Welcome to a very historic March Edition of the Daresbury Gazette – uncertain times with Covid-19, forcing model engineering clubs and tracks to close temporarily across the world, but allowing for lots of tinker time in our workshops – a silver lining during a worldwide pandemic

Sunday March 22nd went down in our clubs history as the day a virus closed our track for the foreseeable future. It was such a shame as for the few that turned out Andrew Marsh’s B1 was put to the test a total of 8 carriages 5 adults and 4x50lb weights were all loaded for a test run. Jake was at the controls just a couple of slips and she dug in gradually picking up speed before blowing off at the first bridge no problems over Daresbury summit and then drifted down round the bottom bend for a blast up to the station a really remarkable performance.

Sadly there will be no more running at our track due to following government guidelines, the club was forced to close down any further activities. Following on from this we have been forced to postpone the AGM and the combined Warrington Model Engineering and Railway Exhibition 2020 due to be held on the 26th of April. More info can be found on our facebook event – https://www.facebook.com/events/188286689069698/. It’s almost certain there will be no Cheshire Steam Fair 2020 this year;- yet another set back for what was planned to be a great year to promote our club and its facilities to the local community. If anything changes we will be sure to let you know.

Since we closed the track I received a call from a friend of mine who is a driver on ELR Bury. He asked about our security for the track as they had no sooner closed down and £10,000 worth of loco spares had been stolen from their loco shed. I wrote to Cheshire Police seeking permission for any one of our members, to do a daily track inspection and I am glad to say permission was granted. On my first inspection I noticed signs of activity within the clubhouse area. When I went up again our landlord had been doing some drainage work in the rear field and he noticed a person sat on our picnic table with a lap top he was approached by Richard and he seemed totally oblivious to any concerns we have.

No doubt we will be receiving further updates from the committee regarding security arrangements and subscriptions etc and when and where we will all met up again, so until then: Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives.

Patrick

 

Other related Daresbury Gazette articles:

• The Big Time – February Edition – Daresbury Gazette
• 2020 New Beginnings – New Year Edition – Daresbury Gazette
• Merry Christmas – December Edition – Daresbury Gazette
• Daresbury Tunnel Completed! – October Edition – Daresbury Gazette
• Tunnel Exit On Track! – August Edition – Daresbury Gazette

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Welcome to a very windy February Edition of the Daresbury Gazette - as its a leap year we take a rare opportunity to release this on the 29th February! Thursday March 5th from 8:00pm we have our final WDMES Talk of the season about the “History of WDMES” by Club Member: T Taylor (at the St Mary Magdalene's Church Hall, Appleton) - we hope to see many members at this event - More details of this event and future events can be found here Storm Ciara has been and Storm Jorge is howling all around me so I decided to take a trip up to Daresbury to make sure everything is in the right place happily all is fine. This is largely due to excellent tree management by Andrew Marsh and tidy work onsite by club members on a Wednesday. Since the last Gazette, we as a club have really hit ...
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Welcome to the January 2020 Daresbury Gazette - Happy New Year to all our members and visitors! Well here we are in another new decade 2020 where has the time gone it doesn't seem two minutes since we were celebrating the new Millennium! Thursday January 9th from 8:00pm we have our fifth WDMES Talk of the season (first for 2020) about the “A Short History of the River Weaver” by Guest Speaker: Colin Edmonson (Mid Cheshire Model Engineers Society) (at the St Mary Magdalene's Church Hall, Appleton) - we hope to see many members at this event - More details of this event and future events can be found here Christmas has come and gone also the New Year and we are still running! Sunday 29th of December a total of five engines turned out - Weather was dry but a cold wind did not deter the stalwarts from chugging around ...
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Welcome to the December Daresbury Gazette - Seasons Greetings! December can be a quiet month but it appears not so at the WDMES! Paul Caldwell has ran his 5inch Blue Duchess after some recent overhaul work and repaint, please see below: Final Duchess report. A few of us rounded off the year with a run today. The weather allowed me to have a test run of the newly painted engine. I am glad to say that she ran perfectly. It is always a relief and a joy to see an engine run well when it has been fully stripped down and put back together. I am really pleased and quite proud of myself. Happy Christmas to all. You can read more of December's ongoings at the track, including our New Year report in January's Edition of the DG! Merry Christmas to all and a very Happy New Year 🙂 Patrick ...
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Welcome to the October Daresbury Gazette - It has been a very busy month before Winter descends upon the track at Daresbury Thursday November 7th from 8:00pm we have our third WDMES Talk of the season about the “How Helicopters work?” by Guest Speaker: Gerry Minchin (at the St Mary Magdalene's Church Hall, Appleton) - we hope to see many members at this event - More details of this event and future events can be found here Well the 31st October we should have been ready to run a 'Bye Bye EU Choo Choo'. But instead we have 6 weeks of nothing but politicians 'letting off more steam'. So let them get on with it and we'll keep playing trains! Where do I start? over the last couple of weeks we have had three lots of unhappy news. First we heard of the passing of Jim Wilson he was the club ...
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