Hello from The Oily Rag

My inspiration to join this hobby and to become a professional engineer started over sixty years ago. The Birmingham Society of Model Engineers are to blame (sorry guys not really). An treat for me when treats were not easily come by was a day out at the annual exhibition held in the old Bingley Hall off Broad Street in Birmingham.

What memories! However I have never stopped learning nor stopped wanting to learn more and I am still learning today from others in this hobby, thanks to the internet and the magazines.

For a long time my main interests have lain with garden railways and mainly in the 7/8" = 1 foot sector. A lonely road at times. This runs on 45 MM gauge track with my focus on colonial and industrial practice. I design and build mostly freelance locos (including live steam) and stock to do jobs on my railway.

Following an enforced house move over a year ago due to family illnesses I had to curtail and downsize my workshop, getting rid of all the heavy equipment. I rebuilt here with all benchtop machines along with a seriously modified mini lathe of Clarke origin. That died last year and has been replaced with a Chester Conquest so the modifications all start over again. The mill was replaced with a Warco WM14 (a delight to use) and have yet to replace the S & B fly press with a smaller version. I scratch build (including the design work) just about everything I can including fly press tooling, gadgets to make life on the machines easier, many of which I can thank ME and MEW for and have completed the development stage of a model building modular system for the railway in infrastructure. So a very wide area of interest and activity as time allows.

We are in the throes of the last house move I hope to a place not having to be bought in an emergency where a new workshop can be built and the railway in the garden re-instated. Currently as I write all is packed and I stare at cardboard city.

Sadly I am not much of a "club" person so my contact with others of a like mind is generally via sites like this. I am happy to share my experiences with others failures as well as successes such as they are and look forward to learning more from the site as time goes on.

regards

Ian.

Welcome along - being a non club type myself I know you will find a niche here. I' m a complete tyro and have felt at home already, albeit in a solely "observatory" capacity!!!

Thank you Christopher. Looking forward to getting started again in the next few weeks as the legal eagles do their stuff and we get moved.

regards

Ian

Welcome Ian, I'm sure you will find lots to interest you on here and answers to any questions you may have.

Hope the house move goes as smoothly as possible and you are back in a workshop quickly.

Brian

Welcome to the forum Ian,

Neil

Thank you all for the welcome. Once up and running again I hope that I will be able to make a contribution to the discussions as well as taking something away.

regards

Ian

The one problem with not being a club member is that although you can get excellent advice from all over the world, but if you need a British Standard Brass tap, or something of the like, for a one off job, you don't have a mate across town or at the end of the road who will lend you one, or will machine something a bit too big for your machines!

Been there and done it, from both ends!

Howard