Wednesday 14 December 2022

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.



Monday 12 December 2022

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!

Friday 10 June 2022

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.




Sunday 29 May 2022

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.


Monday 23 May 2022

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,



 

Friday 20 May 2022

A Bit Of Bob

It's been so long since I did any narrow gauge model making that I can no longer remember what it was, or when it was I was working on it.

However, the castings for FR super saloon 808 (aka BOB) have been gathering dust on the shelf and pricking my conscience for many months now, so I this week I decided I'd better pull my finger out and do something with them.

Part of the reason for the long delay - aside from a general lack of motivation ever since the Glasgow show - is I had run out of the 60 second superglue I've taken to using for assembling resin parts.

It has the benefit of allowing a decent amount of repositioning while not leaving you waiting for ages for the parts to bond, which I've found has always been the case with the so-called 'rapid' epoxy resins.

However, in one of the small DIY shops in town - and we are fortunate to have two here - I came across a 90 second Araldite product which comes in a double syringe dispenser thing.

I was sceptical whether it would actually bond in 90 seconds - it's more like 490 in my experience - but the join does seem to be less brittle than one made with superglue is.

We shall see how it stands up to all the handling as I fit the floor and roof.


 

Monday 16 May 2022

Adap(ol)tations

There are a few things in the railway modelling scene which defy their age, and some of them are in the old Kitmaster range of injection moulded plastic kits.

Despite its longevity I reckon the footbridge kit is still up there as one of the user-friendly and adaptable you can get.

I first knew it when it was branded as part of the Airfix range, and these days it's under the Dapol banner, and we had one on our large OO gauge layout in the loft.

It was the obvious choice for me to use at the station on the 'test track' because I needed something that wasn't standard sized and could be kit-bashed to link platforms at different heights on the standard and narrow gauge.

As luck would have it I found one in a bargain bucket at the Kyle MRC show in Troon on Saturday where the Greenock club were exhibiting their small Banffshire terminus layout Inverboyndie.

The first change I made was to cut out one of the sections on the upper set of stairs, because if you mount it on a platform the deck of the bridge is so high it would give the passengers vertigo!

The second, more involved, alteration, was to insert an extra segment into the deck to stretch it to the length I needed.

This classic kit has always come with the option of a plain sheet section in the middle, which could be used as an advertising hoarding, but I've never been convinced that it looks very prototypical (although  I'm sure somebody will prove me wrong) so I prefer to have another cross-brace section.

With no spare parts available in the kit I rooted about in my diminishing stock of Evergreen strip and found some stuff that was roughly the same dimensions, and knocked up something that could be used as a master to cast pieces to be inserted between the two halves.

Being slightly impatient, and keen to get the job finished in a day, I made up some RTV rubber with a generous dosage of catalyst which meant the mould was set within a couple of hours and I could quickly cast my two copies with the last dregs of resin I have available.

With that done the first section of the bridge is complete.  Now I need to buy a second kit (probably at full price on the web) to complete the second half stretching across to the NG tracks.


Tuesday 10 May 2022

We're Done

Big projects rarely end with a bang, and so it is with model railway layouts.

Himself has declared construction of Bron Hebog is finished with the insertion of a series of brass speed restriction signs in the appropriate places around the layout.


Like Frank Sinatra I suspect that it's not actually over, and in time we'll no doubt find a few scenic improvements to make.

For example, the temporary toilet blocks at the pedestrian entrance to the station are something he keeps mentioning I need to have a go at.

But for now, at least, that's it signed off.

Next stop is the Perth show in around seven weeks time.

Friday 22 April 2022

Weight Watching

Himself has been tinkering with the prototype flat wagon to try and improve its ability to stay on the rails.

The first runs at the Glasgow show suggested that the all-resin construction is a little on the light side when faced with the kind of complicated point work we have in our fiddle yards.

His idea was to fix a layer of 'liquid lead' shot on the underside of the wagon floor and I'm told initial tests suggest it is an improvement.

Were I to make a second version I think I might experiment with adding some lead shot when I pour the resin into the mould for the base of the floor which is hidden with the durbar plating.

I did consult a friend who is a doctor of chemistry to ask if mixing lead and resin was a foolish idea? 

But his advice was it should be no more toxic than casting with resin already is....

