Resin Carriage Sides

Body sections for the 'replica of the replica' of carriage 24 have been cast with moderate success.

This is the first time I've attempted to cast a large piece with quite so much detail as a traditional compartment carriage with matchboarding.

The side your see here are the third and fourth attempts.

One the first the mix was not quite right and it never quite hardened properly.

The second was too brittle  - which is an issue I've had with the brand of resin I've got in stock at the moment - and it snapped while being de-molded.

On these there were a couple of small blemishes where air bubbles had become trapped and the detail was missing, but I've been able to patch it up by inserting some pieces of styrene strip.

The flash filling the windows has been roughly cut out although some detailed work with a needle file will be needed still.

Some small breaks occurred as I was removing the flash, but they were very clean and were easily bonded back together and the sides remain as strong as if they'd never happened.

They won't look as clean and neat as a fully scratch built body, but with Bron Hebog in storage and the Dinas project still on the drawing board nobody is about to scrutinise it closely any time soon.

'One Day' Projects.

Browsing my photo reel the other day I was reminded of another one of those project I'd always intended to get around to 'one day'.

Over the years we've built up a collection of rolling stock from the Welsh Highland Heritage Railway which we ran on Bron Hebog.

To start with it was a gentle 'wind up', at a time when relations between the railways were at a bit of a low.

Then it became something aspirational, and more recently, of course, it has become a reality.

To the best of my knowledge - although I'm sure someone will correct me if I am wrong - the four-wheeler number 6 has never ventured as far as Beddgelert.

I find it quite an intriguing design.

It's got the diminutive appeal of the classic narrow gauge four wheel carriage combined with the body style cues and proportions of the 'Eisteddfod coach', which was one of the first 009 kits I bought more than 35 years ago.

I've often thought about scratch building number 6.

Like the real thing I would most probably use a former RNAD wagon chassis, either from the 009 Society kit or one of the Bachmann wagons if I was feeling flush.

Over the years I've take quite a few photos of it, although never any proper measurements, but it would probably be easy enough to guestimate from the things we do know about it, such as the chassis dimensions.

Whether or not I ever will get round to it I'm not so sure.

With Bron Hebog no longer going out to shows there's not really any pressing need for it.

Recreating Minffordd Station

I was asked last week if I would write a bit more about how I went about scratch building the station building for Minffordd.

It was an intriguing design.  Many of the stations on the Cambrian, particularly those which were passing places, had reasonably substantial brick buildings with staff domestic accommodation attached, while halts usually had only the most basic shelters.

Minffordd was designed for considerable freight and 'human cargo' interchange, but it was also effectively a halt in the middle of a section.

The building was mostly wooden on a brick base.

And, more the point, when the last staff were withdrawn in the mid-1960s it was quickly taken down with little trace remaining, replaced with nothing more than a large bus shelter!

This made modelling it a challenge because I had nothing much more to go on to establish the dimensions than extrapolating from photographs, making assumption about the sizes of the windows and doors.

The other think I was able to do was take a good look at the Minffordd diorama in the museum at Gelert's Farm.

I had a stoke of luck when one of my FR contacts pointed me in the direction of some archive survey pictures of the station towards the end of its life, which crucially included one taken from the very camera-shy rear of the building.

This showed where a few of the details on the diorama model were incorrect, particularly around how the different parts of the building at the rear connected up.

Having sketched out a design the first step was to create a mock-up in cardboard to test fit on the layout and see if the dimensions seemed correct.

It seemed logic to build it as three sub-assemblies.  The main section at the front, with the open-fronted shelter area, and two extensions at the rear.

As is my way most of the build was done in styrene. 

Making the main walls, with their wooden battening, was made simple by using the Seam Roofing Sheet product in the Evergreen range, which you can get in various sizes of gap between the battens.

The slate roof was cut from the Wills sheets which have been around for years.  They are very thick and hard to cut, but it is worth the effort in my opinion because the moulded slates overlap property.

The sash window frames were fabricated from styrene strip, which is a time-consuming and delicate job, but worth it, I think, to get the depth.

I painted the building using acrylics to look very much like it was very near to being closed. 

The poster boards have had whatever was on the scraped off.

The final details, as you will see in the picture above, were to add working 'gas lamps' and attach the screen for the gents' lavatory on the left hand side, and the crinkly tin outbuilding.

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.

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.