Replica Roofing

It's been quite a few weeks since I've done any work on the NWNGR replica replacement carriage.

A couple of nights ago while half the household were out for the night taking in some of the action at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow I ran out of excuses and put in a couple of hours.

I drilled the holes in the chassis where the bogie will go and then tackled the roof skin.

As I described in detail in this article this is a two-stage process which involves fixing some supporting lengthways ribs before stretching a styrene skin over the top and bonding it firmly at each side so it doesn't spring free.

This is one of those jobs that you want to do in one session which is probably why I've been putting it off for a while.

And perhaps because of the nice summer weather we've this year the motivation to hide away at the workbench and do some scratch building has been a little lacking,

There's a reason why we tend to think of railway modelling as an autumn and winter activity.

The Secret Can Be Told

If you've been reading this blog over the last couple of months you may recall I have started work on building a second model of the NWNGR replica carriage 24.

I never did say why, and that was quite deliberate. Because I was keeping a secret.

A few months ago Himself and I were approached by a director of the FR Company - the world's oldest independent railway company, as I'm sure you know - and told about a plan to present a gift to the outgoing chairman, Dr John Prideaux, featuring 4mm / 009 models of some of the heritage rolling stock he has played a major role in restoring / recreating.

The snag was while it was simple to buy models of Welsh Pony and the 'Curly Roofed Van' there was no readily available model of 24.

Could we make another to be part of the presentation?

We said we'd be delighted to help, of course, but there was no way we'd be able to turn it round in a matter of a few weeks.

However, as lifetime supporters of the railway, we felt we should assist in any way we could, so I suggested that as it was such a special request, for someone who's given so much to the FR for many years, we could donate our own model of 24 as part of the gift.

It's not as if we're likely to need it to run on Bron Hebog again, and the Dinas project is likely to be a couple of years away.

Dr Prideaux was presented with the models, in a lovely display box, at a dinner in his honour earlier this week, and I gather he was delighted with them.

So that's lovely.

And I suppose it shows that volunteering for the railway can come in many forms.

In the meantime I've made a wee bit more progress on the replacement which I've cast in resin from my own styrene masters.

The sides and ends have been bonded into a box and I've cut out the pieces for the chassis and the false ceiling.

Getting Closer

This is not a groundbreaking development in the world of model railways, but it is a classic case of us being late adopters.

Himself is experimenting with magnetic couplings for the intermediate connections on our carriage sets.

We use Kadees for the primary coupling to the locomotives but had kept tension locks on stock which is intended to run in fixed formations.

On a layout with a small element of gradient, there can be obvious fore and aft movement as the passenger trains move through the dip on the Cambrian line at the front of the layout, at the bottom of the photo here.

We designed it this way to help emphasise the embankment carrying the long siding in the yard, and also because in reality Minffordd is a summit and there is a steep descent towards Porthmadog.

A fixed magnetic link will eliminate this distracting movement of the carriages, and should also shorten the space the carriage sets take up in the fiddle yards by a few mm's.

It doesn't sound a lot but there is only 'fag paper' clearance sometimes when you have a full three-car rake and a locomotive on each end.

Resin Carriage Sides

Body sections for the 'replica of the replica' of carriage 24 have been cast with moderate success.

This is the first time I've attempted to cast a large piece with quite so much detail as a traditional compartment carriage with matchboarding.

The side your see here are the third and fourth attempts.

One the first the mix was not quite right and it never quite hardened properly.

The second was too brittle  - which is an issue I've had with the brand of resin I've got in stock at the moment - and it snapped while being de-molded.

On these there were a couple of small blemishes where air bubbles had become trapped and the detail was missing, but I've been able to patch it up by inserting some pieces of styrene strip.

The flash filling the windows has been roughly cut out although some detailed work with a needle file will be needed still.

Some small breaks occurred as I was removing the flash, but they were very clean and were easily bonded back together and the sides remain as strong as if they'd never happened.

They won't look as clean and neat as a fully scratch built body, but with Bron Hebog in storage and the Dinas project still on the drawing board nobody is about to scrutinise it closely any time soon.

In The Carriage Works Again

I didn't see this one coming but I've spent the last couple of weeks working on scratch building a carriage again.

What you are seeing in the picture is one side and one end of carriage 24, a replica of a North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways 'Summer Carriage' which was built at Boston Lodge almost 25 years ago.

If you've been following this blog or have come to see Bron Hebog in the years when it was going to exhibitions you might be thinking at this point, hang on, I'm sure you've got one of those already?

You're right, we do.

But now we need to make another one.

I can't say why, or at least for the moment I can't.

