Second Tine Around

I am making another KMX Tamper.

This one is for a very special customer who was one of the engineering brains behind the conversion of a metre gauge, French tunnel-dwelling tamper into a two foot gauge machine able to survive life in the Welsh mountains.

The process begins with making the component parts for the cabs at either end and the main central frame members which you can see laid out here...

This is the cab for the non-powered end of the machine...

The motorising unit for the tamper is a Kato 'Shorty' chassis. Its dimensions and arrangement are prefect for the job.

Just like the real KMX only one end is powered, and the trailing bogie can be removed and mounted independently at the other end of the machine. But crucially it also has built in pick ups allowing us to run wires through the model connecting it to the motor unit.

That motor unit is also a perfect fit for the engine / generator compartment of the KMX, give or take 1mm, and I mount it on a frame made from a piece of 0.60" styrene with a hole cut for the unit to fit through, to which the other cab is mounted...

These cab sub-assemblies are then bonded to the two main frames and the outline of the complete machine can be appreciated for the first time.

I shall post more updates as the project progresses.

Britomart's Big Day Out

When we first started modelling the WHR I confess I feared that it might make a rather boring layout.

During the years of rebuilding the line, and before it was reconnected with the FR at Porthmadog, the train service was a rather monotonous procession of NGG16 Garratts hauling one of only two sets of carriages. Not a very varied diet for either the operators or the paying public at exhibitions.

The last couple of years since the physical reunion of the two railways, however, has seen a wonderful variety of trains running up the WHR to the point where there are few locomotives or carriages in the FR fleet which have not visited 'the dark side'.

This is great news for us because it means we can play with 75% of the stock built up over 20 years for Dduallt on Bron Hebog too.

It also means we can have fun replicating some of the more unusual specials that have been seen at Beddgelert such as Britomart's recent solo foray up the line.



These pictures were taken during the exhibition at Sparsholt a fortnight ago.




Here she is heading around the S bend at Cwm Cloch farm...



And getting a well earned drink on the way back down....



Are there any unusual (but authentic) combinations you'd like to see appear on Bron Hebog when we go to Railex 2012 next month? Leave a comment below to let us know.

MOTW - Palmerston

A real favourite of mine on Model Of The Week this time.

I love the England engines.

In fact I would go so far as to say that if I were forced to choose between an FR without England engines or without Fairlies I would wave goodbye to the Fairlies.

Palmerston was the second of our two Englands to be built from the venerable Langley whitemetal kit and we incorporated a few lessons learnt with Prince.

Although it still sits on the Ibertren chassis the kit was designed for the power comes from a Mashima can motor.

We also drilled out the huge lump of cast metal masquerading as coal in the tender and replaced it with some real crushed coal. Not only does it look better but it also saves a lot of weight which is an important consideration for operating Dduallt with its fierce gradient.

Palmerston has made quite a few appearances on the WHR at galas or on photo charters. He and his brother Prince make a terrific contrast to the giant Garratts and their jumbo-sized carriages as they potter about on Bron Hebog with a comparatively modest vintage train formation.

Scene In Goat Cutting

Another couple of snaps of the layout I took at Sparsholt for you to start the new week.

A lot of people remarked at the exhibition that Bron Hebog, when it reaches its full extent, is going to provide a great number of photographic vignettes around the layout.

One of them is Goat Cutting, which for those who have not had the chance to visit or ride on the WHR yet, is a short, deep and curved cutting at the Porthmadog end of the station leading into Goat Tunnel.

Here we see Funkey diesel Caernarfon Castle departing from the station and passing beneath the footbridge..



And from the opposite direction here's a shot of Prince emerging from the tunnel with a vintage set. On photo charter duty, perhaps?



I shall post some more scenes from around the layout later this week.

Bustitution

The Sparsholt show last weekend saw the public debut of my Parry People Mover.
It attracted a lot of attention and quite a few compliments too, which was pleasing.



I remained dissatisfied with the seats inside it, though. Or to be more accurate, my representation of the chrome handrails on top of the bus-type seats.

