Rolling Along

How you're going to get your layout in and out of a show venue is not always high on the list of considerations when its designed.

In our experience it's one of those thing you adapt and improvise as you go along.

Over the years we've progressed from purely manual handing, deploying a squad of operators to lift and carry boards over long distances, and even up and down flights of stairs, to investing in a heavy-duty barrow to wheel sections of layout into the venue.

But with Minffordd being transported by car, instead of a hired van, we've found it's a struggle to find space for the barrow in a situation where every square inch is prisoner.

As so often a potential solution emerged out of a chance conversation at the weekend.

Chewing over the logistics of getting the layout into the venue at Porthmadog next weekend we wondered whether it would be worth investing in a small skate trolley, which would be easier to fit in one of the cars.

Which is when Himself had another of his brainwaves.

About ten years ago he made a small folding 'train set' board for my son.

In typical Himself fashion it was built on a robust 2x1 frame and he had fitted casters so it could be easily slid into the space beneath his bed when it wasn't being played with.

What if - he wondered - we removed those casters and attached them directly to one of the boards which hold the two main sections of Minffordd together for transport?

It rolls around well enough in the garage at home, I'm told.

Now there are two big tests.

How well will it work to push it in and out of a venue, across a tarmac car pack and whatever steps and bumps there are in the way.

And with the whole package now being another 7cm longer will it still fit in the back of my car?

Too Posh To Shunt

Himself has been continuing to search for more sneaky ways to improve the performance of the Bachmann 'Dukedog', searching for every last place we can hide a precious few grammes of extra weight.

He's fixed a very thin piece of lead sheet in the cab roof, although it's not visible unless you look for it.

It hasn't made a dramatic difference but every little helps.....

We've also removed the weights from all the standard gauge carriages.  

The Mk1s were already done, and it can just about haul three of them in the Down (Pwllheli) direction only - the tight curve into the fiddle yard going the other way gives too much friction.

We've also discovered why it struggles to push anything up the slope into the yard.

It's not the the steepness of the gradient so much as the effect of the change of gradient.

The Dukedog has a relatively long frame and when it reaches the point where the slope kicks in it tips the smokebox end down onto the front bogie, which in turn lifts the rear driving wheels just enough that they begin to lose traction.

So as far as our Cambrian fleet in concerned 'the Earl' is the loco which is 'too posh to shunt', which all sounds like something the Rev. Awdry could have made a story out of.

Packing For Porthmadog

We still have the best part of a fortnight to go but today the plan is to break down Minffordd  and get it all packed away ready for the trip to the show in Porthmadog.

Over the weekend we did a last bit of test running to check a few of the adjustments which have been made since Glasgow, one of which was an overdue reset of the decoder on the green 24 to cure its tendency to unpredictable rates of acceleration, which made attempting to shunt wagons into the yard a challenge.

The show, at Y Ganolfan, just across the harbour from the FR station, looks like it will be a terrific event.  Link here.

The organisers look to have pulled together a remarkable collection of layouts of locations along the FR, or ones which have been inspired by it.

There's a few I'm particularly looking forward to seeing, and I hope the owners won't mind that I've lifted some photos from their social media.

Tan y Bwlch by Nigel Smith has captured the feel of everyone's favourite FR station perfectly.

In a larger scale, Rhiw Goch, from James and Peter Hoyle, is another exquisitely faithful representation of a real life location on the line.

And Charles Insely's Bangor looks like it oozes atmosphere, and I've been watching his Bachmann Fairlie kit bashes with interest as he documented the project, so it will be fascinating to see them close up.

Proceeds from the show will be split between the fundraising appeals to overhaul Blanche and to build a replica of the Spooner bogie ballast wagon, so that's an extra incentive to come along to the show if you are able to.

Battered Bagnal

I've not hung around getting Kidbrooke ready to be permanently abandoned on a length of track in Minffordd Yard.

I don't have enough tiny alphabet transfers in stock to attempt to replicate all the graffiti which was painted onto the hulk of the loco during its time in the yard, but I've had a go at representing some of the other whitewash embelishments.

The 3d print was given a spray with red oxide primer before applying a succession of diluted acrylic washes of various shades of brown and then dry brushing with some orange hues and darker colours to get what I hope looks like a suitably rusty effect.

