Home For Retired Rolling Stock

Having powered up the narrow gauge test track at the weekend I soon found I exhausted the entertainment value in running a light engine around a circuit, or pushing wagons with no couplings (yet).

The obvious solution was to raid the collection of rolling stock at Himself's place which is not usually required as part of our exhibition fleet.

A number of years ago I sold off most of the redundant carriage stock (which had been replaced by improved models) to help fund the purchase of the last pair of NGG16 kits from Backwoods Miniatures as the business was wound up. 

However, I was careful to keep hold of models which will allow us to run Dduallt at its nominal date of 1988.

I only need a few items to make up a token train for the 'test track' while I build up my own stock for it.

So in the picture above you can see, from left to right:

* Our first model of bogie brake 10 shown in the all-green livery in which it was first restored to service, from the excellent Dundas kit.

* Carriage 16 in as per 1988 red livery which I scratch built in styrene donkeys years ago.  This has been replaced in the exhibition fleet by a brass Worsley body in Col. Stephens era green and red.

* Carriage 17, from the Langley brass kit. Our very first bowsider  (in fact, our first brass carriage) showing it in 1988 'Mountain Prince' livery, but with all the panelling detail which is not strictly correct.

* Bug Box 3 is from a Chris Veitch brass kit. It's a lovely wee model, but it's always been out of era for our layouts in it's all-over red livery.  (Would look lovely behind the new green Earl of Merioneth though...)

* Jerry M is a Chivers white metal kit running on an unaltered Ibertren chassis.   At the time we built it the idea was it could masquerade as Lilla for those who couldn't tell the difference. Since the arrival of the Robex print for Lilla it has been made redundant.

Also out of shot is our first Dundas model of quarryman's carriage 8, with the wood panelling smoothed over with filler to show it as it was in 1988 with its plywood-faced bodysides.

It's nice to see them getting a run again, anyway.

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.

2020 Review - Part 3

July 

 

As we moved into the second half of the year Livingston Thompson had been painted, lined and weathered and taken for its first test runs on Bron Hebog with the formation recreating the train when it was first towed from Minffordd to Blaenau Ffestiniog to try and kick start the restoration.

 

After a false start that ended up with the locomotive on display at the NRM in York where it remains.

 

The Double Fairlie story continued with Himself trying to keep pace with Boston Lodge on progress with James Spooner.

 

 

 

We're doing out best to adapt a Backwoods brass kit - although there will have to be the inevitable compromise on scale. 

On my workbench I was getting to grips with a new project in resin....

 

August 

Those Hula Hoop shapes were turned into the body of Maenofferen water tank wagon which sits on an extended 3 ton slate waggon chassis.

 

 

Almost immediate I was inundated with requests to produce a kit version....

 

And Himself used the first lockdown to reach the finishing line on another long term project, finally completing the painting and lining of our Backwoods Lyn.

 

 

 

The latest of our WHR saloons rolled off the production line, too.

 

 

September

 

Trying our best, once again, to stay synchronised with real world developments, Himself began painting our 130, starting with the bunkers and tanks which received their lovely crimson/plum colour and straw lining. 

 

 

After completing work on the tank waggon I was engaged on a request to produce a kit for the FR's small ex-MOD bogie wagons.

 

The first task was to find a way to produce the bogies.

 

The solution I hit on was to cast a piece which could slip over the very free-running Hudson bogie sold by Dundas.    

 

 

 

In fact, Dundas was doing very good business out of us with Himself deciding it was time to replace a lot of our slate waggon fleet as the 30 year old bodies became brittle.

 

This time instead of a uniform grey he decided to make them a little more colourful.

 

2020 Review - Part 2

April

I finished off the previous post saying we had plans for an old England engine kit and a dead chassis which were lying around in the bits box, and this is what we turned them into.

I've got a real fascination with the FR of my childhood in the 1970s and 80s.

While Princess may look splendid now in her lined out maroon livery, this is how I first remember seeing her, when she was freshly liberated from a plinth in Blaenau Ffestiniog.

This model is an unpowered tow-around which may make the occasional, fantasy trip up and down the line.

Himself also finished off the construction work on our own version of Van 51 using one of my kits, improved with a brass roof, resin ventilator and railings on the balcony.

And we started another one of my wish list projects, to create a model of Livingston Thompson at its nadir, when the remains of the locomotive were removed from storage in Minffordd yard.

The donor in this case was Langley white metal kit which had been donated for the purpose many years ago.

May

Out of the blue were were offered the chance to buy another Backwoods Garratt kit at a knockdown price.