Our brand has always been 'doing things the hard way', and my way of tackling a carriage like 24 is no exception!

Every stick of those matchboard sides is stuck on individually. 

At a rough guess there must be around 150 of them, and that's without all the bits of door framing, the droplights and other bits of raised detailing.

It took around a fortnight to get one side done!

I'm not saying I'm getting impatient as I get older, but I'm not up for doing that twice if I don't have to.

So this time for my replica-of-a-replica I'm going to see what happens if I use this first side as a master to make a silicone mold from, and try making resin cast sides.

With so much detail it's likely that the mold will soon lose its fidelity and after a couple of castings some of the matchboard detail will become blocked.

But if I can get two good casts from it out of the initial resin pours then I hope it'll be an easier way of making the basic carriage body.

And if not I've lost two weeks - and a lot of increasingly expensive styrene strip - which I won't get back....

'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.

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.

Flea Bites

Last week I posted about the 'Barn' carriages in their short-lived varnished wood livery which were scratch built for the Minffordd project.

They are one of three core passenger trains which we run on the main line which traverses the back of the scene.

The one which most people probably associate most with the FR is the short train of the historic four-wheelers known in the period as the 'Flying Flea'.

This began as an unadvertised relief train cobbled together to cope with the surge in passenger numbers the railway reopened to Tan y Bwlch in 1958.

It only lasted for a couple of years in this form, so, historically, the heyday of the 'Flea' is a before the period setting for our layout.

Later in the 1960s the four-wheel carriages were mostly added to the top of trains of bogie carriages as strengtheners.

However, it helps us operationally to have three carriage sets to rotate, and it's also a fun little train to run, particularly with a single engine at the head of it.

To get a consistent look we decided to use the RTR PECO 'bug boxes' for this set, instead of the brass kits we have for the carriages on Dduallt.

The Quarrymen's carriage was made from a Dundas plastic kit because during this time the last survivor, number 8, had been repaired with plain plywood, rather than the historic matchboard sides which is how PECO produced theirs.

The same is true for brake van number 2, which I also had to kit-bash.

That is sometimes marshalled on the end of this set as the guard's vehicle, or, as in the photo above, it may be running with the new van 1 which was among the first brand new passenger vehicles on the FR in the revival era.

This model was scratch built in styrene and running on a Dundas Quarrymen's chassis.

It makes such a fun contrast to the large standard gauge trains passing underneath on the Cambrian line and, I hope, adds to the charm of the layout for a casual viewer.

Teak Freak

I'm very unusual, I freely admit it. 

I've always liked the original 'teak' livery on the FR's 'Barn' carriages, although, of course, it was nothing of the sort - more like 'Ronsealed Plywood'.

This affection probably stems from not being old enough to have actually seen one with my own eyes in this condition.

It's something you rarely see depicted in model form, so I hope it's something which will make Minffordd stand out as 009 modelling becomes ever more mainstream.

Carrying on as I did with Dduallt and Bron Hebog this set of four carriages were all scratch built in styrene.

I think my favourite of the set is the buffet car 14, which ran for a few years in this stripped back livery after initially entering FR service in the attractive green an ivory livery.

There is a lot of depth to the panelling on this carriage, and interesting details such as the ventilator hoods and the curves at the top of the main window frames.

Himself did a terrific job in his first goes at teak paint effect on these carriages, I love the way the doors look so much more weathered.

I would like to think that one day the FR heritage movement will reach the point where carriage 100 is recreated.

To me it seems just as much of a landmark moment in FR history as the appearance of the bug boxes or the first bogie carriages.

A Bit Of Bob

It's been so long since I did any narrow gauge model making that I can no longer remember what it was, or when it was I was working on it.

However, the castings for FR super saloon 808 (aka BOB) have been gathering dust on the shelf and pricking my conscience for many months now, so I this week I decided I'd better pull my finger out and do something with them.

Part of the reason for the long delay - aside from a general lack of motivation ever since the Glasgow show - is I had run out of the 60 second superglue I've taken to using for assembling resin parts.

It has the benefit of allowing a decent amount of repositioning while not leaving you waiting for ages for the parts to bond, which I've found has always been the case with the so-called 'rapid' epoxy resins.

However, in one of the small DIY shops in town - and we are fortunate to have two here - I came across a 90 second Araldite product which comes in a double syringe dispenser thing.

I was sceptical whether it would actually bond in 90 seconds - it's more like 490 in my experience - but the join does seem to be less brittle than one made with superglue is.

We shall see how it stands up to all the handling as I fit the floor and roof.

