On this page can be found all the news for 2006. The Latest News section was getting a bit long so I've decided to add an archive section where - if you are interested - you can go back through all the site news. A link back to the main site news section is included below:-

:: Archive news from 2006
:: Archive news from 2007
:: Latest News

December 26

Link in the Links section for Railway Modelling Web updated to reflect the new web address due to the site moving after a major issue.

December 22

Link added to the Links section for the Preserved Railways website.

December 19

Links page updated to reflect that one of the N Gauge forums listed - N Scale - appears to have been hacked by a Turkish hacker. The link will remain listed in case the issue is rectified at some stage in the future. UPDATE:- issue now appears to have been rectified but as this isn't the first time this forum has been hacked this bit of Latest News will remain here for the time being.

November 30

Project Concept updated to include a provision for more operational variety by adding military freight traffic to the range of traffic seen on the proposed layout.

October 19

Finally started page 5 of the e-Rail Passes that I've received after receiving one from Bob Van Cleef of the North River Railway. The pass can be found on e-Rail Pass Page 5.

September 28

Just like buses they come in three's - e-Rail Passes that is. Received one this morning from the Martian Express Railroad. Again, this pass can be found on e-Rail Pass Page 4.

September 25

Hot on the heels of the Missouri, Kentucky and Texas Railroad e-Rail Pass I received on the 21st, I've now received another E-Rail Pass - this time from Swiss Trains. This pass can also be found on e-Rail Pass Page 4.

September 21

Again, like awards, it's been a while since I received an e-Rail Pass, but I've received one today from the Missouri, Kentucky and Texas Railroad, McKinney Sub-Division. The pass can be found on e-Rail Pass Page 4.

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September 16

It's been a while since the site won one but the site has won another award. This time it's Dave's Tracks of Excellence Award and can be found with all the other awards on the Awards page.

September 9

A gallery from the other railway I visited in the Lake District, the Ravenglass and Eskdale, has now been added to the site and can be found here.

September 3

Another new gallery has been added, this time of my visit to the Lakeside and Haverthwaite Railway in the Lake District. The gallery can be found here.

August 12

New gallery added with photos taken from my visit to the Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Railway. The gallery can be found here. For those that are interested, the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway has it's own website that can be found here (this link will open in a new browser tab/window).

August 9

New link added to the home page for the Any Browser Project.

August 7

Due to possible infringement on copyright I have removed the Top Toys video from the site.

July 20

I've added a video to the site today. It's of the TV programme James May - of Top Gear fame - Top Toys. The last 10 minutes or so were dedicated to model railways and it's that part of the programme that's been put online. The link can be found at James May Top Toys video (right click the link and then select "Save target as" otherwise the file will attempt to play rather than be saved to your PC). Please be aware that the file is 55.1Mb in size so may well take an extremely long time to download if you're on dialup. I've also added a new link to the Links page for the Yahoo group for Lenz's Digital Plus DCC system.

July 11

The website has won another award, this time the American Railroads Folklore Award. As usual, the award can be found in the Awards section.

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June 27

The Green Light Silver Award won by this website has now been upgraded to Gold and can be found in the Awards section.

June 22

A write-up on how I converted a Farish class 47 to DCC has now been added with plenty of photos to show how the conversion was done. The write-up can be found on the Class 47 DCC Conversion page

June 19

Photos from the recent Chatham & District MRC's annual Show have been put online.

June 17

This site has won another couple of awards in the last week. First off, I've been awarded the Roundhouse of Recognition for winning 5 railway website based awards. Secondly, I've been awarded the Ciosbahn Gold Award. Both awards - and links to the awarding site - can be found in the Awards section.

June 14

I've bought a Lenz Set 100 DCC and have been trying it out. I've taken a few photos of the set and added them to the Circuitry page.

June 11

Another award has been won by the site. This time it's the Nutsplitters Great Site Award and can also be found in the Awards section.

June 10

The site has received another award, this time from Steve's Railway Pages who has awarded this site with the Model Railway Resource Award. This award can be found in the Awards section.

June 4

New link added to the Manufacturers section for N-Train.

June 3

New gallery added with photos of the layouts that were exhibited at the annual N Gauge Society AGM and Show.

June 1

Added some more content by doing a write-up on the fitting of the cork tiles to the baseboard to complement the photos already in that section. The update can be found in the Cork Tiles section.

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May 20

Done some more work to Westminster-on-Sea by sticking some cork tiles to the baseboard. The new page is called Cork Tiles.

May 15

Added a new gallery called Ashford Exhibition 2006 with 14 photos taken at the exhibition. I've also created a small section for my small interim layout Wesminster-on-Sea called Westminster.

May 12

I've now started work on a new layout and have done most of the work on the new baseboard. The details - and a few photos - can be found in the Baseboard section.

May 2

New gallery added called Adventures in Paint Stripping demonstrating the successful - and not-so-successful - attempts of mine at the art of stripping paint from old Farish bodyshells. Also added a link to the Links section for Disused Stations - a reference site that I think is a great website.

April 24

New gallery added with 4 photos of the 3 Lifelike FA2s I've bought to power the 4-CEP EMUs I'm currently constructing.

April 15

A new page has been added detailing the assembly of TPM's Commonwealth Bogies. A new E-Pass has also been added to E-Pass Page 4 for the Tuolumne & Sierra Foothills Railroad.

April 11

The site has been awarded a bronze Smokin' Award and the award graphic - and link back to the Smokin' Award site - has been added to the Awards page.

April 8

Some more photos of various stages of construction of the train washer I'm scratch building have been added to Buildings Page 4 and 2 more E-Rail passes have been added to E-Rail Pass Page 4.

