Review Of The Year - Part 4

And so to the final three months of 2021 as we look back on what Himself and I got up to...

October

In the first of these review posts I remarked on how there had been little progress with my prototype for a model of the FR's infrastructure well wagon.

I decided not to wait any longer for a bespoke etched brass part for the durbar plate deck and had a go at seeing if I could cast it in resin instead. 

First, I cast copies of the small piece of brass I had in stock, then placed them side by side to make a large cast sheet which I cut and shaped into pieces to fit onto the wagon, and used them as masters for a final set of castings.

Round about this time Himself was adding more finishing details to the Dinas shunter.

And in a surprise development, he announced the purchase of another Worsley Works body kit for Vale of Ffestiniog, because he'd decided to make a model in its current two-tone green livery, which will look more at home on Bron Hebog than the original National Power livery on our first model.

November

A few weeks later, and number 9 had been painted and was posed for its first pictures on the layout.
 

By this time painting was underway on the Hudson toast rack carriages which featured prominently in the previous blog post covering the summer months.

And the building and painting of Ashbury 21 was completed, too.

December

By the year end, along with apparently the majority of 009 modellers (and a lot of OO ones, too) we were taking delivery of the exquisite Bachmann Double Fairlie models, the existence of which had only just been revealed to a shocked ready-to-run market.

Our choice of a 1960s Earl of Merioneth was completely out of keeping for either Dduallt or Bron Hebog, but the way the model railway market operates these days with limited production runs it's a case of 'you snooze, you lose', so we knew this was going to be our best opportunity to get one at a 'reasonable' price, and I've always had a fascination with this engine, having never had the chance to see it running.

My childhood memories of the FR also revolve around green engines and red carriages, so it's a nice piece of nostalgia for me.

We were intrigued to find out how the a plastic RTR model - complete with coreless motor, flywheels, DCC chip and sound would compare against our kit-built, Mashima-powered, brass Backwoods Fairlies, and filmed the trials for your entertainment.

A pretty conclusive result......so don't expect to see our Backwoods models being retired any time soon.

I rounded off the year by laying the narrow gauge side of the 'test track' project at home.

The early weeks of 2022 will, hopefully, see us getting this wired up and ready to start, ahem, 'testing' things on....

Best wishes to everyone who drops by this blog for the new modelling year. 

Review Of The Year - Part 3

Here we are into the second half of our annual review, and the pace of projects slowed down a little over the summer months, as I suspect it does for most of us.

July

We were fortunate to be able to get hold of one of the last of the batch of 009 Society Hudson toast rack kits, which we made up to represent number 42 on the WHHR.
 

In this picture it is positioned between one of our Dundas 37 / 38 pair and my original scratch built 39 which I must have made in the mid-90s.

Himself got on very fast with the RT models Baguley Drewry shunter kit prototype we obtained from RT Models, having swapped the etch brass fly cranks for some cast brass ones we had spare.

August

I was working away at my version of the toast rack to represent the FR's replica 39, which I was making using a basic resin casting for the body side and then using styrene angle and brass wire to complete.

 

Himself had the idea of using a spare Lynton and Barnstaple bogie van kit to make a freelance FR-style track cleaning wagon.

This has a sprung pad beneath it which wipes the rail heads, and the whole wagon is weighed down with lead, to the extent that it needs to have a locomotive at each end of it to be pushed around the layout.

At my house the 'test track' project had reached the track laying stage.

September

By now now the toast rack 39 carriage had reached the stage where it was almost ready to have a roof added and be sent for painting.

In order to better represent the Dinas shunter, number 9, I produced a styrene master for some alternative bonnet doors and grills which I turned into a casting.

And after a saga which went on for more than a year we finally got hold of etches to make a model of the Ashbury replica 21, which Himself soldered together in short order.

I'll bring the story up to date with a final instalment to be posted on Hogmanay.

Review Of The Year - Part 2

Picking up on our look back at the year, and a lot of what we were up to in the spring revolved around the carriage fleet.

 

April

A long-term ambition had been to get round to buying and assembling a Chris Veitch brass kit for the FR 'sentry' brake van, which makes a very distinctive model full of Victorian character.

