If Walls Could Talk...

....they could tell you exactly how they're painted.

Unfortunately, I can't, on account of being hundreds of miles away on the occasion when the Artistic Director arrived with his brushes and pots of acrylic paint to finish off the walls lining the road near the 'Bridge To Nowhere'.

The results are most certainly up to his usual standard..



Lying in the road you can just make out the height warning triangle signs which are about to be installed on the bridge.



Thanks to the wonders of modern home computing it was a relatively simple task to scan an image of a sign with the correct bridge dimensions, re-size it and then print out a miniature version (twice) to mount on the model.

By the way, you can read a little more about Francis' technique with acrylics in this post.

Final Resting Place

Himself has sent me some pictures of the Bridge To Nowhere installed in its position on the layout.



The embankments have been made up with Mod Roc and the next job will be to paint and weather the plaster cast walls which are a Ten Commandments product, by the way.



These pictures again show off the quite superb painting job from the Artistic Director which really emphasises the first class work with embossed plasticard and styrene on the bridge by Himself.

Overall a great team effort!



The Bridge To Nowhere is going to be a very eye catching feature of the front left corner of Bron Hebog.

I think it's going to look even better to the naked eye than in these photographs and those of you within easy travelling distance of the south east of England will be able to see for yourselves when the (incomplete) layout is shown at exhibitions in Hampshire and Buckinghamshire in April and May.

See the Exhibition Diary page for details.

Arc de Triomphe

As I mentioned a few days ago, our Artistic Director has indeed been busy. As well as twisting up the first of the trees for the layout he has painted the 'Bridge To Nowhere'

I think the finished result looks absolutely fantastic, a triumph in fact, but I couldn't really tell you much about how it was done other than the self-evident fact than the Artistic Director is very talented.

So I was pleased when he offered to tap out a few observations on how he did it:

Himself has excelled again in his recreation of 'The Bridge to Nowhere', that iconic entrance arch to Beddgelert. The archeology of the early railway history in this area forms an important component of our layout and this particular structure will be a key feature at this end of our model.

Studying this bridge as we have for many years, it reveals a complex mix of materials including slate, limestone and a warm, almost orange, sandstone. The southern face gets the sun and is consequently paler but the north facing stonework is another story, dark and damp! After more than 80 years minerals leaking through the structure have created wonderful staining and crusts more often associated with underground chambers and caves.

Consequently the wonderful model, faced with appropriate embossed plastic, deserved the very best paint job if all that character was to be captured.

I worked from over 30 images of the bridge, each capturing a different aspect, colour or stain, and not forgetting a piece of presumably Welsh graffiti under the arch!


Only acrylic paints can produce the blend of colours, the streaky and crusty mineral deposits and the subtle colour transitions, sometimes within an individual stone. As with our stock weathering I rely largely on matt white, leather and for built structures like this, a dark grey rather than black. Acrylics may dry fast but nothing beats them when you are working up a different hue on each individual stone. A real challenge but hopefully we have delivered!

Going Nowhere

I'm in receipt of another progress update from Himself, who has now finished the famous 'Bridge To Nowhere'.



This picture shows it in position on the layout.

The bridge is on the extreme front left corner of the layout and you're seeing this as the public will at exhibitions.

Out of shot, to the right of the frame, is the southern portal of Goat Tunnel and the track is curving away on the run towards Cemetery Crossing.

The bend is a little tighter than on the real railway but it's just one of those stretches and squeezes that are necessary to make the location fit into a nice rectangular shape.

The bridge is removable - for the moment - and the next step is to send it off to the Artistic Director to do his thing.