Being a print it is absolutely featherweight so we'll have no problem permanently gluing it onto the length of track in front of the slate sheds.

It should make an interesting conversation piece in Porthmadog in a two week's time.

I wonder what the ratio will be between those who give a knowing smile and those who point and say 'What's that doing there?'

Surgical Violence

There's nothing so strange as receiving a new model in the post and then immediately starting to hack it to bits, but that was how I spend one afternoon this week.

The model in question is a Fourdees 3D print of a Bagnall 0-4-0 which is being heavily distressed to be version of Kidbrooke, a small tank which spent most of the 1960s looking very sorry for itself in Minffordd Yard.

The kit is very cleverly designed so you can sit the body on a static chassis with very nicely represented valve gear, or install a Bachmann Percy chassis.

No other adaptation is required, it is simple swap.  Nicely done Fourdees!

The fidelity of these prints is most impressive these days, although it's fortunate that I needed to chop a lot of bits off because in my experience it is incredibly easy to break off the small details on models such as this.

Whilst I admire that it is possible to render such fine items such as handrails, regulators and really small pipework I do wonder whether it wouldn't be better to leave it for modellers who desire this kind of detail to add it themselves in a more robust material?

The other aspect which always makes check and check again with prints like this differentiating what is a production support sprue which needs to be removed, and what is the part of the model which must remain?  

The spider's web of supports in the cab opening on this print are a case in point.

As you can see by comparing the photos I've posted there was a lot which needed to be chopped off and filed away, such as the cab back sheet, the chimney, smokebox door and the dumb buffers.

The most intricate job was to remove the cab support frame so the cab roof can be resting partly on top of the saddle tank, which is how the loco looked when it was at Minffordd.

With the destruction done the next task is to paint and weather it to look supremely rusted and neglected....

Space Saver

There's one finishing touch to be added before we pack up Minffordd to take it it Porthamdog next month.

Having recently become aware that during the 1960s the hulk of the Bagnall 0-4-0 Kidbrooke was hanging around the yard we had to do something to represent that.

You can read more about it here.

A 3D print of a very similar Bagnall tank should be arriving any time soon, and shall set to work distressing it appropriately.

In the meantime, Himself has prepared a isolated length of weed-strewn track for it to rest on.

This is not strictly prototypical because in reality Kidbrooke was placed on the long siding which runs in front of the Maenofferen sheds, but that's a useful bit of yard for shunting wagons around so we're going to reposition it slightly.

The model in the picture is an old white metal body we somehow acquired - or were gifted - long ago and is sitting there to give an impression of how it's going to appear.

Stayin' Alive

We're still learners when it comes to this DCC malarkey, and every day is a school day.

Take my favourite loco in the Minffordd fleet, the Simplex Mary Ann for example.

When it was re-motored and chipped for its new digital life we managed to squeeze in a stay alive capacitor which was so effective the loco would continue to run for around 10 seconds after it was picked up off the track.

When he was giving the stock a once-over ready for the trip to Porthmadog last week Himself noticed the stay alive didn't appear to be functioning.

We hadn't noticed any particular problem with the loco at the show in Glasgow.

As usual it was superbly reliable and most problems seemed to be caused by route-setting errors resulting in short circuits. 

We did notice some of the other operators giving it a prod every now and then, but assumed that was just operator error.

It was after a while of puzzling that Himself discovered there is a CV setting on these chips which controls how long the stay alive supplies juice for, and adjusting that restored the function.

It was then that the penny dropped.

Towards the end of the first day at the Falkirk show last year Mary Ann developed a strange fault where all the DCC sounds played but there was no drive.

The solution was to reset the decoder - but we made a bit of a beginner's error!

We thought we had moved every other DCC loco to safety by taking them all to the upper fiddle yard and disconnecting the power supply.

We punched the buttons on the handset to reset Mary Ann and it sprung back to life!

And shortly after, every other one of our 009 steam engines began hissing in unison. 

They had all been reset, too!!

But how? We had disconnected the power supply to the fiddle yard!

It transpired that the joints between the scenic board and the yard were close enough that the rails in the yard were still getting some power.

