A Sense Of Purpose

The structures which probably most draw the eye on our layout, and anyone looking at the real Minffordd Yard are the two very large slate sheds.

You can't miss them whether you are passing on an FR or Cambrian train, or even driving past on the road.

It wasn't until after the period in which our layout is set that they ever became railway property.

However, they were always crucial to the purpose of the exchange yard, built as an outpost of the Maenofferen slate mining company for exporting their products by rail.

In our period they were being used by the Davies Brothers slate merchants who still stacked their slates on the wharf opposite the Cambrian station platform, although nearly everything came in and out by road.

To add operational interest we shunt narrow gauge waggons on the long sidings which run in front and in between the sheds even though at this time the FR respected its tenant's privacy at that end of the yard. 

A vital part of setting the scene is the large stack of slates behind the shed.

To represent this I was fortunate to be gifted some spare 3D printed blocks which I was able to cast dozens of copies from to complete the effect.

The sheds were built on a styrene skeleton with brick-effect pillars also cast in resin from a single master.

Much as with the real sheds most of the structure is the roof.

With such an expanse of slate I thought it was vital it the slates were in three dimensions so I made use of the thick Wills sheets.

Two of them needed to be bonded together on each elevation, doing my best to disguise the join.

Some people do wonder why we don't have tracks leading into the sheds, but this is actually a modern feature - well, 50+ years old now - after the FR took ownership and raised the roofs to make use of them to store rolling stock over the winter months.

Minffordd Update: Landscaping

We've been back just over a week but already the bulk of the destructive alterations to the layout we decided were needed after our research visits are in hand.

The 'extra' scenery between the FR mainline and the bottom of the exchange yard, has been hacked away to make room for both of the Maenofferen sheds.

The point work at the end of the upper run-round loop has been lifted so the turnouts can be repositioned to allow a connection to the siding which squeezes between the large and small shed.

At the other end, the original square bridge beams have been hacked out and I spend the weekend designing and casting some replacements to the correct bow-string profile and it looks like they're going to fit very sweetly in the gap.

It just goes to show what you can achieve quickly when you're sufficiently motivated.

Minffordd Update: Excavations Required

It's not often you return from a research site visit happy that you're going to have to tear things apart, but that's the unusual situation we find ourselves in after our week in Wales.

One of the objectives was to have a good poke around Minffordd Yard, and run the tape measure over some of the buildings, and also to plagerise from the beautiful diorama of Minffordd which is now kept in the museum at the Welsh Highland Heritage Railway.

Our number one concern was about the Maeofferen slate sheds which are a prominent feature at the bottom of the FR's yard.

We'd reached the reluctant conclusion that we only had room to include the larger of the pair on our layout.

Peering through the perspex cover at the museum exhibit (which I believe was built by Dave Perrin) we were confounded to see that he'd managed to find room for both!

The difference, we discovered as we stood and compared with photos on our phones, was that we'd made the slope of the land down from the FR mainline far too generous, which you can see from the photos above.

In fact, when later inspecting the sheds, it become clear that the smaller Maenofferen Bach is slightly cut into the hill.

With a bit of remedial landscaping, and some repositioning of the sidings, we should be able to get both in.

Other errors came to light during our visit.

We had puzzled about the bridge over the lane which forms the scenic break for the Cambrian at the Porthmadog end, and decided that we probably wouldn't be too far wrong with a bog-standard square girder.

But flicking through a book on the shelves in the Harbour station shop, just on the off-chance that it might contain some pictures of Minffordd, I finally discovered the answer!

This bridge, before it was rebuilt in more modern times, had a bow string girder with a wooden palisade on top.

So another bit of re-engineering beckons.

And I also solved another mystery that had been puzzling me about the weigh house building which I am making.

I knew that at some point the original windows at the Porthmadog end were replaced by something a lot more domestic-looking, but I had no idea when that was.

A chance conversation in the pub with a long-standing FR figure revealed that he had scanned a collection of photographs from the 1960s, one of which was a rare picture of this end of the building.

© J Owen

This also revealed a small extra building which I never knew existed, as well as confirming the original, ornate, bargeboards were still in place.

Who said no good ever comes from going to the pub?