The Hitman And Himself

It's not false modesty when I say that no one was more surprised than I was when Minffordd was named as the winner of 'Best In Show' at Model Rail Scotland at the weekend.

I've been coming to the show at the SEC in Glasgow for nearly 35 years now - my first visit was in 1993 - and I think the quality of the layouts this year was the highest I've yet seen at the venue.

I must confess I was absent for the moment of presentation on the Saturday afternoon.  

I'd been operating for most of the day and handed over to one of our team so I could sort myself out with a cup of tea in the rest room set aside for the hundreds of volunteers who make the show happen.

I hadn't even reached the doors to the hall when my phone rang to summon me back, for what I assumed must be either to sort out a catastrophic derailment or some other kind of dreadful emergency.

As I returned I saw Himself beaming, and clutching a very heavy glass trophy!

I am sure I wasn't alone in assuming that this award - the Jim Grieve Memorial Trophy to give it its proper title - was certain to be presented to Pete Waterman's massive, and massively impressive, Making Tracks 3.

This modern image monster of Milton Keynes was no doubt the big 'must see' attraction for many of the visitors who came to the show, on its first time being displayed in Scotland.

Everything about it is remarkable, not just in terms of size, but the intensity of the operation, the number of people it takes to operate it, the vast collection of full-length trains, the standard of presentation, and perhaps most importantly, the consistent standard of scenic modelling which I have always believed is the most essential element of a good layout.

You may have some individual pieces on a layout, be they trains or scenic features, which are absolutely exquisite, but if they are very obviously of a different standard to everything else around them then it is jarring and spoils the overall effect.

The great music mogul and famous railway enthusiast - and his team of Railnuts - did not leave empty handed because Making Tracks was named Best Visiting Layout (as distinct from the exhibits from clubs who are part of the Association of Model Railway Societies in Scotland, which includes our club in Greenock, under which banner Minffordd was appearing.)

There is also a category for AMRSS exhibits, which I had dared to hope we might be a contender for one of the top three placings.

The first place for that went to Hazelbank from the Scottish Diesel and Electric Group who have a well-deserved reputation for producing top-quality modern image layouts - although I suspect I may be showing my age by categorizing the 1990s as modern.....

This is a 'what if' for what might have happened if the Waverley Route had never closed.

There were many other layouts I very much enjoyed watching, including ‘Moor of Rannoch’, a very small slice of the vast, bleak tract of land the West Highland Line passes through, cleverly using the famous snow shelter as a scenic break.

It is the essential bleakness of this layout, and the accurately-represented bleached tones of the vegetation, which make it so effective to someone who has spent time in that lonely spot while hillwalking.

It has a quite a 'Bron Hebog' feel about it, I think.  Wouldn't it be marvellous to do something like this in N gauge and with the same depth and emptiness as our layout?

OK, maybe not....

There was also a good selection of narrow gauge to be seen at the show, including a chance to be reacquainted with the Clyre Valley Railway which was a deserved prize winner at the last Warley club show at the SEC when we took Bron Hebog there as part of the anniversary celebrations for the 009 Society.

And in 7mm scale, and showing the less 'cute' side of narrow gauge railways, was a terrific representation of the industrial system around the Bowater's paper mill.

Summer Holiday Traffic

Realism on a model railway is a funny thing.

Sometimes it is possible for things to be too accurate, as strange as that may seen.

When looked at in miniature form they just seem wrong.

I was thinking about that this evening as I was placing the loose vehicles as we set up Minffordd for the Model Rail Scotland show which opens tomorrow (Friday 27th March to Sunday 29th).

In the back left hand corner of our scene is a short section of the main road into Porthmadog.

After setting out two or three of them, plus our Crosville bus heading for Blaenau, I wondered whether I'd crowded the scene a little?

And then I thought again and added as many as I could until they were nose to tail.

Because I'd remembered the hours I'd spent in a baking hot car as a child sat in traffic jam to pay the toll for crossing the Cob which often stretched all the way back to Penrhyndeudraeth - in my memory, at least.