Trying our best to keep up with the carriage works in Wales we also set making a miniature version of the Welsh Highland Heritage Railway's new Pickering brake replica.

This project had a false start because, at first, I purchased the Dundas brass kit.

Once Himself put the body together he found there were a few inaccuracies in the dimensions, but more importantly from our point of view, the design made it difficult to paint and to fit an interior.

So we put that one on ice and got hold of the alternative body kit from Worsley Works.

If you read the first part of the Review you'll have seen a picture of the early stages of my commission to scratch build a model of Carnforth buffet car 114.

This was a snap I took just before it was sent off to its new home.

May

A crucial part of the Pickering project was to find a way to depict the fake lamp pots on the roof.

I had a number of goes at scratch building one which could be copied with resin casting.

Himself got round to finishing off the paint job on the 3mm scale ex-GWR 2-8-0 tank engines he'd been building for the Engineering Consultant.

It was just as well we kept in his good books, unknown to anyone, he was about to become a very important person in the top left hand corner of Wales.

In this month I also resolved that the time had come to make a model of the WHR's diesel shunter at Dinas.

The post about my intentions resulted in an offer to try out one of the prototype body kits from RT Models....

June

The paint job on the Pickering brake was one of the more straightforward ones so we didn't have long to wait for a picture of it posed ready for service on Bron Hebog.

With the Pickering built it left the Hudson toast rack carriage as one of the obvious missing vehicles from our WHHR sets.

We managed to get hold of one of the 009 Society kits before they sold out, but I was also keen to have a second model of the FR replica 39 in its current green livery, so the only option left was to scratch build.

This was a fortunate move because it transpired that Winson Engineering wasn't capable of making an exact copy of the original carriage, and there are some fundamental differences between the 1990s version and the original carriages.

My plan was to make a master for the carriage sides in styrene and cast a copy of it - the one in the picture shows me starting to embellish it with extra details in brass and styrene.

And June was also the month when, after much planning, we began installing the baseboard for a permanent dual gauge test track, my first home layout since I was a teenager.

We came up with an 8ft x 5ft board which can be folded into a frame on the wall when the space in the study is required for something more boring, such as *spoiler alert* self-isolating from Covid-19.....

Nadolig Llawen / Merry Christmas

Very best festive wishes to everyone who clicks on this blog from Himself and The Scribe.

The Final Track Pin

I have completed the track laying on the narrow gauge side of the 'test track' layout.

The final section was a couple of sidings into the shed area, for which I had to raid Himself's stash of joiners for the handful I was missing.

It's strange to think that it's exactly a year since my son received his first proper 'train set' for Christmas and now I have a permanent layout in my home for the first time in more than thirty years.

Its *ahem* just for testing, of course, but I've found there are a surprising number things that require testing on a regular basis, and it's a burden I am willing to bear....

The locomotive in the pictures is the only one I have to hand to pose a couple of shots that emphasis the diminutive size of the smallest 009 locos, even though they are to the same scale as the standard gauge ones.

It was purchases a few months ago to use as a donor for its Minitrains F&C outside frame chassis.

I have a idea for a couple of locomotives for the 'test track' using the aforementioned chassis and a 3D printed body designed in the Alps - I will tease you with that and you can try and guess what I have in mind.

Review Of The Year - Part 1

And so we come to the end of another year of lockdown and exhibition-less modelling - for us at least.

It's ironic that the reason I began this blog nearly a million page views ago, was to have a way of showing off what we were doing while we were in the long process of building Bron Hebog, and while Dduallt was retired from shows.

Never could I have imagined we'd face such a sustained period where modelling, once again, became an almost exclusively private activity in your home, with no communal outlet.

It's one reason to be thankful for the opportunities the online world gives us.

Now, as I always do at the end of December, I'm going to take a look back - three months at a time - at some of the highlights of our modelling .

January

I'm afraid to say that there's been little progress since the start of the year on my prototype for the FR infrastructure well wagon,

Since this picture was taken I have found a way to cast the deck pieces in styrene, but it still doesn't have any couplings so has yet to be given any sort of test run.

