General Discussion

At the recent model railway show held at Doncaster racecourse John Guest brought one of his locos along to see if the club could help with a service and/or repair plus a bit of advice on the best way to run the locos.

John’s plan was occasional use when his grandchildren visited setting up the layout on a tiled floor but as most of you will know with OO live steam this idea would be fraught with problems. John was invited to join the club where he would find all the info he needed on getting started.

A few days later John contacted the club via email to say that having reviewed what would be needed to reliably run the locos he had had a change of heart. The email is reproduced below.

It was great to meet the team at Doncaster and I am especially grateful to Eric, for undertaking to return my very early Mallard to working order. The conversations that I had with him have made me aware of how little I know about looking after the two live steam engines I have and a further conversation with Chris Stevens (a long time club member) has helped me be clear about what I would like to do. These are such precious little machines and my train set is not a huge part of my life, so the necessary attention to running them periodically would be a significant extra effort.

What I would like to do is to pass them on to a good home. I wondered if the OO gauge live steam club would actually like to have them. Would the club be able to organise “owning” them? I don’t want any money for them, just would like to know that they are being appreciated and looked after. What I have is an early Mallard, currently being repaired by Eric and a very lightly used Dwight D Eisenhower. Plus the control gear and one or two bits and pieces.

On behalf of the club I was happy to tell John that we would be more than happy to take ownership of the locos and add them to the Roadshow loco fleet where they will be well looked after and like all the other club owned locos regularly used. With John’s agreement the set of controllers and a rolling road will be sold for a fair price via the club shop to raise some additional funds for the club.

I can now report that on Wednesday 2nd March John hopped on a train from York to Huddersfield and I drove over to meet him. A drive over the tops past the Holme Moss TV mast would normally be a very pleasant trip but on this occasion with really thick low cloud I never even saw the mast, its red flashing light or any of the views.

However Eric has now coaxed the early Mallard back to life and the Dwight will be checked out before Ally Pally where our Roadshow fleet will be a little bit healthier than it was before.

On behalf to the club I would like to thank John for his very kind donation and support of the club.