So if visitors at the SEC this weekend engage us in conversation and feel moved to comment that there are 'too many cars on that road,' I shall feel free to contradict them.

Calm Before The Storm

I popped in at Himself's place the other day and couldn't resist taking a few phone snaps of Minffordd with the late afternoon sunshine creating an almost sunset-like effect over the layout.

All the adjustments and improvements made through the winter are complete and have been thoroughly tested, and now it's ready to be taken down, bolted to its travelling frames and taken for the short ride to the SEC in Glasgow for the Model Rail Scotland show which opens on Friday morning.

Before too long I would hope one of the magazines will arrange for a proper photographer to come and do a proper shoot which do it more justice than I can manage with an ageing iPhone.

This view, which is rather like the one you'd get standing on the roof of the down platform shelter at Minffordd, reminds me of one of the things which makes it such a different kind of narrow gauge model - the double track main line effect.

This is a very the public doesn't really get to see, and is one of those bonuses of being a layout operator. 

Unfortunately, those who are not familiar with the FR don't get to see what an attractive building the Weigh House is, only getting to see it's rather plain back wall.

For now it all looks very sleepy and abandoned, but in a couple of days the Simplex will be busily phut-phut-phutting around the yard, up and down the ramp to the 'coal hole' while mineral wagons and empty gunpowder vans are shunted along the long siding high above.

If you're able to come along to the show please say hello to the team.

For those who can't we'll do our best to share pictures and videos on our social media so if you don't already do so follow us on Facebook, Bluesky and X (the the continuation of an account does not indicate endorsement or otherwise of the proprietor....)

Information Station

There's one last piece of construction to complete on Minffordd ahead of the Model Rail Scotland show in Glasgow at the end of the month, and that is to fit an information panel for those who are curious to know precisely what it is they are looking at.

(We've learned the hard way that knowledge of perhaps the most famous of all narrow gauge railways is not something to make assumptions about in this part of the world....)

In a drive for economy Himself is adapting the panel which we built for Bron Hebog.

The fiddle yards on Minffordd are a few inches shorter than the panel, however, so a slice has been taken off the right-hand end, and there is also a section which needs to be removed to allow it to fit around one of the posts holding up the lighting canopy.

If Bron Hebog is ever taken out to a show again then we'd have a decision to make about whether to make a replacement, or just do without.

While he's taking care of the carpentry my task is to design a few panels to explain the whys, the wherefores and the how-we-did-its of Minffordd.

It will be obvious as soon as someone asks the classic question:  'Is this N gauge?'  (or variants of such) that clearly folk aren't bothering to read it.......

Fiddle Yard Expansion

With more than a month to spare before our appearance at Model Rail Scotland the great news is that Himself has completed the project to expand the capacity of our OO Cambrian line fiddle yards on Minffordd.

During our first test exhibitions at the end of 2025 we discovered the limitations of the original design which showed how you can sometimes get 'railroaded' by sticking to your first concept and not seeing new opportunities as a project develops.

Initially I had imagined the Cambrian part of the layout would have a very limited range of rolling stock, perhaps just a couple of DMUs and a Class 24 with some goods wagons, in which case three or four short storage loops behind the backscene would be sufficient, because space was definitely at a premium.

As so often happens there was 'mission creep' during the build and we found ourselves acquiring more OO stock.  A Collett Goods here, a Standard Class 2 there, and, ooh, a Manor would be very Cambrian!

Soon enough we found ourselves wanting to run loco-hauled passenger trains and exhibitions became an exercise in juggling space and very careful parking of trains so they didn't foul the points at either end of the loops.

Over a few pints at night while were were away exhibiting Bron Hebog in Manchester just before Christmas one of our operating crew floated an idea of simple genius, inspired by the way he uses sidings on his layout as a surrogate fiddle yard to run trains effectively end-to-end on a loop-the-loop transit.