So that was a fun 15 minutes resetting the numbers on every loco in turn....

It's only now we think back to this incident that we realise the CV to control the stay alive must have been reset to 0 in this process.

So much to learn...

'One Day' Projects.

Browsing my photo reel the other day I was reminded of another one of those project I'd always intended to get around to 'one day'.

Over the years we've built up a collection of rolling stock from the Welsh Highland Heritage Railway which we ran on Bron Hebog.

To start with it was a gentle 'wind up', at a time when relations between the railways were at a bit of a low.

Then it became something aspirational, and more recently, of course, it has become a reality.

To the best of my knowledge - although I'm sure someone will correct me if I am wrong - the four-wheeler number 6 has never ventured as far as Beddgelert.

I find it quite an intriguing design.

It's got the diminutive appeal of the classic narrow gauge four wheel carriage combined with the body style cues and proportions of the 'Eisteddfod coach', which was one of the first 009 kits I bought more than 35 years ago.

I've often thought about scratch building number 6.

Like the real thing I would most probably use a former RNAD wagon chassis, either from the 009 Society kit or one of the Bachmann wagons if I was feeling flush.

Over the years I've take quite a few photos of it, although never any proper measurements, but it would probably be easy enough to guestimate from the things we do know about it, such as the chassis dimensions.

Whether or not I ever will get round to it I'm not so sure.

With Bron Hebog no longer going out to shows there's not really any pressing need for it.

Secret Panels

Himself was thinking ahead and anticipating worst-case scenarios when he designed Minffordd, and he was careful to allow access in the event of a major failure or track relaying being required.

That's why there is a six-inch-long section of the narrow gauge lines at the Porthmadog end which can be lifted out to get at the Cambrian fiddle yard points hidden underneath.

At the moment he's investigating a curious fault with the route-setting function.

At each end of the Cambrian yard control panel is a rotary switch where the operator selects which road they require, press a single button, and a matrix of diodes and relays set the points accordingly.

During the Glasgow show we noticed when you had Road 1 selected, and wanted to change to Road 4 the 'king point'  - where roads 1-2 and 3-4 d split - would not move.

However, if you select Road 3 instead, the point will switch as it should, and you can then make a follow-up request for Road 4.

This explains a number of strange head-on collisions in the fiddle yard during the show which baffled the operators who were quite sure they had changed the points, and the LED indictor on the panel backed them up!

So one of the items on the snagging list to be tackled before the next appearance in Porthmadog is to find out what is causing this.

Removing this 'secret panel' makes it much easier to see what's going on under there and whether the point is being switched when it should be.

Yet Another Siding

Just as the scenic part of a layout is never finished it would appear that a fiddle yard certainly never is!

During the three-day show in Glasgow last month it became clear there was something lacking in the siding department on the narrow gauge side of Minffordd.

Spare freight stock for the yard shunting is kept on a standalone siding at the bottom end fiddle yard, which works in much the same way as the extension to the Mineral Line where you will often see a selection of FR wagons.

The trouble with just having a single siding is that if you wanted to get at the wagons at the far end you needed to lift off either them or everything else in the way in front of them.

We really should have given that more thought when we laid out the fiddle yard....

For the next show in Porthmadog Himself has invested in another set of points and laid a second siding, along with some uncoupling magnets.

Seeing Spots

"I've done something, and you're not going to like it!"

Ominous words from Himself a few days ago confessing that he'd taken an 'executive decision' to make life easier shunting wagons around Minffordd Yard.

There are all sorts of tricks layout builders use to mark the magic spots where automated uncoupling things are hidden.

On Minffordd we use magnets buried in the ballast for the Kadee couplings on the standard gauge and to animate the loops on the Greenwich couplers on the narrow gauge.

Some of the places are marked with a model person, and others with a sleeper placed beside the track, and many of the locations have some small bushes springing up as well.

The problem for Himself, and at least one other of our operators at the SEC show in Glasgow, is that they struggle to pick out the brown sleepers and the green bushes because they are red-green colour blind.

Himself has decided to try another trick which is to paint white dots on the shoulders of the sleepers either side of each magnet.

These, he hopes, will stand out like a sore thumb to him, and make shunting the narrow gauge a little less frustrating, with not so much shuffling backwards and forwards trying to stop the train in the correct spot over the magnet.

