Afternoon all,

Just an update on the last month and coming months for Kyle.

The layout appeared at the one day Cambridge 31A show last weekend alongside the 2mmFS Roadshow and received some nice comments. Generally behaved itself but a few locos started to stick on the main turnout and my friend Andy found a voltage drop across the frog so I need to look at that before the next show. Speaking of the next shows....Kyle will be appearing at Taunton Railex in October and the SHMRC Portsmouth show in November. Looking forward to attending these two shows to complete the year on the circuit.

So....after 35+ years I finally made it to Kyle last month 😳 The closest I had got was with my old School friend Andy who was working a year in Edinburgh. We had made it as far as Achnasheen on a 37 but due to shortage of time, had to jump off and take the incoming train straight back. One day I knew I would make it there...albeit the glory days had since passed.

Andy kindly invited me to Dornoch for a few days at the end of August so we decided we needed to make the trip to Kyle (Andy had been a few times as has Scottish relatives so vaguely remembers the class 26's etc) The plan was to leave late morning by car, drop me off at the station before, so I could arrive by train. Sadly that was scuppered as we lost time driving on the road, which has moments of single width lane with passing in few places and a few caravans and tractors! We actually arrived just at the same time as the train so parked up, grabbed some pics and then it left about 15/20 minutes later. A brief lunch ensued at a nearby cafe and then time to visit and photograph the station (more on that at the end 😉)

It was so good and slightly surreal to walk around a place where I have studied photographs for some years in order to make my extract of it. One could only imagine it with 26's and 37's and the freight traffic. Just as we were on the lesser used platform Andy thought he heard something and we had a great surprise that the Royal Scotsman arrived. The train appeared to be empty as the loco ran around and then shunted the stock into the adjacent platform. A local informed us that the passengers were being bussed around Skye (we saw the coach at one point) so we are not sure where they would have disembarked the train. After the train backed in, presumably to vacate the platform for the later passenger service, we decided to head home by car. 

A few pictures attached as below...

And here is proof I made it to Achnasheen...

Incase you are wondering why I took loads of photos of the station...some of you are aware I have started to make inroads into 7mm scale. My retirement layout (originally supposed to be Wenford Dries 😳) is to build Kyle in 7mm although this time I will build the other side of the station to make it more interesting and not an exact replica. Lessons learnt in 2mmFS will be applied to the 7mm version including wrapping the water around the end similar to my hero Ian Futers had done on Loch Lochy. Interestingly I recall that Ian built his famous P4 Lochside layout in 7mm some years later so its not a first to remake your layout bigger albeit I am aiming for something slightly different. 

I have already purchased virtually all the rolling stock, the turnouts and I have the Tim Horn baseboards. What I don't have is the space to start it...plus am 58 so retirement is some way off still 😉

Please do come and say hello if you are at either of the above shows and as always, comments welcome!

Thank you,

Pete