Back In Action

After a good hour of track cleaning the first proper weekend running of 2013 has been achieved. Alas some of the soldered joints between the bus wires and the track have failed over the winter. I've resoldered some but this appears to be a Garden Railway hazard. A little adjusting of fishplates has resulted in a complete circuit being possible once more. The full fleet was out, possibly for the first time, including linking up the indoor section of the railway so it was finally possible to run trains in and out of the garage. The capacity of the indoor section is limited, which means a 12 wagon train of 16 ton mineral wagons will only fit in the sidings after some fairly complex shunting, but at least that gives the 03 something to do! I've read that the release of the Dapol 7mm 08 shunter has been put back to 2014 so I don't anticipate any more imminent purchases, however if I see a cheap Lima 4F...