The trade-off is that while the marks may be more intrusive for the layout viewer, more reliable uncoupling might bring back a little more of the magic of hands-free, effortless uncoupling.

How do you get the balance right on your layout?

Youth Training Scheme

It's just a picture of some wires being soldered onto circuit boards, nothing significant going on here you might assume.

For me, at least, there is some significant, because these solder joints were done by my 13-year-old son - under the supervision of Himself - and a very neat job he's made of it, too don't you think?

You don't have to read many discussion forums or comments on social media posts before you come across someone opining that the model railway hobby is 'dying' or is going to.

And it's fair to say that if you glance around at the average exhibition you won't fail to notice there is a clear demographic.

I'm not sure the hobby is as doomed as some people would have you believe.

I doubt it will be as widespread and mainstream activity for young people as it was perhaps was for a couple of decades, but very few things are these days because there are so many leisure activities available.

At our annual club show which is a relatively small event in a large town, the vast majority of the people who come along are families with children.

They still like 'toy trains'. (I use the word intentionally)

What is important, I believe, is that model railway clubs make an effort to 'reach out' - to use a current buzz phrase - to be 'inclusive' (buzz, again) , and to actively encourage teenage modellers to experiment,  to learn, and yes, to make mistake and errors too.

At our club by son and his friend are building a 00 terminus layout, with help from the dads (and granddad).  

They came up with the concept, presented it to the committee as a project, and the club is funding it.

And that's how it should be.

Oh, and back to the picture.  I should have explained.

They're more frog juicers for the standard gauge fiddle yard on Minffordd.

Over the course of the show in Glasgow we discovered a lot of the point motors are not 100% reliable in always closing the point blades to switch the current, so we adding these onto every turnout in the hope that will solve the problem.

Take My Word For It

 

There hasn't been much modelling done here since the end of the Glasgow exhibition two and a half weeks ago.

The one small job I have done is to lightly weather the impulse buy inspection saloon.

The weathering is so light it might almost be non-existent, to the camera phone in any case.

I took it along to the the club night thinking the layout there would make a better backdrop than taking a snap on my messy workbench, but unfortunately the lighting didn't really allow what I've done to show itself.

So you'll have to take it from me that the bogies, the underframe, and the other previously shiny black parts have been given a subtle coating track grime.

The roof is also looking a bit more rain and soot streaked as well, and there's a hit of some of the dirt on the maroon tumble home.

I'm hoping it'll show up better under the lights, and looking at it with the naked eye, at the show in Porthmadog next month.

Missing Pieces

Having exhibited layouts of real locations for the last 30 years and more we've got used to people pointing out the bits we've missed - in fact we've come to welcome it.

I mean, why wouldn't you, if you're trying to faithfully recreate somewhere in miniature you want to do the best you can to make it as accurate as possible, don't you?

On Dduallt, for example, we had a couple of occasions where former 'Deviationists' brought some oversights to our attention, such as the 'sheep creep' which was missing in the area just beyond Barn Cutting at the back of the layout.

And then there was the former volunteer who told us the story about how on one occasion he was drilling into a rock and the drill bit broke and could not be removed.

So we asked him to point to the spot and at the next opportunity inserted a small bit of wire at the appropriate place.

With the development of the Minffordd project being shared so widely on social media I've been surprised we haven't received more "you've missed that" messages.

Something which was mentioned the other day, and which I never came across in our research, was the presence of the rusting hulk of Bagnall 0-4-0 tank Kidbrooke in Minffordd Yard in the 1960s.

Image taken from Festipedia

This loco, dating from 1917, was bought from the Oakeley Slate Quarry in Blaenau Ffestiniog by Richard Hilton and was stored in the yard until 1970, when it was moved to his home in Oxfordshire.

It was eventually restored to steam and can be found at the Yaxham Light Railway in Norfolk.

Now that we know about it we'll obviously have to have our own tiny Kidbrooke rusting quietly in the yard.

The immediately obvious solution seems to be a generic 3D print for these Bagnall locos which is available from Fourdees.

The bigger question is where to place it on the layout?

