Bend It Like Bullhead

 

Since the last post announcing our intention to start a new project for a small-ish twin gauge layout based on Minffordd there is some solid progress to report.

One of the main reference points to establish early on (pun not intended, for once) was the position of the turnout from the Cambrian line into the exchange yard, because this also dictates where the FR overbridge goes.

For this project we've decided to use Peco's new Code 75 bullhead track for the standard gauge because it has a much more realistic look in terms of sleeper spacing. 

It's a premium product in terms of price, but as there won't be that much standard gauge track on show it won't ruin us, while in the storage sidings hidden out of sight we will transition to a more economical choice of Code 100!

However, the bullhead range is in its infancy and there is a very limited choice of points available so far.

As you probably already know, the Cambrian line through Minffordd is curved, and this included the point into the yard.

For now Peco only make straight points, but with a little scalpel surgery on the plastic sleepers, and some gentle manipulation, Himself has succeeded in persuading the point to take a subtle leftwards bend.

You can see that he's also cut out a basic wooden template for the FR overbridge and the subway tunnel leading to the narrow gauge station.

Change At Minffordd

I thought I might make an occasional dip back into this blog to explain some more about our new project, revealed to our followers on social media at the weekend.

We've decided to scratch the itch again and build another layout, although this time something of a slightly more manageable size.

What we're proposing is a layout showing the under / over interchange between the FR and the standard gauge Cambrian at Minffordd and a somewhat compressed representation of the exchange yard beside it.

©  John Evans

The period would be the second half of the 1960s, allowing a little modeller's licence because, of course, some details change daily on the FR.

It's been done before as a great diorama which you can see in the museum at the Welsh Highland Heritage Railway, but we want to have ours more animated.

There are many considerations in coming up with this plan.

Size

While we'll probably always think of Bron Hebog as our magnum opus it's quite an operation to take it out on the road. 

To transport it to a show requires a long wheelbase van we have to hire, and even collecting / returning it from the depot is a 40 mile round trip each time.   Also because Himself is no longer able to drive a hire vehicle on the grounds of heritage it makes it all that much more complicated.  He was keen on a layout we could load into one or two cars.

The lure of OO

Since my son has also picked up the model railway bug I've spent a lot more time looking at 4mm standard gauge models again.  

To start with this was playing with the comparatively ancient collection from the 70s and 80s which Himself kept hold of, but one or two contemporary RTR items have been added and you can't fail to be impressed with how detailed they are and how well they run.

Cambrian nostalgia

For both of us watching trains on the Cambrian is a treasured childhood memory, albeit from different eras  - 1950s / 60s for Himself  and the 1980s for me.

Last year he treated himself to a Bachmann class 24/0 as a birthday present and I can just about remember seeing small Sulzers plying the coast on freight workings before the worms got at Barmouth Bridge.

DCC sound

Ever since the Bachmann WW1 Baldwin appeared and Himself invested in a chip to make it chuff we've been gradually sucked into the world of DCC which we'd avoided for so long.

Then he chipped the class 24 and resistance was futile - I knew we needed outlet to play with these properly.

009 RTR

The final factor which led us to settling on Minffordd was the expanding range of FR preservation era models from Bachmann, along with the Small England from Peco / Kato.

It's the representation of Livingston Thompson / Earl of Merioneth it its final form which dictated that this model should be be set between 1967-71, and the recent arrival of a green, tendered Linda without a pony truck reinforces that.

We have both of these locos sound fitted and I'm already hatching plans for reconstructive surgery on a green Prince (when they appear) to show it in its rebuilt form with the straight framing beneath the saddle tank.

For the Cambrian we've acquired a second 24 in two-tone green and a green Met-Cam class 101 DMU - always the iconic Cambrian train for my era - and we'll look at a couple of other DMU options for variety.

Himself has been cracking on with the plan and has made up a baseboard, split down the centre, to form an area 6ft across by 5ft deep.

The plan is for a scenic area of around 6' x 4.

The standard gauge will form a continuous run with storage tracks to the rear behind a scenic break.

It will appear at the back left of the scene passing beneath the FR through the stone archway midway along Minffordd station.

There will be a point leading up into the yard while the main line will carry on in a gentle sweep around the front of the scene until it disappears beneath the bridge carrying a lane  (which we are relocating only slightly).

The FR will run along the back of the scene.

We won't show the FR's Minffordd station - at least not yet, that might be a future extension? - and the narrow gauge starts from the crossover at the Porthmadog end, across the bridge and past the weigh house (Fred's office) with both the main line and the mineral line shown.

Towards the right hand end there will be point where the line into the exchange yard dives down around a tight curve.

Our intention is to try to include (in compressed form) some of the features like the 'coal hole' chutes and the adjacent NG and SG trackwork.

If I was any good at drawing I'd have come up with a very pretty plan I could post at this point - but I'm not so I can't.

But hopefully you can follow progress on our social media - or some more occasional posts here - and I trust you'll start to get the idea.

Chuffin' 'Eck

I've quite often found myself in the situation where you end up saying: "If you can't beat them, join them."

Within my family I'm often reminded that I was the person who was quite determined never to get a mobile phone, and now - like most of us - it has to be almost surgically removed from my grasp.

So it is with DCC power and locomotive sound.

The trigger has been the arrival of 4mm RTR narrow gauge locomotives in recent years.

Himself was first to crack, chipping our Bachmann Baldwin, just to see what it's like.

Then, when the Double Fairlies were released last year, he plumped for one of the sound-fitted versions of Earl of Merioneth, and a DCC controller beneath the Christmas Tree.

A few days ago I was unable to resist placing an order for a be-chipped 'Garrarway-era' Linda.

