2020 Review - Part 4

October

The output of new models slowed towards the end of the year, especially at my end of the operation as I spent more time concentrating on meeting requests for resin wagon kits and parts.

By now I had completed the prototype for the MOD flat wagon kit.

Himself spent a week volunteering on the FR and getting a look up closed at the new lining design on Welsh Pony.

We had always intended to finish ours in the green livery that was predicted all through the restoration, but now it looks like the running-in livery will be staying for a few years so we decided to take the plunge and apply that to our model, seen here with the black lining transfers around the edge being applied.

Himself also got round to a job he'd been meaning to tackle for a number of years, and overhaul the Steve Coulson working dioramas in our custody.

November

Progress can be an illusion sometimes.

Himself began applying the orange lining around the edge of the panels on Welsh Pony.

It looked fine on the tender, but once it added to the tighter areas like the cab sides it became painfully apparent that even the thinnest products from the Fox range would be unsuitable.

It was time for Plan B....

The delivery of the painted and lined cylinder covers for 130 to Dinas meant we could follow suit with confidence on ours.

There was more pipework added to the boiler unit which is the last part of the locomotive still under construction.

We can't complete it until we see pictures confirming the positions of all the pipes at the front of the cab.

December

Plan B for Welsh Pony meant stripping it right back to brass and starting again with a coat of primer and purple/plum from the airbrush.

We commissioned a set of bespoke transfers from Custom Model Decals and you can already see the results in some of the latest blog posts. 

I was kept busy with casting.

One customer asked if it was possible to produce some copies of the fake bogie frames we used on our Funkey diesels to disguise the N Gauge chassis.

An enquiry from one modeller turned into orders for 10 sets from all across the country, so that kept me busy for a few weeks.

Currently I am in the process of producing a prototype for a kit of the FR/WHR well wagon.

There's been good progress on the main body of the wagon.  

I'm hoping to finish it off with an etched brass deck covering but that may take a while to come to fruition.

That's the story of our 2020.

It was a year when it seems that railway modelling was given a shot in the arm by lockdown - within our homes at least - let's hope that in 2021 it might be possible to attend an exhibition again.

Wouldn't that be marvellous!

It's A Drag

Given the lack of any other project to make progress on Himself has been overhauling more of the Stefco collection.

The latest to get re-strung and teased back into life is the dragline excavator.

This lowers a bucket into the sand pit, before hauling it up and turning to drop it into a lorry.

The short video doesn't show the full sequence which includes the loaded lorry driving off and reversing to dump its load, which is returned to the pit by a secret screw.

The challenge for Himself with these models has not just been replacing the fishing lines but also getting the sequencing of the whole mechanism coordinated again.

One day, when I'm able to, I shall shoot a video showing how these work in full.

122 Upgrade

Fitting proper-sized modern FR bogies to all the modern carriages is going to be a long-term project, but Himself has begun with one of the carriages that shows them off to advantage - Stefco's one-off 122.

These are the bogies we make up with brass frames etched by Narrow Planet, fitted with 'top hat' bearings which then have resin castings with the axle box and suspension detail fixed on top.

So far we have them fitted beneath all the Superbarns, the rebuild of prototype 116 and a couple of the most recent Barns I've made to replace to older models.

Quite a way to go then...

Excavator In Action

Great news! The first of Stefco's dioramas is back in business and here's the proof.



Himself managed to get to the bottom of the mystery about what was preventing the lorry from reversing and completing the full sequence.

A tiny micro switch case had come apart causing it to switch the reversing action off.

So as you can see once the lorry has received the required number of buckets of sand from the excavator it sets off....

Reverses towards a chute where the back of the lorry rises and tips the sand out...

And it returns to its starting position and the excavator begins to dig out sand again.

You may be wondering what happens to the sand once it is tipped down the chute?

It falls down to where an archimedean screw spits it back out at the bottom of the quarry where the bucket is digging.

