Take My Word For It

 

There hasn't been much modelling done here since the end of the Glasgow exhibition two and a half weeks ago.

The one small job I have done is to lightly weather the impulse buy inspection saloon.

The weathering is so light it might almost be non-existent, to the camera phone in any case.

I took it along to the the club night thinking the layout there would make a better backdrop than taking a snap on my messy workbench, but unfortunately the lighting didn't really allow what I've done to show itself.

So you'll have to take it from me that the bogies, the underframe, and the other previously shiny black parts have been given a subtle coating track grime.

The roof is also looking a bit more rain and soot streaked as well, and there's a hit of some of the dirt on the maroon tumble home.

I'm hoping it'll show up better under the lights, and looking at it with the naked eye, at the show in Porthmadog next month.

Missing Pieces

Having exhibited layouts of real locations for the last 30 years and more we've got used to people pointing out the bits we've missed - in fact we've come to welcome it.

I mean, why wouldn't you, if you're trying to faithfully recreate somewhere in miniature you want to do the best you can to make it as accurate as possible, don't you?

On Dduallt, for example, we had a couple of occasions where former 'Deviationists' brought some oversights to our attention, such as the 'sheep creep' which was missing in the area just beyond Barn Cutting at the back of the layout.

And then there was the former volunteer who told us the story about how on one occasion he was drilling into a rock and the drill bit broke and could not be removed.

So we asked him to point to the spot and at the next opportunity inserted a small bit of wire at the appropriate place.

With the development of the Minffordd project being shared so widely on social media I've been surprised we haven't received more "you've missed that" messages.

Something which was mentioned the other day, and which I never came across in our research, was the presence of the rusting hulk of Bagnall 0-4-0 tank Kidbrooke in Minffordd Yard in the 1960s.

Image taken from Festipedia

This loco, dating from 1917, was bought from the Oakeley Slate Quarry in Blaenau Ffestiniog by Richard Hilton and was stored in the yard until 1970, when it was moved to his home in Oxfordshire.

It was eventually restored to steam and can be found at the Yaxham Light Railway in Norfolk.

Now that we know about it we'll obviously have to have our own tiny Kidbrooke rusting quietly in the yard.

The immediately obvious solution seems to be a generic 3D print for these Bagnall locos which is available from Fourdees.

The bigger question is where to place it on the layout?

In the photo above it is sitting on the rails on the long siding which runs in front of the Maenofferen slate sheds and along the wharf beside the Cambrian headshunt.

But that's a very useful section of track for shunting waggons about in our yard, so we hardly want to place what amounts to a buffer stop halfway along it.

So instead I expect we will place it on the ground in the area in front of the smaller shed, with a respectable amount of vegetation growing around its wheels, like in the picture above.

I'm expecting there will be quite a few more oversights brought to our attention when we show the layout in Porthmadog in a few weeks time....

Back Burners

I bet we've all got them, haven't we? Those modelling projects sitting in a box which you say you will get around to one day.

This pair are one of mine.

If you don't immediately recognise them from their ghostly resin appearance, they are 3D prints from Robex of bodies for the Manning Wardle tank loco Jubilee 1897.

And if you know something about the history of that locomotive you may wonder what my interest in them would be.

There is is tangential connection to the FR in that it started out working at the Cilgwyn quarry alongside Lilla, and made a fleeting trip along the Welsh Highland as part of a transfer move to the Penrhyn quarry.

But the reason I have them is nothing to do with rolling stock for Dduallt, Bron Hebog or Minffordd.

A couple of years ago when I was developing my home dual gauge test track - which turned into a full-blown layout - I was looking for a couple of small tank locomotives which would look at home on the small narrow gauge loop which is done up like a very small scale tourist railway.

I was very impressed with the smooth performance of the Minitrains outside framed F&C chassis which powers our Lilla (also a Robex print) but I found the slight more chunky look of the Manning Wardle loco more attractive.

I've always intended to get these bodies mounted on a pair of spare F&C chassis we have in stock, but it's one of those things that I've not got round to.

Or more accurately, Himself has always had to much to be getting on with that it seemed unreasonable for me to add to the backlog by asking if it'd mind taking a look at them for me.

