Stop, Look, Listen

The fact that they're too often ignored by road users (and pedestrians)  isn't an excuse for not including the veritable forest of warning signs which surround the modern level crossing.

Himself has been very busy reducing, printing, cutting and sticking for the last week or so to populate the areas around the three crossings on Bron Hebog - including the one subsequently named Bron Hebog after the model provided the inspiration to an operating department puzzling how to differentiate the two crossings on the same lane leading out of Beddgelert.

(That's the one furthest away at the top of the picture.)

Himself assures me that all the signs are faithfully bilingual, too, using photographs of the real things, not a generic product.

I do think this view up the lane - I think it's one of the best on the layout.

Gate Keeper

Himself has been on gate patrol.

While assembling some of the boards he noticed damage at Bron Hebog crossing - could it be anything to do with the somewhat battered Ford Puma parked there?

Our wooden gates are all fabricated from styrene strip do it didn’t take him long to knock up a replacement.

The Car's The Star

There's a lot that's been done to the layout since the last time we showed it at Dinas, three years ago, and a lot of new stock to run on it too.

I expect, however, that one of the star attractions when we're at Welsh Highland Superpower next weekend - at least among those in the know - will be looking for the crashed car at Bron Hebog crossing.

One of the perils of making a layout of a real place, and a reasonably contemporary one as well, is that there is never a shortage of people to tell you whether or not you've done it right, and even more so when you go and show it a few miles down the road from the actual place.

I'm expecting that the Oberon Woods estate scene will be getting a through going over because each time we've taken the layout to Dinas we've had people coming up who live there and asking us if we're going to be making a model of their house?

Well, now we have.

The big question is, will it pass muster?

One Careful Owner

I've had a go at distressing the model of the Ford Puma to try to make it look like it's had an argument with a Garratt.

Does that look convincing?

The technique I used in the end was a heat one of my spoon-shaped scribing tools over a gas burner on the stove and press it into the panels which look the hits.

The area was weathered using a dry brush to try and pick out the shape more and then the previously shiny plastic was given a coat of matt varnish.

I'll take it over to Himself's place later today and see what it looks like abandoned by the lineside.

A State Of Distress

Vandalising models doesn't come naturally to me, but that's what I'm going to have to do for a very up-to-date scenic feature on Bron Hebog.

Recently a car had an 'argument' with a Garratt - and came off second best - on the occupational crossing, also called Bron Hebog, which is at the back right hand corner of our layout.

The vehicle involved was a Ford Puma and it got me wondering whether there were any suitable scale models available on the market?

A quick internet search turned up one of these, conveniently in red, the same colour as the car involved in the incident.

This particular model is to HO scale, which is smaller than the 4mm scale of OO9, but there is also a useful modelling dodge to have things at the back of a layout smaller and so add depth by making them seem further away.

As this will be indeed be placed at the furthest away point on Bron Hebog it should work well.

The challenge now is to make this pristine plastic Puma look a little more like this....