Earlier this evening I arrived back home after a superb return to Missenden Abbey for the Autumn Modellers' Weekend.
This was a return in two different ways:
- for the Missenden courses themselves, as this was the first post-Pandemic event. It seemed a very long time since attendees gathered for the weekend that started on 6 March 2020, and just preceded the first UK lockdown. There were a few of the early precautions against Covid in place then, and we picked up again with different ones this weekend, in the light of 18 months of painful experience. The Abbey was still as beautiful as ever:
Missenden Abbey.JPG
- it was also the first modelling I've done for around five months. It was late spring when all of my modelling kit went into packing boxes whilst we moved house from Hertfordshire to North Somerset. In that time, my kit (and kits) were kept safe in storage units, awaiting the opportunity to unpack them again. As we completed on our house purchase only ten days ago, I grabbed a selection of likely boxes, and hoped that the content would make a good weekend.
I need not have worried - no matter what models I took along, the weekend was filled with great company, old friends, and a little bit of musicianship...
As usual these days, I was in group of "4mm and smaller scales locomotive building". A baker's dozen of us set up tool boxes, soldering irons, lamps, and all the usual detritus of modelling:
4mm 1.JPG
4mm 2.JPG
There were a couple of newcomers in the group and many familiar faces. It was good to see Mark Tatlow again, whose workbench revealed that he was making good progress with his P4 model of Dai Woodham's Barry Scrapyard:
Tatty Scrap.JPG
He also won the chocolate frog award for the best-appointed workbench. Rather than the usual anglepoise or clip-on Ikea form of illumination that the rest of us relied on, Mark had been consulting the latest interior design magazines. Not content with moving house this summer, he also decided to bring a little classy ambience from the likes of Heals furniture store to shed a little light on his modelling:
Tattl lamp.JPG
We also had a couple of great tutors in Tony Gee, who brought along a range of superb models he is working on in scales from 7mm, through "Manchester Standard" EM, to 2mm FS:
Tony Gee.JPG
And holding court at the other end of the room, fresh from editing a superb issue of MRJ, was S&D and North Somerset miniaturist Jerry Clifford:
Jerry Clifford.JPG
Just out of shot is Jerry's guitar, which he entertained us with at various points as well. Who said railway modellers don't do art and culture?
There was the usual range of demonstrations, including for the first time a session on the manufacture and use of AJ couplings. This was given by Karl Crowther (tutor of the "Improving RTR rolling stock" group) and was so popular that it had to be split into two sessions. This is the one that I dropped in on:
Karl Crowther Aj.JPG
As for what I did, well that was reopening the box of my GER T26 "Intermediate" locomotive build, for the first time in quite a few months, if not years. As someone pointed out, the brass had gone rather tarnished!
More on that to follow, on the T26's own topic.
So thanks again to all who made it such a fun weekend, and if you haven't been to Missenden yet, the bookings for the Spring 2022 Weekend will be opening soon...
Cheers
Paul