Saturday 16 April 2022

The Last Bowsider

Things have been a little quiet in the world of Bron Hebog these last few weeks - at least on this blog - but we've been quietly working away on various projects in the background and one of them is ready to break cover.

Himself has been painstakingly painting and lining our model of bowsider 18 in its current peak-Victorian livery.

This is a Worsley Works brass kit and the gold lining is all done using the narrowest of the waterside lining and corners range from Fox Transfers.

I think it looks absolutely gorgeous.


This completes our set of vintage bogie carriages, although I suspect Allan Garraway would have had something to say about the order they've been marshalled for the 'works photograph'.

Himself would probably had been summoned to the managerial suite and informed - in no uncertain terms - that this is not an Irish tramway!


Sunday 27 March 2022

(Not) Ready To Run

It wouldn't surprise me if Peco's PR people are a little frustrated this weekend.

(And if they're not, then they ought to be.)

For days my social media feeds have been full of excited narrow gauge modellers receiving their England engines, but as the week wore on the pictures changed from delighted owners posing their new pride and joys on their layouts, to disappointed customers posting images of their purchases arriving in various states of distress and disassembly.

And then our one turned up.


Our Princess had been ordered by a customer as a thank you for a model I'm making for them, and I opened the parcel fearing the worst when I saw how it had been dispatched in an over-size cardboard box with plenty of rattling-around room, even with the protection of bubble wrap.

As you can see, a certain amount of owner reassembly was required - which is putting it mildly!

The cab was detached (which seems to be the most common complaint) and the tender and engine had moved around so much they had become decoupled.

Lifting it from the - obviously inadequate - polystyrene tray I discovered the whistles had also fallen off.

Fortunately the pins securing the coupling rods remained in place - others have not been so lucky.

Perhaps because of decades handling white metal and etched brass locos it's alarming how flimsy and delicate these 009 RTR locos feel - not just this England - and there is genuine trepidation when attempting to re-fit the displaced parts that you're going to further damage the model while handling it.

Fitting the extra knobs which come in the pack, on the sand pots and the front of the tender, can be quite tricky too.

It's a clever design with the plastic sprues which break off once you've inserted the details, but as I found to my cost, if you don't push them in perfectly perpendicular then they can snap off in the wrong place.

I had two which did this and had to be very carefully drilled out,

It's lucky they provide spares.

Now all that's been done I can get on with trying it out on the test track before passing it over for Himself to have a play about with.

One last thought is about opinions I've seen on some social media groups that owners should now cease posting pictures or comments about the state that their models have arrived in, and that we should just be grateful that they've been produced in the first place.

I have to respectfully disagree.

It's not for the consumer to be grateful for any commercial product, let alone one in which a substantial number arrive severely damaged because of packaging which, on the face of it, is not up to the job.

Retailers are replacing them without any quibbles, as far as I can tell, which is as it should be and very good to see.

But there's no getting away from the fact it really shouldn't have happened in the first place.

Tuesday 8 March 2022

Dropsy

Every so often at an exhibitions, if you're listening closely while watching Bron Hebog you'll hear the tell-tale sound of a hand held controller clattering to the floor,  swiftly followed by some imprecations from Himself, either directed at his own clumsiness or someone else's (usually mine...).

The Glasgow show last month was no exception, so he's returned home and decided to try yet another potential solution.

We already have velcro fixings on the back on the controllers, and on the fiddle yard edge, but that's not been successful enough at defeating gravity, so now he's knocked up these neat little shelves where the controllers can be rested.

Keep your ears open at the show in Perth in June to discover whether these have worked or not...

Other items on the post-show snagging list have also been attended to.

The buckled rail in the fiddle yard has been sorted.

We came to the conclusion this was caused not by the heat inside the hall but by the highly efficient ventilation drying out the wood in the baseboards, causing them to shrink slightly over the three days.

He's also replaced the point motors (plural) which failed over the weekend when the throwing pins sheared.

This is not the first time we've had this issue with the Seep / Gaugemaster points, although the salesperson on the Gaugemaster stand at the show swore blind it was the first time anyone had ever mentioned that.

Just us?


Saturday 5 March 2022

Warley, Baby!

I want to begin by thanking everyone who left supportive comments on our social media after the last post about Model Rail Scotland.

