(follows on from part one)

I did complete the garden railway, and built a new garden railway to 45mm gauge after I had moved house. Meanwhile I exhibited Burnside at various exhibitions throughout the 1990's, but my interests had turned first to 0 gauge and 16mm narrow gauge in the garden and, more recently, to EM.

The layout has been stored in the garden shed and occasionally I take it out of storage, clean the track and indulge in a running session. It works perfectly every time, although I did have what I thought was a capacitor discharge failure the other day. It turned out to be nothing more than broken wire in the power plug into the layout.

The back scene has suffered from damp over the years and should really be replaced; I may well end up painting it. I have replaced some of the trees with more realistic versions by today's standards, as the greenery I used on the Woodland Scenics trees was rather "clump like". That has marginally improved the look of them, but some proper replacements will have to be made to bring the layout up to date.

The layout was not improved much in those years as I did not feel that slow speed running capabilities of N gauge mechanisms was enough to keep me interested. My concern has also been the look of the steamroller wheels and the over scale couplings. I wish I had the patience and the eyesight to model in 2mm. However things do seem to be improving now with the likes of Bachmann and Dapol producing locomotives that look and run very nicely and some attempt is being made to disguise if not to reduce the width of the steamroller wheels. To see daylight through spokes together with blackened valve gear is a great step forward.

Who knows, in a few years time I may be able to exhibit Burnside again with stock that allows slow speed shunting. That would persuade me to convert all of the stock to automatic couplings so I can finally use those electromagnets I took so much trouble to install at the beginning !