Minffordd Update: Full Circle

The arrival of a couple of missing curved points - and an extra length of the new Peco Bullhead track - has allowed Himself to complete the standard gauge track laying on the Minffordd project.

The whole thing is little bigger than a standard 'train set' and so the storage loops at the back won't allow for very long train formations.

We can just about squeeze in a class 24 and three mark one carriages in the longest road (nearest the camera) but - and only by a whisker - it will preclude through-running on the centre road.

When I first dreamed this up, though, I was only envisaging running 2-car DMUs, small pick-up freights and the odd day out for the district engineer in the inspection saloon, so it will be perfectly adequate for that.

But isn't it always the case with layouts that you fall to the temptation to stretch he era, or expand the selection of trains you run.....

Big Meets Small

Tracklaying on the narrow gauge side of the 'test track' has continued apace this weekend, and already I'm getting a glimpse of the 'Blaenau Central' effect I was after.

I 've read many articles about the very creative track plans people have come up with for small spaces, but this is unashamedly a traditional oval, planned to function as a 'train set' for my youngest, partially justified by having somewhere to test the running of my NG models, which until now have always had to be dispatched to Himself for proving runs.

So on the NG side we're going to have a simple island platform with a long turnback / storage siding (at the bottom end of the picture) and at the other end a point leading off into a separate shed area alongside the standard gauge steam MPD. 

At the top right, just after the track swings past the goods yard weigh house, there is another point into a short transfer siding where the standard gauge coal wagons can discharge their load into NG wagons waiting below.

My first experience laying 009 track has been fun.

The fishplate joiners for the smaller code rail are much more fiddly to handle that the Code 100 stuff - and even I've had to squint a little at times - but I found I soon got used to it, and some test passes with the half-built Worsley bowsider on Dundas FR bogies suggests all is well so far.

Diversionary Tactics

Something that was proven during the early stages of the Covid pandemic is what marvellous therapy making model railways is to take your mind off all the worry about what might, or might not, be coming down the tracks towards us.

Perhaps its no coincidence, given the current situation with the Omicron variant, that I have decided to start some serious planning, and track laying, on the narrow gauge part of the 'test track'.

I'd held off on this until we'd made some solid progress with the electrics on the standard gauge layout.

Now that around half the point motors are fitted and wired up it seems like the right time to decide on where the two foot tracks will go.

I'm really keen to emphasise the different in size between standard and narrow gauge, which is very apparent when they're in close proximity, just like the effect you get at the headshunt at Blaenau Ffestiniog station

Learning Curves

Due to popular demand - well, a couple of comments, anyway - I thought I would post an update on the 'test track' project.

The standard gauge part is now almost complete as far as tracklaying is concerned, but there is no juice connected to any of it yet.

Despite being to all intents and purposes a 'train set' with the design of the tracks we've tried to make it to a reasonably high standard using flexitrack and medium/long radius, electrofrog points, and despite appearances none of the curves are any tighter than set track radius 2 at any point.

It's been a great learning curve for me because it's the first time I've laid track.

We began with a day-long session with Himself as the tutor, when we got most of the station area completed, and I've been taking it on from there solo, with occasional remote assistance by phone message - remind me how many insulated joiners this point needs again??

It's been a very enjoyable, and completely absorbing, process, although I can't pretend that it's always gone right first time.

Quite often on the large curves I've stood back to admire my handiwork, or pushed a carriage along to check clearances, only to decide that I could do better and pull it up and try again.

As I have written previously, this will be a dual gauge set up, and although the narrow gauge element was included for the purposes of having a test track at home, I've not been able to resist attempting to justify its existence.

Therefore, at one end of the goods yard there is a raised siding where I intend to create a coal transhipment point from standard to narrow gauge.

Image in Peter Johnson's Vale of Rheidol book published by Pen and Sword

I envisage something which is a blend of the arrangements on the Vale of Rheidol (above) but including chutes in the style of Minffordd Yard.

Picture by Rob Fisher, on Fesitpedia.org.uk

Quite what narrow gauge rolling stock will need to be 'tested' is as yet unclear.

Doing The Twist

As I alluded to in the previous post, Himself has been getting on with fixing a couple of irritating track faults which have been there since we first started running trains on Bron Hebog.


