One for the Poms !

Of late the DLE has put his foot down and demanded that all those "odd jobs" be completed - now. As the staff of LLC&WW failed to meet last financial years deadlines (the share holders were not happy!) all outstanding jobs were issued with a 90 day "notice of completion" deadline. Of course this most intimidating behavior  by management was dealt with in the time honoured workshop tradition and the shop steward called a stop work meeting immediately, the local watering hole was declared the most appropriate place to convene said meeting. The notice was tabled (or was that under the table ? I think that part came later) many responses from the rank and file were duly noted in the minutes, none of which are printable, there may be children reading, and a "notice of intended industrial action" (read strike) was the motion which was voted, unanimously, to be conveyed to management !

After some furious (and quite colourful to, so I have heard ) negotiations were entered into, a compromise was agreed to by all parties. The shop steward returned from the meeting, every one went quiet, he looked quite flustered, his dust coat unbuttoned and his tie was askew, his face was red (possibly leftover from the earlier stopwork meeting !?) he called everyone to order, you could of heard a pin drop, "It's the Scotsman"
he bellowed "and we've got one week to get it out of here!". Damn thing had ruptured a defraginator flange whilst on a tour down under and we were the closest workshop. We had the parts but had placed a black ban on repairing it because it was painted a non union endorsed colour !

Don't you miss the old days ?? When everyone new exactly who really ran the railways ?

Whilst the above rant may seem to be the result of the misunderstanding of the term "standard drink" it's actually the compilation of a whole bunch of stories that my Dad shared over years from his 28 years at Eveleigh workshops on the loco side. Not much inducement was required to "walk out" in the 60's and 70's. My PB in this regard was being a part of the great "there goes the brakevan" strike of '82, I think that's the right year, I really didn't care that much, as an 18 year old fireman at Thirroul, still living at home with no commitments, it was just another couple of weeks to be spent at the beach.

Whilst I'm not quite sure what triggered the above the true story here is that, probably close to a year ago, my mate Branchline Bob ( The Coolah Branch ) made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Although it pained me greatly this is not the first time I have done jobs originating from that "other" country where their love of anything that runs on rails can, but not always, go to lengths that I personally find a little disturbing. I did, however, ensure there was some Australian content and it wears the plates and head board (according to Fox transfers in the UK) that it wore whilst on tour down under may years ago. Jokes aside, the guys at Fox were excellent to deal with and I had the required etchings within a few days of the order. The level of detail and the quality of the etchings is amongst the best I have seen. The flowers on the "ornate" head board are hand painted and stand up to any scrutiny under the magnifier.

Here's the end result. I'm only responsible for the finishing. Bob built and applied the green and black to this OO scale A3 (?) DJH kit.I apologise for the 'hue' of the pic, it's the lighting in the room where I work. You will notice this on most of my bench shots.