Himself's techno enthusiasm has been encouraged by fellow modellers at the Greenock club who operate many of their 00 layouts with button-pushing handsets and a cacophony of chuffs, whistles, horns and throbbing.

So it was with much excitement at Manchester that we were able to have a play with a remarkable sound-fitted Bachmann Britomart, which had been adapted by an old friend of ours, John Gay from Digitrains.

As you can hear from the video the effect is really quite remarkable - even running on DC-only - especially considering it was something the manufacturer decided not to attempt.

To achieve it John has placed a speaker in the cab, disguised by model crew who've each had to have one of their legs amputated, and a 'stay alive' capacitor has been hidden in the cab roof.

That really is something to put on the wish list.

The Cream Of Manchester

Five months ago when I wrote the previous post on this blog - like the famous legend on the FR timetables  'Train Services Suspended' - I left open the possibility that I may post again.

As I wrote at the time, I had simply run out of things to say.

Well, after our experience at the Manchester MRS exhibition at the weekend, I've found I do, once again, have something to say, and it would be the right thing to say it here.

I'd like to say a huge thank you to everyone who came to spend time watching the layout, to share their thoughts on it (and the prototype) and to those who went on to put an X in the box on the voting form for the Best Layout.

We were beyond honoured to receive the shield for this on the Sunday afternoon, having on Saturday evening been judged the best in show by the members of MMRS - the first awards for Bron Hebog.

To receive these awards was incredibly humbling given the remarkable standard of all the layouts at the show.

There was not one on display which did show exceptional skill and dedication - with many of them being to EM or P4 standards (in 4mm) or finescale 2mm - and the four of us who travelled with the layout were astonished to hear its name being called out as the winner at the presentations.

(A shame we weren't allowed to take the cup and shield home with us for the next 12 months...)

I can't make any promises about how regular posts on this blog might be, but what I can say is that I found the whole weekend - surrounded by so many enthusiastic and appreciative people - to be restorative and cathartic.

Can't wait for Warley next year!

Where This Train Terminates

You may have noticed that posts on here have become rather infrequent, of late.

I think I may have a chronic case of Blogger's Block - I have simply run out of things to say.

There is modelling going on, but mostly it's for personal enjoyment and not necessarily for public show.

As I posted a few weeks ago, the layout is essentially complete now, and the locomotive and rolling stock collection has reached a certain maturity.

And anyway, the stats would suggest that interest in this blog, at least, is waning. 

The pageviews stats reached a plateau have been in steady decline over the last couple of years. 

I did think that the pandemic might have reversed this decline, as people spent a lot of the extra time they suddenly found themselves with building layouts.

Or, alternatively, that the return to exhibitions might boost readership and awareness again, but neither has proved to be the case.

In fact views now are back to where they were 10 years ago.

Strangely enough, this has come just at a time when the profile of 009 - and FR modelling - has never been higher with the emergence of some terrific RTR products.

Is this coincidence or somehow connected? I have no way of knowing.

I don't want this blog to become something that withers away, where people wonder what's happened to it?

Better, I think, to properly draw a line under it and explain why posts have stopped.

It's not going to vanish - well, not for as long as the Blogger servers stay online - and everything that's been posted will still be here to read.

I shall keep updating the exhibition diary if any new dates come in, and there are other pages with galleries of the layout, features on the rolling stock and video footage.

It might be something I come back to, or I might not, we'll see how it goes.

Make It Stop

It's a contentious opinion, but I'm already fed up of the Platinum Jubilee, and there's still best part of a week to go for us in the media and every part of the service economy to work itself into a frenzy.

It's not a republican sentiment, or any ill-feeling towards the monarch, but more that I instinctively adopt a contrarian attitude when I perceive that I am under some expectation, or obligation, to get excited about an event, or behave a certain way, and when everyone leaps onto the same bandwagon.

I feel exactly the same every four years when the [football] World Cup comes round.  (So, yeah, 2022's a bit of a bummer!)

Right now it feels like you can't move for bunting, the union flag is being plastered onto every conceivable item, and anything that moves - or doesn't - is being painted purple.

Peco has even produced a special edition purple bug box, and it won't surprise you to learn I have absolutely no intention of purchasing one. (And certainly not at £34.95!)

But then again, we don't need to.

As Peco point out, there is a precedent for a purple Small Birmingham, and it dates back to the days of the 'Minffordd Shuttle', when number 4 was returned to service in what was called 'Damson' livery.

At the time it was believed this was a heritage colour scheme after the discovery of fragment of this colour, but it is now known to have been just undercoat.

You can read more about this model in a previous post, but for now its done its job as a vehicle for me to post a rant about the national celebrations.

Toned Down

Princess has returned to the test track from Himself's where it had been sent for the application of a little subtlety.

As it comes out of the box the Kato / Peco England has a number of things which betray that it was produced to a price - or for a certain aspiration of specification -  but these can be easily attended to.

Among the things Himself has done is apply some black paint to the upright at the end of the slidebars, which stands out like a sore thumb in silver.

A brush over with matt varnish makes the smokebox look like a loco that's had a fire in it, and the cab roof looks an awful lot better when it's not black and shiny.

It's also had the happy effect, to my eyes, of making the chimney look a bit fatter and much more prototypical.

The vac pipe bags look a lot more realistic when they are no longer black plastic colour.

The last thing he's done, which you might not notice until I point it out, but is one of those things you can't unsee once you've spotted it, is to run some black paint around the edges of the cab opening,

The livery finish on these models is really very good, but they are badly let down that in places like the cab doorway the black edging is only on the sides and doesn't extend to the edges which remain shiny, maroon-coloured plastic.

It really stood out when you looked at the engine in 3/4 view.

It's such a small thing but it makes such a difference when you fix it,