Cambrian Coast Icons - DMUs

It's well known that nostalgia is in the eye of the beholder.  

In whatever subject we are interested in there will be a period which dominates our memories, and I suspect for most of us that will have coincided with childhood, or when we first experienced whatever this thing is.

So for me, and the Cambrian Coast Line, it's the early to mid 1980s.

I don't think anyone could ever claim it was a golden age - far from it - but if you looked closely it was possible to see the relics of it, such as the last knockings of mechanical signalling.

It was, however, definitely a time when the Cambrian was on its uppers, with Barmouth Bridge closed to all except DMUs - and even then I can remember seeing them absolutely crawling across because of the severe speed restriction, probably moving not much faster than the marine worms were burrowing into the timbers!

I believe before this I can remember seeing a loco-hauled train once, or maybe twice.  A clear memory of a Class 25 with - I think - a breakdown crane at Barmouth station.

So, a young enthusiast on their summer holidays existed on a diet of DMUs, and bread and butter was definitely the Met-Cam class 101.

I always found them the most pleasing of the 1st generation designs on the eye. 

The nicely proportioned front windows in the driving cabs, no great lump of a headcode box above, the chrome window frames, and not being festooned with doors like the high-density suburban units.

So a 101 was always going to be one of the 'anchors' in our Cambrian stock list for Minffordd, and we've gone with the Bachmann version as opposed to the Lima / Hornby offering on account of their very smooth drive, although I am aware that a few proportions were overlooked when the body tooling was designed, but I can't say that I've ever really noticed.

One day I would like to find - or if I'm forced to, repaint - and example sporting the brand-new Rail Blue livery to illustrate the changing scene of our 1960s period, but they seem to be like hen's teeth to get hold of.

I do believe it is important to have variety on a layout, so much as I like the 101's I'm reluctant to run only them.

Our other DMU, then, is a Bachmann Class 108, which were less frequent on the Cambrian, although I have seen plenty of photo evidence.

Were we modelling the era of my childhood, in the 1980s, we could get away with a kaleidoscope of different units.

I can recall on summer Saturdays seeing a wide variety of units from Tyseley and Chester strung, quite often running horrendously late on account of having to pull up many times at the short halt platforms on the coast line.

The one design of unit I would really love to have for Minffordd would be the other one which really sticks in my mind from my younger years when I witnessed the last days of the Park Royal 103s.

Tim Green on Flickr

I would dearly love to see one of the manufacturers add this to their range, it's definitely top of my OO wish list!

Finishing Touches

It's a very FR trait to leave a construction project ever-so-slightly unfinished and we like to keep up the tradition in model form!

It is only now, four months after the first exhibition appearances, that the Cambrian station buildings have gained their decorative finials.

These buildings, of which no trace remains today, were a interesting challenge to research and scratch build for the layout and something I think I may return to in fuller post sometime.

I must say, that bench in front of the ground frame cabin (not a signal box) does look a very inviting place to while away some time on a summer afternoon.

What it must have been to have rested here at this summit and heard the sharp bark of GWR engines forging their way up the banks on either side!

It’s something I’m too young to have experienced but if  you still have those memories clear in your mind it would be lovely for you to share them with us in the comments below.

The Most Important Building

For small layout Minffordd has quite a lot of buildings on it.

Some of them are large, some are very small. 

For some of them their purpose is quite obvious (the Cambrian station building for example) while others may can be a touch misleading - such as the 'signal box' which is not, because it doesn't control any signals!  (It's technically a ground frame.)

The one I'm going to write about in this post is probably the most likely to be overlooked when the layout is being watched at exhibitions because it is tucked away at rear of the scene with it's back to the viewer.

But the Minffordd Weigh House is probably the most important building in the scene.

When the FR was in its heydey, making enormous profits carrying slate down from the mountain quarries, every waggon was to be weighed whether it was heading for the port or down into the exchange yard here at Minffordd.

This elegant stone building contained two weigh machines and the waggons were checked on the move as they passed over the tables on the 'Mineral Line' in front.

Along with virtually all the buildings on Minffordd this one was scratch built in styrene.

It's actually the second model of the building I've made.

The first was done as a gratis commission as a presentation gift to P-Way boss Fred Howes for his retirement a number of years ago, because in the modern era the building found a new use as his office.