As you can see from the picture it was a bit of a wreck, and we had no intention of getting it going as a runner, but it came with a Farish 08 chassis - which is always handy - and we had an inkling of an idea of what we could do with the very battered body...

 

I'd finished making and fitting the interior on Gwyrfai and by this time Himself was well advanced with the painting, which is an epic job on these observation cars.

The paint job was also complete on Van 51 which looked very smart and was just waiting for the glazing to be fitted.

June

Some running repairs were required on Bron Hebog when we noticed one of the crossing gates was damaged.

Himself knocked up a replacement out of styrene strip.

The very intricate transfer work on Gwyrfai was complete and all it now required was a coat of varnish.

And so while he was in the mood for tackling tricky transfers - and getting through incomplete projects - Himself started re-doing the lining on Conway Castle which hadn't been touched since before he moved to Scotland.

Under The Weather

Two of our new tow-around models are finished after a visit from the airbrush to make them look suitably distressed and uncared for.

I found myself in Himself's bad books because on first seeing the picture of Livingston Thompson on my phone I replied with a message querying whether it had been weathered? - and received a withering reply!

That's the trouble with pictures, sometimes.

I popped in a few days later to examine it by eye, and I could see at once that it has been heavily weathered and now has a very dull and dusty look as if it has just been pulled out of the Maenofferen shed after 14 years.

It's pictured here in the station siding on Bron Hebog, but it should only really be appearing on Dduallt.

The other project to acquire some instant ageing was the various components of our dismantled NGG16 which are now looking nice and grubby, as are the DZ flat wagons they are sitting on.

This doesn't have an identity, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if people start calling it 109.

Weather Forecast

Livingston Thompson is now lined and varnished, but sadly for Himself there’s still one vital step left.

Due to the rather ropey quality of the Langley white metal castings he tells me it wasn’t the easiest lining job but it looks pretty impressive to me.

The blank space where the nameplates used to be is looking quite effective too, and even more so when it is made to look more rusty.

With the darker green and the dirty black paint it certainly looks nicely dull, but it’s just too clean.

Himself’s challenge now is to weather it so it looks suitably rusty and forgotten about.

This is not the normal look for our locos so he’s mugging up by watching a teach-yourself-weathering DVD before he starts.

Fairlie Colourful

Himself is in the early stages of painting Livingston Thompson

The challenge with this one is to make it look convincingly neglected as if it has spent 15 years in Minffordd Yard.

At the moment it has been given some initial coats of dirty black and green and posed in its train formation with Earl of Merioneth and bogie wagon 63.

This time Himself is using Railmatch standard loco green in place of our usual Humbrol number 3 and it does look a lot duller.

The nameplates are just tacked in place because the finished model won’t have any - just rusty oblong patches where they used to be - so they are just there as a marker for now.

I think it’s going to look very effective and hopefully quite a conversation starter, whenever exhibitions resume.....

Under And Inside

I’ve been getting on with some of the detailing jobs on Livingston Thompson.

It’s hard to keep track from the few photographs I’ve seen taken over a decade or more it was in store of the parts it still had on it when it was taken for its trips up and down the line, but it would appear that it did still have its ash pans in place, so I’m making up a representation in styrene.

The other key job - which would stand out like a sore thumb if it wasn’t done - is to fit out the coal space in the bunkers on the stoker’s side.

You might also notice that I’ve removed the handbrake and reverser mouldings from the sides of the firebox because it would appear LT lost both of those when it was retired - did they get transferred to the new Earl of Merioneth ?

In which case, where did the parts Livingston Thompson has in the cab now come from?

The Princess

That’s one job ticked off the lockdown wish list!

Himself has completed the painting, lining and (matt) varnishing of Princess.

It almost looks too good to be unpowered, doesn’t it!

I’ve had an ambition to have a  model of the engine in post-Blaenau plinth condition for as long as I can remember.

On this model the green is very faded from exposure to the elements but in all other respects it’s in peak Garrawegian condition with unique red frames and the wheel rims picked out in white.

Sadly, the loco made its way back home to Boston Lodge on the back of a lorry (much like its first arrival in Wales) but ours will be towed around Dduallt as a bit of self-indulgent modelling make believe.

I can imagine it might also spent much of its time parked on the truncated siding behind the signal box as a reminder of what might have been....

On Tow

Livingston Thompson is looking deceptively complete.

In fact it is just posing on the first finished pair of ambulance bogies to see what it might look like

The bottom end boiler / tank casting and the upper cab are still to be fixed down until the firebox is fitted permanently in place.

With the bogies we’ve decided to revert to the original frame casting and accept the wheel sets will have to remain fitted during painting because to attempt to remove them risks them cracking - resin is inherently less flexible than injection moulded plastics, alas.