Very clever, eh?

There is one wee bit that Himself has not been able to restore yet.

There is a lazy solenoid which is supposed to lock the lorry turning arm into place but it will only work if you crank up the voltage, and that would cause everything on the diorama to speed up.

As it seems to work find without the locking mechanism Himself has disconnected it for now.

A Great Honour

Something different for you today.

When our good friend Steve Coulson passed away at the end of last year we were very honoured when we were asked if we would take custody of his wonderful working dioramas.

These beautifully crafted scenes featuring diggers, cranes and conveyors were an expression of his wonderful talent for practical engineering and parsimony being constructed, famously, out of CDs he collected from junk mail and components recycled from a multitude of scrapped household machines.

Having collected them from Wales Himself has begun the process of cleaning and fettling, and more importantly trying to learn how they were put together in the first place.

The first model on the workbench is  'Littledownham Sand Quarry'

He has taken out the operating modules one by one to clean check and service them.

Having been in store for a while there is a little bit of mildew and corrosion on some parts.

The first challenge he has come across is the lorry refusing to reverse up to discharge it's load after it has been filled by the digger.

 Instead it brings the load back to the quarry, so it has been taken out for investigation!

The moving features were built as removable modules as you can see here.

His suspicions are that it could be timer switches to blame as the motors all work if fed current directly.

Also he's found a reluctant solenoid , not wanting to return to off.

The digger is worked by an intricate system of cams and pulleys the concept of which Steve described in a highly entertaining series of articles for Narrow Gauge and Industrial Railway Modelling Review.

These pictures show how beautifully build these mechanisms are with the parts painted and the neat wiring.

It shows the pride and care that Steve put into his engineering whether miniature or full-sized.

The excavator functions are worked by 1 1/2 lb monofilament fishing line.

 
Hopefully Himself will be able to give us more updates as he continues to explore the innards of these wonderful models and who knows, we may even be able to exhibit them to the public again one day.

A Very Special Special

A couple of weeks ago the Bron Hebog team lost a dear friend - designer extraordinaire and raconteur Steve 'Stefco' Coulson.

At the Hull show last week we paid our tribute to him by running a special train formed of the rolling stock he had a special connection with.

For those who aren't aware, Steve was a part owner of Britomart, a Quarry Hunslet locomotive bought from the Pen-yr-Orsedd quarry in the 1960's and brought to the FR where he helped care for it.

Britomart was a 'toy' on the FR in the days when the railway wasn't so open to such indulgences.

This model is our 2nd Britomart, which has been built up from a Brian Madge kit. The exquisite outside frame chassis is connected to the motor not by gears but by a miniature rubber band, just the sort of practical engineering solution Stefco would have approved of, and I'm sure he wouldn't have minded that it's still running around in primer.

The second locomotive is the Funkey diesel Vale of Ffestiniog which he was responsible for redesigning to fit the FR.

It wasn't merely a case of hacking the body about, he had to completely re-engineer the machine, moving many of the components and adapting it to have a cab at each end rather than just in the middle.

That he managed to achieve all this and for the result to be so aesthetically pleasing speaks volumes for his talent as a very intuitive engineer.

The last vehicle is carriage 122, a radical prototype he designed and helped to build in the early 2000's applying modern road coach-building technology to a narrow gauge carriage and making maximum use of the railway's' kinematic envelope.

It looks destined to remain a one-off but that's no criticism of the design which has proved very popular with passengers.

I recall that Stefco was very chuffed when we produced this first model of his carriage and, as ever, offered all the assistance he could.

When I asked for a drawing to help make the model he didn't just hand me a basic outline but instead a complete set of the design documents.

All of us on the Bron Hebog team will always treasure the hours we spent listening to his stories as he held court with a pint in his hand and another lined up ready on the bar.

Until our paths cross again some day,  perhaps in 'the embassy', we hope you appreciated our tribute train, Steve.