Christmas Kit

We've had a bit of a tradition going over the last few years that Himself finds a new locomotive kit beneath the Christmas tree.

First there was Lyd, followed 12 months ago by the NGG16 he has turned into 138 which is being painted currently.

And this year we're going back to where it all stated with another one of these....

(I forgot to take a snap of the Five79 (ex-Chivers Finelines) kit for Conway Castle before I wrapped it up. Oops!)

It was the very first OO9 model he made back in 1989 in its orange, black and grey livery dubbed Liquorice Allsort.

It's still going strong a quarter of a century later, although its Ibertren chassis has had a motor transplant, being exchanged for a Mashima unit.

On Bron Hebog, though, it looks very out of place.

Conway Castle played a big part in the reconstruction of the WHR along with Upnor Castle, but all the while wearing the push-pull green livery its had since the early 1990's.

Making a new one has been on my To Do list for a long time now and at last I've got around to buying one,

I do, however, have a small supply of spare Ibertren chassis so we'll be able to have two 'Conk Out's in operation at the same time should we every have the need....

Nadolig Llawen / Merry Christmas

Picture by Barrie Hughes

Swing Time

One of the many reasons that our model of Bowsider 19 has been sitting in the 'Drawer of Doom' for so many years in an unfinished state is a lack of bogies.

All our other vintage FR carriages are running on some decidedly un-heritage American outline Grandt Line bogies, mainly on account of them being the first things we came across when making our model of 17 from a Langley kit 20+ years ago and Himself didn't much like the look of the bogies which came with the kit.

These are starting to show their age, though, and are beginning to fall apart on a couple of the carriages so Himself is looking for suitable replacement.

The problem is there isn't a lot of space under these carriages to allow the bogies to swing, so Himself has be experimenting with some surgery on a pair of Parkside Dundas FR bogies - the correct type for this carriage, in fact - to see if we can get them to fit.

It seems we can, just...

Now the most pressing issue is in what condition will we finish the carriage?

My original intention when we started making it many years ago was to do it as it was running in 1988 - the nominal year we set for Dduallt - when it was the last Bowsider in all-over red livery.

Now that Dduallt is semi-retired and Bron Hebog is out on the exhibition circuit, however, it would make more sense to paint it in its current Victorian plum livery.

What to do?

Ready To Turn Red

It isn't only carriages we've got going through the paint shop at the moment - there's a certain loco ready for some attention from the airbrush.

First though Himself had one final bit to do to finish off our 138 and that was to fabricate an oil tank and pipe for the lubricator, one mounted on the front of each unit.

It has now been dismantled and washed ready for a coat of primer.

Bron Hebog is going to be looking very colourful in 2015!

Primed For Action

Having chided Himself on the pages of this blog last week for going on strike and not venturing into the workshop when the cold weather hit he's been working hard this week.

Our 2nd model of carriage/van 10 has been treated to a coat of primer now along with another duplicate, a model of carriage 116 in its current condition.

This one has been sitting in the drawer of doom for a few years now.

116 has spend a lot of the last couple of years strengthening the rakes on the WHR trains, if memory serves, so it'll be a very useful addition to the Bron Hebog fleet.

In fact it's the 3rd model we have of this mid-1970's prototype, the other two showing it in its original configuration as a composite with the 1st class compartment at the Porthmadog end, marked by a wider window.

The carriage was rebuilt as a 3rd class saloon a few years ago with the window spaces equalised which is the way its been captured here.

10 Plus 10

Over the years we've acquired a number of duplicates in our carriage fleet.

Mostly it's on account of the FR rebuilding the original or changing it in some significant way or my scratch building techniques improving to such a degree that it was vaguely embarrassing to have carriages I built over 20 years ago running around on the layout.

In the case of Number 10 - no, never Van 2 around here! - it's a combination of both of the above plus a third factor: the failure of the original.

In this case it's just one of the plastic bogies from the Parkside Dundas kit which has given up the ghost, and they're easily replaceable, but it provided a very good excuse to do something I've been meaning to do for a number of years now which is built a second kit and finish it in the livery the vehicle is currently running around in, with the red stripe along the bottom of the bodysides and on the ends.

So to this end Himself has been making up another Dundas kit and adding extra details such as the gutter downpipes and the truss rods beneath the frame as well as the vac pipes.

I hope this might spur us on to creating a fuller Col Stephens set to run on Bron Hebog where we're rather short of Heritage train formations - I'm already thinking about new models of carriage 16 and 20 in the green and red livery, making use of the Worsley Works scratch-aid kits.

Tricky Truss Rods

Another one of the big changes on this 4th FR Super Barn, the new 119, is a new design of truss rod - and it's a bit of pain to model.

Most other carriages have two plain support posts which descend from the frame but the ones on 119 have a triangular design.

Not only that, but the truss rods themselves have anchors mounted below the frame - square boxes which the ends disappear into - instead of continuing on up to an end point hidden inside the frame.

So how was I to replicate this?

The proper way, on course, would be to mount some boxes with holes drilled into which I would poke the ends of the truss rods.

However I saw a number of issues with this.

I would have to drill holes at an angle in a small block of styrene. Tricky.

As well as bending the angles in the brass wire - which his always something of a trial and error process - I would also have to cut them to length very accurately. Again, tricky.

And unless all this was positioned perfectly I foresaw a chance that there would be a lot of strain in the structure, either on the boxes representing the anchor points where they are glued to the frame or where the wire is glued to the support posts.

So in the end I decided to cheat!

You can see in this picture that I've mounted the truss rods in the same way I have on every other Super Barn,

There is a more-or-less 90 degree bend just beyond where the anchor point is supposed to be, and some styrene strip is glued in front and along the bottom to appear like a solid box for those who aren't looking too closely.

You can call me a coward if you like.....