The Most Important Building

For small layout Minffordd has quite a lot of buildings on it.

Some of them are large, some are very small. 

For some of them their purpose is quite obvious (the Cambrian station building for example) while others may can be a touch misleading - such as the 'signal box' which is not, because it doesn't control any signals!  (It's technically a ground frame.)

The one I'm going to write about in this post is probably the most likely to be overlooked when the layout is being watched at exhibitions because it is tucked away at rear of the scene with it's back to the viewer.

But the Minffordd Weigh House is probably the most important building in the scene.

When the FR was in its heydey, making enormous profits carrying slate down from the mountain quarries, every waggon was to be weighed whether it was heading for the port or down into the exchange yard here at Minffordd.

This elegant stone building contained two weigh machines and the waggons were checked on the move as they passed over the tables on the 'Mineral Line' in front.

Along with virtually all the buildings on Minffordd this one was scratch built in styrene.

It's actually the second model of the building I've made.

The first was done as a gratis commission as a presentation gift to P-Way boss Fred Howes for his retirement a number of years ago, because in the modern era the building found a new use as his office.

On Fred's model I scribed the detail of all the dressed stone on the front and sides, and the rough blocks which make up the rear wall.

For the Minffordd example, where the front is normally only seen by the operators and the model is at least six feet away from the nearest paying eyes, I decided I could probably get away with embossed styerne sheet with a rough approximation of the pattern.

And some rough stone sheet for the rear elevation.

Something common to both models is that the distinctive pointed slates had to be cut by hand, row by row, in this case using thick paper card with the pattern printed on to be cut with the tip of a blade.

The finishing touch is some saw-tooth barge boards which I cast in resin from a styrene master.

In case you wondered, the Weigh House can longer weigh waggons - the tables were removed in 1976  - but they were never thrown away, and the FR Heritage Group has an appeal running to raise funds to use them in a recreation of the railway's original weigh house at the back of the old Boston Lodge Engine Shed, which was superseded by the Minffordd building.

It will make a fascinating exhibit as part of the official tours of Boston Lodge Works you can book to join and it help contextualise the very reason the works, and the railway was built.

If you would like to help make this happen you can donate here.

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?

Minffordd Update: Diamonds Take Forever

I mentioned in a post last week that putting an authentic slate roof on the Minffordd weigh house was going to have to be done the hard way, and this is it.

My means of replicating the distinctive diamond pattern is to patiently cut and stick rows of very thin card which, with the aid of a scalpel blade, has been shaped into regular pointed slates.

To make this a little - just a little - easier, I have a photocopied template which gives me around 20 rows on an A4 sheet.

It stems from a project a number of years ago - another favour - to make a 7mm scale model of the 'Bobby Hut' replica which stood at the station throat at Porthmadog Harbour before the return of the WHR and the extension of the Cob.

This also had a diamond pattern slate roof, although being a much smaller building there weren't so many of them, and being a larger scale the rows weren't quite so fiddly to cut.

It was for this project that I drew up the template, and when I came to make the previous weigh house model (for Fred Howes' retirement) I could easily reduce it in scale on a photocopier.

It's taken around a week to get one side of the roof completed.  

I can manage about 4 or 5 rows a night before I begin getting cross-eyed or just plain bored with it!

Earlier today I took it over to Himself's place for a quick trial run on the layout to check it fits in the intended space.

(Yes, it might have been an idea to have tried this before I began doing all the really fiddly bits....)

The good news is that it slots in perfectly.

The not so good news - although we knew this all along - is that hardly anyone will notice all the pretty detailing on the front because most people watching the layout at shows will see it from this side.

Oh well, the important thing is that the operators get the best view, don't you agree?

Minffordd Update: Corner Stones

Progress has been relatively swift on the weigh house building, with the walls complete and fixed together now.

The process was accelerated by the decision to use embossed styrene sheet for the dressed stone at the front and sides, and also for the mortared rough stone rear wall (which is actually the one which is most on show on this layout).

The design of the embossed sheet is not identical in either pattern or size to the real building but I think it will be good enough for viewing from a distance.

Of course, it wouldn't be one of our models if it didn't include a element of gratuitous labour intensive detailing.

The multi-pane windows were fabricated using 20" strip - double layered for strength, and each of the stones on corners of the building and around the window frames were cut and stuck by hand - another process that took a couple of evening's work.

Neither is there a ready made solution for the distinctive diamond-pattern slate roof of this building, so that will also have to be done the hard way....

Minffordd Update: Office Work

One of my biggest contributions to the Minffordd project is going to be making the buildings.

I've decided to begin with the FR weigh house - otherwise known as Fred's Office from its more recent use as admin space for the legendary track supremo - partly because I've already made one model of it.

The story behind it was that around 10 years ago I was asked if I could scratch build model of the weigh house to be presented to Fred as a retirement gift - which I was delighted to do.

I did it the hard way, painstakingly scribing the distinctive dressed stone courses into styrene sheet.

(Nothing was too good for Fred!)

This time I'm looking for a easier approach.

I'm still making the walls out of 60" styrene sheet, for strength, but only as a base layer.

On top I have bonded a thin covering of embossed styrene which is the closest I've been able to find to the stone courses on the real building.

Very little of that will be seen by the public because the part of the building which faces the front of the layout is the rear wall which was left as rough stone, so I'm using a different kind of sheet for that.

At any rate, this model will be the one that is furthest away from the audience, so all the more reason not to worry about pragmatic compromises.