The Most Important Building

For small layout Minffordd has quite a lot of buildings on it.

Some of them are large, some are very small. 

For some of them their purpose is quite obvious (the Cambrian station building for example) while others may can be a touch misleading - such as the 'signal box' which is not, because it doesn't control any signals!  (It's technically a ground frame.)

The one I'm going to write about in this post is probably the most likely to be overlooked when the layout is being watched at exhibitions because it is tucked away at rear of the scene with it's back to the viewer.

But the Minffordd Weigh House is probably the most important building in the scene.

When the FR was in its heydey, making enormous profits carrying slate down from the mountain quarries, every waggon was to be weighed whether it was heading for the port or down into the exchange yard here at Minffordd.

This elegant stone building contained two weigh machines and the waggons were checked on the move as they passed over the tables on the 'Mineral Line' in front.

Along with virtually all the buildings on Minffordd this one was scratch built in styrene.

It's actually the second model of the building I've made.

The first was done as a gratis commission as a presentation gift to P-Way boss Fred Howes for his retirement a number of years ago, because in the modern era the building found a new use as his office.

On Fred's model I scribed the detail of all the dressed stone on the front and sides, and the rough blocks which make up the rear wall.

For the Minffordd example, where the front is normally only seen by the operators and the model is at least six feet away from the nearest paying eyes, I decided I could probably get away with embossed styerne sheet with a rough approximation of the pattern.

And some rough stone sheet for the rear elevation.

Something common to both models is that the distinctive pointed slates had to be cut by hand, row by row, in this case using thick paper card with the pattern printed on to be cut with the tip of a blade.

The finishing touch is some saw-tooth barge boards which I cast in resin from a styrene master.

In case you wondered, the Weigh House can longer weigh waggons - the tables were removed in 1976  - but they were never thrown away, and the FR Heritage Group has an appeal running to raise funds to use them in a recreation of the railway's original weigh house at the back of the old Boston Lodge Engine Shed, which was superseded by the Minffordd building.

It will make a fascinating exhibit as part of the official tours of Boston Lodge Works you can book to join and it help contextualise the very reason the works, and the railway was built.

If you would like to help make this happen you can donate here.

Minffordd Update: Mineral Line

The focus of tracklaying on the Minffordd project has moved 'upstairs' to the narrow gauge line.

If you've been following our updates you'll remember the crossing points at the Porthmadog end of the section were one of the early things Himself tackled, with an inventive mechanical solution to motorising the points on top of an overbridge when you can't place a motor directly beneath it.

While waiting for the points to arrive to complete the standard gauge fiddle yard he got on with extending the FR main line and the parallel mineral line which form a very pleasing arc along the back of the scene.

I've always liked this section of the FR - and in its heyday the section from Glan y Pwll into Blaenau Ffestiniog - because double track formation is such a rare thing to see on British narrow gauge lines.