Bron Hebog Review Of The Year Part 2

July

The second half of our review of the year finds us in high summer with Himself continuing to make progress with the Mercian Models Welsh Pony kit.

The shortcomings of its origins as a 7mm kit scaled down to 4mm were becoming all-too-obvious with a rather complicated sequence of construction as can be seen above.

Having built the first two houses for the Oberon Wood estate on the layout I was called upon to build a scaled-down version of the double garage I built from a guesstimated design a number of years back which was now very obviously too big when sat beside its new neighbours.

August

We were in print again in the summer when Model Rail magazine brought out this special glossy edition featuring some of the best layouts to have appeared in the magazine including Bron Hebog's sister layout Dduallt.

Himself had also been busy painting the WHR tool van which I had scratch built. It needed more weathering but was beginning to look the part.

September

Himself now turned his attention onto the chassis for Welsh Pony, and this was when the problems really began!

It transpired that the motor and gearbox - which the kit instructions say should be fitted in a transverse arrangement - is impossible to fit.  Not only does it not fit within the confines of the saddle tank but the gears foul the motor casing and will not mesh.

We sought advice from the manufacturer who put us in touch with a modeller who had devised an alternative gearbox arrangement (seen above).

September was a big month for us because we got to take the layout out on the road for the first time in 18 months to the WHR's Superpower weekend where it was displayed as part of a model railway exhibition in the goods shed at Dinas.

During the weekend the FR's John Wooden shot this lovely video footage of the layout which included a sequence filmed by placing a miniature camera onto a flat wagon and towing it around the layout.

October

Whilst at Superpower Himself decided to splash out on an RT Models kit for the Harrogate Peckett which was making a guest appearance at the gala.

It didn't take him very look to put it together, and very purposeful it looks too..

He also began work with another push to complete the layout laying the trackbed on the middle section of the big Cwm Cloch S bend.

November

Having had reasonable success with my wagon kits I took my resin casting experiment to the next level with a project to produce a batch of FR Super Barn carriages for a client.

I scratch built the main sections in styrene in my usual fashion and used them as the masters to create mould sand cast a run of  resin copies.

Here you can see the first of the carriages in the early stages of being glued together. So far so good....

At the other end of the country Himself was making rapid progress with landscaping the new section of the layout, seen here with Mod Roc spread over chicken wire in a most traditional fashion...

December

We ended the year with Himself completing an improvised gearbox for Welsh Pony.  

The Large Englands may only have had an extra 6 inch wheelbase compared to the original batch but it looks very obviously longer in this side-on snap.

My efforts to cast a run of Super Barn carriages had got so far as having three body shells completed by the turn of the year.

Thanks for all your visits to the blog during 2013 and even more so if you left a comment or interacted with us on our Twitter or Facebook feeds.

We look forward to sharing our modelling efforts with you in 2014.

Bron Hebog Review Of The Year Part 1

There were no complaints about our following the media fashion at this time of the year for a look back over the preceding twelve months so I shall repeat the exercise with a look back at the Bron Hebog modelling year.

January

I began with a burst of activity on a long term project to make a 2nd model of the WHR KMX tamper for a client - one of the designers of the conversion of the real machine in fact - and gave my finger tips some heat treatment soldering up these hydraulic looms from offcuts of brass and untwisted picture hanging wire.

This project has taken so long that when the model was commissioned the client was living in Australia but has since moved back to Yorkshire. Oops!

In January I also completed the first of my B wagon kits - in this snap you can see one completed as a WHR bike carrying wagon posed next to an example of the 2nd generation DZ wagon rivet details added to the master.

We also made some progress on our model of Super Barn 121 with Himself getting round to putting a brass roof on it.

February

The early months of the year saw us finally delivering on another long term outside contract - a pair of 7mm scale WHR Pullmans which I scratchbuilt in styrene and Himself painted and lined out with Fox's transfers.

They are a stunning pair of carriages, even if I do say so myself, and it was hard to let them go.

March

I caught up with another of my 7mm carriages at the Model Rail Scotland on the layout Rhyd which was on show at the SECC.   It is a model of the original FR Barn Observation Carr 100.

I also began work on the first of the models of the houses in the modern estate which is a feature at the south end of Beddgelert station, working on designs drawn up by the Artistic Director.

April

Having spent many months casting kits to sell and making carriages for clients I had to submit to the urge to make something for myself and started work on a model of the WHR tool van.

The real van was built up on the chassis from a DZ wagon and I used one of the chassis castings from my DZ kits as the base for the model, scratch building the van body from styrene.

I also paid a visit south to Bron Hebog HQ to observe progress on the layout and took this snap of our set of DZ wagons - all of them slightly different - which Himself had painted and lettered.

May

I was making steady progress on the build of the first two houses.  

By May this one was almost complete with the roof in place and just awaiting some finishing touches such as the guttering and the ridge tiles.

