just lill' ole me, is all.......

[Mike]

hello people. I have just joined the forums, so a big HOWDY to all you guys - and gals - out there. I live on the little Meditterranian island of MALTA, which although nice enough to live in, is a bummer for steam-heads like me. My main interest is in model steam, and to be quite blunt about it, the subject is like the dodo back here. SIGH!

I try to compensate by visiting as much steam trains, museums, exhibitions, you name it as I could, mostly in the UK. I was at the Alex Palace model engineering Ex. last January, and if you were there, you may have noticed me. I was that plump guy with the badger beard and the salt-and-pepper hair dragging along my poor long-suffering better half through a day of smelly oily lumps of metal plastic and wood! She appeared to be in the absolute minority, as she herself noted that on that day - Friday  - out of the whole crowd, there weren't more then fifty ladies, and mostly these were behind the stalls bolstering their husband's pet club or selling tools!

I saw puddleducks on a model mag - the name of which eludes this ever-increasing angle-of-incline brain of mine - and I toddled over to the site from there.

My interests vary from electronics to mechanicals, and whilst life mostly kept me from my hobbies, now it is letting up a bit and I am getting into things nicely. My current wish is to build a model steam engine, and I am currently in the research phase. My one-and -only presented me with a 7x12 hobby lathe, which has brought up all those memories of school shop time, so wish me luck dudes, here I am!

[EMBC]

Welcome to the forum, Mike

I`m surprised nobody has replied to your post before now!...............Most of the members seem to be a shy lot!...............it`s typical of all the model forums

Bob

[R.G.Y.]

mike, nice place for a holiday Malta. I see in Model Boats mag you have a thriving club in Valletta. It can be very lonely being a steam boat modeller in my part of England, OK if your in to trains. As for steam boilers here, this is not allowed that is not right, so many rules and regulations! Unless you can afford to pay £1000 for a steam plant it can drive one round the bend. Do you suffer the same? R.G.Y.