I appreciate your forbearance scrolling through while I let off some steam, but after effectively giving up five days (including some precious holiday allowance) and coming out of it feeling your efforts were unappreciated - by a few people you’d hoped would have paid more attention - I think a little strop can be forgiven.

Instead let’s move on with some more positive news, and we were all delighted when an offer that was intimated to us at the SEC was confirmed in writing: Bron Hebog will be going to Warley in 2023!

The Bron Hebog crew and FR volunteers at Warley 2004 with LT while exhibiting Ddaullt

This won’t be first visit to the NEC for Bron Hebog.

Back in 2009 we were asked by the FR to bring along the station boards which were still at a very early stage of development, to complement their display.

The start of the Cwm Cloch bend was there, and the northern entrance to Goat Tunnel was landscaped, but also  still just painted brown plaster.

At the time I recall lots of people commenting that they looked forward to seeing it when it’s finished.

14 years is a long time to wait...I hope they’re not disappointed.

Wednesday 2 March 2022

Second Album Syndrome?

I've had a couple of days to digest our experience at Model Rail Scotland, which was the first time operating Bron Hebog at a show in over two years.

I very much enjoyed the camaraderie of our team over the three days, and it was lovely to receive so many appreciative comments from visitors, both for the layout and for this blog.

But ever since the doors closed, we packed up and came home, I've been left with the nagging feeling that for as many people who loved it - indeed told us it was their only reason for coming along - it seemed as if there were as many who were distinctly unmoved by it, some of them among the railway modelling fraternity.

It's not the first time I've noticed this since we began taking Bron Hebog out, and it's starting to feel like a band struggling to follow up on a chart-topping debut album. 

25 years ago it seemed like Dduallt was feted everywhere it went, but there was a big gap between it coming off the circuit and the follow up appearing.

And like that hit band who spent time locked away in the recording studio, we've gone back on the road and discovered it's just the hard core groupies who remain.

In the days since the SEC I've been chewing over why Bron Hebog doesn't seem to capture the imagination in the same way, and I've settled on a few theories.

It's too big



At 20ft across and 10ft deep it's pretty large for an exhibition layout, and a monster for 4mm narrow gauge, especially for what is, essentially, a single track line with a passing loop.

While the groupies might like looking at an unfolding Welsh upland landscape - and if you're reading this consider yourself part of the fan club! - I suspect many people seeing it afresh see just a dull, barren vastness before them.

Not enough action

This follows on from the previous point. 

Due to its size, the simplest of track layouts, and the tortoise-like nature of the narrow gauge, trains take a long time to traverse Bron Hebog.

It can take 2 minutes for a train to snake its way from the station into the upper fiddle yard, and as a long again for one to return, plus all the fiddle yard time.

In WHR terms we operate an absurdly intensive timetable on the layout, but compared others it must seem woefully pedestrian.

No USP

When it appeared Dduallt was quite a novelty, and it has one thing that make's it cute and memorable - the under / overbridge on the spiral.

Now, like me, you might rather like watching a Garratt and its prototypical long rake of carriages snaking through reverse curves and performing not one, but two, full 180s on a climb up a gradient, through a tunnel and disappearing into a deep cutting, but I'm starting to suspect many people don't share that simple pleasure.

The sound of silence

In the decades since we built Dduallt railway modelling has moved on, and digital tech is now mainstream, but we're still rooted in the silent dc past.

A layout which doesn't arouse your ears as well as your eyes is starting on the back foot.

A level playing field

Once upon a time it really stood out if you were operating a layout entirely stocked with kit built and scratch built stock, or if you'd worked on super-detailing ready to run stock.

Now even the most brilliant modellers - which we are not - will struggle to match what it is possible to buy in a box.

Location, location, location

And last, and by no means least, I suspect this is the effect of moving to the other end of the country.

I think it's fair to say there is much less interest in narrow gauge in Scotland.

We're probably going to have to get used to that feeling of leaving a lot of our audience underwhelmed.




Monday 28 February 2022

England In Scotland

Model Rail Scotland returned at the weekend after a two year pandemic-enforced break, and it brought home to me how 4mm narrow gauge modelling has burst into the mainstream while we've been away.

On trade stands of the 'box shifters' around the giant exhibtion hall in the SEC I kept coming across Bachmann Double Fairlies among all the 00 and N gauge products, and of course the latest version of 'Merddin Emrys' was prominent on the company's own display along with the unpainted samples of the Quarry Hunslets.

