5" Meter Maid 0-6-0

I bought the castings for a 7.25" Metre Maid and it came with the Sweet Pea book [Jack Buckler] and it looks fairly straight forward at last count I think there are four Sweet Peas in our club and they work well.

While it is nice to have the equipment 'at the club' it becomes a bind the travelling to the clubrooms and carting the small bits and pieces one needs to use with the Club gear so recently I added a small mill to my wksp .... which is nice ... but a mistake as the small mill cannot take the reasonable cuts of the bigger club mill and everything takes longer. It also has a variable speed motor so one has no idea of the spindle and cutter speed compared to the belt driven club mill. So 10,000 is probably not an unreasonable figure to allow .... the lathe and mill are just the start I am afraid Just a small part. But we had a retired member who allowed himself three months fulltime work to build a loco and had built half a dozen to a high standard in his workshop which was 'Just big enough' as he put it to a reporter I overheard.

If you have not given us up as a [whatever] bunch I will mention that I have built two houses as a spare time from a regular 40 hour job originallyalog the the valuable assistance of my wife. This followed designing perhaps half a dozen houses to suit the small section I had and building restrictions etc . Second is the retirment home I currently live in. The message I would try and put over is that if you treat each little bit as the target and try to forget the larger picture it comes together nicely without being a daunting task.

With all the tasks mentioned by LTSR my current building programme progresses quite slowly, plus age means that three hours work is a days work .... but that doesn't bother me I make each litte part and though the bits are not secured together just sitting there gives me encouragement to progress to the next task. Today was a 'big' day as I went to the Club to cut off the pony wheel blanks, coming home I need a holder on which to turn them on which took most of the afternoon [ with a half hour break for afternoon tea] and just before tea/dinner I turned had one of them flat .... a good days work for me Now in the evening I am writing this to encourage you