 

The Last Bowsider

Things have been a little quiet in the world of Bron Hebog these last few weeks - at least on this blog - but we've been quietly working away on various projects in the background and one of them is ready to break cover.

Himself has been painstakingly painting and lining our model of bowsider 18 in its current peak-Victorian livery.

This is a Worsley Works brass kit and the gold lining is all done using the narrowest of the waterside lining and corners range from Fox Transfers.

I think it looks absolutely gorgeous.

This completes our set of vintage bogie carriages, although I suspect Allan Garraway would have had something to say about the order they've been marshalled for the 'works photograph'.

Himself would probably had been summoned to the managerial suite and informed - in no uncertain terms - that this is not an Irish tramway!

Last Of The Bowsiders

Having cleaned every wheel on ever item of rolling stock ahead of Model Rail Scotland this weekend - and, no, he didn't count them -  Himself has been engaging in a spot of interior painting.

These are the seat units for bowsider 18 which will slot into the Worsley bodyshell.

The body itself has had the door ventilator hoods added, and the grab handles as well.

This carriage also has fake lamp pots on the roof in its Victorian condition, so I've cast a quartet of those to be fixed onto the roof.

Bob's Your Next Project

Now the festivities are over it's time to start thinking about what will be the next project on the workbench.

Himself spent the days following New Year re-organising all our stockboxes, much like the way a music fan sorts out their album collection, with our various models sorted into a more coherent system - with a box for FR locos, vintage carriages, freight stock etc.

He also knocked up a new wooden case for the current FR corridor stock and left a space for the new superbarn 'Bob'  - 808 to give it it's proper name - which is under construction at Boston Lodge this winter.

Pic: Glenn Williams

As ever, getting ahead of the boys and girls in Glan y Mor is a dangerous game.

Even a 'standard' design like the superbarns can catch you out with differences between the carriages, particularly on the underframe and the small windows at the top.

From what I can see, however, it looks pretty safe to fetch out the resin and run off a set of castings for the body sides from my moulds, although I shall be paying careful attention to images which emerge over the coming weeks to check I'm not making a big mistake.

Review Of The Year - Part 3

Here we are into the second half of our annual review, and the pace of projects slowed down a little over the summer months, as I suspect it does for most of us.

July

We were fortunate to be able to get hold of one of the last of the batch of 009 Society Hudson toast rack kits, which we made up to represent number 42 on the WHHR.
 

In this picture it is positioned between one of our Dundas 37 / 38 pair and my original scratch built 39 which I must have made in the mid-90s.

Himself got on very fast with the RT models Baguley Drewry shunter kit prototype we obtained from RT Models, having swapped the etch brass fly cranks for some cast brass ones we had spare.

August

I was working away at my version of the toast rack to represent the FR's replica 39, which I was making using a basic resin casting for the body side and then using styrene angle and brass wire to complete.

 

Himself had the idea of using a spare Lynton and Barnstaple bogie van kit to make a freelance FR-style track cleaning wagon.

This has a sprung pad beneath it which wipes the rail heads, and the whole wagon is weighed down with lead, to the extent that it needs to have a locomotive at each end of it to be pushed around the layout.

At my house the 'test track' project had reached the track laying stage.

September

By now now the toast rack 39 carriage had reached the stage where it was almost ready to have a roof added and be sent for painting.

In order to better represent the Dinas shunter, number 9, I produced a styrene master for some alternative bonnet doors and grills which I turned into a casting.

And after a saga which went on for more than a year we finally got hold of etches to make a model of the Ashbury replica 21, which Himself soldered together in short order.

I'll bring the story up to date with a final instalment to be posted on Hogmanay.

Review Of The Year - Part 1

And so we come to the end of another year of lockdown and exhibition-less modelling - for us at least.

It's ironic that the reason I began this blog nearly a million page views ago, was to have a way of showing off what we were doing while we were in the long process of building Bron Hebog, and while Dduallt was retired from shows.

Never could I have imagined we'd face such a sustained period where modelling, once again, became an almost exclusively private activity in your home, with no communal outlet.

It's one reason to be thankful for the opportunities the online world gives us.

Now, as I always do at the end of December, I'm going to take a look back - three months at a time - at some of the highlights of our modelling .

January

I'm afraid to say that there's been little progress since the start of the year on my prototype for the FR infrastructure well wagon,

Since this picture was taken I have found a way to cast the deck pieces in styrene, but it still doesn't have any couplings so has yet to be given any sort of test run.

Himself was busy adding the final pipe runs onto to the boiler unit of the Backwoods NG G16 kit for our model of the freshly restored 130.

