Another of my cars

Now this particular make of car is something which I would not have imagine myself buying but buy it I did. It is a 1991 Nisan Figaro. Nissan are renown for making quirky looking cars and this was no exception. It was designed to resemble a 1960's car with a european look (Italian) and was also primarily aimed at the Japanese female driver. At the time of manufacture, Japan was not allowed to import these into the UK at that time and it was only in comparatively recent times that these were allowed into the UK. As Japan drives on the same side of the road as the UK then these little cars were an ideal car to be imported into the uk with very minor mods to make the road legal (rear fog lights for example). 

OK, so that was the preamble and so why should I buy one?  Well I could see that these little cars had a kind of quirkiness about them and there were quite a few well known celebs buying them. I looked at the prices over the last 6 months and they were climbing rapidly, I could see that this could be possibly the only car I could own and drive to work with it not only not losing money every mile I drove it but instead made money. This was looking to being a good, short term investment if nothing else.

And so I hunted around for one with all the prerequisites I wanted - rust free, Emerald Green, low milage, no accident damage and I found one not to far away from where I live. I ended up buying this and drove it home the following week. I owned this Figaro for about two and a half years and I have to say that little car gave both me and my wife so much fun. I spent many hours searching for the many incredibly rare optional extras that would have been available to the original Japanese owners back in 1991 and I managed to find 99% of all the accessories including genuine lace seat back covers, parking sticks and probably the rarest item of all was the rear luggage rack which I also managed to get. You will be able to see most of the accessories in the following photos.

Genuine original rear luggage rack

All leather cream interior which I also added wood veneer trim

She won Car of the Year and Best of Show in 2009

Me looking very smug showing off my trophies that we had just won

Genuine lace seat covers

Oh and I managed to sell the car after two and half year later for double the price I paid for it so yes, it was a very good investment - how many daily driver cars could do that?

Ash pit for Lakeside now finished

I have now completed the Ash pit which has had spacers fitted (a sleeper thickness) underneath the top lip to bring it to the correct height of the track plus I have heaped two piles of coal into the pit and then added cigarette ash which I have ground to a fine ash and put that over the two heaps and also on the tops of the brick piers as if it has been spilt. The next stage is to fit it to the baseboard which I may do Friday evening or over the weekend.

Completed Ash pit

Construction of an Ash Pit for Lakeside
I decided that with the turntable now in position I could now start developing that area and one of the things that I wanted to have in was an Ash Pit next to the smaller single engine shed so yesterday I made this up. I used scraps of off-cuts from my Plasticard box to make the basic shell and again rummaged through my other boxes of left over bits and found some brick patterned plastic sheeting which I then lined onto the inside of the basic shell which I had just built.

Before even starting this I researched old photos of Ash Pits to get an idea of what they looked like and there were various shapes, styles and sizes to choose from but there was one photo I liked and so I decided to chose that as a basis for this one of mine. It consisted of the normal dug out pit lined with brickwork and a concrete floor with a concrete ramp leading up to the top of the pit, the track rested on a central brick pier via two wooden long beams stretching the length of the pit and at each end the wooden beams were resting on another brick support jutting from out from the sides, the two rails of the track were then laid directly onto these wooden beams.

After making the Ash Pit up I then set about painting and weathering the pit using various paints and all applied with a brush rather than an air brush, fine granuals of spilt coal was then added along with two workers shovelling it into a wheel barrow.

I have now left that to dry out and will add the ash tonight once I know it is fully dried and I will use ash taken from my ashtray for the ash as this gives a very realistic effect. The result so far can be seen in the two photos below. The track in the photo is not the track I will be using and is only there to give me dimensions and also to just show the effect.

The tractor in the background will be used for hauling away the ash

All I need to do then is cut a hole in the baseboard and lower it into position and then put the track over the top once dropper wires have been installed. Once installed I will upload some more photos of the final Ash Pit. This turned out to be a very relaxing job to do on a dull, rainy day and cost me no additional outlay as everything used I had already in my 'Spares' box.

My Audi A7 Black Edition
When I started this blog I wanted it to cover most things that are of interest to me, I have started off by showing my OO gauge model railway and now I show another love of my life and that is cars that I have owned over the last few years so I may as well start with my current car.

As I am coming up for retirement I decided that I would buy a car that would last me a good few years and as I am a big Audi fan then one of the cars on my shopping list was the beautiful Audi R8 but after careful consideration I decided that this really wasn't the car that was for me on various fronts so that was crossed off. The other Audi on my list was an Audi A7, I had always liked this car as it was unusual in the fact that it is a large car but in the shape of a 4 door coupe - an unusual design.

My local Audi centre invited me to a private Friday evening viewing of all the cars for sale both new and secondhand and as I was in the market for another car then I thought why not, nothing to loose. I arrived at the centre and walked into the main showroom and within about three seconds I spotted it - the car I just new I had to have - it was literally love at first sight with this piece of Sprint Blue awesomeness.

The deal was done within the hour and a deposit paid.

It took about 2 weeks for it to be prepped, registered and my private plate transferred over to the A7 and the day finally arrived when it was delivered onto my drive, a brand new Sprint Blue A7 3 litre Turbo Diesel.

