Busy doing nothing

With the embossed styrene sheet passed over to my wife for her expert painting, I have been left with time to think about other items associated with the layout.

Lorrie starts work on the first of the styrene sheets.

Like the locomotives and rolling stock. What am I going to use? I accumulated a fairly eclectic collection of locomotives and rolling stock in my earlier Gn15 days, and it's all been sat in storage boxes since then. Some Sidelines kits and quite a few scratch built items of my own.
I found no less than four Heywood TOPS wagons that I built for Whinny Lane and they haven't seen the light of day in a good ten years.
The TOPS concept and design would be perfect for this project. Wagons that could double as flat and open wagons, carrying oil drums or ash from the furnace.

A fleet of TOPS wagons, fresh from Duffield Bank Works.

I would also like some Hudson-type "vee" tippers. I have some Bachmann ones in On30 but the skips are a bit on the small side. Conscious that technology and model making have come along since I built the TOPS wagons. I looked on Shapeways and found an absolute plethora of Gn15 kits and models all ready for me to pick and choose from.
There was a lot of tempting things there.
I shall return and fritter away some hard earned cash there in time for the St. Cloud show. But for now I needed some "V" skips, and I liked the ones produced by TeeBee. So two of them are on the way to me. I shall report back in due course. My only experience with 3D printed kits has been with the OO 6.5 minimum gauge line from James Hilton. Those are excellent. If fiddly, due to their small size.
Another piece of 3D printing I found this week, were these Oil drums from from makeitRC.com. They sell a small line of diorama accessories for radio control cars in 1:24 and 1:25 scale. Oil drums being one of them. Now as I model in 1:25.4 (or 1mm = 1inch) I figured the 1:25 scale ones would do fine. I do have some 1:22.5 (nominal G scale) ones, but they are huge by comparison and I can only fit two in a TOPS wagon. These drums at 1:25 scale are just 1mm under size in diameter, and I can fit 4 in a TOPS wagon, so a big win there. These drums look great.

Make it RC oil drums. Two for $1.95. I'll take 12 please.

If I thought things were just falling into place this week I wasn't prepared for what was coming next...
Out of the blue, I decided to take up a subscription to the French model railway magazine, Voie Libre, again. I've not had a subscription in a long time. Carl Arendt persuaded me to try it in the early 2000's as there was always plenty of inspirational content in there. Quite often with a Micro bent. The magazine is available as an iPad app, so it is available to read in English.
As I flicked through the pages I was amazed when I found an article with photographs, and drawings of a Schneider type 69 0-4-0T loco from 1870.
Never heard of it? Neither had I. But when I saw the pictures, I knew I had to model it. It was originally built to 500mm gauge, and as I model 15” to 18” gauge prototypes the less than two inch difference didn’t bother me in the slightest.
I’ll have to find a mechanism for it first. A Bachmann “Percy” perhaps. Or the On30 Porter. Both spring to mind quickly. I don’t have any experience with the Percy mech. It might not have the slow speed control needed on this short layout. The Porter is excellent.

The Schneider at the Pithiviers railway museum preserved at 600mm gauge.

Anyway. That locomotive was most definitely an unexpected find this week. The drawings for the oval skips that accompanied the locomotive will need further investigation. But they are rather interesting too.
Just what did I accomplish on the layout this week?
Once again. Not much. We now have some vents in the clerestory roof. As soon as the painted stone sheets are finished I can clad this building and move on.

It pretty much looks the same as previous weeks...