It dawned on us it was maybe possible to do something similar on Minffordd and more than double our capacity to store longer, loco-hauled trains.

I dubbed this project the 'Thompson Undertaking' in his honour!

As ever, it was up to Himself to work out how to turn these alcohol-induced brainwaves into practical solutions.

He identified there was space in front of the existing narrow gauge fiddle yards to add a thinner shelf below, and support it on a bracket fixed on the existing legs.

The big question was whether we were going to need to relay a lot of the existing fiddle yard loops in order to add some junction points.

We were in luck!  There was just enough space to squeeze in a Y-point, and the radius of the curves were a perfect match.

One compromise is that these extra points are hand-operated by switches and brass connecting rods, rather than being added into the rotary switch diode matrix which routes trains into the four main loops - that would just be too much extra work and head-scratching!

Something very similar was done at the other side and each line divides into two sidings which can each hold a loco and four carriages, or perhaps a long freight train, as you can see in the photo at the top of this post.

We can have three long trains on the layout with a spare road for one to terminate in after a trip around the circle.

We've also added an extra dead end storage road behind the loops which will give us even more options and hopefully mean we can keep nearly all our rolling stock on track and not have to keep lifting stuff on and off the rails to switch up the train formations.

Glasgow, next month, will be the big test!  Details in the Exhibition Diary.

Second Album Syndrome?

I've had a couple of days to digest our experience at Model Rail Scotland, which was the first time operating Bron Hebog at a show in over two years.

I very much enjoyed the camaraderie of our team over the three days, and it was lovely to receive so many appreciative comments from visitors, both for the layout and for this blog.

But ever since the doors closed, we packed up and came home, I've been left with the nagging feeling that for as many people who loved it - indeed told us it was their only reason for coming along - it seemed as if there were as many who were distinctly unmoved by it, some of them among the railway modelling fraternity.

It's not the first time I've noticed this since we began taking Bron Hebog out, and it's starting to feel like a band struggling to follow up on a chart-topping debut album. 

25 years ago it seemed like Dduallt was feted everywhere it went, but there was a big gap between it coming off the circuit and the follow up appearing.

And like that hit band who spent time locked away in the recording studio, we've gone back on the road and discovered it's just the hard core groupies who remain.

In the days since the SEC I've been chewing over why Bron Hebog doesn't seem to capture the imagination in the same way, and I've settled on a few theories.

It's too big

At 20ft across and 10ft deep it's pretty large for an exhibition layout, and a monster for 4mm narrow gauge, especially for what is, essentially, a single track line with a passing loop.

While the groupies might like looking at an unfolding Welsh upland landscape - and if you're reading this consider yourself part of the fan club! - I suspect many people seeing it afresh see just a dull, barren vastness before them.

Not enough action

This follows on from the previous point. 

Due to its size, the simplest of track layouts, and the tortoise-like nature of the narrow gauge, trains take a long time to traverse Bron Hebog.

It can take 2 minutes for a train to snake its way from the station into the upper fiddle yard, and as a long again for one to return, plus all the fiddle yard time.

In WHR terms we operate an absurdly intensive timetable on the layout, but compared others it must seem woefully pedestrian.

No USP

When it appeared Dduallt was quite a novelty, and it has one thing that make's it cute and memorable - the under / overbridge on the spiral.

Now, like me, you might rather like watching a Garratt and its prototypical long rake of carriages snaking through reverse curves and performing not one, but two, full 180s on a climb up a gradient, through a tunnel and disappearing into a deep cutting, but I'm starting to suspect many people don't share that simple pleasure.

The sound of silence

In the decades since we built Dduallt railway modelling has moved on, and digital tech is now mainstream, but we're still rooted in the silent dc past.

A layout which doesn't arouse your ears as well as your eyes is starting on the back foot.

A level playing field

Once upon a time it really stood out if you were operating a layout entirely stocked with kit built and scratch built stock, or if you'd worked on super-detailing ready to run stock.

