Today, my son John came to help me refurbish ‘Merlins’. It had been in store for the last five years and was very dusty, although covered. It has been invited to The Stowmarket Exhibition on Sunday 29th June and we wanted to test everything was OK on the layout and the Locos.

After a good clean up and testing, the layout is fine, no problems other than a small number of paint touch ups needed – that was a relief !

Now the locos were taken from storage and tried after wheel cleaning, Mixed results I am afraid, out of the ten locos, seven were fine and worked well, although none are fitted with ‘stay alive’, most were DCC sound fitted over 8 years ago!

The Little Loco Class 15 is very hesitant, but we are hoping that more running would help. Sadly my Heljan Class 37 and Class 33 are complete non runners due to gear issues. The 37 had new gears fitted for its last outing in 2020 and the 33 was similar, but that had received two sets over its life so far! Heljan can’t even get replacements correct – what a mess.

Although I am unlikely to be at the exhibition myself – please come along and have a chat with John, Graham and Nick.