In The Beginning

While I was searching through Himself's collection of slides a few days ago, looking for pictures of Earl of Merioneth, I came across some images that I forgot we took of the early stages of construction of Dduallt.

At a guess I would date these pictures as 1992, so pretty much a quarter of a century ago.

As you can see, by this stage he had finished creating the trackbed, which was a very precise operation with the gradient on the spiral, and the track had be wired up and was being tested.

The rolling stock is worthy of note.

This was in the early days of my scratch building carriages in styrene so some of the trains are formed of very weighty white metal GEM kits and the brass Langley bowsiders.

It was also the era before the Backwoods Miniatures kits came along and so our Fairlies tottered along with tiny wheels from an adapted Bachmann diesel chassis sitting beneath a white metal Langley body kit.

The model of the Earl was a fine kit-bashing effort by Himself with the tanks formed from styrene and the smokeboxes and chimneys sourced from Parkside Dundas kits for Linda and Blanche.

The Earl is still with us - sitting on a shelf in Himself's study - but Merddin was donated as a gift to an FR luminary. I think of it now and then and hope it is being well cared for.