A year and a half and 13000 miles later I still feel as if I am getting into a brand new car every time I open the drivers door, it is brimming with modern technology, can be driven like a big armchair wafting me to my destination in utter comfort or at the touch of a switch, can deliver the thrill of a powerful sports car with decent handling to match. It is unusual to find a car in this colour called Sprint Blue as most A7's are either white, silver, grey or black and at the time of buying this A7 then this was the only A7 in this colour within the UK so is a very unique car for that alone.

I will be updating this blog with various other cars that I have owned over the years and guess what? The previous three other cars were all Audis - but not A7's!    

Well with the arrival of the new Heljan Metropolitan this week then it just had to appear in the Sunday Lakeside update, this would be it's first 'proper' run on Lakeside rather than just a test run on the rolling road and I wasn't disappointed! It performed remarkably well tackling the tightest curve on the layout as if it wasn't there, it is without doubt, a very competent runner and a joy to watch in the stunning livery of dark red and gold.

I also wanted to show how the new turntable has now opened up the terminus area on Lakeside which now allows me to make full use of that area for running trains and not just for storage purposes. So this weeks update shows both the Metropolitan and the turntable in full use.

There is now full potential to landscape and detail the engine shed area and the long retaining wall side of the layout much sooner than I had anticipated. Virtually all the components are now there for me to start within the next week or so - the only thing that can hold me back now is the time to actually do it which I'm sure most of us suffer from.

The link to the YouTube video of the update is here:   

A new acquisition arrived this morning.

Most people would have seen the reviews or videos of the new loco launched by Heljan over the last few weeks of the Metropolitan BoBo. This at the moment comes in four guises but the particular version I really liked was the fourth one to be released which was ‘John Milton’. 

All four versions differ slightly in their appearance with one of them in grey wartime livery, John Milton in my opinion looked the most attractive with extra detailing on handrails, red sides to the chassis frames and a few other extra details too. 

After the initial wait for this to be released then it arrived on my desk at work this morning and when I opened it (well, I couldn’t resist waiting until I got home could I !? ) I wasn’t disappointed - another stunning model from Heljan. 

I will write up further details on this when I have more time but in true blog tradition then I thought that this would be newsworthy and post this up as “Hot News” as of 15 minutes ago when it arrived - you can’t get newer than that!

Heljan item number 9001 Metropolitan/BoBo 9 John Milton

Well it’s been almost a year now since starting this blog and after the first entry then I will be honest and say that I forgot all about it, so I thought it about time that I start to utilise it. I shall be retiring at Christmas and no doubt will have more time to keep this blog up to date with hopefully a few interesting snippets of what I have been doing or what I may have planned for the future.

I Have to confess that it will be biased towards model railways but there maybe the odd occasional ‘odd ball’ item thrown in that was of interest to publish an may hopefully be of interest to you too.

Lakeside - my OO gauge model railway.

For three years or so I have been busy with a hobby that I never thought in my wildest dreams it would take me to the hight of interest that this has done and that hobby has been my OO gauge model railway which is set up above my garage and measures 16 feet x 8 feet, not huge in comparison to some loft layouts I have seen on YouTube but plenty big enough for me to build and manage. Manage probably being the operative word here because I have seen many smaller layouts which appear to be majoring on track work with umpteen tracks, many, many points (turnouts) and various yards - far too much for me in my old age to handle and I would feel uneasy in it’s operation. I wanted to keep this layout simple from the outset but with some good scenic details and a few platforms, signal boxes etc - in other words, a large train set.

I have very little knowledge of trains but I do like the modelling aspect and so this layout is first and foremost for fun, it is totally un-prototypical, I will run for instance GWR region trains with Southern region trains, in other words I will run what I want and not was is correct. Although having said that, Lakeside does have a history in-built as it is set very loosely in the Yorkshire area and there is a Youtube video laying out that history which you can find here:  

Lakeside is very much a work in progress layout and is (like most model railways) something that will probably never be finished but will be updated as time goes on, I do try to do as many videos as I think necessary to keep people up to date with it’s progress and I also produce the occasional ‘How to’ video where I think it’s appropriate.

So why not follow me along this very long journey of building this model railway, as long as you can appreciate that this layout is primarily for fun and enjoyment and not to be too serious about being prototypical then you will not be disappointed.

Tentative steps into O gauge.

For my 66th birthday last August my wife bought me an O gauge kit of a Class 50 diesel manufactured by Just Like the Real Thing (JLTRT). This was something I had been wanting to try for a few months for two main reasons. (1) It was O gauge and so was big! and (2) It was a kit and I really liked the idea of building a locomotive from a kit to test my modelling skills - or not as the case maybe!

Although not quite complete at this stage of me writing this, it has been a most enjoyable build and has taught me a few new things that I had no experience of. It has also made me think about either building or buying other O gauge rolling stock or locos to keep the Class 50 company, I do have something in mind at the moment but whether this comes to fruition then we shall have to wait and see on that. I have documented the build of the Class 50 with about 12 YouTube videos but the very start with me opening the box starts here:  

  

So what else is in the pipeline?

Well as regards model railways then I have in mind to build an end-to-end N gauge layout next year, I haven’t decided on the size yet but it is going to be small enough to fit into the back of my car for ease of transportation, I have a rough theme mapped out in my mind but nothing actually drawn up yet - I guess the first thing to do is to measure the back of the car up to find out the maximum dimension is!

I think that about brings me up to date after a year but I will hopefully post more at a later stage when there is more to report.