Himself was busy adding the final pipe runs onto to the boiler unit of the Backwoods NG G16 kit for our model of the freshly restored 130.

And he was also well on the way to lining out a set of three 3mm Hawksworth carriage kits he'd been making as a favour to the Engineering Consultant - a man who was destined for higher things before the year was out!

February

This was the year my son reached an age where he was ready for his first OO layout, and I found my moulding and resin casting skills came in handy fixing a second hand Mainline wagon which had lost one of its sliding doors on one side.

Once the pipe runs were finished on the real locomotive, Himself wasted no time in getting our 130 painted, lined, and sent on a test run on Bron Hebog.

It really looked quite the part!

Another locomotive which was finished off - after many years - was our Mercian Welsh Pony, which looks absolutely stunning matched with the Victorian set.

March

Our James Spooner II project was in danger of running perilously far ahead of the real build as Himself had a play around with the etches to see how the half cab arrangement would work,

This is a model I hope we can expect more updates on in 2022.

Many years after our first model was stolen at an exhibition, Himself finished off his long-term project to make a replacement of the works shunter Harold. (aka, Shitty the Shunter)

At this time I was busy working on a commission for a scratch built model of Carnforth buffet car 114 in styrene.

To be continued...

Big Meets Small

Tracklaying on the narrow gauge side of the 'test track' has continued apace this weekend, and already I'm getting a glimpse of the 'Blaenau Central' effect I was after.

I 've read many articles about the very creative track plans people have come up with for small spaces, but this is unashamedly a traditional oval, planned to function as a 'train set' for my youngest, partially justified by having somewhere to test the running of my NG models, which until now have always had to be dispatched to Himself for proving runs.

So on the NG side we're going to have a simple island platform with a long turnback / storage siding (at the bottom end of the picture) and at the other end a point leading off into a separate shed area alongside the standard gauge steam MPD. 

At the top right, just after the track swings past the goods yard weigh house, there is another point into a short transfer siding where the standard gauge coal wagons can discharge their load into NG wagons waiting below.

My first experience laying 009 track has been fun.

The fishplate joiners for the smaller code rail are much more fiddly to handle that the Code 100 stuff - and even I've had to squint a little at times - but I found I soon got used to it, and some test passes with the half-built Worsley bowsider on Dundas FR bogies suggests all is well so far.

Diversionary Tactics

Something that was proven during the early stages of the Covid pandemic is what marvellous therapy making model railways is to take your mind off all the worry about what might, or might not, be coming down the tracks towards us.

Perhaps its no coincidence, given the current situation with the Omicron variant, that I have decided to start some serious planning, and track laying, on the narrow gauge part of the 'test track'.

I'd held off on this until we'd made some solid progress with the electrics on the standard gauge layout.

Now that around half the point motors are fitted and wired up it seems like the right time to decide on where the two foot tracks will go.

I'm really keen to emphasise the different in size between standard and narrow gauge, which is very apparent when they're in close proximity, just like the effect you get at the headshunt at Blaenau Ffestiniog station

Stuffed And Mounted

A rite of passage for anyone of my generation - by which I mean growing up in the 70s and 80s - was attempting the Blue Peter 'makes', where kids were encouraged to recycling household objects into something useful, or as a means of faking the unobtainable / unaffordable.

They ranged from the infamous fake Thunderbirds 'Tracey Island' to the annual Advent Crown, which in hindsight must have prepared an entire population for a life of potential pyromania.

These projects were never entirely successful in my experience.

I recall when I sat and watched one of the presenters transform a used fabric softener bottle into a convincing statue of a Golden Retriever puppy.

Then I attempted it with my Mum.  

It didn't look anything like the one on the telly.....

So you'll perhaps understand why, when flicking the latest edition of Model Rail magazine, I didn't linger long at an article enticing the reader to create a diorama in a jam jar.

'Been there before....', I thought to myself.

However, I reckoned without the persuasive powers of a young boy, who brandished the same magazine under the nose of Himself and suggested - in the way only 8-year-olds can suggest things to gullible grandparents - that it would make a great wee project for him.

As if he hasn't got enough to be getting on with...

