handle heavy loading. The layout was initially stacked on top of some old kitchen units at the back of the garage. We even observed the top of one of these sagging but thought nothing of it until I went to extract the car one fateful Saturday afternoon...

It's hard enough to lift these boards on your own, even worse when there's a car in the way. Several sections were lifted clear and then I had to prop up the boards to stop them falling further and causing more damage, both to the car and the boards.

In the end, the car had to have a new bonnet, repairs to both wings and the bumper and then a front end respray. While most cabriolet owners enjoyed the summer of 2014 with their roofs down, mine spent the summer locked away awaiting repairs.

The layout suffered a bent signal and a couple of crushed pieces of track - clearly one was built better than the other.

Transfers. 

This year I've been getting to grips with painting and transfers, buying them from several different sources and making my own. I wanted to update my Sir Nigel Gresley and after an experimental respray of a spare A4 body I deemed it good enough to use as a base and acquired some Wren Meth-fix transfers. They went on reasonably easily and the transfer outer protective paper went on straight and true. Everything looked perfect until I pulled away the protective paper on the tender...

 I still haven't rectified my R yet, as the loco runs on the inner loop it's harder to spot!



And finally, as requested, a little about loft safety.

I still have a test track in the loft and carry out some of my repairs up there. One fateful morning in November during construction of one of the EMUs, I ventured into the loft to spray a coat of lacquer. As I went to leave, my phone rang and I was distracted enough to forget where the top rung of the ladder was, putting my foot into thin air. Thankfully when I fell out of the roof, I fell into the ladder and grabbed it to break my fall. If I hadn't have done so then the consequences don't really bear thinking about.

The bruised arm was impressive though, I've never seen so many different colours over the days that followed...

I also got a severe telling off for going into the roof when there was no one in the house. 

If you're going to use a loft ladder, first of all be careful, secondly they work far more effectively if you put your feet on the actual rungs of the ladder. Gravity is such a b*tch,