Review Of The Year - Part 3

July

And so to the second half of 2018 where there was much excitement at the arrival of our first ready-to-run model, the Bachmann 590 Baldwin.

I've never made any secret of my enthusiasm for the mainstream manufacturers discovering 009.

The intensity of the debate online around this has been second only to Brexit, but unlike the latter subject I can see only positives in this development for our scale.

I'm hugely excited about the next project in the pipeline, the small quarry Hunslets (especially the cab-less versions) and for what this innovative firm might decide to do next.

In this month I began work on a project which had been on the back burner for a while, to make models of the hybrid BZ wagons made at Boston Lodge for infrastructure trains on the FR.

I decided to make masters and cast them in resin, even though only two have been produced so far and they are far from identical.

July was also the month where, quite by chance, I discovered that the last two Backwoods NGG16 kits produced were available to buy.

We had to dig deep to avert the possibility of them being offered for sale in an online auction, but we'd been looking for a number of years for the opportunity to complete our Garratt fleet and it was too good an opportunity to miss.

August

The first of the BZ wagons had been cast and was being put together.

The fold-flat end doors are a right pain because I had to scratch build the triangular support brackets in styrene, which was a very fiddly job.

Himself had been putting together a Chivers kit of a tiny Hunslet diesel to replace our model of Harold, the Boston Lodge shunter, which had been stolen when we were exhibiting Dduallt in Leeds a number of years ago.

And to have a bit of fun for when we took Bron Hebog to show at the Welsh Highland 'Super Power' weekend I decided to add a very contemporary scenic feature - a reminder of the day when a driver tried his luck racing a Garratt to Bron Hebog crossing - and the Garratt won!

September

Himself had taken an executive decision to invest in panoramic photographic backscenes for the show at Dinas.

The result was very effective indeed!

We had a fabulous time - as we always do - showing Bron Hebog in the goods shed, this time in its finished state.

The Lynton and Barnstaple Baldwin Lyn was the star attraction on the railway and Himself pulled out the stops to get the Backwoods kit we had been given running.

Once again we couldn't resist being cheeky and double-heading it with Lyd knowing that the real locomotives were not being allowed anywhere near each other that weekend.

Back home the production line of superbarns continued with a start being made on assembling number 120.

Review Of The Year - Part 2

April

By this point my Bro Madog kit-bash had got to the point where the body had been assembled and was ready to be primed.

The main change to the carriage was creating the toplight windows by cutting out solid plastic and inserting new pillars and a top rail.

I was pleased that you really couldn't see the join.

Himself was tackling the biggest outstanding scenery job which was lining the walls of Cutting Mawr.

Some of it was done with genuine pieces of Welsh rock, although most were copies I'd cast in resin.

He also set about fitting a basic backscene to hide the goings-on in the fiddle yards from view.

May

I had started work on a second WHHR vehicle for a new rake, and again it involved a kit bash.

The ex-VoR brake van has changed a lot from the version with matchboard sides which is made by Dundas.

What I decided on was using the chassis and the very bottom section of the body (showing the frames) and making the rest out of styrene.

It was coming along well.

Himself had done a quite remarkable job with the gold leaf lining on a second vintage carriage - this time number 15.

And I was busy starting work on yet along superbarn, this time casting the parts for what would become 120.

June

This was a very big month for us as we took Bron Hebog out on the road for the first time in a couple of years - and what a road trip it was, all the way to Norfolk for a one day show!

The Dad's Army section of the museum building is certainly up there as one of the more unusual venues we've exhibited at, but they looked after us very well indeed all weekend.

It'd got the WHHR brake van ready to the point where it had been painted in BR blue, just like the real one, to wind everyone up.

Unfortunately I had yet to get my hands on some of the famous double arrow transfers to complete the look.

We'd had a few issues with track alignments during the show. It was nothing major but it's still and irritation when you're exhibiting, so Himself decided to invest in some additional  measures after we'd returned home.

These precision engineering dowels don't come cheap, but hopefully it will be money well spent.

Hole In the Wall

A challenge for all layouts which have a distinct scenic area and a fiddle yard is how to make the break between the two.

Typically this is done with an overbridge or a tunnel.

In this respect Bron Hebog is quite unusual because we have our tunnel in the middle of the layout and you get to see both ends.

What we don't have is an obvious scenic break at either the Portmadog or the Rhyd Ddu end of the layout.

I suppose at the southern end we could have employed the Bryn Y Felin road bridge but that would have been stretching things a bit.

So instead we just have the line disappearing into the trees - just as we do at the upper end as well.

The difficulty we had was that the entrance to the fiddle yard was just too much of an obvious mouse hole, so we've tried to disguise it with a few carefully placed trees, although we can't have too many otherwise there's a danger that the board will no longer mate with its opposite number for storage and transport.

There's always a compromise in this game.

Backscene Bandwagon

Himself has taken an executive decision that a plain background to the layout wasn't good enough and surprised me last week by announcing that he's invested in a batch of self-adhesive photographic backscene sheets.

These are becoming quite common now and the ones he's picked are produced by International Models.

It's a compromise, of course, because the scene is not exactly the same as the slopes of Moel Hebog which rise above the Beddgelert S-bends but I have to say I think it looks effective enough in the shot above.

One of the things which pleases me most is the shades blend in, which is always the concern I have with using these type of backscenes.

What's for sure is it's certainly way better than anything we could create ourselves with a paintbrush.

It may be in due course that an opportunity presents itself for a more authentic, bespoke solution, but this will certainly do the job for going to Dinas in a fortnight.

Welsh Weather

So in the end we poked around in the collection of old paint cans, as you do, and thought we'd give this a try.

I think it'll do the job for now.

It's very neutral and to my eye at least gives the impression of a dull, overcast day.

(Not that you ever get many of those in the top left hand corner, of course....)

Scene But Not Seen

Himself has finished the woodwork for the backscene.

That was the easy bit!

The difficult bit is deciding how to decorate it and I don't mind admitting that we're both in a bit of a quandary.

What sort of colour or effect should we be going for?

Any advice or suggestions are most welcome because the situation here, frankly, is that one of us is colour blind and the other hasn't progressed much in the artistic department from drawing stick men in playschool.

There's the potential to ruin with some very subtle scenic work on the layout with a backscene that sticks out like a sore thumb.

Hmmmmm.

Away From Prying Eyes

The task of completing the pre-exhibition snagging list continues.

(You have got Narrow Gauge East at Bressingham at the start of June in your diary, haven't you?)

The job this weekend was starting to build a removable backscene screening off the fiddle yard at the back of the layout.

I have mixed feelings about backscenes.

On the one hand, as a visitor to exhibitions I quite like to be able to see what goodies they've got lined up in the sidings to whet the appetite.

On those occasions when you are the exhibitor, though, I also feel the opposite urge to want to keep things hidden.

Running a layout is like putting on a performance and you want our audience to be concentrating on what's being played out on the stage, not watching the actors waiting in the wings.

You also feel you'd like to maintain the element of surprise about what's coming down the tracks next.

With neither of us having a particularly artistic bent we're not about to attempt to paint a scene onto the plywood.

In the long term I suppose we could look into getting a panoramic picture of the slopes of Moel Hebog printed out and pasted onto it, but for the moment Himself will most likely just give a wash of paints to represent a untypically overcast Welsh sky.