The Peco stand, naturally, featured the Small England which we are expecting in the shops imminently.

While a senior figure from Peco was admiring Bron Hebog during the show I remarked to him that they were more than welcome to liberate one of those samples from their display case and bring it over to the layout to show it in an authentic setting.

This was something Accurascale were doing with their brand new Class 55 Deltic models, depositing them on a number of the 00 layouts around the show, which seemed like a pretty smart marketing move to me.

Towards the end of the Sunday (when there were barely any visitors left in the hall.....) the man from Peco returned holding a model of Prince, and so for the first time we - and they - got to see how it performs 'in the wild'.

And the verdict is that I was impressed.

And I'll admit I was wrong to scoff at those traction tyres.

The Bachman Fairlie struggled in the back-to-back test against our Backwoods brass models - as you would expect - but the hard truth is that even with our lightest, styrene-built, carriages it can't pull a prototypical load for a Fairlie up the bank on Bron Hebog.

We hooked the Peco England onto our Victorian set, which includes three brass bogie carriages - a load which would test the Bachmann Fairlie to the limit - and it strolled up the grade with no hint of slip.

Not only that, but it ran very smoothly.  

There was no hint of a stutter on any points or board joints, and it was very controllable.

This was very pleasing because my previous experience of using Kato power, in our KMX Tamper and the Parry People Mover, is that they are very flighty and hard to control, and geared much too high.

It's also been our experience so far running the Bachmann locomotives, that although they run beautifully smoothly they are very sensitive to gradient.

They slow as soon as they start up a hill and are liable to run away on descent unless you are quick to throttle back.

One of the - justifiable - criticisms of the Peco product is that it is not DCC ready out of the box, you will need to get your soldering iron out and re-engineer the model yourself.   

In terms of how it looks, the finish is very shiny, and I would want to calm it down with a satin varnish, for sure.

And there are still those other things that disappoint, like the slide bars which are nothing at all like the prototype, and having a one-size-fits-all nameplate moulding on the tanks which stands out a mile on the Prince version.

So a big thumbs up for the chassis, but I wish they'd just tried a little harder on the body and not settled for the compromises that have been made.

And I still don't know what they were thinking of showing off those dreadful engineering prototypes a few years ago - some things are best left behind closed doors.





Thursday 24 February 2022

Rush Job

It wasn't part of the plan, but a very productive couple of hours at the weekend saw me put the finishing touches to my prototype FR intrastructure well wagon.

These bits included links cut out of a chain to represent the lashing rings on the deck and some brass wire bent to look something like the pipework around the brake cylinder on the Caernarfon end bogie.

At which point I had a very bad thought - I wonder if there's still to give it a lick of paint in time for Model Rail Scotland?  

Himself indicated he was up for the challenge, and so here it is with a rapidly applied interim livery in the infrastructure department's rather drab olive green livery.

At this point the wagon has been test run around the track at my house but has yet to be tried out on Bron Hebog itself.

So whether or not it will play a part in any of the train formations, or just be a static feature in the siding at Beddgelert station, will depend on how it runs when we get the layout set up tonight....




Tuesday 22 February 2022

Last Of The Bowsiders

Having cleaned every wheel on ever item of rolling stock ahead of Model Rail Scotland this weekend - and, no, he didn't count them -  Himself has been engaging in a spot of interior painting.

These are the seat units for bowsider 18 which will slot into the Worsley bodyshell.

The body itself has had the door ventilator hoods added, and the grab handles as well.

This carriage also has fake lamp pots on the roof in its Victorian condition, so I've cast a quartet of those to be fixed onto the roof.

Thursday 17 February 2022

Breeding Buildings

There's not a tremendous amount to report this time.

As far as I know Himself is working through the mountain of wheel cleaning and final checks ahead of setting up at Model Rail Scotland a week from now.

Having finished my marathon casting session to restock Light Railway Stores with wagon kits, I've spend a few enjoyable evenings making up the Meltcalfe building kits my youngest received for his birthday to pep up the 'test track'.

Not only are these really well designed and solid, they are also very adaptable, and much fun can be had kit-bashing.

