Green Agreement

It's a rare day when Himself and I are as one on the question of colours - especially greens!

But we had a rare outbreak of unity in choosing the paint shade for our Backwoods Lynton and Barnstable Lyn which is now being finished off.

Himself bought a selection of Southern shades from the Railmatch range and what we decided on was a 50/50 mix of Light Olive and Malachite Green which best seemed to marry up with the photos we took at Dinas a couple of years ago.

Himself held off with painting this loco because he was never quite satisfied with how it performed - it always had a very pronounced waddle.

The solution has been to disable the compensation on the front driving axle, locking it in place with a new bearing. 

Years ago we had to do the same on the Backwoods Ladies which we could never get to run right as the designer intended.

Fully Enclosed

Himself is concerned - quite why, I can't imagine - that I might think he has been swinging the lead and so sent me a couple of photos with the caption that they prove he has been busy lately.

Quite where he's got this notion from is beyond me, because his output has been prodigious these last few months.

The latest project has been completing the wire fencing along the front of the station.

This is made up of 8 sections of etched brass fencing panels from Wizard Models.

He tells me they're quite fiddly to put together and it takes quite a while to paint them.

(If he describes it as fiddly then you may draw your own conclusions...)

The one thing missing from the station area before we can consider it complete is to make, or obtain, some portaloos.

Oh the glamour!

Next he's talking about getting on with sorting some of the things on the snagging list including some relaying in Goat Tunnel.

The track bed has always had a slight dip in the middle which sometimes causes stock to uncouple.

It's never a good look leaving the back half of your train behind...

Review Of The Year - Part 1

Let's face it, there's not a lot of modelling gets done in the run up to Christmas, so I've got into the habit on the blog of taking stock of what we have achieved over the course of a year.

Quite often I end up surprising myself with how much has been done, because progress on a model can be such a haphazard affair that you sometimes don't realise how many things you have been working on over the period.

January

At the start of the year Himself was putting the finishing touches to our scratch built model of the new FR service car 125.

A few miles down the coast I was starting work on one of the more obvious missing pieces on Bron Hebog - the ruined barn which sits in the middle of the S bend.

And after many years sitting in primer Himself got around to painting the exquisite model of Britomart which was built up from a Brian Madge Quarry Hunslet kit  (which are sadly filed under H for Hen's Teeth currently, more's the pity.)

February

There were other locomotive loose ends which Himself set about tidying up earlier this year, including the long-standing issue we had with the wheels on our Welsh Pony.

This model was built - with extreme difficulty! - from another now unavailable kit  (do you spot a trend here?) and the problem was that one of the wheels on it was slightly less than round.

Our little pony ran with a nasty limp.

Fortunately, one of my contacts who knows the manufacturer was able to obtain a replacement set of wheels, for which we are most grateful.

Himself pulled the chassis part and replaced them, with the result that it now runs much more satisfactorily as you can see below.

Which is more than can be said about the real Welsh Pony! (Patience is a virtue...)

As milder weather arrived he ventured into the garage and began scenic work on the layout again, making a start on the scale miles of post and wire fencing alongside the line.

I was very taken with an overhead shot he took of the farmyard area, which I think showed off the subtlety of the scenic work he's been doing.

March

While that was going on Himself had been painting the old barn which was ready to be tried out in position on the layout, and looked very effective.

We'd also taken a radical step into a new technology: 3D printing.

For his birthday I bought him a copy of the Robex design for the unique Quarry Hunslet Lilla which I had been admiring for some time after seeing pictures of models which other people had made.

Until now all our locomotives have had brass or white metal bodies.

Himself found that bits fell off this one from virtually the first time he held it, which didn't do much to endear him to the medium.

On my workbench I had begun another stretch of house building with the intention of finally finishing the Oberon Woods estate scene.

To be continued after Christmas.

Fencing Continues

The cocktail sticks and cotton are still threading their way around the layout.

In the last couple of weeks Himself has changed around the boards which are up on the trestles and able to be worked on (because we don't have room, alas, to erect the whole layout at once) so now he's moved onto the Porthmadog end of the station and the section of line to the south of Goat Tunnel.

Here you can see the fencing has been completed along section by Cemetery Crossing.

And in the station area he's been busy fencing in the concrete pad where one day there might be a station building (?)

Even when it does get built ours will remain forever a concrete pad because Bron Hebog is frozen in a time warp around the period of the re-opening.