On Fred's model I scribed the detail of all the dressed stone on the front and sides, and the rough blocks which make up the rear wall.

For the Minffordd example, where the front is normally only seen by the operators and the model is at least six feet away from the nearest paying eyes, I decided I could probably get away with embossed styerne sheet with a rough approximation of the pattern.

And some rough stone sheet for the rear elevation.

Something common to both models is that the distinctive pointed slates had to be cut by hand, row by row, in this case using thick paper card with the pattern printed on to be cut with the tip of a blade.

The finishing touch is some saw-tooth barge boards which I cast in resin from a styrene master.

In case you wondered, the Weigh House can longer weigh waggons - the tables were removed in 1976  - but they were never thrown away, and the FR Heritage Group has an appeal running to raise funds to use them in a recreation of the railway's original weigh house at the back of the old Boston Lodge Engine Shed, which was superseded by the Minffordd building.

It will make a fascinating exhibit as part of the official tours of Boston Lodge Works you can book to join and it help contextualise the very reason the works, and the railway was built.

If you would like to help make this happen you can donate here.

Fiddle Yard Expansion

With more than a month to spare before our appearance at Model Rail Scotland the great news is that Himself has completed the project to expand the capacity of our OO Cambrian line fiddle yards on Minffordd.

During our first test exhibitions at the end of 2025 we discovered the limitations of the original design which showed how you can sometimes get 'railroaded' by sticking to your first concept and not seeing new opportunities as a project develops.

Initially I had imagined the Cambrian part of the layout would have a very limited range of rolling stock, perhaps just a couple of DMUs and a Class 24 with some goods wagons, in which case three or four short storage loops behind the backscene would be sufficient, because space was definitely at a premium.

As so often happens there was 'mission creep' during the build and we found ourselves acquiring more OO stock.  A Collett Goods here, a Standard Class 2 there, and, ooh, a Manor would be very Cambrian!

Soon enough we found ourselves wanting to run loco-hauled passenger trains and exhibitions became an exercise in juggling space and very careful parking of trains so they didn't foul the points at either end of the loops.

Over a few pints at night while were were away exhibiting Bron Hebog in Manchester just before Christmas one of our operating crew floated an idea of simple genius, inspired by the way he uses sidings on his layout as a surrogate fiddle yard to run trains effectively end-to-end on a loop-the-loop transit.

It dawned on us it was maybe possible to do something similar on Minffordd and more than double our capacity to store longer, loco-hauled trains.

I dubbed this project the 'Thompson Undertaking' in his honour!

As ever, it was up to Himself to work out how to turn these alcohol-induced brainwaves into practical solutions.

He identified there was space in front of the existing narrow gauge fiddle yards to add a thinner shelf below, and support it on a bracket fixed on the existing legs.

The big question was whether we were going to need to relay a lot of the existing fiddle yard loops in order to add some junction points.

We were in luck!  There was just enough space to squeeze in a Y-point, and the radius of the curves were a perfect match.

One compromise is that these extra points are hand-operated by switches and brass connecting rods, rather than being added into the rotary switch diode matrix which routes trains into the four main loops - that would just be too much extra work and head-scratching!

Something very similar was done at the other side and each line divides into two sidings which can each hold a loco and four carriages, or perhaps a long freight train, as you can see in the photo at the top of this post.

We can have three long trains on the layout with a spare road for one to terminate in after a trip around the circle.

We've also added an extra dead end storage road behind the loops which will give us even more options and hopefully mean we can keep nearly all our rolling stock on track and not have to keep lifting stuff on and off the rails to switch up the train formations.

Glasgow, next month, will be the big test!  Details in the Exhibition Diary.

Model Train Movies

As part of the process of reawakening this blog from its recent slumber I've updated the page featuring videos of our layouts filmed over the years.

There's some cracking footage which has been lovingly filmed, edited and posted online.

Some of the films are fifteen minutes long, and you could certainly lose a happy hour watching all of these films in their entirity.

You'll find them all on the Layout Videos page.

So, what's next?

One of the great things about model railways as a pastime is that you are often eagerly anticipating the future - the next item of rolling stock you want to buy or build, the next exhibition, or dreaming up plans for a new layout.

That's where we find ourselves in 2026, excited about taking Minffordd out for a first full year of exhibitions - check out the diary page - and also turning our minds to what we could do with our collection of Welsh Highland stock.

