South East Group mid week meeting

Seven or eight of the South East group met at Peter Mann's last week for one of their now regular mid-week monthly meetings. Many of these meetings have been to help Peter develop his Merney Junction layout, his entry for the Challenge 33 competition to held in October. Besides being a good natter with the very welcome cup of tea/coffee there is usually a sprinkling of models in various states of development on show or someone brings along their latest RtR model to demonstrate and this meeting was no exception with Peter showing for the first time his recently painted (by Ken de Groome) model of the Metropolitan Bo-Bo "Sarah Siddone" - what a superb finish to a rather exceptional loco. Rob Thompson brought along his Heljan Hymek and this proved to be a very good runner and there were a sprinkling of other locos in a state of dress or undress; these were mostly Midland locos. After the Lord Mayor's show it was down to work with some helping to improve the ballast whilst others went searching for missing chairs. The basis of the layout is quite old with mostly soldered rivet construction and white metal half chairs, many of which were missing and so the replacements were being provided by the Exactoscale versions. There will need to be some judiciuos painting of the permanent way no doubt before it arrives at Mark. To help with the scenery Robert Wigley has produced an absolutely superb twin overbridge for one end where the tracks disappear into the fiddle yard; this deserves a prize on its own but there is no scenery class in Challenge 33. All-in-all a good afternoon meeting with progress to be seen.