Finishing Touches

It's a very FR trait to leave a construction project ever-so-slightly unfinished and we like to keep up the tradition in model form!

It is only now, four months after the first exhibition appearances, that the Cambrian station buildings have gained their decorative finials.

These buildings, of which no trace remains today, were a interesting challenge to research and scratch build for the layout and something I think I may return to in fuller post sometime.

I must say, that bench in front of the ground frame cabin (not a signal box) does look a very inviting place to while away some time on a summer afternoon.

What it must have been to have rested here at this summit and heard the sharp bark of GWR engines forging their way up the banks on either side!

It’s something I’m too young to have experienced but if  you still have those memories clear in your mind it would be lovely for you to share them with us in the comments below.

Minffordd Update: A Little Realignment

Himself hasn't had so much time available to make great leaps forward on the layout in the last few weeks, but there is a little bit of progress to report this time.

Having first had to obtain a couple of replacement points - the originals being damaged during removal - he has relaid the wee run round loop at the back of the yard in order to re-route the siding which runs between the two Maenofferen slate sheds.

All being well, this should be the last bit of trackwork required on the layout.

The next job is most likely going to be wiring it up, but after that there will be a bit of a lull as we enter exhibition season.

The old warhouse Dduallt has a couple of trips out this winter - more comebacks than Sinatra! - so that will have to be set up and tested, and of course we have Bron Hebog's big appearance at the Warley show in December.

At my end I've been making a start on the Cambrian station building.

This building I am having to design using only educated guesswork and a rather slim selection of archive photographs, but I was pleased when we went to check out the original Minffordd layout on display at the WHHR's Gelert's Farm museum to see that the dimensions of that model are more or less the same as mine.

(With the caveat that the only way I could measure it, as it was in a perspex case, was using the fiendishly clever measuring app on my iPhone.)

Much of the construction time so far has been swallowed up fabricating the sash windows from  styrene strip.