Showing posts with label Standard 4MT Tender. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Standard 4MT Tender. Show all posts

Sunday, 15 March 2026

Seven Steamers

We’ve completed the loco line up for the show in Glasgow with the sound chipping of the 43XX which was a gift from the Engineering Consultant on the occasion of the layout’s debut last October.


These Churchward moguls probably aren’t the first class which comes to mind when you think of Cambrian steam but there’s plenty of photo evidence of them around the Porthmadog area in the 1960s.

It joins our existing ex-GWR allocation including the maid of all work, the Collett Goods, which is one of those in the stock box awaiting weathering.


Representative of the earliest years of our 1960s period is the Dukedog, a younger-than-it-looks class which was seeing out its final days.


This Bachmann model is limited by being rather light on its feet and can struggle a little with the gradients and drag on our tight curves, so loadings have to be managed carefully.

Making a rare foray up the coast line our iconic Cambrian engine, a Manor.


This period witnessed the changeover to the new Standard classes.

Our trio are made up of the Standard 4MT tender we featured a few days ago. 

The sole tank engine in our fleet, for now, is the 3MT.


And another needs-to-be-dirtied is the 2MT, not to be confused with its near relative the ex-LMS Ivatt design.


Tuesday, 10 March 2026

This Is Spinal Tender



More fiddle yard roads on Minffordd means room for more trains, which means we need more locomotives to haul them.

Now that's the definition of a virtuous circle for a railway modeller if ever I heard one!

So for the Model Rail Scotland show in a couple of weeks we're augmenting our fleet with another Cambrian stalwart, a Standard 4MT tender.

By happy coincidence it is a loco which spent around six months based at Machynlleth between 1962-63 so it no doubt passed through Minffordd many times.



This pre-loved Bachmann model arrived in Santa's sleigh a couple of months ago and has been waiting in the queue to be chipped and speaker fitted.

And what a speaker!


I'm still a complete novice about this DCC business so I rely on some expert friends who recommended what looks like some kind of miniaturised subwoofer which just about squeezes into the tender space.

My friend said it would be loud - he wasn't exaggerating.

That's probably no bad thing.

At the first two shows we've taken Minffordd to we've been positively deafened by DCC diesels on neighbouring layouts, with owners of whistling English Electric types who like to turn to volume up to 11.

Well, now we can play them at their own game if it happens again