January      February      March      April      May      June      July      August      September      October      November      December

Had a lovely day out to the Rotorua track.

Had another lovely day at Whakatane.

The Rotorua Model Engineers have asked to me to re-do their website, so watch this space.

I am trying to co-ordinate a centralised list of all miniature railway events in New Zealand. I'll start this off with the Rotorua and Hamilton events, but please, PLEASE help me on my quest to do a national list. This started because I find it frustrating to find out what is going on as I like to visit different tracks. I am quite happy to co-ordinate this myself, I just need the information to add to the list!

I am going to loan my passenger carriage to the Hamilton Model Engineers - as it isn't of much use to anyone just sitting in John Bremner's workshop.

I have decided that the best way to resolve the recurring valvegear problem is a staged approach:

1. Replace the two cranks on either side with new ones of larger proportions - this should stop their current tendency to work loose over time.
2. More drastic action.

I prefer option (1) for now!

Unfortunately, I am really busy getting our business off the ground and I cannot spend as much time as I'd like working on POEM.

I have finished the website for the Rotorua Society of Model Engineers and it looks like another club may be interested in their own too.

Pip and I had a great time at Havelock North; not as busy as Labour Weekend but a great time nonetheless.

I've had the new cranks for POEM water-jet cut. All I have to do now is find enough spare time to machine them, and with work as busy as it is, that's not going to be easy.

Work seems to be getting in the way of progress on POEM and on the 29th we're going away on business for six weeks.

Away on business, so no progress on anything railway-wise.

Whilst in Melbourne on business I visited the Puffing Billy Railway and ended up firing loco 8A all the way from Belgrave to Emerald. Excellent.

It's possible that we may have found our piece of land. Not bad really, it's only taken us 2+ years.

The land purchase fell through. They wouldn't let us run a business from there; which is kind of fundamental really. It's a damn shame as it is by far the best section we've seen so far.

We've finally found a piece of land to build on. This time they'll allow us to run a business from there and there's space for a railway. Now we're cookin'!

I have been "manically busy" for the last year or so on our business so I haven't had much time to work on POEM. However, the replacement cranks are almost done and she's nearly ready for a steam test.

A lot of people have suggested simply replacing the Allan straight-link valve motion with Walschaerts. There is nothing inherently wrong with Allan motion (plenty of full-size locos used it successfully), so I intend to persevere with it.

The piece of land is now ours and we're already talking to a builder about the house.

This is the view out to the river; more or less what you'll see from the train

Pip has given me the "all clear" to start planning a railway to go around the land. Little did she know that I was way ahead of her!

I have been busy and done a load of overdue updates to this site.

25th September was Hamilton Model Engineer's Night Run. The weather was less than co-operative (OK, it rained hard for most of the day only clearing about 8pm), but the evening seemed to go well. I spent most of it walking round taking photos. The ground was absolutely sodden as we've had huge amounts of rain in the last weeks.

Driving in the dark brings a whole new dimension to miniature railways!

CLICK HERE to view the whole gallery of images.

I am trying to source inexpensive 2m diameter pipe for a tunnel for the railway around our land. It really needs to go in fairly soon so that any dirt excavated during the house construction can just be dumped on top of the pipe.

Any help in finding pip would be appreciated.

A group of six us from Hamilton descended on Rotorua for their regular running day. The weather was great, the hospitality was great, the running was great. Did I forget anything? I don't think so.

After the running-day we visited both John Heald and Paul Newton's workshops to see what they had "in the works".

CLICK HERE to see the photo gallery of the day.

I had a great time at Havelock North over Labour Weekend (as usual).

A group of us from Hamilton went down and although I still haven't sorted out POEM (not enough hours in the day), I got to drive three locos: John Heald's Kerr Stuart, Dennis Searle's WAB and Dave Giles' Shay. What a great weekend.

Check out the photos.

I've done some planning of where the track will go on our piece of land. The land isn't huge and Pip doesn't want the track encircling the house, so I've had to be "creative". It won't be going in straightaway, but we've planned the position of the house around where the track needs to run.

POEM is coming along slowly. I'm getting there but it is a long slog.

Nothing much happening. Still trying to find time for POEM. The cranks are machined and I just have to put her back together now.