Having got accustomed to the nature of the complicated design of the buildings the second house came together quite rapidly.  Here they are posed together.

June

I was thrilled in June when the news I'd waited a lifetime for was confirmed - a decision to go ahead with the restoration to steam of FR Large England Welsh Pony.

I have very fond memories of playing on the engine as a child in its days perched on a plinth outside Harbour Station dreaming that one day I would see it steam again.

I immediately announced a pledge that a proportion of turnover of sales from my WHR wagon kits would be donated to the appeal fund.  The total donated is into three figures already.

Inspired by the restoration announcement Himself recommenced work on our model of Welsh Pony which he is building from a rather flawed Mercian Models kit. It has been rather a saga as regular readers of the blog will know...

I was also able to finally sign off on the NGY ballast wagon kit with the arrival of the test etches for the brass parts of the kit and it was able to go into production.

Another Garratt - But What Colour??

Santa was very good to Himself this year and he found what he really, really wanted lying under the tree.

It wasn't a Furby or an iPad, or whatever this year's must-have present is, but another Backwoods Miniatures NGG16 kit.

An unlike so many toys which are tossed aside out of boredom, or broken, on Boxing Day you can be sure that this one will be played with for many weeks to come - because that's how long it takes to put them together.

Of course, given his long record of building beautifully smooth running Backwoods kits I have no doubt at all that he will make a first class job of this third one, but the big question is what to make it as?

Those who are familiar with Bron Hebog will know that we have one Garratt that depicts number 87 in the temporary grey livery in which it first worked on the WHR.

And a second (which was the first he built) which doesn't actually represent any of the 3 NGG16's in Wales as it was made up in South African condition.

Being black it does look a little quite like 143 used to do. But, of course, 143 was an oil burner at that time and this one has a bunker full of coal.

On the other hand it does have the big headlamps which are now fitted to 138, which also burns coal but is currently painted red.

To complicate matters further 143 is now a coal burner but is painted green but still has the small SAR spotlights.

So answering the question about which loco we build this new kit into also determines which one our existing black Garratt should be rebuilt into.

It is a bit of a knotty one.

Merry Christmas!

All of us on the Bron Hebog team would like to pass on our hope that everyone who reads the blog has a very contented Christmas and that Santa will fill your stocking with all the modelling items on your list.

Himself is certainly hoping for something special, I'll let you know whether or not his wish comes true......

Oh, and thanks to Roger for lending us the seasonal photograph, we do hope you like it.

Welsh Pony Comes Together

Having got the chassis working Himself has begun adding the finishing touches to our Mercian Welsh Pony kit.

He began by adding some of the detail in the cab including the bits and pieces on the firebox.

It was at this point that it suddenly dawned on him that he'd put the cab on back to front.

(Some bad words were muttered...)

With that fixed he continued on by making up the hand brake - which was apparently rather fiddly - and soldered it in place on the back of the cab and added the spectacle rims.

It was during the process of soldering the cab in place that he broke the regular off and managed to melt the white metal safety valve casting.

(More naughty muttering....)

As you can see from the picture below he managed to bodge up some replacements out of some brass bits he had hanging around.

So here's what it looks like from the side.

Obviously it's missing a couple of rather important bits - like the chimney and those iconic Festiniog sandpots - but we've got a real idea now of how impressive the finished Welsh Pony is going to look.

Mission Accomplished!

I try not to write too many self-indulgent, self-congratulatory posts - which is a trap I fear it would be easy to fall into as a blogger - but I'll make an exception today because I have achieved one of the targets I set myself for the year.

And I should be thanking you all, too, because the ambition was to achieve 200,000 pageviews, which as you can see from the counter in the menu section on the right hand side of the page has been surpassed.

I know that a basic count of page views is a very imprecise way of measuring the impact a website is having but even so its quite satisfying to see.

The counter has become a little meaningless at times over the past few months as various spam bots and web crawlers have locked onto the site leading to rather improbable spikes in traffic every time something new is posted, but even allowing for those I think I can be reasonably confident the number of genuine views has passed 200k.

So many thanks to you, wherever you are the in the world and whatever your interest in the FR & WHR or narrow gauge modelling for stopping by and reading the blog.

Writing this does take up time that otherwise might be spent modelling so it's good to know that it is being read and I hope to have lots more to tell you about in 2014.

Onwards to half a million!

Saddle Sore

There's been more improvisation as our Welsh Pony canters towards completion.

First on the snagging list was to find a way of attaching the saddle tank to the main frame of the locomotive which has been achieved with the aid of a couple of brackets made out of brass as you can see in the picture below.

Also the locomotive will require pick ups if it is to be self-propelled, of course, and these will be attached to a piece of copper clad strip which is itself secured by those same screws that hold the saddle tank in place.

Clever, eh?

The only question remaining unanswered is whether the fake brake shoes will become entangled with the pick ups when they are fitted.

Himself does like to keep us in suspense...