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Freelance keiben locos and rolling stock in H0e. Warning: contains extensive kitbashing, scratchbuilding and a general inability to open a box of model railway products without turning the contents into something new. Let's start with some existing/completed things. The Blue Beast started out as two of those little blue caricature locos produced by Tomytec that came with a tanker wagon. I had thought that they could be made to look sensible by putting them on bogie chassis instead of the intended four wheelers but that only made them look worse. So I grafted the two bodies together and mounted them on a Kato EF65 chassis with the middle bogie taken out. The whole fiction is vaguely justified by the similar looking locos used by the Nagaden for heavy freight traffic, albeit on 1067mm gauge. A loco of this size, or with double cabs, is admittedly rare on Japanese 762mm gauge. It is a very nice runner though. Generic keiben bogie wagons. These actually use the body from a British 009 plastic kit (War Department field railway D type) mounted on more appropriate bogies. Scratchbuilt ToFu made from all sorts of bits and pieces. Like several of my early freight wagon scratchbuilds, the planks are too small because I had only undersize 1mm or very oversize 2mm planked sheet and did not know of a source of more appropriate 1.5mm planked sheet (subsequently found from a US supplier). It's inspired by the larger of the two ToFu on the Kusakaru Keiben. I usually have several different items in build at once at various different stages of completion, like this: The coach on the left was built before I acquired a Silhouette cutter for more accurate shaping of plasticard parts and so is rather wobbly compared to later creations. The body parts for the smaller of the two four wheelers in the picture above, fresh off the cutter. Do let me know whether or not this sort of modelling is of interest. It is admittedly rather different from the normal kind of modelling on this forum.

I would never thought this would happen, but the Lincolnshire Light Railway volunteers took a trip to Japan to visit RASS and their little railway, link to FB post: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/149L5x7rHY/ This is big because not everyone outside of Japan knew about this railway, and seeing volunteers of a British railway could encourage other British narrow gauge groups(like the Narrow Gauge Railway Society)to visit Japan, which both railways offered a hand in friendship, which I could tell it could lead to more wonderful visits and collaborations.

I'm sure we all know about the Railway Park and its opening this year, the link of the site, https://www.kato-oo9.com/en/sekisuiml, I'm excited about this, I could see this being very popular for regular tourists and railfans, and maybe we'll get a Japan Railway Journal segment on this. Though, I'm a huge fan of two-foot gauge and a big follower of RASS(羅須地人鉄道協会), their little tiny workshop has built Oscar(https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=849972353797277&set=pcb.849983143796198), an British influence 0-4-0t saddle tank engine for this new railway in 2023. This is exciting.

On my way to exhibit at the Folkestone model railway exhibition I called in on 'The Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Railway' a famous 15" gauge line that used to claim to be the smallest public railway in the world. It was opened in 1927 as a result of two millionaire racing drivers Captain Jack Howey and Count Louis Zborowski's idea after they had failed to buy a couple of already existing narrow gauge railways. The chief engineer was Henry Greenly who was responsible for the design of the permanent way and the rolling stock and loco design. It is situated on the Kent Coast near Dover and Folkestone with France clearly visible across the English channel The line connects the 'Cinque port' of Hythe in the with new Romney passing through Dymchurch. After new Romney it heads out onto the Romney marshes to the desolate coastal area around Dungeness, a distance of 13 1/4 miles On the day I called passenger services were in the Hands of 'Green Goddess', a 1925 Davey Paxman built 4-6-2 and 'Samson' also a Davey Paxman product, this time a 4-8-2 delivered in 1926. 'Green Goddess' was getting attention to its mechanical lubricator at New Romney station 'Samson' waits to head down to Dungeness. its elegant lines evident in this shot A line drawing of 'Hercules' Bizarely the RH&DR remain the only user of a 4-8-2 design in the U.K none of the full size railways ever having acquired one. more soon Kev

A video filmed and edited on Saturday 15th Feb near my home in the Bay of plenty. The Line , ECMT (East Coast Main Trunk) is the busiest line in New Zealand at present connecting Auckland city port and Tauranga port.