Review Of The Year - Part 3

Here we are into the second half of our annual review, and the pace of projects slowed down a little over the summer months, as I suspect it does for most of us.

July

We were fortunate to be able to get hold of one of the last of the batch of 009 Society Hudson toast rack kits, which we made up to represent number 42 on the WHHR.
 

In this picture it is positioned between one of our Dundas 37 / 38 pair and my original scratch built 39 which I must have made in the mid-90s.

Himself got on very fast with the RT models Baguley Drewry shunter kit prototype we obtained from RT Models, having swapped the etch brass fly cranks for some cast brass ones we had spare.

August

I was working away at my version of the toast rack to represent the FR's replica 39, which I was making using a basic resin casting for the body side and then using styrene angle and brass wire to complete.

 

Himself had the idea of using a spare Lynton and Barnstaple bogie van kit to make a freelance FR-style track cleaning wagon.

This has a sprung pad beneath it which wipes the rail heads, and the whole wagon is weighed down with lead, to the extent that it needs to have a locomotive at each end of it to be pushed around the layout.

At my house the 'test track' project had reached the track laying stage.

September

By now now the toast rack 39 carriage had reached the stage where it was almost ready to have a roof added and be sent for painting.

In order to better represent the Dinas shunter, number 9, I produced a styrene master for some alternative bonnet doors and grills which I turned into a casting.

And after a saga which went on for more than a year we finally got hold of etches to make a model of the Ashbury replica 21, which Himself soldered together in short order.

I'll bring the story up to date with a final instalment to be posted on Hogmanay.

Domestic Duties

Himself has been putting the finishing touches to a little side project to make a track cleaning wagon, which will be handy for the hard-to-reach areas in the centre of Bron Hebog.

This was made up from a Nine Lines L and B bogie van we ended up with - I can't remember how - and finished in the current FR infrastructure livery to try and make it blend in a little.

I'm not fond of this colour scheme, I think it looks dreadfully dull, and I might have thought you would wish vehicles that are likely to be in the vicinity of personnel working on the track to stick out like a sore thumb, but what do I know?

It makes a nice little model, and if we ever get back to exhibitions then it will probably make a few circuits during the course of the day to try and keep everything running smoothly.

It's packed with so much lead weight that it needs to be topped and tailed with two locomotives.

Keep It Clean

A while ago Himself was given a gift of a Nine Lines Lynton and Barnstaple bogie brake van.

Obviously enough this is not our prototype, so the question was what to do with it?

While dropping in at his place at the weekend he showed me the result of some tinkering to convert this into a track cleaning wagon - which is a very handy thing on a layout as large as Bron Hebog with sections which are beyond the reach of a human arm.

The business end of the wagon is this pad slung beneath the chassis, covered in thin cloth, which rubs along the rail tops as it is pushed / pulled around the layout.

On any mobile track cleaning device you need some way of keeping this in contact with the rail, which in this case is done with a spring pushing it downwards from the bottom of the wagon.

The spring he used here is a relic of his former career as a piano tuner, and is part of the mechanisms he used to fettle as a side hustle.

The critical thing is to make sure the spring is not too strong to push the wagon off the rails, and for this reason the inside of the van is heavily weighed down with lead.

So heavy, in fact, that it needs two engines to top and tail the wagon to get it up our hill!