I had made them out of very thin strips of styrene, but I couldn't get them to sit nice and straight along the top. Over the weekend I decided it was time to substitute the styrene for another material. Or perhaps that should be, bustitute?

To stop them bending upwards I decided a strip of brass the same size as the styrene would give me the nice straight top I was seeking.

While I was staying at home for the Sparsholt weekend I took the opportunity to raid Himself's stocks of brass. (I could have ordered it online, of course, but it didn't seem worth paying postage for just one item.)

At any rate, it was a fair exchange. In return for a strip of brass (and the dregs of a bottle of Lagavulin) I found the solution to fix Himself's Sky TV settings issue and changed his Facebook profile picture for him.

An hour's work later and the brass handrails have been put on in place of the styrene ones. Much better, don't you think?


Now I just have to cut the glazing pieces and then I can start the process of painting it.

MOTW - 'Romanian Carriage' 2060

This Model Of The Week is a case of what might have been, or perhaps some might think, a fortunate escape.



Carriage 2060 is a WHR one-off. Its continental heritage is immediately apparent.

It was bought second-hand in Romania and partially refurbished before being brought to Boston Lodge in 2007 where it underwent a lengthy process of fitting out before finally entering service on the WHR where it has mostly been employed in the secondary train set.

At the time it was purchased it was reported that there were a number of similar redundant carriages in Romania and the idea was these vehicles might be a quicker and cheaper way of increasing the fleet ready for the re-opening of the section from Rhyd Ddu to Porthmadog. (Quicker and cheaper, that is, than building carriages from scratch at Boston Lodge.)

Our model is made from a Worsley Works brass scratch-aid kit.

As with all Worsley products the model you end up with reflects the amount of work you're prepared to put into it, and Himself put a lot of effort into making the roof and blending it into the sides of the carriage to make it look like a smooth, welded bodyshell. The ribs along the top of the roof are also particularly effective, as is the paint job around the window frames.

The carriage runs on bogies from an N gauge Farish BR Pullman Carr, the Commonwealth Bogie being a pretty good match for the bogies bought over from Romania and re-gauged for use on the WHR.

Fortunately, in my opinion, and for various reasons, 2060 has not sparked an influx of immigration from Eastern Europe while Boston Lodge has continued designing and making indigenous modern WHR carriages and a new generation of FR 'Superbarns'.

Much taller and slimmer than the other WHR stock it is far too continental looking for my tastes and a fleet of these Romanian carriages would make the WHR look too much like the Welshpool & Llanfair Light Railway of the 70's and 80's, with their Alpine and African carriages, before they embraced their GWR heritage with those lovely Pickering replicas.

(No slur intended on the W&LLR, by the way.)

Greasers' Express

One of the joys of modelling a real location on a real railway is the chance to recreate the more unusual train formations with complete accuracy.

A train that we wanted to run on Bron Hebog at Sparsholt at the weekend was the WHR 'Greasers' Express'.

It is a works train which runs the length of the line, roughly on a quarterly basis, which halts at every junction, loop and station to apply liberal amounts of gloop onto all the point mechanisms.

Himself joins the gang whenever he can. On one of the recent trips the train was formed of FR van 51, a 'B Wagon' and 'Upnor Castle', miniature versions of which can all be found lurking within our colletion.



The only unrealistic part of this scene, of course, is that the train has been stabled on a bit of the WHR which no longer exists - this tightly curved bit of the siding at Beddgelert, on top of the old loco servicing pit, having been lifted in recent years.

One of the trips that Himself was involved in was filmed for a DVD produced by the FR's in-house team.



This video has proved invaluable to Himself during the recent spurt of construction activity on Bron Hebog.

Now, in order to double check some detail of the railway or the landscape around Beddgelert he has only has to pop the disc into the player rather than look through hundreds of photographs or, worse still, stop what he is doing until he is able to make a 400 mile round trip to North Wales.

This, and other DVDs about the WHR and the FR can be purchased online from the railway's shop here.