Now even the most brilliant modellers - which we are not - will struggle to match what it is possible to buy in a box.

Location, location, location

And last, and by no means least, I suspect this is the effect of moving to the other end of the country.

I think it's fair to say there is much less interest in narrow gauge in Scotland.

We're probably going to have to get used to that feeling of leaving a lot of our audience underwhelmed.

England In Scotland

Model Rail Scotland returned at the weekend after a two year pandemic-enforced break, and it brought home to me how 4mm narrow gauge modelling has burst into the mainstream while we've been away.

On trade stands of the 'box shifters' around the giant exhibtion hall in the SEC I kept coming across Bachmann Double Fairlies among all the 00 and N gauge products, and of course the latest version of 'Merddin Emrys' was prominent on the company's own display along with the unpainted samples of the Quarry Hunslets.

The Peco stand, naturally, featured the Small England which we are expecting in the shops imminently.

While a senior figure from Peco was admiring Bron Hebog during the show I remarked to him that they were more than welcome to liberate one of those samples from their display case and bring it over to the layout to show it in an authentic setting.

This was something Accurascale were doing with their brand new Class 55 Deltic models, depositing them on a number of the 00 layouts around the show, which seemed like a pretty smart marketing move to me.

Towards the end of the Sunday (when there were barely any visitors left in the hall.....) the man from Peco returned holding a model of Prince, and so for the first time we - and they - got to see how it performs 'in the wild'.

And the verdict is that I was impressed.

And I'll admit I was wrong to scoff at those traction tyres.

The Bachman Fairlie struggled in the back-to-back test against our Backwoods brass models - as you would expect - but the hard truth is that even with our lightest, styrene-built, carriages it can't pull a prototypical load for a Fairlie up the bank on Bron Hebog.

We hooked the Peco England onto our Victorian set, which includes three brass bogie carriages - a load which would test the Bachmann Fairlie to the limit - and it strolled up the grade with no hint of slip.

Not only that, but it ran very smoothly.  

There was no hint of a stutter on any points or board joints, and it was very controllable.

This was very pleasing because my previous experience of using Kato power, in our KMX Tamper and the Parry People Mover, is that they are very flighty and hard to control, and geared much too high.

It's also been our experience so far running the Bachmann locomotives, that although they run beautifully smoothly they are very sensitive to gradient.

They slow as soon as they start up a hill and are liable to run away on descent unless you are quick to throttle back.

One of the - justifiable - criticisms of the Peco product is that it is not DCC ready out of the box, you will need to get your soldering iron out and re-engineer the model yourself.   

In terms of how it looks, the finish is very shiny, and I would want to calm it down with a satin varnish, for sure.

And there are still those other things that disappoint, like the slide bars which are nothing at all like the prototype, and having a one-size-fits-all nameplate moulding on the tanks which stands out a mile on the Prince version.

So a big thumbs up for the chassis, but I wish they'd just tried a little harder on the body and not settled for the compromises that have been made.

And I still don't know what they were thinking of showing off those dreadful engineering prototypes a few years ago - some things are best left behind closed doors.

Rush Job

It wasn't part of the plan, but a very productive couple of hours at the weekend saw me put the finishing touches to my prototype FR intrastructure well wagon.

These bits included links cut out of a chain to represent the lashing rings on the deck and some brass wire bent to look something like the pipework around the brake cylinder on the Caernarfon end bogie.

At which point I had a very bad thought - I wonder if there's still to give it a lick of paint in time for Model Rail Scotland?  

Himself indicated he was up for the challenge, and so here it is with a rapidly applied interim livery in the infrastructure department's rather drab olive green livery.

At this point the wagon has been test run around the track at my house but has yet to be tried out on Bron Hebog itself.

So whether or not it will play a part in any of the train formations, or just be a static feature in the siding at Beddgelert station, will depend on how it runs when we get the layout set up tonight....

Breeding Buildings

There's not a tremendous amount to report this time.