Coupling heights are critical in OO9 perhaps more than any other scale, certainly if you use the very fine (in both senses of the word) brass Greenwich couplings which we do.

A slight imperfection in the track can also cause stock to derail which sometimes happens to trains as they descend the hill into the station where there is a little dip on one side on the Cwm Cloch road bridge.

The remedy is not particularly difficult, it's just taken him more years than I care to remember to get around to fixing it.

So the three pictures here show how he first dug out the ballast..

...put some bits of packing under the sleepers on one side...

...and then re-ballasted.

You may be wondering how there came to be this dip in the trackbed, especially if you're used to building your layouts on a solid, flat piece of baseboard.

Bron Hebog was built with what is known as the open baseboard approach where a narrow, plywood trackbed is raised up on stilts all the way around, even in places where the trains are running in a cutting.

This makes it easier to model embankments or underbridges and you can see the same section of the layout under construction here.

The place where there was the problem is where it's a narrow, single track formation, going uphill on a slight curve and it seems that at some point there was a very slight twist got into it.

Hopefully that will be sorted now and he can take a look at the issue in the tunnel I mentioned previously, and a rather odd electrical gremlin in the fiddle yards which cropped up the last time we had the layout out on show.

The Grid

One of the scenic features on the railway around Beddgelert which has caused us considerable head-scratching has been how to represent the anti-sheep grids which are are positioned either side of features such as level crossings or bridges in a (sometimes futile) attempt to stop livestock wandering onto the track.

Simple enough, you might think, it's just a question of laying some triangular section down.

The problem is getting hold of the correct kind of triangle.

Take a close look at the picture above and you'll see that the wooden beams have right angle and a flat section at the bottom and on one side - it's what's called a Isosceles Right Triangle - just like an arris rail that you'd use in fencing.

The only plastic sections we've been able to find on the market, however, have been of an equilateral section.

So what to do?

We realised that while you can't get triangular section with a right angle you can easily get L section - but how to fill in the 3rd side so it becomes a triangle?

Our answer is to cast copies by mounting the L section upside down and filling the gap at each end. to make the master.

Here are a the first prototypes I have cast.

Cut them out and turn them over and you'll have a triangular section with a right angle at the bottom.

Genius!

I'm sending these ones down to Himself to see how they fit on the track.

The question is whether they'll stand proud of the rails and foul the trains - as sometimes happens with our foot crossings - in which case I will have to make smaller versions.

Rusty Rails - Clean Conscience

When Bron Hebog, and before it Dduallt, are described in exhibition programmes or magazine articles they are usually referred to as being built by Father & Son.

The hard truth, however, is that there's not a lot of 'son' about the building of the layouts.

Yes, I do my share of making the rolling stock, building the buildings and waffling on this blog, but I cannot remember ever lifting so much of a finger to assist with the construction of the baseboards or the track and scenery on them.

So last week when I spent a half term holiday with the family chez Himself I felt an overwhelming urge to put that right.

And so I spent a happy hour or so painting the sides of the rails rusty on the first part of the S-bend.

It wasn't a particularly skilful or taxing contribution to the construction effort however it does have a disproportionately positive impact on the overall look of the layout.

If you've never done it painting the rail webs is one of the easiest thing you can do make your model railway look better.

All Under Control

Both ends, or perhaps I should say, both levels of the fiddle yard have now had the track laid and the temporary control unit for shunting in the yard, which I mentioned in a previous post, has been installed.

To me it all seems very prototypically FR.

During the push back to Blaenau - and to a lesser extend through the WHR project - the railway had a series of short term infrastructure solutions that ended up becoming very much long-term, and for all I know our fiddle yard could end up being just the same.

You can see that Himself has laid out the lower half with the same pattern of sidings as the Caernarfon end.

Eventually we plan to have the control panel for all the point work and electrical sections mounted here at the rear of the layout with the 'drivers' plugging in hand held controllers at the front of the layout where they can combine train operation with public relations duties, ie. Gassing to the punters. (I foresee collisions and derailments)

The only question mark with this temporary set up is that Himself has not been able to test that all the wiring will talk to the rest of the layout because, short of hiring the village hall, we're not able to erect the whole thing to test it.

