Minffordd Update: Grey Scale

I've always thought painting models to get them looking right is a hell of a lot harder then building them in the first place.

Thus, I was impressed on my latest 'inspection' - having been away on holiday - to see Himself put the paint brush between his teeth and had a go at getting some colour on the undoubted centrepiece of the new layout project, the arched stone bridge which carries the FR above the Cambrian at Minffordd.

Things like this are so tricky because a structure made out of natural rock, like this, will always look slightly different depending on the weather conditions on a particular day - how bright the sunlight is or whether it is wet or dry.

It's looking pretty good to me, so far.

I think perhaps it might still require a little more weathering - perhaps some vague hints of brown tones here and there to contrast from all the shades of grey - and even maybe some invasive vegetation creeping in, although structures like this benefitted from a little more 'gardening' care in the 1960s than they get today.

On the other side of the layout he's mostly completed the track laying in the yard - with just the NG spur into the goods shed remaining to be fixed down - and he's been able to conduct some shunting tests with the Kadee couplings and magnets which are a new adventure for us on this project.

Hopefully this means we can have some hands-free fun shunting the daily pick-up goods from Pwllheli.

Minffordd Update: Flange Squeal

I wrote last week about the temptation to stretch the era on a layout - and here it is!

At the start of the project I'd only envisaged running DMUs and class 24s to fit in with the 1967-71 time frame.

But browsing the second hard stalls at an exhibition a couple of weeks ago I failed to resist the temptation of a weathered Bachmann 4MT tank at a very enticing price...

Our followers on social media will know that I was a a bit disappointed with its performance when I first ran it on our test track at home.

It wasn't the smoothest-running model, and was also very sensitive to tight radius curves  - by which I mean bends of roughly R2 dimensions - without the torque in the mechanism to overcome the resistance of the bend without slowing down markedly.

This didn't fill me with confidence for how it might perform on Minffordd where there is one bit of the curve into the storage roads just beyond the bridge which is more like R1.5, followed by a set track curved point.

I was very apprehensive when I took it over for a test run, but it was more positive that I expected.

It seems to be much happier on the finer code 75 Bullhead track, and using a different controller to the ones I have at home ran more smoothly at slow speed.

It does juuust get around the tightest bend into the storage yard, but only to the outermost storage road.

The front pony truck derails if you try to keep turning hard right into the inner storage roads on the curved point straight after the bend.

So it's not as bad as I feared.

In time we'll decide whether or not it i worth investing in a chip to run it on the layout (which will cost at least twice what I bought it for) or perhaps we might splash out on a slightly smaller 3MT tank, which were a little more of a regular sight at Minffordd at the end of steam on the Cambrian.

Focal Point

Every layout has a feature to which the eye is naturally drawn, and a lot of the time these seem to be bridges.

It was certainly the case with Dduallt and I have a feeling it's going to be the same on Minffordd, with the focus of attention being on the arched stone bridge which carries the FR on the top and has the Cambrian passing beneath.

This was our 'zero point' as we mapped out the layout and set the trackbed heights, and Himself has concentrated on building this feature first.

The underlying structure of the bridge was put together with thin plywood and it has been clad with Wills sheets to represent the dressed stone blocks.

Another Wills product, representing rough slate slab walling, is being used for the waist height wall at the far side which separates the FR from the road.

Roughly chopped styrene bits are then glued on top to represent the random slate capping.

Ever the pessimist (or pragmatist?) when it comes to his own engineering, Himself will keep the deck of the bridge as a removable unit in case he has to service his point-moving contraption, or any fault develops with the slow-action point motor which will be buried inside the embankment.

A feature which often goes unnoticed, except by passengers using the Cambrian trains, is the much smaller pedestrian underpass to the left which is the main way of accessing the standard gauge platform, the other being a public footpath which runs right beside the line for a short distance as it descends towards the Traeth.