When Good Showers Go Bad . . .

Slight problem with the downstairs shower this weekend.  Noticed water leaking from the casing yesterday, got in touch with our builders but unfortunately their plumber was out of town so there wasn't anything they could do that day.

By this morning it was running, rather than dripping with water - Martin turned the water off at the stopcock and tried to get the leaking valve off, but not luck.

Somehow, in fiddling with it, he must have tightened something though, because when we switched the water back on (at a lower pressure admittedly) he seemed to have stopped the leak.


Waiting for the plumber to come and take a proper look - so using the upstairs shower in the meantime.

Update - 19 March - plumber finally showed up, and fingers crossed it's all fixed!

Planning the Track

Spent some time today trying to finalise the track layout on the baseboard - in theory we came up with something like this:

Experimented with other layouts, but this still seemed to work best in terms of making use of the space - and the smooth running of the trains.

Will probably mull it over for a bit before fixing everything down mind you!

Onwards and Upwards

A walk along the prom today gave us the opportunity to check out progress on the bandstand.  As predicted it still isn't fully complete - but you can see that the end is in sight.

The 'cofferdam' that surrounded it, holding back the sea during the building works, has gone in the last week as well - just in time for Storm 'Imogen' tomorrow . . .

And since Christmas our Tesco has also finally made an appearance over the builders' hoardings - in fact it's going up quite rapidly at the moment, like a giant set of Meccano.


We'll just have to wait to see if once it's built they actually open it!

Getting Set

Having sorted the baseboard for the train set, we then needed to decide how to set it up - primarily so it could be 'deconstructed' if we ever have guests staying in the room!

We'd been through options such as pulleys to haul it up to the ceiling, foldable legs, etc. In the end went with a couple of portable trestles, (which were simple, cheap, and work a treat).

So . . . on to the next step - covering the board in cork sheets.


We'd finally got four rolls of cork of an appropriate size (bit of a 'fail' on our first purchase, where we'd misread 75mm width as 75cm!) . . . , which we were going to glue to the baseboard to provide a decent surface and some sound 'dampening'.   

Out with the PVA and one roll down - needed plenty of tins and jars to weigh it down and prevent it bubbling up, mind you.

  

Once that one was dryish, on to sheet two - then we did three and four together, as they were covering a smaller area (and we managed to find some more tins!)

Job done - looking good - next job finalising the track layout (not sure yet about the one shown here):

Jigsaw Time

I like a good jigsaw puzzle - and I had a couple of new ones for Christmas back in 2014 - but I'd made this pact with myself that I wouldn't start one until this blog was up-to-date.

So, a year on - thank you (again) for my Christmas presents!  Started with the Rolls Royce of jigsaw models - a Wentworth wooden puzzle, with its 'whimsy' pieces:

Beautiful quality - nice picture - and the Wentworth puzzles have such differently shaped bits (aside from the actual whimsies), which makes them really interesting to do, even at the 250 piece level.

On to the 1000s. . .

I Will Do Better . . .

So the flurry of blogging is over, and I'm now (for the first time in well over a year) actually up-to-date.  Look back to see what you missed in 2015 - and hopefully I'll do better from now on!

And So It Begins . . .

As mentioned, one of my Christmas gifts this year was a train set, and while the Virgin Pendolino had to go back due to a fault, it has duly been replaced by a Flying Scotsman.

A baseboard has been constructed, and much time is now being spent on track layouts, researching the ins and outs of track underlay, points, building models etc., etc.

We hadn't realised quite how many YouTube videos there were out there on model trains - the level of detail some enthusiasts go into is phenomenal . . .  but I don't think we'll be going as far as airbrushing our track with 'sleeper grime'!

For us, I think this will be a work in progress for quite a while - but expect lots of train set related blogs over the coming months.