2019 - Part 4

We rounded off the year with a first showing of Bron Hebog in Scotland at our own club's show in Greenock and with the debut of our new set of WWHR carriages.

Unfortunately only Russell is able to pull the whole lot up the hill. Gelert and the Baldwin have to have the load reduced....

130 is really starting to come together, although once again Himself is waiting for the real one to be finished so we can be completely sure about all those little details.

I'd finally got round to making a start on the second WHR Pullman observation car which is being given the name Gwyrfai.

November

Progress on the carriage has not been rapid but did get most of a day to myself to start adding the beading to the side pieces.

Himself decided that after many years broken on a shelf it was time to get our original Blanche back into running order, a major operation which required the strip down of the chassis and replacement of a gear wheel.

He was also getting on with the very intricate task of lining out the FR Observation car 152, the completion of which has taken most of 2019.

December

To bring the review up to date, as you've been reading in recent weeks I've been making an effort to complete the first model of van 51, which has sat for many months looking like this.

And Himself celebrated the completion of 152 with a line up of our three Pullman obs, hopefull to be joined by a fourth next year.

Thanks for reading our updates during 2019 and we look forward to sharing more of our modelling with you in 2020.

The Old Ladies

Our old Blanche is back together and has had a little test run with her sister on the Bron Hebog fiddle yard.



She still needs her fly cranks painted red but it’s great to see the old girl in action again after 8 years inactivity.

Ladies Falsies

The final stage of rehabilitating our Blanche is to give the lady back her modesty with a set of outside frames.

In this case she's faking it, because the outside frames are just pieces of very thin, carefully-shaped, styrene which slip between the wheels and the those iconic red fly cranks.

The original ones have long since gone brittle and cracked so Himself has made up a new set.

The reason we went for plastic was to be sure that there could never be any issues with them shorting out against the frame or the wheels.

Blanche Rides Again!

I dropped hints at the weekend on the Bron Hebog social media feeds that things were about to happen with our old Blanche.

This is our original model, made from a Dundas white metal kit with an Ibertren chassis adapted with outside fly cranks, which failed quite spectacularly at an exhibition around 8 years ago.

It has been replaced in service by a Backwoods kit and has sat on a shelf for all that time since.

Rummaging around in his chassis bits box for gear wheels for the Garratt seems to have prompted Himself to take a look at getting it going again.

The thing which stopped the engine was the front 'clock side' fly crank falling off the axle, but the underlying fault was with a gear wheel which was going out of mesh and affecting the quartering,  putting the motion under strain with the inevitable result.

Putting it all right has been quite involved.

Himself has had to make up a new front axle and bearing, and change the gear wheel which drives it.

To do that he had to replace the stub axle the gear revolved on which has broken off in the old chassis - perhaps the root cause of the original failure?

He tells me that there is now noticeably less slop in the front axle and it doesn't disengage the drive gear.

That things are getting a little worn is no a surprise given than it put in 20 years hard service on Dduallt!

The cranks have been refitted and quartered, and the next job is to cut some new fake side frames from styrene as the old ones have gone brittle and are broken.

Sisters

I’ve not had a chance to do any modelling this week, so for today’s update here are a few more pictures from last month in Greenock.

Linda and Blanche spent most of the weekend coupled together hauling FR sets.

Both these locos are built from Backwoods kits which were not without their faults.

The tender for Blanche, as supplied, was too short and the domes too small, both of which we found work arounds for.

We finished our Linda in the midnight blue livery she wore in the 90s for the sake of being different, but it would be nice to one day get another in traditional FR green or even PQR black.

I’m sure before too long someone will come up with an RTR model of them, don’t you reckon?

Clearance Run

Himself tends to have a number of jobs on the go at once - or perhaps we should just call them 'concurrent projects'.

One of them is the Observation Car 152, which has recently had a pair of bogies made up for it and has been taken for a test run around Dduallt by Blanche, which has itself been undergoing a strip down and clean of its pick ups ahead of the show in Perth this weekend.

The wisdom of a test run at this stage may be recalled by long-time readers of this blog, who will know that I made a very elementary mistake building the chassis of 150 and managed to drill the holes for the bogies not precisely along the centre line of the carriage, meaning it walloped the side of the very tight Rhoslyn Cutting as it passed under the bridge.

Thankfully, I haven't repeated that mistake, and the sister carriage passes through very sweetly with an equal amount of daylight either side.

Himself is now gathering the mental energy to take on the task of making the curved glazing for the observation end...

Hidden Treasures

The recent transfer of two of my a favourite FR locomotives to a shed at the furthest reaches of the railway reminds me that we also have a collection of out of service engines which rarely see the light of day.

In our case they are hiding in plain sight on a shelf in Himself's study.

The most notable of this 'heritage collection' is our original model of Earl of Merioneth which was 'kit-bashed' around a white metal Langley Double Fairlie, and its diesel-locomotive chassis with its absurdly small wheels.

It was retired from service more than 20 years ago when it was replaced by our current machine which was adapted from a Backwoods Miniatures kit.