Set up time at Woking in three weeks could be very interesting....

The Sidings

Himself has been finishing off the first draft of the fiddle yard track laying.

This is just a solution to get us up and running for the first couple of exhibitions with the complete layout - the first of which is less than a month away now - and it is by no means the finished design.

Himself got some of the stock out to test what length of trains we'll be able to fit in the sidings.

As you can see from the pictures we will be able to use the run round loops with a 7 car formation of WHR stock with a Garratt at one end.

The siding nearest the edge has a long head shunt which will be able to accommodate a 10 car rake and an NGG16.  The middle road is intended to act as the run round.

At least that's the idea - each of the operators will find their own way of utilising the track layout at shows.

For those of you wondering about the points - or turnouts if you must - they are a mix of the new PECO 'mainline ' range and the original 009 design.

At the moment it's just a case of using what we've got to get it up and running.

The points on the public side of the layout are hand made, but in a fiddle yard where the the point are switched by hand it's much more practical to use the proprietary product.

Track Plan

In preparation for the show at Woking, which is just a little over a month away now, Himself has begun laying some track in the fiddle yards.

It's intended to be a semi-permanent arrangement to get us through the first few shows.

The sidings are roughly in the positions we intend them to be, but for now they will be dead ends, whereas the eventual plan is to have them come together into headshunts at the far end to allow us to run round trains and avoid having to lift the locomotives off the track.

With 10 axle Garratts that is not a very desirable state of affairs!

You can see in these pictures how the track enters on a large balloon loop before fanning out into the sidings with an extra headshunt running parallel to the 'main line', where Conway Castle is sitting.

We'll probably use this as a stabling point for locomotives which can run onto the rear of incoming trains ready for the return journey, in turn releasing the incoming engine which take its place in the headshunt.

It's a lot less complicated than the traverser arrangement we employed on Dduallt and should be an idiot-proof solution while we're on the learning curve of the first exhibitions.

It needs to be!

Tamper At Work

As I mentioned in the previous post, Himself has been finishing off the job of ballasting the remaining sections of newly laid track on the scenic boards built over the last 9 months or so.

As as every permanent way engineer knows, track should be properly tamped before trains are allowed to run over it...

So here, for your enjoyment are a couple of shots of our KMX at work in Cutting Mawr.

Looks quite at home, doesn't it!

Cemetery Scenics

So, the basic structure of the layout is complete!

You can define that in lots of different ways, or course, but a milestone has certainly been reached in the last couple of days with Himself placing the last of the Mod-Roc in position on the cemetery crossing board - the last one at the Porthmadog end of the layout.

He's also made up the crossings for the road to the cemetery and the accommodation crossing just along from it.

He has also finished laying the track around the curve past the scenic break into the fiddle yard.

The actual fiddle yard, it must be said, is not even a doodle on a piece of paper yet, so we're still not quite at the stage where we can run a train all the way around Bron Hebog - not that we have the space to put the whole thing up anyway.

These, as I'm sure you'll agree, are just very minor inconveniences.....

A Few Centimetres To Go

We have almost completed the track laying on the layout.

Himself has turned his attention to the other end - the Porthmadog end - and the last base board to be tackled.

This is the one that was used as a temporary fiddle yard but is destined to be the section leading from the southern end of Goat Tunnel and across Cemetery Crossing as the railway heads for the Pass of Aberglaslyn.

He has cut and mounted the plywood track bed and started work on the crossings.

In the picture above you can see Cemetery crossing in the foreground with road and footpath leading off p the hill.

The entrance to the fiddle yard, with the scenic break on a diagonal, can be seen in the background after the unnamed foot crossing.

And this is the view from the over direction.

As you can see there is but a few centimetres of virgin track bed left on Bron Hebog now. What a tantalizing sight!

It also serves as a reminder how huge this layout is going to be by 009 standards.

Many of them seen on the circuit are no longer than the run from this point to the start of the tunnel around the corner out of shot.

That's not meant as a criticism or a put down because you can see some amazing modelling in small spaces, it's just an observation to put the size of this project into context.

More Walls & Track Down

The 'head of steel' has finally reached the top end of the layout with the final big loop into the fiddle yard laid at the Rhyd Ddu end.