In the photo above it is sitting on the rails on the long siding which runs in front of the Maenofferen slate sheds and along the wharf beside the Cambrian headshunt.

But that's a very useful section of track for shunting waggons about in our yard, so we hardly want to place what amounts to a buffer stop halfway along it.

So instead I expect we will place it on the ground in the area in front of the smaller shed, with a respectable amount of vegetation growing around its wheels, like in the picture above.

I'm expecting there will be quite a few more oversights brought to our attention when we show the layout in Porthmadog in a few weeks time....

Back Burners

I bet we've all got them, haven't we? Those modelling projects sitting in a box which you say you will get around to one day.

This pair are one of mine.

If you don't immediately recognise them from their ghostly resin appearance, they are 3D prints from Robex of bodies for the Manning Wardle tank loco Jubilee 1897.

And if you know something about the history of that locomotive you may wonder what my interest in them would be.

There is is tangential connection to the FR in that it started out working at the Cilgwyn quarry alongside Lilla, and made a fleeting trip along the Welsh Highland as part of a transfer move to the Penrhyn quarry.

But the reason I have them is nothing to do with rolling stock for Dduallt, Bron Hebog or Minffordd.

A couple of years ago when I was developing my home dual gauge test track - which turned into a full-blown layout - I was looking for a couple of small tank locomotives which would look at home on the small narrow gauge loop which is done up like a very small scale tourist railway.

I was very impressed with the smooth performance of the Minitrains outside framed F&C chassis which powers our Lilla (also a Robex print) but I found the slight more chunky look of the Manning Wardle loco more attractive.

I've always intended to get these bodies mounted on a pair of spare F&C chassis we have in stock, but it's one of those things that I've not got round to.

Or more accurately, Himself has always had to much to be getting on with that it seemed unreasonable for me to add to the backlog by asking if it'd mind taking a look at them for me.

As well as the chassis I ordered in the other parts we'd need, such as the etch for the motion and slide bars.

I'd even had a couple of name plates produced because I intended to finish them in freelance liveries and name them after my children. (Very soppy for a serious prototype modeller, I know.)

I wonder, however, whether this might be a good moment to suggest the idea to Himself, because we get seriously drawn into the Dinas project.

And I also suspect he might be quite glad of another excuse not to have to try to sort out the knotty problem of how to attach valve gear to the NG15 chassis which is sitting on the workbench taunting him...

Blogiversary

I realised the other day that it is coming up to the anniversary of when I first started this blog.

That was back in April 2010 and I've been keeping it up for 16 years, if you are generous and include the recent period where I was in a bit of a huff and there was something of a pause in posting.

Looking back at some of the first images its remarkable how much progress has been made.

Back then we were still in the early days of building Bron Hebog - hence the title of the blog - and one of the places we'd taken this work-in-progress to was a show at Y Ganolfan in Porthmadog, where we'll be going in a few weeks with Minffordd.

An even earlier outing was to the Warley club show at the NEC in Birmingham, when we were asked to form part of the FR's display, because obviously something as crude an unfinished as this would never normally be seen at what was one of the UK's premier exhibitions.

At the time it seemed like such a gargantuan undertaking to build a layout that bit with so little track bed and so much scenery, and I suppose it was, but we did it, although it was the best part of a decade before it was properly completed, and then Covid happened...

For those who're interested the 2000+ posts on this blog can be browsed as a record of how the project progressed, and there are lots of pictures in the galleries of it at the shows we attended.

Given how long it took to build it's odd how short its time on the exhibition circuit was, but there you go...

Knowing that this was going to be a slow burn was the main motivation for starting the blog.

Aware that it would be many years before we'd be regularly showing our models in a face-to-face pubic forum I figured the next best thing was to put it out their virtually - and as this blog approaches nearly 2 million pageviews (for what that stat is worth) it's fair to say it's certainly achieved that!

Social media has played a big part in spreading the word about our modelling, of course.

Many of you may have clicked to read this page through a link on Facebook,  the site formerly known as Twitter, or the upstart Bluesky.

That one's been a bit of a slow burn, although follower numbers recently hit 300.

If you're on any of those sites and haven't followed us yet just search for Bron Hebog and Minffordd and you'll find us.

The one promotional where we probably should have put more effort in is You Tube.