I've turned the 'small factory' kit into a trio of low relief buildings, slimming down the single storey unit to fit the gap between the folding baseboard and the shelf it rests on, and slicing the mill-style three storey building into two.

On the other side of the circle I've fused two arched bridge kits to create a structure which has given the Engineering Consultant kittens.

I plead Grandfather Rights.

This was all a pleasant change from the casting, but I fear I will be getting the resin out sooner than I anticipated because it appears nearly all the new stock sold out within 48 hours of delivery, which is a blessing and a curse.

That will be what I've had to get on with after we return from Model Rail Scotland.

I still can't get my head around the fact we'll be exhibiting again in 7 days time. 

It's been so long since the last show we took a layout to, because of the pandemic, and it feels strangely unreal and distant still, something that creeps up on you in a rush rather like Christmas does..

I also must confess that I am still mildly cheesed off that Bron Hebog did not merit a mention the long preview article for the show in Hornby Magazine.

It sounds a little big headed, I accept, but I would have hoped by now the layout would have enough of a reputation that it might have been included in what was quite a long list of layouts appearing at the show, especially since the editorial team at the magazine got in contact with us more than a year ago expressing an interest in featuring the layout in their publication.



Sunday 6 February 2022

Tamper Tinkering

Himself is getting very bored of wheel cleaning!

And the bad news is he's only halfway through scraping all the crud off the tyres of the carriage fleet ahead of Model Rail Scotland later this month.

It's worth doing, however, because there's no point cleaning the loco wheels and the track only to leave a fresh mucky trail on the rails with every train that passes.

Whilst testing the locomotives he noticed the KMX tamper wasn't picking up on the front axle of the trailing bogie.

This turned into one of those jobs that snowballed, when wires had to be soldered back into place - and were also pulled out of the connecting plugs - which was all necessary after cleaving the Kato shorty chassis in half to power this unusual contraption.

I've found that it's never performed as well as I might have hoped.

The gearing is so high that it is very flighty, and I've often wondered it it would benefit from having a resistor grafted on to calm it down a bit?

Contact with the rails isn't helped by one of the powered bogie axles being fitted with a traction tyre, which is quite unnecessary for something which is so light and doesn't have to haul anything.

The Parry People Mover is also very speedy, but is rather more reliable as it uses the four wheel tram chassis, but the lack of controllability of these Kato chassis does make me wonder how it is they became so popular for shoving under any number of 3D printed loco bodies?

The answer, I suppose, is simply because they're cheap.




Tuesday 1 February 2022

Limited Clearance

There's not much to report on the narrow gauge front today.

I'm busily casting a batch of the full range of resin wagon kits for Light Railway Stores - which is going to take at least the rest of this week - and Himself is fully occupied servicing all the locos and ploughing his way through a long stretch of wheel cleaning on all the rolling stock ahead of Model Rail Scotland in a few weeks time.

In the meantime, it was my son's birthday at the weekend and among his presents were a couple of Metcalfe arched bridges which are part of the plan for the 'test track' so I've been having a little play with them to see if we can make them fit where we'd intended them to go.


OO in a confined space certainly challenges the kinematic envelope, and to position these bridges on one of the 2nd radius curves - spanning three standard gauge tracks and the narrow gauge circuit - inevitably mean's Ffestiniog-style clearances against the side walls.

There's a respectable amount of daylight when the Mark 1's pass through but the real test will be when I borrow a Mark 3 from Himself and see whether that will squeeze through...

Wednesday 26 January 2022

Pick Your Battles

A number of unfortunate motorists in North Wales know from bitter experience over the last two and a half decades that if you pick a fight with a Garratt there's only going to be one winner.

Thus the many level crossings around the Beddgelert area are festooned with bilingual signage warning of the dangers of failing to stop and take a good look at whether there's 62 tonnes of articulated locomotive heading your way.

It's details like that which really lift a scene on a layout and, I hope, sometimes make you look twice to check if it really is a model.

Himself has finished this painstaking task by planting all the poles around Cemetery Crossing which is just to the south of Goat Tunnel.

Careful observation and a lot of detailed photographs on many research visits have paid dividends.


Monday 24 January 2022

Model Rail Scotland Debuts

Excitement is building ahead of us taking Bron Hebog to Model Rail Scotland in Glasgow in a month's time, which will be our first show in more than two years.