Literally within hours, when I arrived to collect the young persuader, Himself was already well on the way to fulfilling the challenge, with a wooden stand made and some redundant models selected to be sealed away in the glass chamber.

I can't remember where or when we got the loco, or what it's origins are, but it was never part of our running fleet.

Its last useful function was as a test bed for glue 'n' glaze cab spectacles, and Himself has now removed the motor for the purposes of display.

The slate waggons were apparently from our original fleet of Dundas kits, which now have very ropey axle boxes after many laps of Dduallt.

I have to admit it's a very effective little scene, and clearly a viable project with good step-by-step instructions in the mag.

From this we can learn two things.

1) I shoudn't be so cynical about these projects next time.

2) I made a tactical error 40 years ago not getting Himself to watch Blue Peter with me.....

Spare Pickering

I've decided to get a job out of the way which I've been meaning to get sorted for a few months.

You may remember that when we set out to model the Welsh Highland's replica Picking brake our first approach was to use the Dundas brass kit.

Himself got as far as assembling the body before deciding to change tack and switched to the Worsley Works body kit which has a number of perceived advantages.

Among those were the way it's possible to make the floor removable on the Worsley design, and it doesn't have a strengthening lip along the top edge, which was going to make it much harder to insert an interior.

It's still a very nice looking body, however, so the plan was to complete this second one with a view to selling it as a complete, painted carriage.

My part of this arrangement is to fit it out with an interior.

To get over the issue of how to get it in past the prominent lip, Himself had the idea of filing back a short section in the middle, which will enable me to build the interior in three sections which can be dropped in and then slid along into position.

So far I've got the floor sections cut to size and the three compartment dividers fixed into place.

The next job will be to add the bench seats. 

1870 And All That

The arrival of a radical new locomotive in the top left hand corner of Wales always brings the irresistable urge to put it to the test and see what it's capable of.

In 1870 it was the FR's pioneer Double Fairlie Little Wonder and in 2021 it's the Bachmann 009 version which I suspect will be as much of a game-changer for the scale as the real locomotives were for the FR and for narrow gauge railways in general.

This time we didn't bring along Russian Imperial observers - just me with my iphone - but the principle was the same: find a hill and hang the longest train you can on the back and see what it can do.

150 years ago the newcomer Little Wonder was up against the incumbant in the form of Large England Welsh Pony.

For our version we pitted the DCC sound fitted Earl of Merioneth against the eldest of our fleet of Backwoods Miniatures Fairlies, Merddin Emrys.

The results were obvious enough if you watch the video, so I won't explain it all here, but a little bit of background context will be helpful.

The Bachmann model has been pulled apart and some extra weight added in the empty space in the tanks, but unfortunately I forgot to bring along my digital scales for the test so I can't tell you how much was added, or how the RTR model compares to the Backwoods which is 100% brass construction.

What I can say is that despite the alterations it wasn't able to haul much more than the Bachmann model of Livingston Thompson which has not been touched - and will probably be left alone as a result of these tests. 

So are we disappointed?  Not really.

It would have been nice if it could have handled a rake of six, but I'm not sure that the real locomotive - which by the end of its working life was beginning to struggle by all accounts - could take many more than four of the current FR super saloon carriages up the 1:40 grade.

The capablity of the Backwoods models on our layout far exceeds the prototype, indeed, our Merddin was limited only by the output of the motor in this test, requiring full power and feeling distinctly warm to the touch afterwards.

It's more than 25 years old now, and such is the design of the Backwoods kit it's impossible to get the motor out to replace it, so we need to take care of the old girl.

What's more, nether of the models we have bought should ever run on either Bron Hebog or Dduallt if we're being prototypical, so they're strictly for Rule 1 specials.

The green Earl looked very nice on a set of 4 carriages in red livery, and I suspect once we've given the carriage bogies an overhaul it could handle 5 quite comfortably, and LT will look good on a vintage freight or a short Victorian set running a short service from Port to Beddgelert.

What is sure is that as gorgeous as the Bachman models look, the Backwoods Fairlies aren't going to be retired from mainline duties on our layouts any time soon!