There are quite a number of videos we've uploaded to our channel over the years, although I've always left it for the models to do the talking rather than put myself in the picture, which is probably one of the things which held it back....

If you've never come across them yet please take a look at the footage, and, as they all say, like and subscribe!

It would be lovely for those figures to look a little less pathetic....

Waiting Its Turn

Moelwyn spent the weekend in Glasgow as a static exhibit, once again, lurking at the doorway into the goods shed.

This vintage Baldwin 'tractor ' - a veteran of the First World War - is a loco we have yet to adapt for DCC control, but I'm hoping that can change in time for the next time we have the layout running in Porthmadog in May.

The difficulty is there is nowhere immediately obvious to stuff all the gubbins - the chip, stay-alive capacitor, and speaker - with it hidden from view.

At the moment most of the space inside the bonnet is taken up by the Mashima motor.

I am told that it is possible to retro-fit a very small coreless motor which will create just enough space to hide all the kit and I am seeking advice from those in the know.

The other question is what to use for a sound file.  

As well as its vintage Gardner diesel engine Moelwyn has a very distinctive, rhythmic whine from its gearbox at speed.  

Again, I have hopes that one of our friends with all the right kit will be able to assist us with this.

How useful Moelwyn will prove to be is an open question.

It's built from a Meridian etched brass kit, so it's not featherweight like a 3D print would be, but it still doesn't have the heft of a white metal casting.

What we do know is that on Dduallt it is capable of hauling a couple of carriages up the hill, which is similar to what Britomart can do, so hopefully on Minffordd it will be able to drag a couple of wagons at a time up the ramp from the depths of the yard.

Hopefully, before to long, we will be able to find out.

Short Circuits = Short Fuses

Digital Command Control - or DCC as we have all come to call it - is a wonderful thing, but let's not pretend it doesn't have a lot a downsides.

Many might regard the cost of the chips as the biggest drawback, which is especially the case when you're going for sound as well, because it can sometimes double the price of a new locomotive.

Then there's the complexity of the control handsets themselves.  

A couple of times during the Glasgow show I looked across at some of my fellow operators and saw only furious button pressing and furrowed brows, and no trains moving.....

And at exhibitions I would argue that perhaps the biggest issue is the way that everything on the layout comes to a stop as soon as anything creates a short circuit.

Mostly this is because of simple human error - a failure to check the route has been set before moving off and the loco runs towards point which are set against it.

The problem is affects everything on the system, not just the single train involved.

But as the weekend in Glasgow wore on we began noticing an increasing number of mysterious occasions where a train made up of our set of 'Barn' carriages would come to a stop in the middle of plain track for no apparent reason.

The instinctive reaction each time would be to assume a short had occurred somewhere else on the narrow gauge side of the layout.

(Minffordd is divided into two separate circuits for 009 and 00)

The fiddle yard operators, and the person on shunting duty on the remote controller at the front, would face increasingly irritable accusations and interrogation.  "Was that you, again??!"

By the Sunday afternoon it had happened so often - and there had been so many false accusations bandied about - that the finger of blame started to be pointed at the train itself.

But how?

It was Himself who did the detective work and found the culprit.

It was carriage 14 what did it!

Here's the explanation.

The wheelsets we're using on these carriages are insulated on one side only, which means that on a bogie you need to have both orientated the same way if you are not going to risk creating a short circuit,

This is especially the case when the bogie frames are brass, and the axles fit into brass bearings, because the whole bogie becomes live.

We'd taken care to ensure each bogie on the set had the wheelsets matching.   

What we hadn't done was check that every bogie on every carriage matched.

On carriage 14 we had the wheelsets in the bogies the opposite way round to the rest of the rake.

With us also using brass couplings soldered to a brass bogie, the last line of insulation defence is the paint on the couplings.

As that begins to wear and chip after 3 days of intense running at a show, snaking over crossings and into fiddle yard sidings hundreds of times, it opens up the potential for the different polarities of bogies on adjoining carriages to briefly come into contact with each other, creating the short circuit.

It's simple fix to rotate the wheelsets on the bogies on 14 to they all match now, but it shows how careful you have to be.