As well as the chassis I ordered in the other parts we'd need, such as the etch for the motion and slide bars.

I'd even had a couple of name plates produced because I intended to finish them in freelance liveries and name them after my children. (Very soppy for a serious prototype modeller, I know.)

I wonder, however, whether this might be a good moment to suggest the idea to Himself, because we get seriously drawn into the Dinas project.

And I also suspect he might be quite glad of another excuse not to have to try to sort out the knotty problem of how to attach valve gear to the NG15 chassis which is sitting on the workbench taunting him...

Blogiversary

I realised the other day that it is coming up to the anniversary of when I first started this blog.

That was back in April 2010 and I've been keeping it up for 16 years, if you are generous and include the recent period where I was in a bit of a huff and there was something of a pause in posting.

Looking back at some of the first images its remarkable how much progress has been made.

Back then we were still in the early days of building Bron Hebog - hence the title of the blog - and one of the places we'd taken this work-in-progress to was a show at Y Ganolfan in Porthmadog, where we'll be going in a few weeks with Minffordd.

An even earlier outing was to the Warley club show at the NEC in Birmingham, when we were asked to form part of the FR's display, because obviously something as crude an unfinished as this would never normally be seen at what was one of the UK's premier exhibitions.

At the time it seemed like such a gargantuan undertaking to build a layout that bit with so little track bed and so much scenery, and I suppose it was, but we did it, although it was the best part of a decade before it was properly completed, and then Covid happened...

For those who're interested the 2000+ posts on this blog can be browsed as a record of how the project progressed, and there are lots of pictures in the galleries of it at the shows we attended.

Given how long it took to build it's odd how short its time on the exhibition circuit was, but there you go...

Knowing that this was going to be a slow burn was the main motivation for starting the blog.

Aware that it would be many years before we'd be regularly showing our models in a face-to-face pubic forum I figured the next best thing was to put it out their virtually - and as this blog approaches nearly 2 million pageviews (for what that stat is worth) it's fair to say it's certainly achieved that!

Social media has played a big part in spreading the word about our modelling, of course.

Many of you may have clicked to read this page through a link on Facebook,  the site formerly known as Twitter, or the upstart Bluesky.

That one's been a bit of a slow burn, although follower numbers recently hit 300.

If you're on any of those sites and haven't followed us yet just search for Bron Hebog and Minffordd and you'll find us.

The one promotional where we probably should have put more effort in is You Tube.

There are quite a number of videos we've uploaded to our channel over the years, although I've always left it for the models to do the talking rather than put myself in the picture, which is probably one of the things which held it back....

If you've never come across them yet please take a look at the footage, and, as they all say, like and subscribe!

It would be lovely for those figures to look a little less pathetic....

Waiting Its Turn

Moelwyn spent the weekend in Glasgow as a static exhibit, once again, lurking at the doorway into the goods shed.

This vintage Baldwin 'tractor ' - a veteran of the First World War - is a loco we have yet to adapt for DCC control, but I'm hoping that can change in time for the next time we have the layout running in Porthmadog in May.

The difficulty is there is nowhere immediately obvious to stuff all the gubbins - the chip, stay-alive capacitor, and speaker - with it hidden from view.

At the moment most of the space inside the bonnet is taken up by the Mashima motor.

I am told that it is possible to retro-fit a very small coreless motor which will create just enough space to hide all the kit and I am seeking advice from those in the know.

The other question is what to use for a sound file.  

As well as its vintage Gardner diesel engine Moelwyn has a very distinctive, rhythmic whine from its gearbox at speed.  

Again, I have hopes that one of our friends with all the right kit will be able to assist us with this.

How useful Moelwyn will prove to be is an open question.

It's built from a Meridian etched brass kit, so it's not featherweight like a 3D print would be, but it still doesn't have the heft of a white metal casting.

What we do know is that on Dduallt it is capable of hauling a couple of carriages up the hill, which is similar to what Britomart can do, so hopefully on Minffordd it will be able to drag a couple of wagons at a time up the ramp from the depths of the yard.

Hopefully, before to long, we will be able to find out.

Short Circuits = Short Fuses

Digital Command Control - or DCC as we have all come to call it - is a wonderful thing, but let's not pretend it doesn't have a lot a downsides.