While I was thinking about that the other day it occurred to me that there must be a number of models we built in that time which have not been seen in public yet (aside from on this blog and our social media).

I stopped counting when I got to 15.

So I thought you might like a reminder of what's among the new stuff.

The steam engines include NGG/16 130, which is all new, and in the last two years Himself has got round to painting Lyn and Welsh Pony.


The diesel fleet has been bolstered by the recent arrival of our green Vale of Ffestiniog, and the duplicate of Conway Castle in the livery in which it served with distinction on WHR construction trains and as the Dinas shunter for many years.


Now, we also have the locomotive which replaced it, the big yellow Baguley number 9, and at the other end of the spectrum the former Boston Lodge gofer Harold.

New carriages include 2048 and the fourth of the opulent observation cars Gwyrfai, as well the much less salubrious Ashbury replica 21 and the Pickering brake for the WHHR excursions / incursions. 


If Rule One is enacted at any point over the three days at the SEC you might also be lucky to see some of our new tow-along amusements including a derelict Livingston Thompson on ambulance bogies, and a freshly un-plinthed Princess.



Both are completely out of era - being 1980s representations - and completely out of place on the Welsh Highland section, but you never know...

More prototypical is a deconstructed NGG/16 loaded onto DZ flat wagons for transfer between Boston Lodge and Dinas.

This little tableau is a consequence of us being offered the chance to buy the remains of a Backwoods kit which someone made such a Horlicks of building that the best thing to be done with it was recover any parts which could be used as spares and turn what was left into a conversion piece.


Saturday 22 January 2022

Stop, Look, Listen

The fact that they're too often ignored by road users (and pedestrians)  isn't an excuse for not including the veritable forest of warning signs which surround the modern level crossing.

Himself has been very busy reducing, printing, cutting and sticking for the last week or so to populate the areas around the three crossings on Bron Hebog - including the one subsequently named Bron Hebog after the model provided the inspiration to an operating department puzzling how to differentiate the two crossings on the same lane leading out of Beddgelert.

(That's the one furthest away at the top of the picture.)

Himself assures me that all the signs are faithfully bilingual, too, using photographs of the real things, not a generic product.

I do think this view up the lane - I think it's one of the best on the layout.


Thursday 20 January 2022

The Green Vale

Apart from a few etched brass finishing touches - such as windscreen wipers and nameplates - our second Vale of Ffestiniog is ready for action.


The body has been given a coat of varnish and the glazing fitted.

Tests runs on the upper part of Bron Hebog show this Funkey is able to haul a reasonably prototypical 6 carriage rake up the hill without doing its transmission a mischief.


Given the lead times on custom etched plates I doubt it will be named in time for the Glasgow show at the end of next month but it will certainly be getting a run on the layout.

Tuesday 18 January 2022

Home For Retired Rolling Stock

Having powered up the narrow gauge test track at the weekend I soon found I exhausted the entertainment value in running a light engine around a circuit, or pushing wagons with no couplings (yet).

The obvious solution was to raid the collection of rolling stock at Himself's place which is not usually required as part of our exhibition fleet.



A number of years ago I sold off most of the redundant carriage stock (which had been replaced by improved models) to help fund the purchase of the last pair of NGG16 kits from Backwoods Miniatures as the business was wound up. 

However, I was careful to keep hold of models which will allow us to run Dduallt at its nominal date of 1988.

I only need a few items to make up a token train for the 'test track' while I build up my own stock for it.

So in the picture above you can see, from left to right:

* Our first model of bogie brake 10 shown in the all-green livery in which it was first restored to service, from the excellent Dundas kit.

* Carriage 16 in as per 1988 red livery which I scratch built in styrene donkeys years ago.  This has been replaced in the exhibition fleet by a brass Worsley body in Col. Stephens era green and red.

* Carriage 17, from the Langley brass kit. Our very first bowsider  (in fact, our first brass carriage) showing it in 1988 'Mountain Prince' livery, but with all the panelling detail which is not strictly correct.

* Bug Box 3 is from a Chris Veitch brass kit. It's a lovely wee model, but it's always been out of era for our layouts in it's all-over red livery.  (Would look lovely behind the new green Earl of Merioneth though...)