As far as I know Himself is working through the mountain of wheel cleaning and final checks ahead of setting up at Model Rail Scotland a week from now.

Having finished my marathon casting session to restock Light Railway Stores with wagon kits, I've spend a few enjoyable evenings making up the Meltcalfe building kits my youngest received for his birthday to pep up the 'test track'.

Not only are these really well designed and solid, they are also very adaptable, and much fun can be had kit-bashing.

I've turned the 'small factory' kit into a trio of low relief buildings, slimming down the single storey unit to fit the gap between the folding baseboard and the shelf it rests on, and slicing the mill-style three storey building into two.

On the other side of the circle I've fused two arched bridge kits to create a structure which has given the Engineering Consultant kittens.

I plead Grandfather Rights.

This was all a pleasant change from the casting, but I fear I will be getting the resin out sooner than I anticipated because it appears nearly all the new stock sold out within 48 hours of delivery, which is a blessing and a curse.

That will be what I've had to get on with after we return from Model Rail Scotland.

I still can't get my head around the fact we'll be exhibiting again in 7 days time. 

It's been so long since the last show we took a layout to, because of the pandemic, and it feels strangely unreal and distant still, something that creeps up on you in a rush rather like Christmas does..

I also must confess that I am still mildly cheesed off that Bron Hebog did not merit a mention the long preview article for the show in Hornby Magazine.

It sounds a little big headed, I accept, but I would have hoped by now the layout would have enough of a reputation that it might have been included in what was quite a long list of layouts appearing at the show, especially since the editorial team at the magazine got in contact with us more than a year ago expressing an interest in featuring the layout in their publication.

Showtime Again!

A very exciting email arrived in my inbox at the weekend confirming not only the return of the Model Rail Scotland exhibition in Glasgow in February, but also an invitation to bring Bron Hebog.

Needless to say we jumped at the opportunity to show the layout for the first time in nearly two and a half years.

(I don't mind admitting that there have been times during this pandemic when I wondered whether we ever would again?)

On a personal level it seems quite weird to be thinking about returning to those giant SEC halls for something as frivolous as a model railway exhibition.

For most of 2020 the place had been transformed into an enormous emergency Covid-19 hospital, and right now the place is in the process of being turned into Fort Knox as the venue for the Cop26 climate change summit.

Come February, all being well, our Backwoods Garratts will spend three days coffee-grinding their way around the S-bends with what must be the longest and heaviest 009 trains you'll see running on any layout in the UK.

It's a great show, and Glasgow's a great city.  It will wonderful to get back to exhibiting, and we'd love to see you there!

Best One Yet

I spent a very enjoyable few hours in the company of Himself at the Model Rail Scotland show at the SEC in Glasgow this weekend and I have to say I think its been the best one yet.

The stand-out layout for me had to be the 4mm EM north London Hornsey Broadway which totally captured the feel of the approaches to Kings Cross set in the early 1970s.

There was some very thoughtful modelling, a muted and very subtle weathering to the scene, and most importantly, everything was to the same standard - there was nothing which jarred.

The Glasgow show has really come on in recent years, raising itself up to what I believe should always have been its place as one of the top shows in the UK.

This wasn't always the case.

For a long time I believe it was hamstrung by it's co-operative constitution, relying mostly on member clubs to provide layouts.

Since they began upping the number of layouts invited from across the Border so the standards of home-grown Scottish modelling have risen - or at least it appears that way to me as a visitor over the last 25 years.

Fallside by Clyde MRC was another which impressed me - not least because it featured a kit built example of my all-time favourite EMUs the 303 'Blue Trains'.

Hills Of The North - The Spirit Of Shap was a layout I wanted to pull up a chair and spend hours watching.

Just like Bron Hebog they capture the feel of the train running through the landscape.

The Bridge At Remagen justifiably won one of the prizes at the show and it was hugely impressive, although on a personal level I stilll have a mental block about Continental (and military-themed) modelling.

