Gathering winter fuu-uuu-ell...

Although it's been quite mild over the last couple of days, the Christmas period had seen us lighting the fire in our living room almost every evening.  That usually meant that there was a constant round each morning of restocking the coal scuttle and firewood basket.

So after a bacon sarnie, I was hard at work lugging logs and coal in from the garage to the house ready for the evening's warmth.  Whilst I was doing so, I remembered that my stocks of model coal were running low.  Yet here in my hands was an entire new stock...

A quick rummage in the kitchen produced an assortment of metal colanders with holes of different sizes, and a stout plastic bag.  A return trip to the garage produced a hammer!

Unfortunately we don't have access to Welsh anthracite, to use some proper steam coal, but I selected a lump

This is the result:

 

Three different grades of coal, ready for use.  The largest will be to finish the weathering on my Great Eastern Coffeepot.

As can be seen here (Y5 image on Wikipedia)  these locomotives often had lumps of coal stored on every single possible surface.  As they were generally only used for the very lowest of speed shunting duties, I assume that they didn't have the problem of the coal being bounced off when they moved!

I've been meaning to finish weathering my own Coffeepot for a while now, and this has given me a kick up the posterior to get on with it.  Like CraigW found on his excellent wagon building topic here: (link to Scalefour Forum) I am far too easily distracted!

Cheers

Flymo