* Jerry M is a Chivers white metal kit running on an unaltered Ibertren chassis.   At the time we built it the idea was it could masquerade as Lilla for those who couldn't tell the difference. Since the arrival of the Robex print for Lilla it has been made redundant.

Also out of shot is our first Dundas model of quarryman's carriage 8, with the wood panelling smoothed over with filler to show it as it was in 1988 with its plywood-faced bodysides.

It's nice to see them getting a run again, anyway.




Sunday 16 January 2022

It Really IS A Test Track

I've had this weekend marked in the diary since Christmas as an opportunity to make some significant progress on the electrics on the 'test track.'

I'm pleased to report that in a full-day session yesterday Himself and I managed to install and wire up all but one of the remaining point motors on the standard gauge side, and were prevented from completing that only by the need for an unforeseen additional switch.

We got that done so efficiently that there was time to get some power into the narrow gauge circuit and sidings.

I've always used inverted commas when referring to the test track, because I fully expect it to morph into more of a home layout project in the fullness of time.

However, I would like to place on record that one of the first things I did when it was wired up was to test propel the well wagon around the circuit, as until now I have not yet been able to do any more than push it by hand along a short section of straight track.

And the test track immediately proved its worth because I discovered the bottom edge of the frames below the axle boxes on one bogie needed a little attention from the file when they fouled on the points.




Thursday 13 January 2022

Bits Of Bob

One of the best things about resin casting is that once you've made the masters (and the moulds) it's delightfully quick to turn out most of the key parts you need to make up a carriage or wagon.

The body shell for 808 was poured and cured in the time it took for me to cook and serve up the kids tea a few evenings ago.

This is the point, however, where progress stalls to the speed of any other scratch build project.

The castings will need their windows cleared of flash and tidied up very neatly before I can think about gluing it together into a box, and then it will need a floor / chassis cut from thick styrene sheet to help keep it all together.

I shan't be rushing ahead too much on this project in case I come up against some detailed differences with the real carriage, with an update expected from the carriage works any day soon.

Tuesday 11 January 2022

2001: A Narrow Gauge Odessy

I noticed by chance the other day that this blog has reached the 2000 post milestone - in fact this is number 2001 - which seems like something worth marking.

Having never been a diary-keeper I'm quite chuffed at being able to maintained a regular stream of updates over the last 10 years and more.

It thought it might be amusing to have a look at the stats and see which of the posts have proved the most read over the years.

By part the most popular single post is one that's relatively humdrum about our indecisiveness on a colour for WHR Garratt 143 which has received more than two and a half thousand hits.


The figures are far higher for the pages and advice articles - boosted, no doubt, by the number of photographs in each piece.

The most-read section here is the Model Of The Week Archive, which was something I was doing for quite a while where I wrote a post explaining the background of an individual model, and collected them in one monster thread.


That section along is responsible for more than 10 thousand page views.

The other one which has done really well is a 'how to' I wrote describing my technique for making carriage sides using styrene strip and sheet.


This piece is also getting close to five figures for page views.

It seems a lot of people have read it, but so far as I can tell very few seem to have been tempted to try the technique for themselves.

Oh well, as long as you all enjoy the read, anyway.

Sunday 9 January 2022

Class Divisions

I walked into my modelling den the other day, fully intending to look out the superbarn moulds and make a start on 'Bob', when my gaze fell upon the empty brass shell of bowsider 18, and my conscience got the better of me and I decided I'd better get this job finished before starting on something new.

This will be the last of our second generation of bowsiders.

Our existing model of 18 is one of the Langley kits, finished in the very basic maroon and ivory 'Mountain Prince' livery of the late 1980s - although it is strictly speaking not accurate because the carriage features the full panel detail which had been pulled off 17/18 as an economy measure all through the '70s and '80s.

This version - a Worsley body etch - will complete our rake of Victorian bogie carriages showing 18 as it runs today in its plum and off-white livery.

When it went through (*edit) privately-funded restoration in the HLF workshop it also regained a 2nd class compartment, although in effect this functions as standard class in service today.

As a result I need to be very accurate lining up the compartment wall at the bottom end because it has to hide behind a very thin pillar, whereas there's a nice chunky panel either side of the 1st class compartment which hides a multitude of sins.

I'm also reminded that 18 also runs with the fake lamp pots on the roof, these days, so have to try and find the mould I used for the resin ones on 19.