We also have two old Ladies in this retirement home for old engines, both of them from the Dundas white metal kits.

Linda was also relegated by the appearance of a Backwooods kit, but she still makes a fine model with her Ibertren chassis adapted with outside fly cranks and the conical chimney she acquired in the 1980s during an experiment with gas producer coal firing.

The end of service for Blanche was more abrupt after she failed in the middle of an exhibition with a detached fly crank and has never been properly repaired and now sits with her one of her false outside frames missing.

Join The Cavalcade

Never let it be said that we are unafraid to jump on a bandwagon at Bron Hebog.

As the FR celebrates the 125th birthday of Hunslet 'Ladies' Linda and Blanche by inviting lots of other Loiners to come and play in the top left and corner of Wales this weekend we thought we'd get in on the act too.

My social media feeds have been full of pictures of line ups of little locomotives so Himself decided to do the same by posing all our Hunslets together.

This collection was made possible by Brian Madge, Robex, Roger Chivers and Backwoods Miniatures - and we're very grateful to them for their wonderful kits.

Pre-Fade Checks

I took my client's model of the 'Disco Car' 121 over to Himself's place the other day for a wee test run just to check for any snags or alterations required before it gets painted.

Here are a couple of short videos.

Horrible History

I know I bang on on this blog about the 1980's and the tin cars, etc, but I make no apology for doing so again.

It seems sometimes like the FR treats the era as its dirty little secret and I'd like to see it getting a little more acknowledgement from a heritage perspective.

Once Earl of Merioneth is out of traffic, and all but one of the 'tin cars' sent off to their new homes, there will be very little to represent a very considerable chunk of the FR's history to be seen on the rails.

(Although I suppose you could argue the very railway itself - the Deviation - is enough of a reminder of the 1970's and '80's)

When we first built Dduallt we set it in 1988 which was the last year the passing loop was in use and also the transition in carriage liveries from plain red to the two tone livery which persists to this day.

So feeling, as I do at the moment, that this era is a little under-appreciated I got our red set out for a play the other day to create some authentic 1980's scenes.

We should the grateful that at least Linda and Blanche are currently wearing the classic FR lined green livery but I would like to start a lobby to get some carriages in Cherry Red before it's too late.

As a start maybe 110, the prototype tin car, could be put back into this livery - and with authentic bus seats if there are any still around - and also the original Barn 104 while it survives in its early 1980's rebuild condition.

A case could also be made for 116 and 123 (ex-101) although they've both had their window positions altered in recent years and been reclassified.

I'm all too aware that mid 1980's was not the FR's finest hour from a presentational perspective, and fully appreciate why the Garrawegian diktats on locomotive and carriage liveries had to be relaxed to make the railway more attractive to the punters.

But consider this.

We have half of our unique and splendid Victorian carriages dressed up in drab 1930's liveries to represent the Colonel Stephens era which was surely the FR's nadir - if you  ignore the period of closure, that is.

If that can be celebrated then why not the 1970's and 80's?

Probably because too many people lived through it and still think it was only yesterday.

Well it wasn't!

Ladies At Dduallt

With no modelling done this week myself - and no confirmation of whether Himself made it as far as the modelling room with his sticks  - I have precious little to blog  about.

Time, perhaps, for one last video clip from Super Power?

Pic Of The Week 9

For my 500th post I can think of nothing better than one of the best pictures of our layouts I have ever seen.

Chris Nevard took this exquisite shot of the Ladies Linda and Blanche in the woods at the back of the sprial on Dduallt.

It shows off the stunning Backwoods kits and the lovely painting and lining job by Himself perfectly.

Indeed, I am given to understand that this shot was considered as a possible cover image for Model Rail when Dduallt was featured back in December, but a standard gauge, 00 subject was chosen instead.

Pic Of The Week 8

This is one of the pictures which was selected for use in Model Rail in December last year and no wonder because it's a cracker.

Once again Chris Nevard has lit the scene beautifully to really show off the fantastic paint jobs
Himself did on our Backwoods Miniatures 'Ladies' which are in themselves superb models, improved further by a lovely pair of bespoke brass domes turned for us by Chris Veitch.

Another Backwoods masterpiece, Taliesin, is crossing Rhoslyn Bridge heading for Blaenau in this shot.

A Blanche From The Past

We had a few carriages left over when the stock was put out on the layout for the first day of Railex. Specifically a trio of the original Winson carriages, 2020, 2090 and 2041.

(The operation was being supervised by a current FR trainee controller who insisted upon setting out the carriage rakes in the current formations!)

Come Sunday I thought this a bit of a waste of good rolling stock so we put them on the track and hooked them up to Blanche which was very reminiscent of the days when this 'Lady' was based on the WHR for running off-peak services between Caernarfon and Dinas in the late 1990's.

The period scene is completed with a glimpse of the Parry People Mover in the siding in the background.

Please do get in touch via the comments section if you'd like to send us any pictures or videos you took of Bron Hebog at Railex at the weekend.