Review Of The Year - Part 2

April

By this point my Bro Madog kit-bash had got to the point where the body had been assembled and was ready to be primed.

The main change to the carriage was creating the toplight windows by cutting out solid plastic and inserting new pillars and a top rail.

I was pleased that you really couldn't see the join.

Himself was tackling the biggest outstanding scenery job which was lining the walls of Cutting Mawr.

Some of it was done with genuine pieces of Welsh rock, although most were copies I'd cast in resin.

He also set about fitting a basic backscene to hide the goings-on in the fiddle yards from view.

May

I had started work on a second WHHR vehicle for a new rake, and again it involved a kit bash.

The ex-VoR brake van has changed a lot from the version with matchboard sides which is made by Dundas.

What I decided on was using the chassis and the very bottom section of the body (showing the frames) and making the rest out of styrene.

It was coming along well.

Himself had done a quite remarkable job with the gold leaf lining on a second vintage carriage - this time number 15.

And I was busy starting work on yet along superbarn, this time casting the parts for what would become 120.

June

This was a very big month for us as we took Bron Hebog out on the road for the first time in a couple of years - and what a road trip it was, all the way to Norfolk for a one day show!

The Dad's Army section of the museum building is certainly up there as one of the more unusual venues we've exhibited at, but they looked after us very well indeed all weekend.

It'd got the WHHR brake van ready to the point where it had been painted in BR blue, just like the real one, to wind everyone up.

Unfortunately I had yet to get my hands on some of the famous double arrow transfers to complete the look.

We'd had a few issues with track alignments during the show. It was nothing major but it's still and irritation when you're exhibiting, so Himself decided to invest in some additional  measures after we'd returned home.

These precision engineering dowels don't come cheap, but hopefully it will be money well spent.

Look Back At Bressingham

I promised you a proper review of our experience at Narrow Gauge East, and now we've had the best part of a week seems like a good time to reflect.

There's no denying that going all that way for a one day show was a test of stamina - if not sanity!

I calculated we drove around 900 miles in 60 hours, with a full set up and pack down within those hours, as well as 7 hours of running.

But was it worth it?  Definitely!

For one thing it was the first opportunity we've had to put up the full layout, let along play with it, for more than two and a half years.

Considering that it didn't run too badly, although a spate of uncouplings from a mystery track defect deep inside Goat Tunnel and a board joint imperfection which appeared during the course of the show (probably due to a change in atmospheric conditions) were a little frustrating at the time.

It was terrific to hear from so many visitors that seeing Bron Hebog was their reason for coming to the show in the first place.

The location was inside the Exhibtion Hall at Bressingham Steam Museum which is partly given over to housing an impressive collection of Dad's Army memorabilia, including mock sets.

We found ourselves positioned in front of Frazer's funeral parlour, which seemed somehow appropriate for a Scottish-based layout, although I suspect the dour undertaker would have dismissed model railways as "Rrrrubbish!"

Another of the reasons I was inclined to say yes to the invitation to go there was that I had never visited Bressingham, which has a legendary place in railway preservation.

I'd known about the steam giants which had been kept there decades ago, like Duchess of Sutherland, which have since moved on and returned to the mainline, but I didn't know about their collection of narrow gauge engines and that they have a number of reasonably lengthy loops which they run them on,

I was delighted to be invited to take a footplate ride around one of the circuits on board the 'Port Class' Quarry Hunslet 'Gwynedd'

We were treated by the staff organising the show like honoured guests all weekend.

They didn't flinch when we turned up more than an hour before they'd said the hall was available for setting up.

We were able to bring our van right into the museum to unload at the precise spot where the layout was to be assembled - and this was a great bonus when packing up on the Saturday afternoon when it was teeming with rain.

All our travelling expenses were paid, as you'd expect, but they also agreed to accommodate our operating team not just on the night before the show but also on the Saturday night following, meaning we were properly rested before facing a 400 mile drive home.

We were put up in a high quality bed and breakfast with a lovely village pub just across the road where we spent a couple of very convivial evenings.

Nothing was too much trouble. Free water, tea, coffee, lunch and biscuits were provided.

They dug out some crush barriers for us to protect the front of the layout where the trains run along an embankment closed to the edge.

Now you might think that this is quite standard for a well-run model railway show, and you'd be right.

What impressed me was that this was a commercial event put on by a charity / businesses, not a dedicated model railway club and I know that quite often people who take their layouts to these type
of shows can feel rather ignored and taken for granted.

This was not the case at Bressingham, so credit where it's due to Philip and his team of museum staff and volunteers,

And probably most impressive of all, when we popped into the café to buy a pot of tea after we had arrived on Friday the girl on the till accepted a Scottish bank note without a second glance!

Cutting Room

I spent most -of Saturday at Narrow Gauge East at Bressingham attempting to multi-task, which is no easy thing for the average bloke and even harder when you're attempting to operate a large, traditionally controlled layout.

