Hello Dolly!

Narrow gauge projects are still taking a back seat this week, so Himself has been working on another epic brass signal construction for the new club layout, Kirkconnel.

There's been a lot of puzzling around the 'dollies' on this skyscraper, and how many there were - and when - with much pouring over photographs. 

Connecting this up, and making them all work, is going to be a challenge in itself, but I wonder whether the biggest issue is going to be ensuring that they stay vertical.

This comes from a notoriously clumsy individual who's been known to accidently catch a signal or two when moving, cleaning , or generally being anywhere close to a layout.....

Lovely Lattice

Yet more infrequent blogging - apologies.

I'm still hard at work casting wagon kits every day while Himself has been completing more fiendishly tricky brass signals for the Greenock club's new Kirkconnel layout.

He's making sure he's putting in his best work on these because the task is being shared with the chairman and I've got a feeling the competition is spurring them both on.

There'll be more news soon, I hope on Welsh Pony and 130.

Upper Quadrant

I'm not sure I've ever gone so long without posting in more than 10 years of blogging.

The gap has been due to a perfect storm of events - an hiatus in progress updates on prototype locomotives we're part-way through building, still waiting on the delivery of etched brass kits which were ordered in the middle of the year, and Himself spending a week volunteering with the repainting of Tan y Bwlch footbridge.

At my end of the operation I've spend the last week or so resin casting to meet orders for wagon kits or carriage interiors.

Himself has now sent me an image of the one project he has been working on - making up a Model Signal Engineering kit for an LMS upper quadrant signal for the Greenock club's new layout, Kirkconnel.

He reports that it was rather fiddly.

Given some of his previous work posted on this blog you may wish to read that as an example of classic British understatement and draw your own conclusions....

Aerial View

While waiting for the next update from the workbench I thought you might like to see an unusual view of the layout.

The venue for the Greenock show is a Kirk (church) which comes complete with a balcony around three sides which provides the perfect spot to get a bird’s eye view of proceedings.

It’s the only way to get a full appreciation of the size of Bron Hebog

Incidentally, this blog has now recorded over three quarters of a million page views, so a heartfelt thank you to everybody who clicks through to read it.

Dee See See

I spent a happy couple of hours at the weekend helping to operate on one of the Greenock club's layouts at a local exhibition in Renfrewshire and renewing my acquaintance with all things standard gauge.

Inverboyndie is a compact terminus / shunting layout based on Banff in Morayshire in the 1960s but has one link with our layouts because it also has a gravity train feature - loose shunting of carriages in order to get the engine on the other end of the train without the aid of a run round loop (or a second locomotive).

This feature (achieved by cheating with a powered carriage bogie) is made immeasurably easier since the invention of DCC - and it was my first experience of using this new fangled technology.

I can't deny I was impressed but I would be lying if I said I enjoyed it more than running an old-fashioned DC wired layout.

Frankly I found it a bit of a faff!

There's something very intuitive about twiddling a knob to control a train but I didn't get any of that with a DCC handset - it felt more like a double maths period with a scientific calculator in your hand.

There's nothing pleasingly tactile about pushing buttons for me.

Ah, said my friend, but with DCC you're really driving the train, not just controlling a motor, and I could see what he was getting at, because the simulated deceleration does mean you have to concentrate and anticipate what you're doing a lot more.

(It also massively increased the opportunities for pile-ups with inexperienced operators....)

But it was all the upshift, downshift, function x, y and z to control the whooshes, hisses and toots that got my eyes glazing over.

There's an old saying, that people in my trade like to hang on to, that the pictures are better on radio, and part of me thinks that this applies to model railways as well.

I quite like daydreaming and hearing the sounds in my head as I operate a layout rather than having a computer chip in control.

Just me?

Dduallt at Greenock

I did promise to post some more footage of Dduallt running at the show in Greenock at the weekend and here it is.



If you like what you see here then why not plan yourself a trip to the 'Fair City' of Perth to see it for yourself next June?

Details of our confirmed appearances can be found on the exhibition diary page.

The Resurrection

An old Presbyterian kirk seems a very appropriate place for what is starting to look like the second coming of Dduallt.

We had a terrific first day showing the layout at the annual exhibition of our new home club in Greenock, and were very pleased to receive a number of enquiries about taking Dduallt to exhibitions in what will be its silver anniversary year in 2019.

We've already confirmed that we'll be going to the excellent Perth exhibition in June and it looks like there are others in the pipeline now, too.

Truly this is the layout which refuses to die.

Having spent most of the previous quarter century being exhibited around southern and middle England (with a healthy number of forays to what the English touchingly insist on referring to as 'the North') it's been very rewarding to show to whole new audience here in the west of Scotland.

Those with long memories may recall that Dduallt did make a cross-border raid to appear at the Model Rail Scotland show at the SEC in Glasgow once.

We'll try and post some more pictures and videos from the show during the week.

Shakedown

Next month it's a chance for this old thing to see the light of day again.

Yes, Dduallt, the layout that's had more comebacks than Sinatra, is having an outing at our local show in Greenock, so after our return from Wales Himself has put it up to give everything the once-over.

Unlike Bron Hebog, this is a layout we do have the space to put up play with.

There's a dodgy switch on the control panel to be replaced and a few scenic repairs to be carried out - many of them are cat-related as, frustratingly, the garage (where the layouts are stored) is on the moggy's through-route to the cat flap....

After that we just need to have a few test running sessions, which is the fun bit!

Blooming Marvellous

Some exciting news! We're going back on the road in 2018.

We've accepted an invitation to show Bron Hebog at the inaugural Narrow Gauge East show at Bressingham in Norfolk in June.

It's been over two years since we last had the layout on show.

Much of the hiatus can be put down to the inevitable disruption caused by Himself's migration north of the border.

We've also been working hard to get Bron Hebog looking much more 'finished' rather than merely complete from an operational point of view as it was last time we had it out at the WHR Superpower event at Dinas.

Admittedly Norfolk is one heck of a long drive from the west coast of Scotland for a one day show but we said yes to it for a couple of reasons.

I can't deny that we enjoyed having our ego tickled by the museum telling us that they would like to have us as their 'headliner' for their first NG event.

I was also intrigued by the prospect of visiting Bressingham for the first time.

In my mind I had the museum, started by Alan Bloom, down as one of the classic locations of the early days of steam preservation when it was home to famous locomotives like Royal Scot and Oliver Cromwell.

The locomotives were steamed but I always had the feeling that it might be rather like going to see a magnificent beast kept in a cage in a zoo, as opposed to roaming on a reserve (like a preserved railway) or being stuffed by a taxidermist. (The NRM anyone?)

Those two giants have since been released onto the mainline again, of course, but Bressingham still has a large collection of steam engines including a couple of Quarry Hunslets from Penrhyn, so it must be a good place!

Anyway, we shall find out next summer, won't we.

We've also had another invitation from rather closer to home.

Himself has been having a look around our local model railway club in Greenock who put on an annual show in the town in October where in recent years there has been some very good modelling on display.

As well as talking him into taking out a membership the club also asked if we'd be willing to bring Dduallt of retirement at take it along to the show next year.

This layout has had so many comebacks it's fast becoming 009's answer to Frank Sinatra.

Full details of both shows are on the Exhibition Diary page.