A Job For The Dukedog At Last

I posted in the build up to the Glasgow show about our struggles to get our Bachmann Dukedog to do any useful work  on Minffordd because it struggled with the combination of gradients and very tight curves.

You can read that post here.

The solution presented itself to me in a moment of serendipity as I wandered towards the tea and coffee room past the display of one of the second hand traders I buy from most often - The Junction Box.

There on Ian's stall, calling to me, was a Bachmann inspection saloon in crimson and cream livery, which is much more appropriate to our era than the blue/grey example we already have in our stock box.

I had intended to resist all temptations over the weekend, but this seemed like it had my name on it.

Plus, a not half an hour previously, we'd just been presented with our prize for Best In Show, so I figured I deserved to treat myself as a small reward.

I can report that the Dukedog can manage to haul this one carriage around the layout, however I doesn't have the guts to propel it up the slope into the exchange yard, slipping to a stand before it is halfway up...

That is not to say that the tinkering which Himself carried out before the show has not made some difference.

It will manage - just - to haul three Bachmann Mk1s with the weights removed in the Pwllheli direction - but going the other way it will slip to a stand when it hits the tight curve into the fiddle yard.

There is limited scope for adding more weight to this model and Himself has tried three alterations.

1) Shortening the spring above the front bogie to equalise the contact of the four coupled wheels.

2) As another means to achieve this he has added a very gentle spring between the coupling bar and the base of the tender, again to direct a downward force on the driving wheels.

3) Some very small and thin pieces of lead have been fixed to the baseplate between the driving wheels.

As you can read above, the effect has been quite minimal, but at least we've found something it can do on the layout.

Eventually I suppose we might learn how to do double-headers - or 'consists' as they insist on calling them - using our NCE handsets, but from reading the instructions that looks like a very complicated process which requires many steps to be memorised....

The Hitman And Himself

It's not false modesty when I say that no one was more surprised than I was when Minffordd was named as the winner of 'Best In Show' at Model Rail Scotland at the weekend.

I've been coming to the show at the SEC in Glasgow for nearly 35 years now - my first visit was in 1993 - and I think the quality of the layouts this year was the highest I've yet seen at the venue.

I must confess I was absent for the moment of presentation on the Saturday afternoon.  

I'd been operating for most of the day and handed over to one of our team so I could sort myself out with a cup of tea in the rest room set aside for the hundreds of volunteers who make the show happen.

I hadn't even reached the doors to the hall when my phone rang to summon me back, for what I assumed must be either to sort out a catastrophic derailment or some other kind of dreadful emergency.

As I returned I saw Himself beaming, and clutching a very heavy glass trophy!

I am sure I wasn't alone in assuming that this award - the Jim Grieve Memorial Trophy to give it its proper title - was certain to be presented to Pete Waterman's massive, and massively impressive, Making Tracks 3.

This modern image monster of Milton Keynes was no doubt the big 'must see' attraction for many of the visitors who came to the show, on its first time being displayed in Scotland.

Everything about it is remarkable, not just in terms of size, but the intensity of the operation, the number of people it takes to operate it, the vast collection of full-length trains, the standard of presentation, and perhaps most importantly, the consistent standard of scenic modelling which I have always believed is the most essential element of a good layout.

You may have some individual pieces on a layout, be they trains or scenic features, which are absolutely exquisite, but if they are very obviously of a different standard to everything else around them then it is jarring and spoils the overall effect.

The great music mogul and famous railway enthusiast - and his team of Railnuts - did not leave empty handed because Making Tracks was named Best Visiting Layout (as distinct from the exhibits from clubs who are part of the Association of Model Railway Societies in Scotland, which includes our club in Greenock, under which banner Minffordd was appearing.)

There is also a category for AMRSS exhibits, which I had dared to hope we might be a contender for one of the top three placings.

The first place for that went to Hazelbank from the Scottish Diesel and Electric Group who have a well-deserved reputation for producing top-quality modern image layouts - although I suspect I may be showing my age by categorizing the 1990s as modern.....

This is a 'what if' for what might have happened if the Waverley Route had never closed.

There were many other layouts I very much enjoyed watching, including ‘Moor of Rannoch’, a very small slice of the vast, bleak tract of land the West Highland Line passes through, cleverly using the famous snow shelter as a scenic break.

