Month: November 2024

A Surprise ‘Back to School’ at Burton Crumpnold

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After years of looking we managed to get a lucky EBay (Good Value) purchase of a long time ‘Wish List’ steam loco for Burton Crumpnold.
.. It is in celebration of the fact that my beautiful wife was born in Cheltenham.

So we have 4-4-0 Schools Class Loco ‘Cheltenham Schools‘ 30925, Lined and with the BR Early Crest.

Cheltenham Schools

Here it is running on my Rolling Road.

Cheltenham School on the Rolling Road.
I actually prefer the Malachite Green finish – but with no SR Coaching stock in my collection this will work well with my BR Rhubarb and Custard ones.

I am actually quite a fan of the very underrated 4-4-0 and 4-4-2 locos – so the plan, when the layout is operations to get a Midland Compound (no 1000 preferably) to join the ‘Schools’..

Sitting on Ones Hands..

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Many apologies (again) for the lack of updates. As the title implies, I have been desperate to continue but have had to wait for the end of the holiday season and my builder friend to be ready so we can move on with converting the loft for the Railway.

I have planned out the space ready for the work, the first ‘Key’ job is adding a second Loft Hatch. The existing ‘Main’ hatch blocks access to the rooms my wife runs for AirBnB, which is the reason I have had to wait until the end of the main holiday season. The new, smaller, hatch will be from my current office so will allow permanent and private access to the Loft. This will allow me to play Anytime 🙂

I have sketched out the loft space ready for the layout planning stage – and to show the builder what’s required.

Then it will be a case of flooring, insulating and adding walls to the space and of course electrics & lighting.
When we have the house reroofed we added a couple of Velux windows in preparation for this.

The dimensions available for the new layout will be a little over about 5m x 3m so ‘plenty’ of space to play in.
.. Now onto designing it….