This view reminds me that I've still got to make some temporary toilet units to go in here.

Fence Spotting

You know things have gone too far when you start taking a close interest in the finer details of fencing - but that's the stage of advanced obsession that Himself has reached.

He is also rather pleased with his latest effort to represent the boundary along the uphill platform at Beddgelert.

He's done this using etches from Wizard models which I think look really effective.

There's also been a policy decision to take more photographs with trains posed at the work site.

I'm sure that's something we all approve of, yes?

Stick With It

This is a model railway blog, so readers don't generally come here expecting investment tip offs - but if they did I would advise them to buy shares in firms which manufacture cocktail sticks.

Yes, Himself is still hard at work on fencing, and as you can see there's still a lot of layout to go - we've only just reached the top points.

If you will indulge me in a little immodesty, I can't help remarking that this almost eye level view looks damned good!

All it needs is a Garratt descending into view with a train to complete the scene.

You can also see how there is a notable change in the gradient as the trains depart the station heading north.

We quite often find that when an item of rolling stock is brand new - when there is the least resistance in the axle cups and when the couplings have not been adjusted quite right - that we can have breakaways further up the layout and the vehicles which have broken free roll quite happily all the way down into the station.

The model HMRI would have a kittens!

Border Secuirty

Perhaps taking inspiration from the so-called leader of the free world, Himself has spent most of the last week tightening security around the layout - but in this case building beautiful fences rather than beautiful walls.

Yet more have been inserted around the first big bend in front of the farm.

He's also begun threading the 'wire' on the fences which run across the large open area in front of Cutting Mawr,

As you can see, completing the rock face in the cutting is one of the major scenic jobs left on the layout as well as lots and lots of trees.

Marker Posts

There's been more work going on setting out the fence lines on Bron Hebog.

Last time I 'posted' on this topic they were being laid out on the ground around the farm, now they are fixed and painted.

As well as progressing the lineside fence Himself has been inserting some markers   on the land in the middle of the S bend.

Work in the garage will probably have to be suspended due to the demands of festive family duties but will resume in the New Year, no doubt.

Extending Boundaries

Himself is either really into his fence post planting, or he's deliberately avoiding finishing off the lining on 150.

I'll give him the benefit of the doubt because he's certainly making speedy progress around Bron Hebog.

The fence line now extends around most of the S bend.

The next stage will be to fix on the boards along the front with the station.

Before that, thought, there are still some fences and walls to add in to divide up the fields.

What's remarkable is how much more complete these little brown posts make the layout look.

Post Haste

I popped in on Himself over the weekend to see how he's getting on - not that I'm checking up on him, you understand.

Progress on lining out 150 has stalled.

(It's the kind of job you have to be in the mood for.)

However, the fence line is extending nicely on Bron Hebog.

As well as the trackside fencing there also also some around the farm to be installed.

You may recall I mentioned there is an awkward section on the S bend which straddles a board joint.

This means there is a run of four posts which sit on their own on a corner - I wonder how long they'll last?

That section of fence continues along the front edge of the board to its rear, where the track is doubling-back towards Rhyd Ddu once again.

The brown space in the foreground is where the ruined barn goes - and making that is going to be one of my priorities in 2017.

String 'Em Up

Himself has been carrying on with the fence installation around the S bend, all the while muttering that he takes pity on the contractors who had to do it for real all the way down from Rhyd Ddu to Porthmadog on Phase 4.

You'll notice that due to the location of the board joint the fence line on the upper side of the line, in the middle of the picture, will have to be broken with a stand-alone section on the other board.

As you can imagine these fence posts are going to be very vulnerable to knocks when putting and taking down the layout, or even shifting the boards around in storage.

So Himself has cunningly strengthened the ends ones by securing them in position up against a length of piano wire. (He never throws useful things away even when retired!)

What's not so smart is that he's also realised that when the fence line marches up over the high edges of Cutting Mawr the board will most likely no longer fit in the face-to-face storage racks.

So fine were the tolerances that those couple of centimetres will make all the difference.

Fence Line Advances

Himself is going through a spell of multi-tasking.

As well as painting the Observation Car 150 and upgrading the bogies of some of the older carriages he has also been spending some time in the garage inserting more fence posts on the layout.

The section he's working on at the moment is the middle section of the S bend.

In order to put more of this, the central part of Bron Hebog, together Dduallt has been taken down for now.

It's more than 6 months that it has been up and running in the garage and I'm struggling to think of any occasion where it has ever been put up for more that 4 days continuously.