And he was also well on the way to lining out a set of three 3mm Hawksworth carriage kits he'd been making as a favour to the Engineering Consultant - a man who was destined for higher things before the year was out!

February

This was the year my son reached an age where he was ready for his first OO layout, and I found my moulding and resin casting skills came in handy fixing a second hand Mainline wagon which had lost one of its sliding doors on one side.

Once the pipe runs were finished on the real locomotive, Himself wasted no time in getting our 130 painted, lined, and sent on a test run on Bron Hebog.

It really looked quite the part!

Another locomotive which was finished off - after many years - was our Mercian Welsh Pony, which looks absolutely stunning matched with the Victorian set.

March

Our James Spooner II project was in danger of running perilously far ahead of the real build as Himself had a play around with the etches to see how the half cab arrangement would work,

This is a model I hope we can expect more updates on in 2022.

Many years after our first model was stolen at an exhibition, Himself finished off his long-term project to make a replacement of the works shunter Harold. (aka, Shitty the Shunter)

At this time I was busy working on a commission for a scratch built model of Carnforth buffet car 114 in styrene.

To be continued...

Replicas Running

Now the varnish has set, and the bogies been fixed on,  Himself has sent me a couple of pictures of our new replicas - Ashbury 21 and Hudson toast rack 39 - on a test run on the layout.

21 is from a Worsley brass body kit and 39 was scratch built with most of the body cast in resin by myself,

This gives us a very respectable length of a 'Garraway' vintage set strengthens our 'Col Stephens' options as well, although we are a few green bug boxes short in that department.

They look very good posed in the platform at Beddgelert station on Bron Hebog.

It shouldn't be too much longer before our Bachmann Double Fairlies arrive and I'm really looking forward to seeing what the green Earl of Merioneth looks like hauling some of our green and ivory and all-over red stock.

Totally out of period for us, of course, but it's nearly Christmas so we're allowed, aren't we?

Open For Business

I've got more action to report from the paint shop.

Himself has been busy with the multi-coloured Hudson semi-open carriages - one the replica for the FR and the other for the WHHR fleet, which have different origins.

The red (WHHR) one is from the very neat 009 Society injection moulded kit, and has had a few enhancements such as brake pipes and the safety chains across the passenger access openings.

The green (FR) version is one I cast in resin from a scratch built master I made in styrene, and has a number of differences, including the positions of the right angle uprights and the number of slats on the end panels.

The mesh doors - a mid-life upgrade which offer significantly more protection than the chains on number 42 - are 3D prints which were kindly donated to the project.

For a few minutes Himself thought he had caught me out by noticing that number 39 currently has fewer, and thicker, planks on the ends, but he forgot the golden rule of FR modelling, which is that things change so frequently you have to choose the day you are modelling your locomotive, carriage or waggon and stick to it.

Thus, this 39 shows the carriage before its most recently, and thorough, overhaul.

Venting

As well as the Vale of Ffestiniog II, Himself has been doing some work on replica carriage 21 this week.

Now all the detailing work has been done it has been sprayed with primer ready for the application of its green / ivory livery with red ends.

It's adding the small details which really lift these Worsley Works kits, such as the ornate door grab handles, and the vents at the top of the doors.

These were made from a single strip of styrene which was scored with parallel lines and propped up with a smaller strip behind.

This was shaped subtly and chopped into the small lengths and glued in place.

Toast Rack Update

Tinkering has been completed on the scratch built Hudson toast rack replica 39 and it is about to move to the painting stage.

Himself has taken my resin cast body and added a a brass roof as well as finishing details such as the vacuum pipes, electrical connections and emergency stop apparatus.

It's had a trial run on (most) of Bron Hebog along with the 009 Society kit version which we are going to finish as the version of this type of carriage running on the WHHR. which is more correct to the kit.

The front one will be finished mostly in green and the rear one mostly in maroon.

Given that I was only working from photographs with measurements of the key dimensions of the Society kit when I started I'm pretty pleased with how it has turned out.

The Forgotten Carriage

It's possibly the affect of age, and a touch of confusion creeping in, but I was very surprised to discover recently that we didn't have a model of bowsider 18 in its current ornate Victorian livery.

The only one we have is one of our very first 009 models from around 30 years ago, built from a Langley brass kit, finished in the very simple two tone 'Mountain Prince' livery of the late 1980s.

(This model is not strictly correct because it has all the panelling etched in brass, whereas at this time number 18 was running with smooth panels along its midriff.)

We're going to fix this gap in the stock list and have bought in a Worsley Works body kit which Himself is busy soldering together.

That's the easy part - the hard part will be the painting.