It is the essential bleakness of this layout, and the accurately-represented bleached tones of the vegetation, which make it so effective to someone who has spent time in that lonely spot while hillwalking.

It has a quite a 'Bron Hebog' feel about it, I think.  Wouldn't it be marvellous to do something like this in N gauge and with the same depth and emptiness as our layout?

OK, maybe not....

There was also a good selection of narrow gauge to be seen at the show, including a chance to be reacquainted with the Clyre Valley Railway which was a deserved prize winner at the last Warley club show at the SEC when we took Bron Hebog there as part of the anniversary celebrations for the 009 Society.

And in 7mm scale, and showing the less 'cute' side of narrow gauge railways, was a terrific representation of the industrial system around the Bowater's paper mill.

Summer Holiday Traffic

Realism on a model railway is a funny thing.

Sometimes it is possible for things to be too accurate, as strange as that may seen.

When looked at in miniature form they just seem wrong.

I was thinking about that this evening as I was placing the loose vehicles as we set up Minffordd for the Model Rail Scotland show which opens tomorrow (Friday 27th March to Sunday 29th).

In the back left hand corner of our scene is a short section of the main road into Porthmadog.

After setting out two or three of them, plus our Crosville bus heading for Blaenau, I wondered whether I'd crowded the scene a little?

And then I thought again and added as many as I could until they were nose to tail.

Because I'd remembered the hours I'd spent in a baking hot car as a child sat in traffic jam to pay the toll for crossing the Cob which often stretched all the way back to Penrhyndeudraeth - in my memory, at least.

So if visitors at the SEC this weekend engage us in conversation and feel moved to comment that there are 'too many cars on that road,' I shall feel free to contradict them.

Calm Before The Storm

I popped in at Himself's place the other day and couldn't resist taking a few phone snaps of Minffordd with the late afternoon sunshine creating an almost sunset-like effect over the layout.

All the adjustments and improvements made through the winter are complete and have been thoroughly tested, and now it's ready to be taken down, bolted to its travelling frames and taken for the short ride to the SEC in Glasgow for the Model Rail Scotland show which opens on Friday morning.

Before too long I would hope one of the magazines will arrange for a proper photographer to come and do a proper shoot which do it more justice than I can manage with an ageing iPhone.

This view, which is rather like the one you'd get standing on the roof of the down platform shelter at Minffordd, reminds me of one of the things which makes it such a different kind of narrow gauge model - the double track main line effect.

This is a very the public doesn't really get to see, and is one of those bonuses of being a layout operator. 

Unfortunately, those who are not familiar with the FR don't get to see what an attractive building the Weigh House is, only getting to see it's rather plain back wall.

For now it all looks very sleepy and abandoned, but in a couple of days the Simplex will be busily phut-phut-phutting around the yard, up and down the ramp to the 'coal hole' while mineral wagons and empty gunpowder vans are shunted along the long siding high above.

If you're able to come along to the show please say hello to the team.

For those who can't we'll do our best to share pictures and videos on our social media so if you don't already do so follow us on Facebook, Bluesky and X (the the continuation of an account does not indicate endorsement or otherwise of the proprietor....)

A Mickey Mouse Layout

 We're going try something daring in Glasgow next weekend - running a guest loco!

This is always fraught with risk, especially on a layout with extremely tight curves and using Kadee couplings where it pays to make sure everything is set to the same standards.

However, with the extra train capacity in the fiddle yard extensions, and with a question mark about the usefulness of the Dukedog, I thought it would be prudent to ask the Medical Director if he fancied bringing along his sound fitted Ivatt 2MT - a class sometimes nicknamed a Mickey Mouse, I know not why - because they were also to be found on the Cambrian at this time.

This particular engine 46334 did not work the Cambrian under BR ownership but is well known for doing so in preservation having been called to substitute for a failed Standard 4MT when steam first returned to the coast in the mid-1980s.

I expect the greatest challenge with this loco will be the Medical Director’ idiosyncratic technical set up.

In common with much of his fleet this loco operates in the reverse of what you might expect.

Select forward on the controller and the loco goes backwards, and vice versa.

Who is going to be the first among the crew to forget this minor detail?