Model Rail Scotland Debuts

Excitement is building ahead of us taking Bron Hebog to Model Rail Scotland in Glasgow in a month's time, which will be our first show in more than two years.

While I was thinking about that the other day it occurred to me that there must be a number of models we built in that time which have not been seen in public yet (aside from on this blog and our social media).

I stopped counting when I got to 15.

So I thought you might like a reminder of what's among the new stuff.

The steam engines include NGG/16 130, which is all new, and in the last two years Himself has got round to painting Lyn and Welsh Pony.

The diesel fleet has been bolstered by the recent arrival of our green Vale of Ffestiniog, and the duplicate of Conway Castle in the livery in which it served with distinction on WHR construction trains and as the Dinas shunter for many years.

Now, we also have the locomotive which replaced it, the big yellow Baguley number 9, and at the other end of the spectrum the former Boston Lodge gofer Harold.

New carriages include 2048 and the fourth of the opulent observation cars Gwyrfai, as well the much less salubrious Ashbury replica 21 and the Pickering brake for the WHHR excursions / incursions. 

If Rule One is enacted at any point over the three days at the SEC you might also be lucky to see some of our new tow-along amusements including a derelict Livingston Thompson on ambulance bogies, and a freshly un-plinthed Princess.

Both are completely out of era - being 1980s representations - and completely out of place on the Welsh Highland section, but you never know...

More prototypical is a deconstructed NGG/16 loaded onto DZ flat wagons for transfer between Boston Lodge and Dinas.

This little tableau is a consequence of us being offered the chance to buy the remains of a Backwoods kit which someone made such a Horlicks of building that the best thing to be done with it was recover any parts which could be used as spares and turn what was left into a conversion piece.

Younger Brother

I'm sure you're probably heartily sick of pictures of proudly purchased Bachmann Double Fairlies by now, but if you've come to this post by clicking on our social media I suppose you must still have a smidgen of interest left to want to know what I'm saying about them.

The first of our pair has arrived direct from Bachmann HQ, the model of Livingston Thompson in peak-Spooner condition, and looking just like it does today in the NRM at York.

Himself posed it next to our eldest Backwoods Miniatures Fairlie, which was also designed as LT but doctored as best we could to represent Merddin Emrys as it emerged from its re-Spoonering overhaul in 1988.

Of course, the Backwoods model is not to scale. 

The real loco is much longer and taller now, but it's pleasing to see that our one still sits a little higher than the Bachmann version, which at least gives some of the effect of what the brothers looked like when Merddin dragged LT to Tan y Bwlch for the official handover ceremony to the NRM.

Our LT has already had a short light engine test run on Bron Hebog.

However, I'm looking forward to putting this pair up against each other in a 'King of the Hill' challenge.

We already know our brass Backwoods Fairlies can handle a longer FR rake than the real locos do around the  S-bend out of Beddgelert.

The big question is whether the relatively featherweight RTR version will be able to haul an authentic number of carriages up the grade?

Watch this space...

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?

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.

Emergency Service

My current challenge is to try to produce a pair of Fairlie ‘ambulance bogies’ to go under Livingston Thompson.

The bogies in question are the ex-Polish ones which I previously scratch built to run under our oil tanker 66, which I’m using as a guide.

These bogies have a very distinctive short wheelbase and a semi-circular frame at the front.

Last time I fabricated them entirely from styrene but this time I think it might be a better idea to try to cast them from resin as one piece to give it more strength.

I’ll use the technique I adopt with the brass-framed bogies of having the axle box and suspension detail as a secondary casting to glue the sides afterwards.

The first attempt at a master for the frame is ready to create a mould, and we’ll see if the concept works.

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.

El Tee

I'm on a week's holiday with the family near York, which, of course, necessitates a visit to the NRM to see dear old Livingston Thompson.

This is the FR engine which as always intrigued me most.

Whilst I've long dreamed about seeing Welsh Pony and Princess steam again (which is going to be 50% fulfilled very soon) LT has been something of an enigma.