I think they’re pretty effective, and they certainly run freely - if this whit metal Livingston Thompson breaks away while being hauled uphill around the spiral we’re in trouble!!

Firebox Fitting

I’ve received Livingston Thompson as the backload from a lockdown shopping delivery to Himself.

He was smarter than me and realised that if he soldered the whole body together it would be impossible to insert the firebox casting.

The resin copy I made of the white metal chassis block has undergone a lot of filing at the bottom to sit lower inside the cab - on the Langley kits it rises too high into the cab to accommodate the motor.

What I’m wondering now is whether I was wrong to fatten it out with a thick wedge of styrene in between the two halves?

Bunkering

Even in bare white metal Livingston Thompson has already got the look of the hulk that sat hidden away in Minffordd yard for so many years.

Himself has corrected the bunker casting error and the added details such as the handrails really set it off - it’s remarkable what you can achieve with these old Langley kits when made up carefully.

The bogies it’s sitting on just now are a pair Himself has sitting around in his den while I work on the proper ambulance bogies.

One of the important details - which Himself didn’t thank me for - was to hack out the cast coal detail in the bunkers.

Now it’s being passed over to me to fit in the firebox casting and complete the bogies.

Double Bottom

While I've been casting a resin copy of the firebox Himself is cracking on with the main superstructure of Livingston Thompson, and I think I've discovered why it was I was given it as a freebie...

Have you spotted it?

Yes, this kit came with two bottom end castings!

They should be a mirror image of each other, so that when they are fixed onto the frame the coal bunkers are both on the stoker's side - look carefully at the picture and you can see that these would be diagonally opposite.

Never mind, it should be relatively easy fix -in any case the bunkers will be empty on this tow-around hulk.

Himself has also fixed in bolsters for bogie pivots which would normally be taken care of by the chassis block.

Speaking of which, it's my job to try to come up with a pair of ambulance bogies to tow it around on, which for its adventures in the 1980s were a pair of distinctively short wheelbase Polish bogies.

Fairlie Firebox

So far lockdown has resulted in us cracking on with a number of projects which have been on the back burner for years.

Following on from our Princess Himself has suggested we action a long term ambition to create a Livingston Thompson.

Just like with Princess we’ll be portraying the loco at its nadir, when the rusting superstructure spent a decade and a half hidden away in Minffordd Yard.

I remember clearly the first time I saw this in a full colour picture in the FR magazine and it was like discovering a mythical lost engine, and it’s fascinated me ever since.

LT did eventually escape when it was towed to Glan y Pwll in 1985 for cosmetic restoration - which never started - and then back down the line again at the end of 1987, and so that’s how we’re going to have our model finished, as a tow-along on ambulance bogies.

For the model we’re going to use a Langley white metal kit for LT which was kindly donated many years ago.

I’m conscious, however, that a white metal engine of this size is quite heavy so I’m going to try to keep the weight down.

The Langley kit includes two chunky castings to replace the Bachmann diesel chassis block, and the bit where the motor goes also doubles as the firebox detail you can see in the cab.

These two pieces alone weigh 67g, so my cunning plan is to cast a resin copy, not of the whole chassis but just the bit you can see in the cab.

To this end I have crudely chopped up the white metal blocks and glued them into a mould box which I have covered in RTV silicon and cast copies from.

The combined weight of the two resin castings is 6g, which shows you what a no-brainer it is to make these copies.

What I will do now is glue them back to back into a unit which can be inserted into the cab area.

From The Archives

I got a very pleasant surprise a couple of weeks ago when one of the luminaries of PECO Publications told me that they’d dug out the pictures of Dduallt taken a quarter of a century ago to use in the latest of their special editions.

This magazine is the latest in the series and is all about modelling the preserved railway scene, which is something I’ve been involved with since I was a a schoolboy, and which is very much overlooked.

The images, shot by the legendary Len Weal after hours at one of our early exhibitions, are historic in their own right in that they feature much of our first generation of rolling stock, much of which has been retired, sold or, in the case of the Langley Merddin Emrys given away as a gift to a former FR luminary.

Have the years been kind?

Why not buy a copy of the magazine and let us know?

Hidden Treasures

The recent transfer of two of my a favourite FR locomotives to a shed at the furthest reaches of the railway reminds me that we also have a collection of out of service engines which rarely see the light of day.

In our case they are hiding in plain sight on a shelf in Himself's study.

The most notable of this 'heritage collection' is our original model of Earl of Merioneth which was 'kit-bashed' around a white metal Langley Double Fairlie, and its diesel-locomotive chassis with its absurdly small wheels.

