Beginning At the End

Usually the bogies end up being the last thing to get made on a carriage project but this time they're the first thing I've done on the Disco Carriage.

This, you may recall, is something I'm doing for one of our exhibition operators who was involved in operating these musical specials.

The 'disco' was set up in the original carriage 121 (since scrapped, alas) which had its tables and chairs stripped out before being transformed into a narrow gauge nightclub.

You can read about how it was done here on his blog.

I've started with the bogies rather than the body because I haven't yet had the chance to scale down my drawing for the carriage which is in 7mm.

But I had the bits in stock for the bogies - which are my own design of brass frame and resin overlay - and it seemed a good idea to put them together so that I could at least say that I had started the project.

Batch Of Buildings

I've come to the end of around six months where I've worked almost exclusively on buildings so I thought it would be fun to line them all to to show just how much as been achieved.

In the front row is a detached twin garage for the Oberon Wood scene and the big Cwm Cloch Isaf farm house and a small outbuilding.

At the back are the three houses I've built for the row that forms the southern extreme of the housing estate running down the hill from Goat Tunnel.

There is still one building left to do which sits between the pair closest to the camera and the one at the top of the shot.

I'm still waiting for plans for that one but hopefully the Artistic Director is on the case.

Soon I will hand them over to Himself (without requiring the services of the Royal Mail - yippee!) and he'll fit them in place on the layout.

Mastermind

Himself says he is itching to get back to doing some modelling after more than two months of enforced abstinence.

Getting settled after a house move is not the work of a moment, of course, so I'm doing what I can to get him back in business.

In this house his modelling den will not have to double as spare bedroom so he's spreading out, and I spent some of an afternoon at the weekend assembling this fancy chair he's bought.

It reminds me of the one Magnus Magnusson used to interrogate contestants in.

The quizmaster's famous catchphrase was "I've started so I'll finish", which is very appropriate because Himself still has a drawer full of stalled projects to complete including lining the new Conway Castle, painting the Brian Madge Britomart, finishing off models of carriages 15 and 19 and rebuilding our Backwoods Darjeeling Pacific.

Let's hope it's a comfy chair!

Home Sweet Home!

The layouts' long emigration is over!

Bron Hebog and Dduallt have arrived safely at their new home on the west coast of Scotland after a month in transit.

We haven't had the chance to conduct a detailed examination yet but it appears that they have survived the loadings, unloadings and period in storage relatively unscathed.

The only damage Himself has noticed is to a stretch of fencing, but fortunately things like the 'Bridge to Nowhere' on Bron Hebog and the semaphores on Dduallt are all intact.

At the moment they are surrounded by all the detritus of 'flitting' (as we say in Scotland) but the hope is that eventually the double garage (which was top of Himself's wish list for their new home) will have enough room to have Dduallt up more or less permanently, meaning for the first time in nearly 30 years Himself will have a layout to play with at home!

(And me too when I pop in!)

Although there won't be enough room to put the whole of Bron Hebog up we should be able to erect at least 2/3 of it at a time which will be handy for things like trying to fix the phantom electrical fault that disabled the fiddle yards at Dinas last year.

All in all, exciting times!

Move In Condition

While I've been blogging about my blunders the new house has raced over the finish line.

Since I last posted about it I've fitted the two main roof sections and finished the porch.

It's had a chimney and guttering added as well.

The final job was one of the most intricate, fabricating the bay window from styrene strip and embossed 'tongue & groove' sheet.

Although the individual bits are rather flimsy it's quite solid when it's all stick together.

It's a pain in the backside to paint and glaze so to make Himself's life easier I've left it removable for now.

So for the moment that's the last house.

Back to carriages again now...

Open House Surgery

They say bad news comes in threes and I've made another blunder, only this time there was no easy way out.

I wrote in the previous post about how the two houses are attached, but not quite as I presumed, at the front.

Well, there was a nasty surprise lurking at the rear.

All through the process I've been working from a set of digital research pictures we have taken over the years.

This is one of the images I have of the back of the houses and I think it's pretty clear from looking at it that they are joined at the back, wouldn't you agree?

Wrong!

There was an area at the front of the buildings that I was still puzzling over and I knew that somewhere in a drawer I had some prints (remember those?) from one of our very first visits to the site, and I looked them out to see if there were any better views of the bit I was unclear about.

It turned out there were, and it answered the initial query I had, but I also found some pictures taken at the back and they contained an unwelcome surprise.

I think it's pretty clear from the image below what I discovered.

Yes, that's right. They are most definitely not attached at the back.

Drat!

So how was I going to get out of this one?

The only option was going to be to take a chunk out of the side of number 18 - the model that is allegedly finished - to create the passageway.

Well, there was nothing else for it but to get on with some judicious destruction.

The roof was eased off and then half of the side wall had to be removed.

I had a stroke of luck here because right at the start of the build I messed up this wall by accidentally slicing it in half.

I'd put it back together with an almost invisible joint and that meant it was easy to snap it apart again.

The last thing to be ripped off was the patio door frame that I'd so carefully built and then I could start the reconstruction by fixing the replacement wall in the altered position.

I quickly knocked up a new window frame - and as is the way of these things it's actually a more simple and robust structure than the original one.

Once that was glued into position the last big job was to trim the slates piece to the new size and slip it back into position.

I've still got to put the foundations in again and stick the brickwork back on but I feel relieved to have been able to successfully  correct this glaring error.

Whoops, Didn't Spot That

I've had another of those moments where I discovered I had not looked at the photographs of my subjects carefully enough.

Houses 17 and 18 are not just attached, it appears they overlap.

The question was how to alter mine retrospectively?

The hard way of doing it would be to cut a section out of the side of the garage on number 18 (the house on the right) so that the next door house sits 'inside' it a little.

But that would be quite an involved process, so I thought of an easier way.

I've added an extra strip of thick styrene to the side of the garage and bonded on a tiny section of slates on the top to create the same effect.

It does mean the left hand wall is a wee bit thicker than it was supposed to be but I hardly think anyone's going to notice.

And, yes, it was most definitely easier.