Many might regard the cost of the chips as the biggest drawback, which is especially the case when you're going for sound as well, because it can sometimes double the price of a new locomotive.

Then there's the complexity of the control handsets themselves.  

A couple of times during the Glasgow show I looked across at some of my fellow operators and saw only furious button pressing and furrowed brows, and no trains moving.....

And at exhibitions I would argue that perhaps the biggest issue is the way that everything on the layout comes to a stop as soon as anything creates a short circuit.

Mostly this is because of simple human error - a failure to check the route has been set before moving off and the loco runs towards point which are set against it.

The problem is affects everything on the system, not just the single train involved.

But as the weekend in Glasgow wore on we began noticing an increasing number of mysterious occasions where a train made up of our set of 'Barn' carriages would come to a stop in the middle of plain track for no apparent reason.

The instinctive reaction each time would be to assume a short had occurred somewhere else on the narrow gauge side of the layout.

(Minffordd is divided into two separate circuits for 009 and 00)

The fiddle yard operators, and the person on shunting duty on the remote controller at the front, would face increasingly irritable accusations and interrogation.  "Was that you, again??!"

By the Sunday afternoon it had happened so often - and there had been so many false accusations bandied about - that the finger of blame started to be pointed at the train itself.

But how?

It was Himself who did the detective work and found the culprit.

It was carriage 14 what did it!

Here's the explanation.

The wheelsets we're using on these carriages are insulated on one side only, which means that on a bogie you need to have both orientated the same way if you are not going to risk creating a short circuit,

This is especially the case when the bogie frames are brass, and the axles fit into brass bearings, because the whole bogie becomes live.

We'd taken care to ensure each bogie on the set had the wheelsets matching.   

What we hadn't done was check that every bogie on every carriage matched.

On carriage 14 we had the wheelsets in the bogies the opposite way round to the rest of the rake.

With us also using brass couplings soldered to a brass bogie, the last line of insulation defence is the paint on the couplings.

As that begins to wear and chip after 3 days of intense running at a show, snaking over crossings and into fiddle yard sidings hundreds of times, it opens up the potential for the different polarities of bogies on adjoining carriages to briefly come into contact with each other, creating the short circuit.

It's simple fix to rotate the wheelsets on the bogies on 14 to they all match now, but it shows how careful you have to be.

A Job For The Dukedog At Last

I posted in the build up to the Glasgow show about our struggles to get our Bachmann Dukedog to do any useful work  on Minffordd because it struggled with the combination of gradients and very tight curves.

You can read that post here.

The solution presented itself to me in a moment of serendipity as I wandered towards the tea and coffee room past the display of one of the second hand traders I buy from most often - The Junction Box.

There on Ian's stall, calling to me, was a Bachmann inspection saloon in crimson and cream livery, which is much more appropriate to our era than the blue/grey example we already have in our stock box.

I had intended to resist all temptations over the weekend, but this seemed like it had my name on it.

Plus, a not half an hour previously, we'd just been presented with our prize for Best In Show, so I figured I deserved to treat myself as a small reward.

I can report that the Dukedog can manage to haul this one carriage around the layout, however I doesn't have the guts to propel it up the slope into the exchange yard, slipping to a stand before it is halfway up...

That is not to say that the tinkering which Himself carried out before the show has not made some difference.

It will manage - just - to haul three Bachmann Mk1s with the weights removed in the Pwllheli direction - but going the other way it will slip to a stand when it hits the tight curve into the fiddle yard.

There is limited scope for adding more weight to this model and Himself has tried three alterations.

1) Shortening the spring above the front bogie to equalise the contact of the four coupled wheels.

2) As another means to achieve this he has added a very gentle spring between the coupling bar and the base of the tender, again to direct a downward force on the driving wheels.

3) Some very small and thin pieces of lead have been fixed to the baseplate between the driving wheels.

As you can read above, the effect has been quite minimal, but at least we've found something it can do on the layout.

Eventually I suppose we might learn how to do double-headers - or 'consists' as they insist on calling them - using our NCE handsets, but from reading the instructions that looks like a very complicated process which requires many steps to be memorised....