Review Of The Year - Part 4

For the last post of 2017 I'll bring our modelling review of the year up to date.

October

Himself was steadily getting on with the top coats on the Superbarn 118 between other jobs.

He had many tasks on the go including fixing the last two bungalows in place and beginning the task of landscaping around them.

It was such a relief to have finally got all the houses built - a project which had taken many years to bring to fruition.

We also got round to purchasing a chassis to put our 3D printed Lilla body on.

At this stage it still needed some material cleared away from beneath the saddle tank which explains why it is sitting at a very racy angle.

November

There was still the need to paint the bungalows before they could be fixed in place on the layout.

The last of them was the most challenging of the lot because one wall has stone cladding which was very well represented by Himself.

The only shame was that this effect is mostly hidden from the viewing public at exhibitions because this is the side which faces the operators.

There was more work on Lilla.

The Minitrains chassis was improved with some new slidebars from RT Models and Himself also carefully filed down the fly cranks to remove the very large balance weights.

While he was doing all that I was busy earning a little money fulfilling a promise to build some of my resin SAR wagon kits for a customer.

December

As we moved into the final month of the year Himself set to with the task of painting Lilla which we're going to finish in its Penrhyn Quarry Railway lined black livery.

Currently he is engaged in the very careful and patient task of lining it out.

The project on my workbench at the moment is to bring our WHR carriage fleet up to date with the latest of the saloons 2047 which I am building from scratch in styrene.

So all that remains is for us to wish you all the best for 2018 and thank you for visiting the blog or keeping up with what we're up to by following us on Facebook or Twitter,

We'll be taking both Bron Hebog and Dduallt out on the rode during the year ahead and we look forward to seeing you there - full details are on the Exhibition Diary page.

Review Of The Year - Part 3

July

The early part of the summer was taken up with work on the housing estate scene.

The conservatory which I had to build for the back of the latest house was one of the more challenging bits of the estate I've had to make.

Himself had been doing some work on the gardens of the houses which are already in place on Bron Hebog.

He'd also been busy creating the cemetery above the crossing on the far left hand side of the layout.

August

I decided to take a break from house building and put together the castings for Superbarn 118 which I'd cast the previous year but kept stored.

Himself was also giving some attention to the scenery on the top of Goat Tunnel, planting a copse of trees.

We also made a start on the last major scenic challenge on Bron Hebog which is lining the Cutting Mawr at the back of the layout with rock.

Instead of using slabs of real rock, which is what we did on Dduallt, we've decided to try casting copies of sections in resin which will be lighter and make the layout slightly less heavy.

September

By this time I'd started work on the last two houses to complete the Oberon Woods estate scene, both of them are detached (mostly) bungalows.

Himself had a few models which needed priming and decided it was time to give our Welsh Pony a coat.

The photo was taken in black and white - if it was in colour you would see that the primer is actually red oxide.

We did use grey primer as the base coat of the new Superbarn 118 which was ready to start being painted.

It's seen here on the shelf in front of some of the Superbarn fleet including the service car 125 and the observation car 150.

Review Of The Year - Part 2

April

At the start of the year Himself had begun painting our Britomart, a few months later it was finally lined out and had its name and works plates fitted.

The finished effect was terrific!

He was also making the finishing touches to another model which featured in our January review, the service car 125, which had received a coat of varnish and was ready to join the fleet.

I had made rapid progress with the latest house for the estate scene which was looking pretty much finished.

Or so I thought.....

May

Yes, I spoke too soon.

I had to pull it to bits in places because I'd come across an aerial picture of the estate which showed me aspects of this house which I had never noticed before, including an entire extension on the back.

Fortunately with styrene it's easy enough to splice in new bits.

Yet another long-term project came to fruition this month when our model of observation car 150 had its (very complex) lining finished and the glazing added.

It was so impressive I had to take some portrait shots on Bron Hebog.

June

Our attention in the early months of the summer was all about the estate scene.

The house which you saw me building earlier in the review was ready to be tried out in place on Bron Hebog.

Around the same time I was already well on the way to filling the gap site at the top of the picture with one of the more interesting houses on the development - which is saying something given the unconventional shape of many of them.

We'll begin looking at the second half of the year next time.

A Christmas Message

With thanks to Richard Marsh and FRCo for permission to reproduce image

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.

Pale Blue Lines

Himself has been hard at work lining out Lilla in Penrhyn livery.

It's a two stage process starting with the pale blue lines on the outside.

For this he's using the water slide lining sets from Fox Transfers which come with sections of straight lines and corners of various radii.

The biggest challenge on this engine I suspect is the back cab sheet.

He's about to begin with the red and I look forward to posting some snaps of that soon.

Panel Show

I was left alone for an entire weekend (albeit in some charge of the youngest in the family) so I had an evening to fill.

Sometimes when you are faced with an open goal it's hard to decide what to do and I was torn between starting work on the doors and the ends of the WHR saloon or adding the panellling to the sides.

In the end that was what I decided  to do.

It was a close run thing, though, because I only had just enough of the finest size of strip.

It's too close to the festive season to order more online so I might have to raid Himself's stocks again.