A very Merry Christmas and an enjoyable, and model filled, New Year to everyone reading this blog.

The picture shows the Bernina Railway, a metre gauge line that runs over the Bernina Pass from the German speaking to the Italian speaking parts of Switzerland. It reaches a height of 2,253 metres (7,392 feet), runs over gradients of up to 7% and is one of the steepest adesion railways in the world. What I like most about this picture is that it is a mixed goods and passenger train, oh.. and all that snow 🙂

At times this year I have felt that my modelling has been making slow progress. Browsing through my blogs from 2017 made me realise I’m being rather hard on myself, I’ve done a lot, including many things that were totally new for me. I started modelling in 09, finished my first soldered brass kit, started scratchbuilding in plasticard (wagons and a bogie coach), made my first resin kits (a box van and a coach), refurbished two secondhand 09 locos and converted them to DCC. My 009 layout went to the Beccles exhibition, was featured in 009 News and had it’s fiddle yard approach re-laid. On top of all this I visited nine exhibitions, the Bure Valley Railway, the Leighton Buzzard Railway and the Yosemite Sugar Pine Mountain Railway and I even met Peppa Pig. It’s been quite a year!

Perhaps, the Bernina line trains feel they are making slow progress up those gradients and when they get to the top of the pass they see what they’ve achieved. A quiet moment of reflection at Christmas has made me realise I shouldn’t always look at the detail, but should step back and look at the bigger picture.

Have a great Christmas!

Many thanks to David Gubler for the original photograph used under a Creative Commons License