There was a Narrow Gauge fix courtesty of the evergreen Lothians and Miniature Railway Club.

They had a lovely couple of 7mm scale Englands.

Speaking of which I finally got a look at this wee beastie...

...but I won't say any more than that because I've got into trouble before for offering an opinion on something which is being put on public display...….

Quarryman’s Train

Among the interesting things to see at Model Rail Scotland recently were these samples of PECO's next OO9 products.

I'm delighted to see another FR product being launched on the market and I've always had a soft spot for these very basic carriages, and their brake van variants.

I could be tempted by a model of Van 2 in its green livery myself.

Our only model is one kit-bashed from the Dundas kit in the distinctly orange colour it sported at the end of the 1980s, so by now it's rather outdated with a lot of our other stock.

I do feel a little bad for Dundas who will inevitably see a decline in sales of what is a very good, and easily put together kit which has served the hobby well.

Models like this feed the narrative of some critics who argue that ready to run is bad for the hobby.

I prefer to believe that the entry of the likes of PECO and Bachmann will have the effect of expanding the market for narrow gauge, bringing new modellers into the scale.

Hopefully those people will progress to expanding their rolling stock from kits, thus making up for any impact on a couple of product lines.

Slow Modelling

The end of February marks the traditional visit of the extended Bron Hebog team to Model Rail Scotland at the SEC in Glasgow.

On a couple of occasions over the years we have even been invited to exhibit there ourselves with Dduallt and other standard gauge layouts.

There's no doubting that the standard of layouts on show in Glasgow is night and day compared to what was once the case, I suspect spurred on by many of the visiting layouts from over the border, and it's evident that there is now a lot of very high quality modelling going on in some of the clubs in Scotland.

As I wandered around the show what struck me was how quiet and empty a lot of the layouts were.

In many cases you could see over into the fiddle yards behind the operating team where there were sidings stuffed with what looked like some very interesting trains, but you'd be waiting a very long time to see any of them come past you because there was very little moving out front, and what was running was generally running rather slowly.

Now, of course, this is not necessarily a bad thing.

It is a tribute to the great strides the manufacturers have made in how ready to run locomotives perform, and to the quality of the construction of the layout and the track by the people who've built them.

It's not a good look to have trains chasing around a break-neck speed, either.

However it was disappointing that on some of the biggest layouts, where the standards of modelling were most impressive and consistent,  which depicted a section of main line,  there seemed to be very few trains running at what you might consider to be main line speeds. Everything was proceeding as if running under a signal check.

Most of the layouts where this was a 'thing' seemed to have something in common, and I think I have a theory why.

Not only were they DCC, they also had sound.

Although I've never had a go on one of these it seems to be that the most interesting sounds are made when they're running slowly, and it occurred to me that perhaps this is why this trend has developed?

Is this a problem? What's so bad about operating layouts realistically, you might ask?

Well I think we're maybe in danger of forgetting who we're exhibiting for - the people on the other side of the barrier - who've paid a rather large wedge of cash to get into a show such as this one and who would rather like to see the conveyor belt of your interesting models moving a little faster in front of them.

Because at a busy show, where you have to fight to get into a position where you can even see the most popular layouts, you don't want to be hanging around watching nothing much happening - well I don't anyway.

After a couple of hours your feet begin to ache, your back gets sore, and if you're like me you begin to get a little impatient.

It would be lovely in a comfy chair with a glass of something nice in your hand to sit in front of one of these layouts for hours at a time and see everything slowly processing past you, but that's not what the experience of being an exhibition is for most of us punters.

Once upon a time we used to help our friend operate his OO main line layout New Mills. It had two levels of continuous run tracks and we did out utmost to try to ensure that there was something running on at least one of them at all times.

Some might say that it was too busy, that a service level like that is not realistic, but it always kept the crowds entertained and was a popular exhibit.

It was also in the age before DCC and all its trickery. Coincidence?

