Lucky 13 (metres)

I mentioned a few weeks ago that 'Himself' was working on clearing the backlog of unpainted carriages. Here's the first to be finished.



It's 2043, the first of the second generation of 3rd class saloons which were also the first to be built at Boston Lodge. There are a number of design alterations from the original trio built by Winson Engineering.

They are a whopping 13 metres long (that's whopping for UK narrow gauge) and at one end there are double doors to allow for wheelchairs and the first bay of seats inside the saloon can be tipped up and the table folded to make space for these chairs.



The exterior panelling was also different to the first batch, although as the Winsons have passed through Blodge for heavy overhauls their panelling has been changed to match.

The most challenging detail to model was the new design of handrails on the vestibules. These have a T joint unlike the Winson's L shape design which could be replicated by just bending a piece of brass wire. These new ones have to be soldered from three pieces, although himself has made this easier by making a jig.

2044 & 2045 are still in a drawer in virgin white styrene.

Welsh Highland Hybrid

I sometimes think that every exhibition layout needs a novelty feature or something to wind-up the punters.

On Dduallt this requirement has been met by the gravity slate train which always gets plenty of reaction from the viewers and provides the perfect opportunity to pull a few legs. Some people really don’t know whether to believe us or not when we respond to their enquiry about how it’s powered with the answer:"Why, Gravity of course." (Our layout of the spiral has a very severe and obvious gradient, you see.)

The incomplete Bron Hebog has only had a couple of exhibition appearances but it was easy enough to tease a reaction out of the audience by giving Russell a run out and soon enough someone would mutter: “Oooh, controversial!”.

However, with the recent thaw in relations between the FR and Welsh Highland Heritage Railway I don’t think the historic Hunslet is going to retain its abilty to shock for much longer. It can only be a matter of time before it appears back on
WHR(C) metals.

So I’ve been looking around for something else to ‘get them going’ and I think its time to bring on the ‘Parry People Mover’.



The PPM was a lightweight railcar which had a brief career on the WHR in 1999 when line was open between Caernarfon and Dinas only.

This hybrid railcar was powered by a large flywheel underneath the vehicle which was revved up by an external power source, in this case a low-horsepower LPG engine, which charged the flywheel as required.

(A standard gauge version has been used for a while now on the Stourbridge branch in England with the units designated as 139’s.)

It was passed by HMRI for public use and ran a few public trips before the gearbox consumed its innards and it skulked at the back of the carriage shed for a time (where I photographed and ran a tape measure over it) before it was sent back the manufacturer, never to return.



So a PPM never has been seen at Beddgelert, and one wonders whether a machine designed for urban tramways would have been able to haul itself up the long climb to the summit at Rhyd Ddu without frequent stops to ‘spin up’, but there’s no harm in using a little modeller’s licence, is there?

You can question, too, whether passengers would be too enthusiastic about the rather spartan interior on a longer run. The railcar was registered to carry 30 passengers but there were only (bus) seats for about half of them.



My PPM project’s still at the ‘thinking about it’ stage of development, but I reckon I should be able to make the bodyshell out of styrene in my usual way and I’ll probably use a Kato tram chassis. So just a boring old dc motor rather than a fancy flywheel arrangement!

If you’re interested in finding out more about Parry People Movers the company has a website

Transferable Skills

The varnish has barely cured on Garratt 87 and Himself is already cracking on with completing the paint job on baby brother - or perhaps that should be little sister (?) - K1.

Our model, a Backwoods Miniatures kit, has spent years running around in its underwear waiting for Boston Lodge to complete the lining out, and then waiting for Himself to pluck up the courage / enthusiasm * (delete as appropriate) to finish the job.

It seems the moment has arrived. Here's a shot of the trial lining on one side of the front tank.



He's using lining from Fox Transfers. It's quite a challenge because the two colours have to be added individually. The real K1 has a very, very thin powder blue line on the inside edge of the straw colour, but we're not crazy enough to try that.