It was retired from service more than 20 years ago when it was replaced by our current machine which was adapted from a Backwoods Miniatures kit.

We also have two old Ladies in this retirement home for old engines, both of them from the Dundas white metal kits.

Linda was also relegated by the appearance of a Backwooods kit, but she still makes a fine model with her Ibertren chassis adapted with outside fly cranks and the conical chimney she acquired in the 1980s during an experiment with gas producer coal firing.

The end of service for Blanche was more abrupt after she failed in the middle of an exhibition with a detached fly crank and has never been properly repaired and now sits with her one of her false outside frames missing.

Deep Purple

Himself has been seized by a mania for vintage carriages.

This is not a problem - indeed it is something I am doing all I can to encourage.

19 is making rapid progress having been primed and given a couple of coats of glorious deep purple livery since I last posted about it.

The tricky bit with this carriage will be attempting to replicate all the ornate gold leaf lining around the panelling.

Given the size of a 4mm scale model and the limits of how fine the transfers available are it will probably have to be some kind of lining-lite compromise.

The mania I mention is that he has also dug out a Worsley body for 15 in its current high-Victorian state in order to finish it off.

(It was purchased and soldered together a couple of years ago when we were making a new model of 16 and to our shame didn't initially notice that the one we had had windows in the ends and the one we needed, didn't. Opps!)

He's also talking about repainting, or replicating, our models of 17 and 18 which currently are Langley ones painted in the basic, two tone Mountain Prince livery as per their condition in 1988.

This is not entirely satisfactory because the etch for the bodies shows the full panelling but back in the 1980's this pair were running around with most of it stripped off. (Such different times!)

So option A is to dunk them in a bath of paint stripper and repaint them in their current livery BUT only if it is possible to replace the existing Grandt Line bogies with Dundas FR ones.

That will depend on whether there is enough room beneath for them to swing.

If not then he is talking about purchasing another pair of frets from Worsley Works and making complete new carriages.

As I said previously, I'm not about to stop him.

Square Go

I had a trip down memory lane a couple of weeks ago when a friend revealed he is planning to make a model of Earl of Merioneth aka  'The Mighty Square' using one of the Langley white metal kits as the starting point.

I told him that this was how Himself built the first of our models of it around 25 years ago, so I thought it might be nice to dig it out for another look.

The key to our model was that we used as much of the Langley kit as we could as a solid base to build up the magnificently modernist (and under-appreciated) superstructure of the Earl.

So beneath those iconic side tanks, which were cut out of styrene, is the outline of a curvy Spooner Fairlie.

One of the things that made this a 'no brainer' is that the Earl's tanks are flush with the bottom of the superstructure whereas the traditional design has a lip which makes provides a very secure footing for the overlays.

We also filed down and reshaped the one-piece casting for the cab roof and cut a hole for the luxury sunroof.

For the very plain D shape smokeboxes and the chimneys we obtained examples of the white metal castings from the Dundas kit for Linda and Blanche.

All these pearls of wisdom were duly passed onto my friend who is blogging about the progress on his own model.

My reward for all this assistance was the publishing of a scurrilous slur which suggested that this faithful old model was withdrawn from service and replaced another built using a Backwoods kit because it was unreliable!

I feel compelled to set the record straight and state very clearly that this model, powered by an adapted Bachmann chassis, was epitome of reliability.

Let there be no doubt that the primary motivation for the construction of a second Earl was the absurdly small wheels on the old diesel chassis.

To even suggest that Himself would accept an unreliable locomotive is tantamount to a defamation or the worst kind.

So there!

In The Beginning

While I was searching through Himself's collection of slides a few days ago, looking for pictures of Earl of Merioneth, I came across some images that I forgot we took of the early stages of construction of Dduallt.

At a guess I would date these pictures as 1992, so pretty much a quarter of a century ago.

As you can see, by this stage he had finished creating the trackbed, which was a very precise operation with the gradient on the spiral, and the track had be wired up and was being tested.

The rolling stock is worthy of note.

This was in the early days of my scratch building carriages in styrene so some of the trains are formed of very weighty white metal GEM kits and the brass Langley bowsiders.

It was also the era before the Backwoods Miniatures kits came along and so our Fairlies tottered along with tiny wheels from an adapted Bachmann diesel chassis sitting beneath a white metal Langley body kit.

The model of the Earl was a fine kit-bashing effort by Himself with the tanks formed from styrene and the smokeboxes and chimneys sourced from Parkside Dundas kits for Linda and Blanche.

The Earl is still with us - sitting on a shelf in Himself's study - but Merddin was donated as a gift to an FR luminary. I think of it now and then and hope it is being well cared for.