On another note, getting back to Narrow Gauge matters and descending from my soap box, the main thing I'd gone to the show for was to get my first look at the new Bachmann 009 Baldwin tanks which I understand are due to arrive on these shores very soon.

We have a 590 on order and we're very much looking forward to running the first Baldwin to Beddgelert for around 80 years.

Are You Ready To Run?

I got my first chance at the weekend to take a look at Heljan's 009 ready-to-run Lynton and Barnstaple Manning Wardle tank loco, and mighty impressive it looks too.

This really does mark a watershed for the scale.

For the first time a manufacturer is giving us a model of equivalent standard to that which standard gauge modellers have been able to take for granted.

I hope that they, Heljan, will have massively underestimated the demand for models like this, are both rewarded for their gamble and encouraged to look for follow ups.

This model was being held captive inside a display case in Glasgow so we were unable to take a close look at it.

Himself's first impression was that he still thought the Backwoods Miniatures kit - which we used to make our Lyd - is a better model.

But then he would say that, because he can build them!

For the likes of mechanical imbeciles me like this loco looks like a glimpse into the promised land.

Do not take from what I have written that we are kit and scratch building snobs who turn our noses up at ready-to-run, for we long ago put down a reservation for the long-awaited Bachmann Baldwin WD 4-6-0's.

There is nothing wrong with top quality RTR in my eyes, nor with the best of the 3D printed bodies that are being designed by enterprising people like Narrow Planet and Robex.

I will admit, though,  to being more than a little frustrated at some of the utter abominations that I do see being knocked out on printers by modellers who it would appear are content to have something that bears only the most passing resemblance to the prototype.

It looks suspiciously like in many of these cases the truth is that all that matters is that the model is designed and produced at the fastest possible speed.

Many of the people behind these seem to be young, and impatience goes with the territory. Perhaps they will be in less of a busting rush as they mature.

What really irks me, however, is that in this age of cyber commerce many of these 'models' are put out there to buy through 3D printing websites.

Which brings us back to ready-to-run 009 which must be carefully nurtured in its infancy.

I believe strongly that we should not baulk at the prices the manufacturers charge for models such as this Manning Wardle, nor judge it against the cost to some of these 3D print offerings.

That would be to compare oranges and rotten apples.

The other thought I have is whether we, as a scale, will be able to exploit the potential for bespoke ready-to-run in the same way as the 00 fraternity has?

Look in any of the model magazines and you will see adverts from some of the most well known model shops and specialist firms for exclusive, short-runs of unusual prototypes.

Others, I note, are embracing crowd funding.

Can this not be done in 009? And who might be brave enough to do it?

One of the delights of Narrow Gauge is that there are so many one-off locomotives, and I suppose it could be difficult to find a market for hundreds of models of one single engine.

But there are other examples of small classes that can be exploited just as Heljan and Bachmann are doing.

For example, what about the Rhiedol tanks? Yes, there are only three of them but look how many livery variations have they worn between them over the years.

The current VoR owners seem very enterprising and go-ahead people.  Might they not like to explore the idea of commissioning a run of models to sell exclusively?

You've got a retail and marketing proposition rolled into one there.

Then there's my own first love, the FR. And how many opportunities there are here!

Can anyone seriously argue that a top-notch RTR 009 England engine wouldn't sell?

What about the Penrhyn Ladies?

If Heljan can provide for interchangeable cabs on their L&B locos then surely it's not impossible, with a common chassis and basic body dimensions to mass produce some lovely models of Linda, Blanche and Charles.

I suspect the lead-time on a model would be too long, and Boston Lodge would beat them too it, but what a marketing wheeze it might have been for the FR to commission a 009 model of their new Double Fairlie James Spooner?

The chassis is always the stumbling block in 009. Once you've got that look at how many other Double Fairlie variants you could plonk on top.  (So long a the rivet counters would overlook the variations in wheelbase and other minor details.)

Can I be the only one thinking along these lines?  I'd love to read your thoughts.