Snap Happy

A glimpse of the talented Mr Nevard at work yesterday taking pictures of Dduallt for Model Rail magazine.

The figure lurking in the background is our Artistic Director, Francis. It was Himself who snapped the snapper.

Smile Please!

Our old layout Dduallt is getting a turn in the spotlight today - quite literally.

The very talented Mr Chris Nevard is coming along to a secret location in the Chiltern Hills to photograph the layout for an article in a future edition of Model Rail magazine.

I'm not able to be there for the shoot but I'm very excited about seeing the results. It's not the first time Dduallt has been featured in a magazine but I'm expecting the pictures Chris takes to be among the best I've ever seen of it.

At the start of this year one of our other CHMRC layouts, New Mills, was in Model Rail - in fact it was the cover feature - and if you're a regular reader of that mag you'll already know how handy Mr N is with a camera. (There's also link to his blog over on the right hand side of the page.)

Naturally I will let you know which edition of Model Rail the article will be in when the time comes.

Superbarn Update

Himself reports that he's been having a tough day completing our model of 'Superbarn' 103. Quite a lot of the reason for this is my fault, I must confess.

This is because when I built the carriage two years ago it turns out I set the truss rods too low. This error was only discovered 75% of the way though the process of painting the carriage when he sat it down on the new style bogies- which  he had spent a whole day fashioning from a pair of Parkside Dundas VoR bogies -only to find the truss rods swooped lower than the railhead.  Oops!

The easily fix, you might think, would be to add some packing beneath the bogie pivots and raise the carriage up a bit, but he didn't want to do this because the middle paint line matched perfectly with the rest of the stock.

So, no doubt cursing my name, he ripped off the truss rods and the king posts and made and fitted some new ones, which you can see in these pictures.

And he's still got to solder up four pairs of handrails to go either side of each of the doors.

All in all he's finding it rather fiddly, but I must say it's really got the look of a Superbarn, don't you agree?

Pass The Popcorn

Yes, it's Bron Hebog movie time again.

Part-time operator Max Brayne has kindly sent me a link to a video of the layout he shot at Railex two weeks ago.



And here's another filmed by Matt Wickham.



Many thanks to Max and Matt for allowing us to include their work on the blog.

I hope these short films will give those readers who've not had the chance to see Bron Hebog at a show yet a better idea of what the layout is like.

MOTW - Carriage 16

Once upon a time there were very limited rolling stock options for 009 modellers of the FR.

Langley did their brass kits for 'bowsiders' 17 and 18, and Parkside Dundas had the plastic semi-opens 37 and 38. And that was about it apart from some ancient GEM and FR whitemetal kits for old Obs 11, WHR pair 23 and 26 and sundry box boxes which all weighed not far short of a real NG carriage.

So there wasn't much choice other than to scratch build, which is how we came to have this model of 16 which is entirely built from styrene. (Yes, even the curvy handrails on the balconies!)

My technique for building this carriage wasn't dissimilar to the way they these pioneering iron framed bogie carriages were built in 1872.

In those days - we're talking 18 years ago now - I was still building carriages with a fixed floor and a removable roof.

On these carriages there was a bit of a problem doing that because the bogies are tucked up into the carriage body and hidden behind those big iron frames.

What I did was to build the bottom frame and the end balconies as a rolling chassis unit and make a separate square carriage body to mount on top.

As the model is so old there are a few things I find a wee bit unsatisfactory these days - the windows should be slightly rounded, for a start. But I think its still quite a creditable effort.

This model shows 16 as it was running in 1988 in the all over Cherry Red livery, so we can't reasonably run it on Bron Hebog, so I think in time we'll replace it with a Worsley Works brass kit finished in the Col. Stephens green livery that 16 is running around with currently.

Midnight Express

Here's the answer to all the questions we've been getting about what colour our new Linda will be turned out in.

Our Backwoods Penrhyn lady was liberated from the paint shop for the Railex weekend for some more running-in turns on Bron Hebog, seen here paired with sister, Blanche.

Linda wore this midnight blue livery through most of the 1990's, before being put back into lined Penrhyn black, and our model shows her in the short period when she was reunited with her proper chimney.

As the pictures clearly show, the paint job is not finished. There is more lining to go on and the model is yet to be varnished, which is why it is so ridiculously shiny.

As well as double-heading with Blanche we also recreated a recent WHR scene when Linda had to be paired with Criccieth Castle as emergency substitutes for a failed Garratt.

Silly Half Hour

In our two exhibition appearances this year Bron Hebog has been operating at what you might call reduced power.

That is to say the way we run the layout has been dictated by the size limitations of our temporary fiddle yards which means that our mighty Garratts have been tootling around with 5 and 6 carr trains when the layout has been designed for operating prototypical 9 or 10 carr rakes.

But towards the end of Sunday at Railex, when the crowds thinned out, and at what is traditionally seen as the silly half hour when some more unusual combinations are run for the amusement of the operators, I decided to send out an 8 carr train so I could get an impression of how impressive it will look when Bron Hebog is finally completed.

Now you can see how we're going to get that 'train coming back on itself' effect around the S bend that so many visitors to the exhibition remarked upon when recounting their rides on the WHR.

I hope you won't think me conceited if I say so myself, but the completed Bron Hebog is going to be worth waiting for.