April 7

New page added to detail the construction of an EMU kit titled Converting Farish Mk 1s into a 4-CEP. The page contains only 6 photos of the work done so far but will eventually have a full record of the construction of the kit including how it was motorised.

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April 2

E-Rail Pass added for the Penn Western Railroad to E-Rail Pass Page 4.

March 31

New E-Rail Pass added today for the Crossroads, Pinecove & Rockhaven Railroad. The pass can be found on E-Rail Pass Page 4 and is quite a nice looking pass. I've also added a pass for Joshington Railways today. Bit of a mistake here on my part. I was issued the pass quite a while ago but forgot to add it to the E-Rail Pass section! All sorted out now though. A new link for Model Railway Express Mag has also been added to the Links page.

March 27

OK, today I validated all the CSS on the site and have also moved all CSS to an externally linked style sheet in order to make the site a little leaner - and, therefore, faster loading - with some further tidying up of the code on the site also done. I've also received another award, this time a Green Light Silver Award and this has been added to the Awards page.

March 26

A slight redesign of the site has been implemented today. All pages on the site now comply to the W3C requirements for HTML4.01 Transitional and have a logo/graphic on each page to reflect this. The header image for the site has been reduced in size so that visitors viewing this site with a screen resolution of 800x600 do not have any horizontal scroll bars. The size of the home page has been reduced to aid visitors using dial up. This has been done by moving all the award graphics on the home page to a new Awards page which can be accessed from the main menu on each page and by removing one of the webrings from the site. I've never received approval for my website to be listed, the webring owner does not respond to e-mails and the webring was offline today so there seems little point in having it on the site, especially as it was full of HTML validation errors. The site has now grown to the stage where a site map is both useful and necessary so there is a new Site Map option from the main menu. Finally, a Site Policy page has been added to deal with the unpleasant but necessary issues of copyright, trademark, etc.

March 22

New link added to the Retailers page for Howes Models.

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March 19

All pages on the site bar the home page - due to the rail webring links on it - have been made W3C compliant to ease accessibility and interoperability.

March 17

I'm very pleased to have won the much-coveted Web Gem Award from TrainNet.org for this site and have put the logo graphic on the home page. It links back to TrainNet's home page where, as soon as I confirm that I've added the logo and the link, there will be a listing of my site on the Web Gems page.

March 16

New gallery added showing the parts acquired from Taylor Precision Models to convert some Graham Farish Mk 1 coaches into a 4-CEP EMU and the gallery is called TPM 4-CEP Kit.

March 11

Added a link to one of our forum member's, solent, online diary for their model railway project to the Other Layouts page.

March 7

A small update today with more content being added to the Rolling Stock page.

March 1

This website has achieved a 5-star rating on the Waldovia State Railways awards scheme and the award graphic has been added to the site's home page and links back to Waldovia State Railway's awards scheme page.

February 26

New link added for Simply Trains to the Links page. A new link has been added to the Other Layouts page for Hammerton Junction, a layout by the Nene Valley Model Railway Group. I've also added some more content to the Rolling Stock page. A new gallery has also been added with 12 photos of my class 73s running on my test track layout and can be found in the Gallery section and is called 73s in Action.

February 24

New link added for www.modelrail.org plus a link for the N Scale Yahoo group also added to the Links page.

February 19

New link added to the Links page for the Railway Channel.

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February 15

Received another E-Pass today, this time from the Jolo Coastal Railroad. I've now started a 4th page for my E-Passes and this is the first one I've received from Asia, in this case from the Philippines.

February 11

Photograph added to the home page and photographs of the first 2 N gauge layouts I built have been added to the Hobby History page.

February 10

Added a new gallery called Previous Layouts with 14 photos of the first 2 N gauge layouts I attempted to build. They're truly bad I can tell you!

February 9

Added another gallery. This one is called Buildings Gallery and contains 19 pictures of some of the buildings I've assembled and painted for this project.

February 6

Added another link to the Links section and created a basic header for the site which adds a nicer feel than the plain text that was there.

February 3

3 more layouts have been added to the Other Layouts page. They're all modern image layouts of members of this website's forum. Content has also now been added to all pages that were lacking any. I've also tidied the site up a bit by adding alt attributes to all images for those people browsing the site that can't or choose not to load the images on this site. Pages have been broken up into more manageable sizes, headings added to all pages, better site navigation added to some pages, a "Last Site Update" note has been added to the home page and images have been added to any pages lacking in them where possible. Hopefully that will improve the navigation and viewing experience for anyone visiting the site.

February 1

Another new gallery has been added to the site. It's the second part of my rolling stock gallery and is called Rolling Stock Part 2. I've now taken some snaps of my locos with some coaches and wagons in tow.

January 28

More links added to the site with another entry in the Retailers section and another model railway site listed in the Links section. The Layout Location page has also been updated with some photos of my loft to show where the layout is now planned to be going.

January 27

3 more links have been added to the Retailers section. I've used all of these in the past so there shouldn't be a problem in using them. I've also added the last track plan that I worked on. It's not been finished as I'm going to alter the design quite a bit but I've added it to let people see where I was heading with the design.

January 25

2 more galleries have been added today. First is a gallery of some of my rolling stock - it contains pictures of most of my locos and is called Rolling Stock Part 1. I'll be adding a gallery of my wagons and carriages soon. The other gallery has been prompted by my finding that some manufacturers can't/haven't made pictures of their products available online so it's kind of hard to determine whether they meet your needs. Any product I buy that I can't find a pic of will have it's photo taken and be put online in the Kit Gallery.

January 24

OK, there's been some minor updates to pages throughout the site recently but the main update that I thought I'd you all know about is that there's now a Gallery online. The first one has 5 pictures of my test track including a couple of pics of 2 of my locos and is called Test Track Gallery. Hope you like them.

 

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