Back on the Rails

Apart from spending a very enjoyable day in the New Forest, looking at deer, among other things, I've also made a bit more progress on that model railway I'm building - in fact, this evening I actually had one of the main lines wired up and ran a train under power.  It didn't run too smoothly - for one thing the track (which was salvaged from a previous layout) desperately needs cleaning and, for another, the locomotive I chose for this trial hadn't been run in several years - but it did run.  My old Hornby unrebuilt Bulleid pacific managed to - rather haltingly - haul four BR Mk1 coaches and a CCT van (the Wrenn one I bought on eBay and featured here some months ago) on a complete circuit of the mainline.  I did, at one point, manage to get it to haul seven coaches plus that old Triang GUV I bought with the CCT.  You are probably wondering why I chose a locomotive that hasn't been run in years for this initial test.  Basically, I know that when running it is one of my most pernickity engines, derailing at the slightest track laying imperfections: if it can do a complete circuit without falling off the track, then I know that no major track relaying is required.

Now, I took some video footage of this event and had every intention of editing it together and posting it here.  Except that I forgot that this new laptop of mine has no video editing software installed.  I had assumed that, like all Windows computers, it would have the default Microsoft video editor (Windows Live Movie Maker since Windows 7), which isn't great, but is good for quick and simple editing jobs.  But, as it turns out, they've discontinued the whole Windows Live suite and not replaced it.  The free video editing apps that I looked at in the Windows store are universally awful and other free editing software is far too complex to download for a one off job like this.  I actually have a licence for a far more capable video editor which I had installed on my old laptop and I'd be better off installing it on this one than downloading any of the free options.  But that will take time to install and set up, meaning that this post would have been unacceptably delayed.  Once I've got it installed, I'll edit the model railway footage and post it here.  You never know, by then I might have wired up and tested the other mainline on the layout (not to mention cleaning the track), thereby providing some additional footage.