In fact it's probably the first time since 1989 that we've had an actual layout to run, which is when we moved from a house where there was a large OO layout in the loft.

That's rather a long wait.

The Wire

Himself's been getting on very well with the fences.

The first section to be tackled - at the back of the layout on the run down past Bron Hebog Crossing - has had the posts painted and some representation of the wire added.

We do this by running fine cotton thread between the posts, wrapping it once around each before carrying on down the line, repeating it three times.

The real fencing has both horizontal an vertical wires which form a square pattern but we're not about to attempt that, so we've gone for the same method we used on Dduallt.

Marching On

If there is any job more boring that ballasting on a layout could fence post installation be a contender?

Himself has continued working his way along the layout drilling and inserting fragments of cocktail sticks.

Unfortunately for him this is only a fraction of the distance he's going to have to cover all around the S bend.

He's also taken a diversion down the road from the top crossing (called Bron Hebog) and past the farm house to the lower crossing.

It's a nice view, isn't it, if you can ignore the spray cans on the shelves in the background.

Posts Post

One of the drawbacks of building a stupidly large layout set in a rural location is that there is an enormous amount of lineside fencing which needs to be modelled.

We have completed the maze-like installations around the level crossing but have barely scratched the surface of the post and wire boundary fences.

This week Himself has made a start on the far corner, beyond Bron Hebog crossing where our track curves off into the fiddle yards.

The posts are chopped-up cocktail sticks which are inserted into holes drilled in the scenery and they will have some strands of cotton strung between them at some point in the future.

The real railway used contractors to do this rather tiresome job before they got on with the exciting business of relaying a railway on the track bed.

I doubt there's anyone interested in submitting a tender to do the same in the 4mm world, alas!

Fencing Repairs

One of the many little jobs on Himself's 'To Do' list is to fix some of the small instances of damage to the layouts during their cross-border migration and the time in storage last winter.

A corner which suffered was the fencing around Bron Hebog level crossing which is being replaced.

He makes up the fences using styrene strip sections of various sizes - the main horizontal bars are 20 x 60 thou for example.

These days the safety regulations demand that a veritable maze of fences are erected around a level crossing - and there are no shortage of them on the big S bend out of Beddgelert - and so we find ourselves getting through a lot of styrene.

And with the stuff retailing at nearly a 40p per foot these days the price is probably to scale too!

Open Crossings

Himself has been doing some last detailing on some of the many crossing around the layout ready for the exhibition in Hull this weekend.

This is Bron Hebog Crossing positioned at the back of the layout. The fencing has been finished off and the loose road surface laid.

A few boulders have been positioned in the stream under the bridge which has yet to have any fake water added.

Further down, in the middle of the layout, is the crossing at Cwm Cloch farm. Here the road markings have been put in.

Above is the view from behind as the operators see it, and this is the view from the side where where the 'audience' stand...

Remember you can find details of the exhibition in Hull, and a link to the official website, on our Exhibition Diary page.

Bron Hebog Crossing

Another couple of snaps of yet more gating / fencing work.

Himself is now working at the very rear of the layout on the crossing known on the WHR as 'Bron Hebog' - with the name inspired by our layout.

You can also see that he's begun to paint the rail webs a rusty colour here too, so we're slowing working our way around the layout.

Gate Post

Himself is being kept busy with more of the fine detailing work which still requires completing on the layout.

There must be at least a scale mile of fencing needing to be put in and still some occupational crossing to be equipped with gates.

This one is on the first curve out of Beddgelert station and the four gates were made up from 1mm wide styrene strips.

Modelling a real location means you're very unlikely to be able to get away with using ready made farm gates that you could buy in your local model shop, but the effort of building your own is rewarded when you see the finished effect.

This is another crossing, to the south of the station and very close to the starting point of the layout which has now been painted.

Occupation Crossing

Himself was straight back down to work on Bron Hebog following his week away on the FR.

Some may take this as a manifestation of a guilty conscience. I couldn't possibly comment...

Progress so far this week has included more timber fencing around the many occupational crossings around the layout.

These are all built up, strip by strip, from styrene. It's a rather time-consuming process but the results look very good.

This is a crossing midway around the first loop of the S bend beyond Beddgelert station.

In the foreground of the pictures is the embankment, and bridge abutments, of the unfinished PB&SSR alignment which took a more direct and punishingly steep route north towards Rhyd Ddu.