Books about the early years of the FR revival are stuffed with pictures of the engine, more so than any other I reckon, and yet it was only in use for 15 years between 1956 and its withdrawal 1971, and not continuously either.

So here we have a loco which would seem to be synonymous with the 'preserved' FR but hasn't worked for getting on for half a century now.

It last steamed two years before I was born, and, in fact, the first time I ever saw it was only a few years ago when it was removed from the NRM for a short stay back in Wales, during which time it was the centerpiece at the Warley show at the NEC right behind our layout.

I then saw it a second time at the railway for the unprecendented '5 Fairlies' line up, but those are the only times I have clapped eyes on it.

I think my strongest impressions of it are still of the images I saw occasionally in the FR magazine in the mid-80's of the superstructure stored in the furthest recesses of Minffordd yard.

I still intend to make a model of it in this condition.

There is a Langley kit lying in my drawer earmarked for this project.

Himself has always said we should use it as an opportunity for him to instruct me in the dark art of soldering white metal.

Perhaps in the next couple of years we will get a chance to try that out.

A Fourth Fairlie

I've finally got around to doing something about another long-time modelling ambition - a model of Livingston Thompson 1980's style.

Photo taken by the late John Halsall, courtesy of FR Society

This is the FR's fourth Fairlie that currently lives in the National Railway Museum at York, looking rather smarter than she does in the picture above, although that's how I'm going to model her.
First, a quick history lesson for those who don't know the background to this locomotive. (Those that do can skip on a few paragraphs if they wish..)

Livingston Thompson (or LT for short) was one of two Boston Lodge built Double Fairlies which survived the FR closure and was restored to steam in 1956, but by that time called Taliesin. (The same name the Single Fairlie carried. Confused yet? You will be....)

In 1961 it was renamed (again) Earl of Merioneth before being retired for good in 1971. A rebellion by FR staff and volunteers - the so-called Active Forty - headed off a plan to give the old girl a radical rebuild with a new parallel double boiler, and the (new) Earl of Merioneth we know and love (or perhaps even loath) was built to replace it and had its debut in 1979.

The old superstructure, ex-LT, ex-Taliesin & ex-Earl was stripped of any useful bits (like bogies) and placed in store until finally in 1986 it was placed on ambulance bogies and dragged up the line to Glan-y-Pwll by a gang who called themselves the Active Four.

Eventually a plan was hatched for a proper cosmetic restoration, the corpse was dragged back down the line again, got taken away to Winson Engineering where it was buffed up, plonked on a pair of withdrawn bogies and handed over the NRM for display, having been pulled halfway up the line yet again for a ceremony at Tan y Bwlch.

Photo - Roger Dimmick

(Here's where FR anoraks who knew all that can start reading again!)

I've always been fascinated by this loco, I think because I am too young to have seen it in steam.  I remember seeing a picture in the FR society magazine in the early 1980's showing the superstructure resting on a couple of slate wagons in a shed in Minffordd Yard, apparently unloved and forgotten about.

I've only ever seen it in its embalmed state when it came back to the FR for a visit a few years ago and got a really close look when we exhibited Dduallt directly in front of it as the centrepiece of the Warley show at the NEC.

Knowing that it had been towed at least twice around the spiral I have for years wanted to make a model of it like this to drag around on Dduallt behind our Earl of Merioneth. The difficulty has always been finding a kit to essentially ruin for the purpose. A Backwoods Miniatures one is quite obviously far too valuable to vandalise in this way, and even the old Langley whitemetal ones retail for a small fortune (for what they are).

So I was very grateful indeed when FR shop manager, in-house film maker, 009 modeller and 'Isle of Stoner' blogger John Wooden offered to give me one he had (with a few bits missing) for free.

Here it is with the main bits laid out. LT was stripped of a lot of its fittings before its lost decade and a half in Minffordd Yard, but happily all the big bits that remained on LT are there in the kit.

The big challenge on this project, aside from cleaning up and straightening out some of the shockingly rough castings, will be the scrapyard-style weathering job to be done on it. I hope it'll be an interesting one to watch.