Bron Hebog is effectively mothballed since its potentially final outing to Manchester just before Christmas, but we have a magnificent collection of exquisite Backwoods Garratts and nowhere to display them or run them.

It would be shame if they just stayed in a stock box never to be admired again.

So we're developing a plan for a smaller, more manageable, more easily-transportable, but still authentic WHR-themed layout.

We were looking for a location and design which can fulfil a number of criteria. 

* It needs to be as compact as possible, however...

* We need to be able to run full-length WHR service trains  

* We want it to be an accurate model of a real location

* It needs to have genuine scenic breaks - nothing too contrived.

On a line as wild and open as the WHR is for much of its run is the presence of natural scenic breaks, such as over bridges or tunnels, was going to narrow down the possibilities.

For a while I had mused about the possibilities of doing something based on Aberglaslyn where there is a very short stretch of open line between two of the tunnels.

It would be a very simple run-past layout, with the train completely dominated by the scenery.

However, the ratio between scenic layout and fiddle yard to hold those full-length trains would be very unfavourable, and it might end up being just as much of a headache to transport as Bron Hebog.

It also might be a little bit too simple to hold interest at an exhibition?  Once you've seen one Garratt pass through with a long train of carriages you've seen them all, haven't you?

And so my mind turned to places along the route where there are overbridges within quick succession, and one of those, I realised, was Dinas South Yard.

This location has the advantage that it is not just plain single track.  

It includes the locomotive shed and the head shunt, so you can have more of your stock out on display as well as running a wide range of trains not limited to run-of-the-mill passenger services but also engineering and gala specials.

Not only can trains run past the scene but you can have light engines shunting on and off shed, or fiddle about with unusual wagonry in the head shunt.

At the southern end of the scene is one of the classic NGWGR arched bridges which look almost like some kind of mouse hole in a skirting board for the Garratts to squeeze through, which would look really good.

The formation here is on a curve, so it would not be a regular rectangular layout, either.

Our model railway club in Greenock showed us the way with a very creative baseboard design for the OO layout Inches set in wild country on the Lanarkshire / Ayrshire border by having the layout arranged in a hexagon shape with three of the boards scenic and the other three a space where storage loops fanned out.

I though this might work well for Dinas as a 2/4 arrangement and printing out a scale plan of the site showed it would fit with very little tweaking of the track bed required.

The idea has met an enthusiastic reception at the club so I'm hopeful this is a project which may progress later this year.

Here We Go Again

I note it has been nearly two years since I posted in this blog, and my return here today is because I reminded myself that it's coming up to four years since I got so mightily pissed off that I began easing back on the content I was posting.

The trigger, you'll remember if you were reading back then, was the almost total disinterest shown in Bron Hebog when we took it to one of the largest shows in the UK on the first outing since the Covid lockdowns, and just days after the Russians launched their war against Ukraine.

So it was stressful time, it's fair to say.

Next month we return once again, this time with Minffordd.

In between we also returned with Dduallt, collecting one of the minor awards, which only served to confirm that my thoughts about Bron Hebog were probably correct, as least so far as tastes in model railway layouts in the northern half of this island go.

The concept behind Minffordd includes a lot of that learning. 

Here, the layouts which connect with the public need a lot of these aspects about them:

British outline standard gauge - not necessarily OO but it's obviously dominant.

Aspirational ready-to-run rolling stock - there aren't many visitors who know enough to coo over your kit-building or scratch building.

DDC and especially sound - people love a gadget.

Plenty of movement on the layout.

A quirky track plan doesn't hurt either.

Minffordd unashamedly ticks all those boxes, and more, but it also does so while being completely prototypical and providing enough of the wow factor for the vanishingly small number of exhibition-goers who know their narrow gauge and appreciate a painstaking recreation of the FR in the 1960s.

We have a few show-stopping curiosities, too, like the 'how did you get sound in that?' Simplex and Britomart, and our latest addition, a speaker-fitted Wickham p-way trolley for the Cambrian Coast.

We have also taken learnings from our first two exhibition outings and more than doubled the OO fiddle yard capacity with two auxiliary storage areas which give an end-to-end option for running more of the longer formations than the very short loops allowed for.

So despite still feeling pissed off about 2022 (I can't deny it) I am excited about going back next month with something I hope will float some boats a little more.