While there’s never a dull day in our world, the start of the year and its (relatively) empty diary is a chance to get caught up on ‘housekeeping’. From turning the office upside down to clearing the decks of any pre-owned gems we’ve uncovered in the warehouse – as well as nailing down our plans for the year ahead – it’s when we tie up loose ends and start anew as we mean to go on.
Item no. 1 on this week’s agenda was to replace the well-trooden ground beneath our feet. Held together by masking tape and having incorporated various unidentified substances over the years, our office carpet had started to resemble another creature altogether. It had to go. 24 hours of furniture chess later, we were basking in New Carpet smell, having transformed the underfoot experience of our packing and customer care teams. And in accordance with company procedure, we submitted the threads to our chief floor-dwellers for approval:
A thumbs-up from Ladd, who's abandoned his bed for New Carpet smell...
...but some of us are less easy to please!
This week's train treasures have included a charming clutch of 16mm scale narrow gauge coaches that we found hiding in a corner of the warehouse. We’ve never seen anything quite like these before; ‘freelance’ in design, they’d nonetheless fit with almost any narrow gauge scene and have been beautifully built. We especially love the reversible interior bench seating of one pair, which has given us endless ‘seat goes forward, seat goes back’ play therapy...
Intricate, quirky, and quite simply lovely
...while in the 'conventional' corner, we’ve come into another impressive collection of OO Gauge diesels, the standout feature of which is a large contingent of weathered and detailed class 37s. (Almost) everyone loves a ‘Tractor’, and this latest batch has class members representing most freight liveries from the sectorised and early privatised years, with lots of matching stock:
Note that we don’t refer to these models as ‘modern image’. Most of them depict a period two decades or more in the past – so definitely fall into the ‘historical’ category. Roughly speaking, we’d term anything from the last 15 years or so (the usual measure of a generation) as ‘modern image’ – which, of course, means that the definition is constantly changing.
We also got our hands on a ‘Ghan’! Models of Austrlalia’s most famous luxury train are seldom seen in the UK, so this HO pack is one for collectors and enthusiasts of Antipodean railways alike. It’s heading to Clark Railworks in the next day or two.
To round off this week’s news – and if you haven’t seen it already – our ‘offer of the month’ has returned for 2026. Until 11 Feb, you’ll receive a 10% discount when buying any of our Quad Art packs. We still have limited numbers of all three flavours (although only one of the teak variants remains), and you already know that they're totally splendiferous as well as being really, really useful for anyone modelling Great Northern commuter trains throughout much of the last century. So treat yourself while you still can!
