What Did You Do Today 2025

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Spent the afternoon at Chickerell Steam & Vintage Show 2025 ( near Weymouth).

Quite a cramped site in a valley and the stewards made an excellent task of marshalling the single entrance / exit on the fairly busy B3157, and crucially of course, the movement of some two dozen traction engines & steam wagons plus a plethora of other vehicles, among very many visitors.

The Show is very miniatures-friendly with about 40 miniature steam road vehicles, and a sprinkling of  radio-controlled military models. The miniatures can and do amble freely around the grounds while the full-sizes have to slumber on the sidelines apart from arena parades and a saw-bench demonstration (fenced of course).

On the Saturday evening as I was driving home from elsewhere, on passing the show ground I saw ahead a thin smoke plume at the crest of a sizeable hill, and was surprised to discover this was not from a full-size engine just over the skyline but two miniatures of around 4-inch scale, a general-purpose traction-engine and a roller, pulled into a small layby at the summit.

I learnt the TE owner is very intrepid with it, having ventured into Weymouth on Friday and Saturday evenings to find chips and ice-creams: a round-trip of eight miles on busy roads with many twelve-inch-to-the-foot hills.

 

My home club (Weymouth) was well represented with several steaming their miniature TEs, and others operating their 16mm-scale locomotives and trains on the club’s portable display (but not scenic) table-height track in the Model Tent.

This marquee was a delight to explore with not a huge number but a very rich range, with a sprinkling of model-engineering exhibits, a collection of Meccano models, a display of models of unusual work-boats (these had come all the way from Hayle), some superb miniature houses …. and what may be described as pure fun! This last being conveyor-type machines, not strictly models, moving marbles or ball-bearings in very ingenious ways around endless circuits. The rubric above a display of beautiful wood-engineering revealed amusingly that the maker had the company of a nest of swifts above the lathe, and had to be careful to avoid trampling robin chicks on the workshop floor. Intriguing that the birds seemed to have no qualms about this human sharing their chosen nest-site.

 

The programme cover photograph is of the late Len Watts’ ex-Eldridge – Pope Brewery, Austin K4 lorry he had driven professionally, and bought for preservation. On it at the Show was Len’s freelance Showman’s Road Locomotive, to perhaps 2-3 inch scale, with its distinctive cast-steel rear wheels Len always said were from Bren-gun carrier’s tracks.

This same lorry bore his coffin on Len’s final journey a few months ago, with the showman’s engine, eaves lamps on, in leading position on the platform.

Within the programme, we read this year’s show was in memoriam of both Len, and of Mr. Stephen Vine, whose family own the host farm.

 

Sorry about the quality of the snaps, taken with a small camera in my shaky hands and with the screen very difficult to see. These full-parade images give more a flavour of the rally than an engine-spotter’s exercise. The miniatures and their owners, incidentally, were all encamped in a sizeable “model avenue” area but this saw unfortunately few public visitors because it was not clearly signed, and to most visitors probably seemed just the exhibitors’ camp-site.

The Burrell roller in the second photo was one of the two engines I passed on the road yesterday (Saturday) evening. Beyond it, in the full-sizers’ line-up, are a Mann steam-cart and a Stanley Steam-car.

 

 

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Model-engineering club evening – performing a boiler test on a loco, after which, over tea (in the tea room!) off-the wall entertainment from two members who’d brought their cajon drums to demonstrate.

New to me, this instrument: pronounced “cahon” (Spanish) it is a stout plywood box with its front acting as the head and the whole case forming the seat for the player who uses his hands rather as when playing bongoes.  The head gives a bass drum effect when slapped centrally, a snare-drum sound when played on the edge, with snares that can be engaged or disengaged as on a regular snare drum.

We learn something every day!

[DiogenesParticipant @diogenes]

Your Chickerell pics seem to have slipped in under the radar, thanks for the pics and taking the time to write-up!

 

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, not model engineering, but a bit of domestic engineering of sorts, as I swopped out my water trap in my kitchen cupboard, for a different one, so out came all the cleaning bottles and and sprays and other junk, and it soon became apparent that it needed a good muck out altogether, and that’s when I found a freebie that was attached to an ME in 1992.

The black ink that was on the lettering etc. has all but gone, save for a few though, but it is still useable, not that I remember using it that much. I probably put it in there with the intention of giving it a good clean, which didn’t get done until today.

Regards Nick.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

have my ‘Andy Angle’ too, Nick

A tidy little moulding, but I’m pretty-sure I’ve never actually used it for anything

… maybe invaluable was the wrong word 🙁

MichaelG.

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Does that mean you haven’t emptied the cupboard since 1992?  Even by my standards that’s a long time.

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi Duncan, no it hasn’t been that long. I think I found it in my garage, looking a bit dirty a while ago, and put it in there, and forgot about it.

Regards Nick.

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi MichaelG, I might have used the two rulers a few times, and maybe the centre finder, but that’s about it, and not for a long time though. I think you are right about invaluable not being the right word.

Regards Nick.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Completed a set of M6 Tee-nuts for my Harrison L5’s boring-table.

This was beautifully made, but not quite completed, by a gentleman in Norfolk and I came by it via ads on here from his daughter helping him slim his workshop.

The most nerve-wracking task I had was locating the seating for the nut, which was very difficult to measure until I twigged how to use the standard cross-slide to set the mill.

…..

Now I have a problem even reaching the workshop at the end of the garden….

A baby gull fell from a precarious nest high on the chimney, survived the fall and now resides the area just outside the kitchen door, under the very aggressively close watch of Mummy Gull, feeding the little fluff-ball down on the ground. It came to the point that I had to dash for the lockable side gate to set that as the access to and from the garden, but I can’t even safely hang out the washing or tend the nature-reserve trying to be a garden.

At one point the adult, perched up on the chimney, saw me in the workshop door and made one those baleful swoops that gulls use to frighten you away.

I don’t know how long it will take the little blighter to develop its wings, and for both it and parent(s?) to give me my garden back, but it’s no fun having your home life dictated by a blasted flying rat!

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