UPDATE

I have been corrected about which transfers we are using on K1. The red lining is from Kemco.

It's Showtime!

We're delighted to be able to announce a new entry in the Bron Hebog exhibition diary.



The organisers of Narrow Gauge South have been kind enough to invite us to bring the layout to their show at Sparsholt, near Winchester on the 14th of April 2012.

Still, I suppose you can never have enough advance advertising.

We'll be aiming to have a lot more of the layout built by then but it will still be something of a work-in-progress exhibit. One of my aims for this year is to get to work on the Oberon Wood housing development at the south end of the station, where the railway dives into Goat Tunnel. What's holding that up at the moment is a lack of drawings / designs. (Are you reading this Francis?)

An Explanation...

A few readers have mentioned that they didn't 'get' a reference in a post couple of days ago when I wrote about 'Himself' finding 'Rudd's Shilling' slipped into his pint of Purple Moose. (Himself was among the ranks of the puzzled)

Perhaps my historical play on words was a little too subtle and so I thought I'd better explain it.

Many years ago when serving in the Royal Navy was not a very attractive career option, groups of hard nuts, known as press gangs, used to roam coastal areas of Britain looking for men they could round up and force onto the ships. They would press a shilling, which, of course, had the image of the monarch on one face, into their victim's hand and tell him that he had 'taken the King's Shilling' and was therefore obliged to serve as crew on board one of His Majesty's warships.

Unsurprisingly blokes got wise to this, and so the story goes that the press gangs took to dropping the King's Shilling into their beer when they weren't looking. When they came to drain their glass they would find the coin at the bottom and were dragged off forthwith to a waiting ship. (Incidentally, is it said that this is why some tankards have a glass bottom, so you could spot the shilling lurking at the bottom of the beer and scarper before the press gang grabbed you.)

So, to return to the point, 'Himself' has found himself co-opted into FR volunteer Ian Rudd's lineside maintenance gang. Hence my reference to him finding 'Rudd's Shilling' at the bottom of his pint of Purple Moose (a Porthmadog brew which is highly recommended!)

So now you're all clear then!

Grey Garratt

Our latest Backwoods NGG16, No87, has passed through the paintshop and been reassembled, and here she is.



Although she only wore this livery for her first year in service on the WHR in 2009 (and is now in a lined dark blue) we've finished her in photographic grey because it was just too tempting to resist. I think it'll make her really stand out on the layout because its very rare indeed to see a grey locomotive on an exhibition layout.

The cab plates are only temporary - they will be replaced with the correct design in due course.

Easy As 1, 2, 3

If you were wondering why there hasn't been much progress on the layout part of the Bron Hebog project recently, part of the explanation is that Himself has been giving up a lot of weekends to go and volunteer on the FR.

(I think he found Rudd's Shilling slipped into his pint of Purple Moose one night)

The upside of this is that I get very regular research reports on the activities at Boston Lodge.

The latest set of pictures smuggled out of Wales show progress on the conversion of former first class Observation Carr. 101 into a third class, wheelchair accessible saloon which will be marshaled at the Blaenau end of trains and given a new number: 123.





This will be an 'quick win' (as business folk are fond of saying) because I've built 2 models of 101 already and there will only be slight alterations to the external design - an extra pair of windows in what was the guard's van. However, I won't be starting work on my model until the project is a little further on and I can see all the panelling / beading on it.

The carriage team are also busy on converting former WHR semi-open saloon 2020 into a BBB (bog, buffet and brake) Service Carr.



This should also be quite simple to replicate because they've based the conversion around the existing layout of the steel frame as much as possible, so there is a good baseline to work from. The major alteration is the generator compartment which has meant opening up the frame and inserting new uprights on one side. The sliding window frames are also asymmetric, unlike on the first, purpose built service carr, so I'll have to be careful to get those looking right.

My spy also reports on some intriguing, I might go so far as to say Spooneresque, plans for future FR carriage designs, but I shall say no more about that for now. (This is a modelling blog, not Wikileaks!)