As well as pinning down the PECO Himself has been fixing many feet of cast stone walls into place with this run along the south bank of the Afon Cwm Cloch...

And also around the farmhouse of the same name...

The actual farmhouse is still a glint in the eye of the Artistic Director (and even that may be overstating the case) but the walls are in place now so we'll just have to hope that it fits in the space Himself has left for it.

I suppose it will just have to....

More Track Goes Down

The track work on Bron Hebog is tantalisingly close to being completed now with lengths being laid on the latest board.

This is the final stretch of the S bend around Cwm Cloch farm where the line has climbed all the way from Beddgelert station.

The ballast has yet to  be laid but that will probably wait until after the rock lining has been added in the cutting.

This shot give a very good impression of just how deep this is even in model form. 

Heaven help us if anything derails in there during an exhibition because you're going to need a very long arm to reach in there...

Before & After

Alas the job of ballasting doesn't end when you walk away and leave the watered-down glue to set the stones in to position,

If you want a neat job you have to return to the scene of the crime to remove all the stray ones sitting on top of the sleepers and more importantly any which are stuck to the web of the rail ready to derail the first passing train.

Close examination of these two snaps illustrate how much tidying up is involved.

And how it looked after Himself had been along dislodging stray stones.

So now the ballast bed stretches nearly all the way around the big bend.

The only section where the track is still bare is in the cutting and that won't be covered until we've got some rock stuck in place.

I'll have more on that for you in a couple of days time.

Bonding Session

I got a bit ahead of myself last week when posting pictures of the new section of track being ballasted.

I forgot to mention that before the stones are spread onto the track there's the small job of soldering the feed wires in place.

Just in case you were wondering, this layout is being built according to the quaint old-fashioned concept that the operators actually control the trains themselves rather that leaving it to digital micro chips buried deep in the locomotives which probably have more computing power than the rocket that sent Man to the Moon.

As you can see Himself is doing a very neat job, which is not surprising since he is now fully training in wiring track of all sizes as you can see in this picture of him in action on the real FR.

I did briefly consider posting this snap on 1st April and seeing if anyone would believe me if I described it as a World Exclusive revelation that the FR is not a steam railway at all but a giant electric train set.

He is, in fact, drilling and bonding new track circuit wires into position, one of the many tasks that distract him in North Wales when he's supposed to be at home building the bloomin' layout!

Ballasting

After the very rapid process of laying yards of track comes the much slower task of teasing tens of thousands of tiny stones into position.

The main tools required, as you can see, are a teaspoon, egg cup, paint brush, PVA glue and the vital drop of washing up liquid.

Oh, and a lot of patience!

Himself has done very well to ballast the full run of the board in the middle of the S bend.

More Tracklaying

Himself is well and truly round the bend! As you can see..

Track now extends all the way around the southern half of the Cwm Cloch S bend taking us into the depths of Cutting Mawr.

Himself has also been working on a few of the trackside features including the drainage ditch on the floor of the cutting which he fashioned out of styrene which you can see on the left hand side of the track here along with a the large inspection pipe brickwork made up from embossed plasticard.

The white bits under the track on the embankment are pieces of 10 thou sheet to give a very small degree of cant on the curve.

He's also taken a shot inside the cutting - probably just as an excuse to play with the macro function on his funky new digital camera - but with the Pulllman Obs Glaslyn posed in position at the end of the cutting it does emphasis just how deep it is, even in model form.

One of the next tasks will be to liberate some slices of genuine Welsh rock to fix onto the cutting walls.

Hopefully we'll be able to find some bits that don't say Beddgelert all the way through them...

Head Of Nickel Silver

Exciting news! Another few feet of track has been laid on Bron Hebog in the last couple of days, so this great decade-long project is inching towards completion.

Slowly.

There's another of the WHR's reverse curves in this stretch of line between the two halves of the big S bend around Cwm Cloch.

If you compare these shots with the ones I posted a couple of days ago you will notice Himself has given the baseboards a coat of plaster mixed with a colour of emulsion we like to call natural earth - others may have another description for it....

One amusing little detail.

Himself tells me that the complex of culverts and ditches on this board function just like the real ones so if you pour liquid in at the pipe at the top of the bend it runs all the way down and spills out of the pipe nearest the camera underneath the farm track.