MOTW - Taliesin

This week we present for your enjoyment the one and only 'Gentleman's light sporting locomotive'.



That's how one of the pre-war FR drivers affectionately referred to the Single Fairlie 'Taliesin' which was reborn at the beginning of the 21st Century.

(Let's not get into the debate about whether it's a rebuild or a replica here.)

Our model is a pretty standard Backwoods Miniatures kit and it's a beautifully quiet and smooth running machine.

The real 'Taliesin' will be worth watching in the coming months as it emerges from Boston Lodge with a pair of beautifully disguised piston valve cylinders.

Him-Self Service

I can unveil what I believe may be the first ever model of the WHR's second Service Carr 2011.

(If I'm wrong I'm sure someone will let me know)



Himself has been painting this over the course of summer and has now applied the last transfers and given it a final coat of varnish.



If you're a relatively new reader of this blog you can find some of the posts detailing the construction of this carriage including the saga of the generator door louvres here, here and here.

Practical Modelling

I've been getting on with a few of the odd jobs still left to do on 100, like sorting out a way of attaching the couplings.

This is something I've been mulling over for a quite a few weeks now, and for two reasons:

1) I've not attached couplings to a 7mm scale model before

and

2) It's not my model.

Of these the second is of much greater concern to me because I want to ensure the client is delighted with the finished product. In this case the customer has advised me he needs the couplings attached to the bogies (as opposed to mounted somewhere on the carriage) and set at an exact height, which has been a big help. So the main issue was how to achieve it.

There's another difference to the 009 models I normally work with in that these are whitemetal bogies with just a central cross-member and no frames at the ends.

Clearly, then, there would need to be a long shaft of some kind running almost 2 inches from the centre of the bogies to the end of the carriage. And there was also the issue of avoiding the leading axle.

The pics below will show you the solution I've adopted.



A bit of (rather untidily cut) brass has been Araldite-d onto the whitemetal stretcher and then takes a cunning step up, which not only avoids the axle but also raises it up to the specified height for the top surface of the bemo couplings.

Then at the other end I've soldered on another bit of scrap brass to form a jaw into which the shaft of the plastic bemo coupling will fit snugly.



The beauty of it is that if, when the carriage is delivered to the Scottish Highlands, the couplings are either too low or too high to mate with my client's existing stock all he has to do is give the brass shaft a little tweak one way or the other and all should be well.



I'm not pretending it's the prettiest bit of model engineering you've ever seen, but I think it's practical and effective, and that, I would suggest, is what matters most on a layout.

MOTW - 'The Cric'

Our featured model this week is another of Himself's kitbashes.



The starting point for our model of the FR's diesel 'Criccieth Castle' (which was built at Boston Lodge in 1995 from a kit of parts bought from Baguley-Drewry's liquidator) is a Chivers Finelines whitemetal kit for sister locomotive 'Harlech Castle' running on a Grafar 08 chassis.

In recent years Farish have revamped their 08 with pukka outside frames and cranks but back when we made 'The Cric' the conversion had to be done the hard way, stripping down the chassis, replacing the axles, fashioning our own cranks, not to mention drilling into the chassis and creating a fourth axle and new rods for the jackshaft drive.

The alterations to the body were simple by comparison to the mechanics. The main difference between 'Criccieth Castle' and 'Harlech Castle' is the front bonnet which extends the full width of the locomotive, and is decorated with brass handrails and the go-faster grill with the whiskers.

We used the existing whitemetal structure as the base and bulked it out with styrene extensions and other details such as the grill and the exhaust.

Himself added more finishing touches including the buffer beam detail around the coupling, the windscreen wipers and the cab is flush glazed with each window cut out of styrene and fitted individually.

The model is most often seen on Dduallt doing what the real one was originally built for, operating in push-pull mode with the green & ivory InCa carriages.

'Criccieth Castle' has, however, been run to Beddgelert since the WHR was reopened so our model has many years of legitimate work ahead of it on the exhibition circuit on Bron Hebog.

Shunt The Pony

I thought we'd take a deviation from modelling, just for a little while, to show you some evidence of why nothing much is happening on the building the layout (the real purpose of this blog, after all) and because if you're reading this it's likely you've got more than a passing interest in the FR and the WHR and so might quite like to see the pictures anyway.

Himself has 'wasted' another weekend of valuable construction time playing around with 12 inch to the foot trains in the top left hand corner of Wales, once again lending his services to the 'Greasers Express' team during their quarterly fettling of the points on the FR / WHR system.

One of their extra jobs this time was to move Welsh Pony to another stable at Glan y Pwll.

I've always had a very soft spot for this rusty old nag, and there has been a great deal of intriguing talk in the last couple of years about whether the time has now come to return her to service?

There is, however, a very nuanced debate about the rights and wrongs of restoring one of the few remaining untouched artefacts from the orginal FR company which centre around the fact that to make it work again there wouldn't be very much of the original loco left. (Just like the 'original' FR engines which are in service - Prince, Merddin Emrys & Palmerston)

I'm firmly in favour of getting her going again and my money is ready and waiting for someone to start up a proper Welsh Pony restoration fund.

(I do realise that the FR Society has had a Welsh Pony fund for many years now but it is not, and this is the pertinent point, for the express purpose of restoring the locomotive to running order.)

Brush Strokes

Here's a shot of progress painting the 7mm scale FR carriage 100.



Apologies for the picture, which isn't the best, but it shows you where I've got to.

So far it's had two coats of maroon and cream and will probably need at least another of each, and then there's all the wee fiddly jobs touching it up here and there, painting the grab handles and the vac bags etc...

And then we'll have some fun with the dry rub transfers. Oh joy!

Pull The Other One

In the absence of anything new to build for the layout - although I'm keeping an eye on the progress of Super-Barn 108 at Boston Lodge, ready to pounce when it's rolled out - I've taken on another super-sized commission.

A new client has asked me to make a 7mm version of WHR Pullman Observation Carr 'Glaslyn'.

Here's a pic of my 4mm one on Bron Hebog...



The challenge with this carriage, as I explained in this Model Of The Week post is the curved observation end.

But that's waiting a little further down the track. The first task is to do the main bodyside pieces.

They are also a little more complicated than your average carriage. On a normal vehicle I can use styrene strip for the window pillars, which are easily chopped to an equal height before the top rail is fixed in place. On this Pullman, though, the pillars at the rear are very wide and it isn't so simple to chop them off at the top, especially on a 7mm scale model when they are 0.75mm thick.

Instead I had to prepare them in advance, taking care to ensure they were all exactly the same dimension so there wouldn't be any gaps when I came to glue the top rail in place. This rail is also very wide on this carriage (6mm) and unlike a normal narrow top rail there is no lateral 'give' if one of the pillars is a fraction short.



The other side has also had the second layer of detail added.

The beading is limited, compared to the standard WHR design, but the challenge is the curved corners. I'm using a similar technique to the one I have for raised window frames I described here, curling thin styrene strip into the corner and using model filler to get rid of the gap.