The Holy Grail.

I have had two very pleasurable experiences in the last 18 hours - related, as it so happens.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I crave a particular HO scale locomotive, namely, the JEP Nord Express 232 R.

My layout is supposed to represent a busy main line terminus in Paris in the late 1950s and I like the idea of an international service plying the route between there and Northern Europe. And what better locomotive to fulfil the role than:

And its HO scale manifestation by JEP (the now defunct French toy manufacturer).

Every now and again, on a whim, I go onto the internet looking for one of these JEP models, but with no success - until last night.

So, for my Christmas present, I purchased, all the way from Canada.

Couldn't successfully download an image of the actual model that I've purchased.

The JEP was built for 3-rails and there is a drive rod missing from the model I've purchased, so for the foreseeable future it will have to simply sit on the circuit.

But no matter - the Holy Grail has been acquired.


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So, because it is the Holy Grail and it is my Christmas present, I was willing to cough up the cost of the locomotive plus the very large shipping costs.

Then an even more pleasurable experience occurred. The Canadian seller emailed me to say that as a Christmas gesture, he would pay for 50% of the shipping costs!  What a fine thing to do!

The seller has a railway blog too, and within the next few days, I'll put up the link for it.

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Currently listening to:

Christine Schafer singing:

Aribert Reimann

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Last night's dinner:

Basically a pork pie plus veg.

Preceded by my first glass of Pineau of the winter.

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Currently reading:

Amusing

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Drumming practice update:

If it's possible to go back beyond the basics, then that is what I spent a couple of hours doing today: left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right always striving to make each stroke the same weight and the same interval from its neighbours.

I wonder if I should buy this book.