Since its first year of operation, the TBLR has run a Santa Special train at Christmas time.
This year I thought the train could do with a bit of an upgrade by providing Santa with a sleigh.
Houstoun Gate Locomotive Works produce a rather attractive and reasonably priced kit of a sleigh for this very purpose.

I did not order the kit until two weeks before the big day, so once it arrived, I had to get a move on. The kit parts are all laser cut and they fit together very easily. Once the edges of the parts had been given a light sanding the sleigh was glued together with PVA woodworking glue. The two trim pieces required painting before attaching to the body.

The whole thing was given a few coats of grey auto spray primer before the top coats were applied. The instructions show the sleigh in red with white trim, but I thought that as the driver wears red and white, why not go for another seasonal scheme; I settled for holly green with red trim.

The enamel gloss paint I had in stock was rather old, the green was OK once two coats were applied, although it took a long time to dry fully, remaining tacky for over 24 hours. The red however would not dry completely, and by Christmas Eve I was starting to think it would not be ready in time. My solution was to overpaint the red trim parts with some Railmatch Royal Mail Red satin enamel (good paint for buffer beams and signal arms). The satin paint dried quickly and I was able to apply two coats within 8 hours. The trims were glued to the sleigh body on Christmas morning, and Santa had his sleigh in time for the special,which ran at 3 pm on Christmas day!

Since extending the railway, I have found it difficult controlling railcar number 3. The manual speed control and reversing switch were mounted on one side of the underframe, and difficult to access in station areas, where buildings or another train would get in the way. The solution was to fit radio control.

I purchased a 3 channel 2.4 GHz transmitter with two receivers at a bargain price earlier in the year, one of the receivers was earmarked for this project, the other will probably be used in railcar No.2 'The Unit'. All I needed therefore was a speed controller. I ordered the Mtronics Viper from Chuffed 2 Bits. As the controller was going to be a direct replacement for the manual one, I just needed to splice it into the existing wiring set up. I thought I ordered the basic controller, but for a few extra quid, C2B offer a ready wired version with switch and charge socket, I must have suffered from the old twitchy finger when ordering on t'net as I received the fully wired version.

The first job was to remove the wiring harness from the Viper, and put this in my bits box; it will come in handy one day. In addition to the motor and controller wiring, the railcar is equipped with working headlights and interior lighting controlled by toggle switches mounted on the underframe. The resulting rat's nest of wiring would have taken some deciphering, but luckily I found my original wiring diagram, which showed me what was what (always produce a wiring diagram and put it somewhere safe for future reference).

The manual control pot and reversing switch were removed and the Viper controller was connected to the motor wires and the positive and negative feeds from the on/off switch. The Viper controller is a mini marvel and it was discreetly mounted on its side, with a smear of silicone adhesive, inside the underframe. The radio receiver was mounted behind the radiator at the opposite end of the railcar from the motor and the aerial was fed back under the floor. The sides of the receiver were wrapped in black insulating tape in order to hide the ghostly green glow (to show that all is OK) that emanates from the LED within.

The set up LEDs did not appear to work on this particular controller, but I managed to set it up with a bit of luck and guesswork. Extensive track testing has proved the system to be very satisfactory. I have not fitted suppressors to the motor but despite this I have experienced no RF interference; I can sit in the brick built workshop and send the railcar round the entire layout with no problems at all.

I acquired the Roundhouse Silver Lady loco in early November 2014, it is a superb loco in it's original ex works condition; however, I could not resist adding some cosmetic enhancements in order to personalise the loco and give it the appearance of a hand built masterpiece.

The majority of the enhancements came from the Locoworks range comprising: cab doors, cab step overlays, running boards, lubricator set and inner tank sides. In addition I added name and number plates from MDC, I painted the cab interior cream above the waistline and painted a thin strip of black along the bottom of the tank sides.

The Locoworks parts are either screwed in place using existing screws or glued with 2 part epoxy resin. To fit the cab doors and inner tank sides, the body has to be removed by simply undoing 2 screws and 2 nuts. While the body was off I painted the cab interior and the black strip along the bottom as well as applying black paint to the parts of the existing cab steps that would still be visible after applying the overlays. 

The window glazing had to be removed before painting the cab interior; it was quite a fiddle getting the windows back on after painting and I managed to scratch one glazing unit with the screwdriver I was using. 

MDC name and number plates were fixed in place with a thin smear of silicone adhesive. Company crest transfers were applied to the cab sides and sealed with clear varnish once they were dry. I also painted the brass roof hinge screws with Railmatch satin BR Maroon enamel, once these were dry, they were given a top coat of varnish so that they would match the body colour. The body was then refitted to the chassis.

I then removed the buffers and buffer beams, I drilled 2 x 1.6mm dia holes in each beam to take 10BA fixing bolts for my standard Accucraft chopper couplings at 28mm height. The buffer beams were replaced using Locoworks prepainted hex head bolts, in substitution for the original slotted screws.

In the future I may put some real coal in the coal bunkers, and replace the damaged glazing.

Following the purchase of the Roundhouse Silver Lady loco, and allocating it the name Stephanie and number 1, the current holder of that name and number needed renaming to its original identity, Errigal No.2. I still had the original plates, that was the easy part.

Unfortunately when I attached the Stephanie plates about four years ago I used a rather strong silicone adhesive. It was a bit of a struggle to remove the plates. I had to lever them off with the aid of a screwdriver. The tank sides of the loco are made of wood and I could not avoid denting the surface in my attempt to remove the plates.

Once the plates were off, I set about filling the dents with Milliput filler and then sanding the filled areas back to a smooth surface. The affected area was then given a coat of gloss black enamel paint to match the rest of the loco body. Once the paint was dry, the number and name plates were fixed in place with a very thin smear of silicone adhesive.