I was trying to capture as much still and video footage of the layout as I could in the first opportunity to see it running for two and a half years - and that went for us as much as any of the paying visitors.

My camera-wielding efforts frustrated Himself a little at times, who clearly thought I was too distracted - and I'll admit there were a few operator errors as a consequence - but I hope you'll enjoy the end result which is some little clips of action like this.

Diss Debuts

By the time you read this Himself and I should be well on our way to Bressingham to set up Bron Hebog ready for Narrow Gauge East tomorrow (Saturday).

It's been more than two and half years since the layout was last exhibited so we've got lots of new things to show you, like our exquisite model of observation car 150 and our equally lovely Lilla.

Both of us have been burning the midnight oil to get a couple of current projects in a state fit to run this weekend.

If you appreciate a nice bit of lining then be sure to look out for our new model of carriage 15 in all its Victorian finery.

I'm also hoping we'll be able to run our embryonic WHHR set with my kit-bashed Dundas Bro Madog carriage and the infamous BR blue-livered brake van.

Unfortunately I've not been able to add any of the iconic 'arrows of indecision' yet, but it's painted and has its glazing, handrails and door handles fitted so my intention is to give it a little test run.

Remember, this is just for one day only, and we're looking forward to running the layout for you to enjoy in Norfolk.

Hitting The Road Again

It's still two weeks until Narrow Gauge East at Bressingham but Himself is already getting things organised and Bron Hebog has been packed up ready for the long journey to Norfolk.

The main reason for getting so far ahead of the game is that the stacking arrangements have had to be revised since it last went out.

The boards are paired up, face to face.

In the last could of years, however, we've done a lot more scenic work, in particular planting trees.

Trees have an awkard tendency to raise the height of the scenery and so some of the bracing pieces have had to be adjusted to take account of this, making some of the units slighty wider.

What we won't know for another fortnight is whether we've gone our back of the envelope calculations correctly so that it still fits in the same size of hired van it always used to fit into......

Away From Prying Eyes

The task of completing the pre-exhibition snagging list continues.

(You have got Narrow Gauge East at Bressingham at the start of June in your diary, haven't you?)

The job this weekend was starting to build a removable backscene screening off the fiddle yard at the back of the layout.

I have mixed feelings about backscenes.

On the one hand, as a visitor to exhibitions I quite like to be able to see what goodies they've got lined up in the sidings to whet the appetite.

On those occasions when you are the exhibitor, though, I also feel the opposite urge to want to keep things hidden.

Running a layout is like putting on a performance and you want our audience to be concentrating on what's being played out on the stage, not watching the actors waiting in the wings.

You also feel you'd like to maintain the element of surprise about what's coming down the tracks next.

With neither of us having a particularly artistic bent we're not about to attempt to paint a scene onto the plywood.

In the long term I suppose we could look into getting a panoramic picture of the slopes of Moel Hebog printed out and pasted onto it, but for the moment Himself will most likely just give a wash of paints to represent a untypically overcast Welsh sky.

Blooming Marvellous

Some exciting news! We're going back on the road in 2018.

We've accepted an invitation to show Bron Hebog at the inaugural Narrow Gauge East show at Bressingham in Norfolk in June.

It's been over two years since we last had the layout on show.

Much of the hiatus can be put down to the inevitable disruption caused by Himself's migration north of the border.

We've also been working hard to get Bron Hebog looking much more 'finished' rather than merely complete from an operational point of view as it was last time we had it out at the WHR Superpower event at Dinas.

Admittedly Norfolk is one heck of a long drive from the west coast of Scotland for a one day show but we said yes to it for a couple of reasons.

I can't deny that we enjoyed having our ego tickled by the museum telling us that they would like to have us as their 'headliner' for their first NG event.

I was also intrigued by the prospect of visiting Bressingham for the first time.

In my mind I had the museum, started by Alan Bloom, down as one of the classic locations of the early days of steam preservation when it was home to famous locomotives like Royal Scot and Oliver Cromwell.

The locomotives were steamed but I always had the feeling that it might be rather like going to see a magnificent beast kept in a cage in a zoo, as opposed to roaming on a reserve (like a preserved railway) or being stuffed by a taxidermist. (The NRM anyone?)

Those two giants have since been released onto the mainline again, of course, but Bressingham still has a large collection of steam engines including a couple of Quarry Hunslets from Penrhyn, so it must be a good place!

Anyway, we shall find out next summer, won't we.

We've also had another invitation from rather closer to home.

Himself has been having a look around our local model railway club in Greenock who put on an annual show in the town in October where in recent years there has been some very good modelling on display.

As well as talking him into taking out a membership the club also asked if we'd be willing to bring Dduallt of retirement at take it along to the show next year.

This layout has had so many comebacks it's fast becoming 009's answer to Frank Sinatra.

Full details of both shows are on the Exhibition Diary page.