Transatlantic Tribulations & Tea Train Trips

It’s fair to say that the last month has been fairly eventful, with trips both to the USA and around the UK. However, the best laid plans always seem to go astray!

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And we’re back…

Well… it’s been a while!

Just after writing the latest update, I underwent some fairly major surgery on my right hand, after which I was not allowed to use it for three months.
This meant that touch-typing was out of the question, and I really didn’t fancy trying to update the site typing with one finger!

So here’s a quick whistle-stop tour of what’s been happening since February!

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Winter Blues

With many railways in their ‘hibernation’ season and Omicron still circulating, there hasn’t been much opportunity to get out and about with the Golden Ticket over the last couple of months, so focus has remained on the ‘indoor’ models.

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Happy New Year

Happy New Year from me, Andrea and Luna at Phoenix Hill Railways.
All the best to you and yours for a happy and prosperous 2022!

Due to the rise of the Omicron variant, December has been fairly quiet on the railway outings front, but that has given me a little bit more time to work on the model railways instead.

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Forewarned is 4 armed…

To allow safe operation of more than one train on the Phoenix Hill Railway, we are almost certainly going to have to install a proper signalling system.

Although planning for this hasn’t advanced very far yet, the first signal parts have arrived as a result of a fortuitous find on eBay!

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Now you DCC me…

Although both the BFR and the future OO and HO gauge railways will be capable of operating analogue stock, I want to run them on DCC whenever possible due to the increased flexibility and functionality.

Consequently, I’m slowly working through my analogue stock and fitting it with decoders.
Those that are DCC-ready are usually nice and easy and just involve fitting the decoder in a socket, however, I have a number of models, often older ones, which have no socket and require hard-wiring.
Over the last couple of days I’ve attempted a few of these conversions.

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