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.

Garratt In The Gap

Having fixed the last bits of rock onto the sides of Cutting Mawr and added various bits of infill and foliage to finish it off Himself decided to pose 138 and a selection of carriages in there to show it off.

One of the things which really pleases me about it is that it's hard even for me to tell at a glance which are the genuine pieces of rock and which are those which had been cast in resin.

I have to run my fingers along them and feel for the cold ones just to be sure sometimes.

It's a vindication of the decision to try to save weight by making copies, although it's perhaps not the most cost-efficient way of doing it because you do get through a lot of RTV and resin.

I hope you enjoy these views because it's only possible to get angles like these when the layout is disassembled.

And if you'd like to see if with your own eyes then come along and see us at Narrow Gauge East at Bressingham in June.

The Depths Of Cutting Mawr

Himself has spent most of this week adding more rock, and resin fake rock, to the sides of Cutting Mawr.

It occurred to me that the picture I posted last time might not have given an impression of just how deep it is, so this time I thought I would pose one of the WHR saloons on the track to give you some perspective.

The bulk of the job is done now.

He's sent me away with a few more selected lumps of slate to mould and copy to finish off the inside wall and then it will be a case of infilling the gaps with rubble and foliage.

The irony is that most of this will be unseen.

Not only is the cutting so deep that you have to peer over the top to see into it but it's also 15 feet away from the front of the layout.

At least you know it's there, though.

Keep On Rocking

Himself has started work on the last major scenic operation on Bron Hebog, completing the rock lining of Cutting Mawr at the back of the layout.

Most of it is not actual rock, but it is a perfect copy because I made moulds from pieces of genuine North Wales shale which I cast copies of in resin.

Himself has given them washes with a variety of acrylic colours and they are fixed into position by being pressed into a bed of plaster.

It does look very deep, doesn't it!

Cutting Casting

The story of my modelling week has been casting a job lot of resin rocks for lining the massive cutting at the back of the layout.

I've made five molds using pieces of shale collected in the North Wales area over the years and I've made a few copies of each.

In order to give Himself more options when using them, in a mosaic fashion, to line the cutting I have cast a number of smaller pieces by pouring resin into only a small area of the mold.

One of our concerns is that it repeated patterns could be obvious in the rock walls so this should help him break it up a bit.

The reason we're doing this is because Cutting Mawr is so long and deep that to line it with real rock would make the baseboard very heavy and more awkward to carry and lift into place when the layout is exhibited.

Incidentally, the difference in the colour of some of the pieces is because half way through I moved onto using a new bottle of Isocyanat.

Breaking Rocks

Himself has been busy taking out his frustrations on the lump of Mother Wales he brought back from his travels a few weeks ago.

Now pulverised into suitably sized chunks he has begun fixing bits into place to represent the rock of Cutting Mawr.

As you can see, the advantage of using genuine rock is that if you choose your lump carefully it comes ready-weathered and these pieces appear to have fractured quite nicely to look like the handiwork of McApline's 1920's navvies.

Once the fragments have various bits of foliage stuffed into the cracks it should look a lot less like a stoney jigsaw puzzle.