One of the great things about model railways as a pastime is that you are often eagerly anticipating the future - the next item of rolling stock you want to buy or build, the next exhibition, or dreaming up plans for a new layout.
That's where we find ourselves in 2026, excited about taking Minffordd out for a first full year of exhibitions - check out the diary page - and also turning our minds to what we could do with our collection of Welsh Highland stock.
Bron Hebog is effectively mothballed since its potentially final outing to Manchester just before Christmas, but we have a magnificent collection of exquisite Backwoods Garratts and nowhere to display them or run them.
It would be shame if they just stayed in a stock box never to be admired again.
So we're developing a plan for a smaller, more manageable, more easily-transportable, but still authentic WHR-themed layout.
We were looking for a location and design which can fulfil a number of criteria.
* It needs to be as compact as possible, however...
* We need to be able to run full-length WHR service trains
* We want it to be an accurate model of a real location
* It needs to have genuine scenic breaks - nothing too contrived.
On a line as wild and open as the WHR is for much of its run is the presence of natural scenic breaks, such as over bridges or tunnels, was going to narrow down the possibilities.
For a while I had mused about the possibilities of doing something based on Aberglaslyn where there is a very short stretch of open line between two of the tunnels.
It would be a very simple run-past layout, with the train completely dominated by the scenery.
However, the ratio between scenic layout and fiddle yard to hold those full-length trains would be very unfavourable, and it might end up being just as much of a headache to transport as Bron Hebog.
It also might be a little bit too simple to hold interest at an exhibition? Once you've seen one Garratt pass through with a long train of carriages you've seen them all, haven't you?
And so my mind turned to places along the route where there are overbridges within quick succession, and one of those, I realised, was Dinas South Yard.
This location has the advantage that it is not just plain single track.
It includes the locomotive shed and the head shunt, so you can have more of your stock out on display as well as running a wide range of trains not limited to run-of-the-mill passenger services but also engineering and gala specials.
Not only can trains run past the scene but you can have light engines shunting on and off shed, or fiddle about with unusual wagonry in the head shunt.
At the southern end of the scene is one of the classic NGWGR arched bridges which look almost like some kind of mouse hole in a skirting board for the Garratts to squeeze through, which would look really good.
The formation here is on a curve, so it would not be a regular rectangular layout, either.
Our model railway club in Greenock showed us the way with a very creative baseboard design for the OO layout Inches set in wild country on the Lanarkshire / Ayrshire border by having the layout arranged in a hexagon shape with three of the boards scenic and the other three a space where storage loops fanned out.
I though this might work well for Dinas as a 2/4 arrangement and printing out a scale plan of the site showed it would fit with very little tweaking of the track bed required.
The idea has met an enthusiastic reception at the club so I'm hopeful this is a project which may progress later this year.
