Garden Railway Saturday; Welsh Highland Railway Coach

Needing a passenger vehicle, and something quite large at that, as a test train, I turned to a favoured prototype.

During the Plague Years, we had a ride in this carriage on the Welsh Highland Heritage Railway, Porthmadog. At the time I was tempted to laser-cut one of my own, but in the end I purchased this kit (from the WHHR shop, on a later visit).

Nice multi-media kit.

Little bit fragile in places, but easy to mend.

Some lovely, good quality bits, like the bench.

Contrary to the instructions, some very nice white-metal castings to replace the laser-cut wooden parts.

Ready for painting; having constructed the coach mainly during my lunch breaks, and before shifts at work, I ended up painting it in Wales.

Bit limited in the choices of paint; it was Autumn when we were there, and naturally B&M had stripped out the spray paints in favour of more Halloween tat. Luckily I had the dregs of a can of black paint to prime it, then hand-painted the rest with tester pots.

A bit of an experiment with the roof, loo-roll soaked in  watered-down PVA.

A bit more modification to the kit, to portray open windows.

An attempt at my usual weathering technique, washes of Nuln Oil and watered-down acrylics, but the material drank it up. But then maybe it would make more sense for a carriage like this to be kept sparkling.

Photographed out in the garden at my parents house, as we still lack a garden railway... Still, as I type this, the plan is to shortly crack-on with it, weather depending...

...aaaaaand published.

Garden Railway Saturday; Fine and Dandy

The under-developement 32mm garden railway is planned to be set in the late 20th century, somewhere in Wales, and probably diesel hauled. So there really isn't a justification for a Ffestiniog Railway Horse Dandy Wagon. Yet, as soon as I saw this wagon in an issue of Garden Rail, I really wanted it. What can I say, I like an eccentric bit of rolling stock.

A Dandy Wagon is a specialist item of rolling stock, used in the days when the Ffestiniog ran their slate trains by gravity. Empty trains were hauled by horse up to the quarries, then the horse rode back to the seaside in a a special wagon attached to the back of the loaded trains.

This is a really nice wagon, it practically falls together.

Use of an engineers square, but the quality of the cutting is so good it doesn't really need it.

Bodywork assembled.

The chassis was an interesting design, brass tubes the axles sit within. It does mean the wagon rolls along very nicely.

Sprayed with a handy can of dark red.

The more I looked at it though, the more I thought I'd like to add some extra relief detailing, so broke out the spare rivets (stick on gems) leftover from the diesel shunter build.

Some dry grass used for the hay in the trough.

The horse is the right side, but the wrong breed and really needs some harness and tack. That said, the Schliech-branded toy is quite characterful, and they had this one on another stand at the Llangollen show so it was a handy purchase.

 

Garden Railway Saturday; Llangollen Show, 2025

Striking whilst the iron is hot, here's a post on the Llangollen Garden Railway Show today.

Love a streamliner. 

Where was I? Yes, Llangollen. So this is a show we've been attending for the last few years, and it's always worth the effort of attending.

By contrast to the more commercial G gauge items such as that rather tasty streamliner, here's a really rather nice Gauge 1 loco. more to scale, and a wonderful model.

Going high up the list of 'models seen at the show that I'd love to own, had I a bottomless bank account'.

There were plenty of the trade there, who we were wanting to shop with, and several impressively large layouts.

This is the other loco I wanted, "Little Wonder". I gather it's a detailed 'Boot Lane' kit.

This is the sort of modelling I like; the builders (a family group) have been scratchbuilding the characters from the Thomas series that Bachmann haven't produced so far; that BoCo is brilliant, I wanted to do a model of him back when we had a 45mm layout, but never got around to it.

Quirky, colourful, and huge, this beast of a layout really caught my eye. Inspired by the works of Roland Emmett.

Yep, this also struck a chord. I love that there's room in garden railway modelling for the silly...

...and the serious. I really, really like this Fairlie.

Lots of nice live-steam locomotives running, and loads for sale. Seriously tempting, had I the funds.

That leads to thoughts on the Trade there. We came away with lots of goodies, though definitely on the 'laser cut kits' end of the scale. Though we did treat ourselves to a 3D printed loco kit from Boot Lane Works, who seem to be cornering the market in competitively-priced locomotives. A selection of kits from the likes of Timpdon Models (retiring and having an 'everything must go sale', to my disappointment, as I love their kits), and a few more from other suppliers.

Catering was a bit busy (the poor weather meaning the inside seating was a bit crowded) so we strolled down to the Llangollen Railway station.

The 31 was waiting to depart as we got there, which at least meant the tearoom was quiet enough for a sit-down for lunch.

Quick reference shot, for one of the benches we bought at the show.

The show was good as ever, and nice to have a quick catch-up with Phil Parker, my editor at Garden Rail. Lots of goodies bought, and some lovely layouts seen.

Who knows, maybe next year, I'll buy that Double Fairle too...

 

Warhammer Wednesday; Thunderhawk Gunship

Today on the blog, Warhammer Wednesday sees a build of one of my favourites, the Thunderhawk Gunship.

Released as part of the Aeronautica Imperialis game, it's recently come back as part of the Epic re-release. I used to play Epic back in the 1990's and the metal kit of the Thunderhawk was one of my favourites. I'd been wanting to get my hands on one of the new ones, and once again, Acme Games of Llandudno came up trumps when I couldn't buy one of these at a Games Workshop.

I seem to vaguely recall my metal kit in the 90's consisted of about 9 parts...

Just look at the detailing on this- the usual crisply-moulded Citadel kit.

I didn't have a particular Chapter in mind for this when I undercoated the model...

...that said, I'm a fan of large aircraft in white, so decided to make this a White Scars machine. I can't see myself getting into playing Epic, but wanted to use this for some aerial photography in the same manner as the Captain Scarlet planes last year.

A light dusting of white, then some detail painting followed. All very minimal. And due to reasons of poor planning, no transfers either, as I finished the model off whilst in Wales and had managed to leave the transfer sheet in Yorkshire... Final weathering was a bit of drybushing, and a wash of nuln oil (front to back, nose to tail this time) to pick out the relief details.

Just look at the surface detailing, the vents and grilles... this on a model about 10cm long. Please, please GW, release this in the standard scale!

As with the Angel jets, I'd drilled-out the engines, and inserted the telescoping metal rod for the home-made flying rig. Two cocktail sticks, wrapped in cotton wool, went into the outer engines.

First shoot, on the beach at Criccieth.

However, the cocktail sticks wouldn't stay in place, so I gave up after a few shots...

...and in the afternoon, went up into the hills above Porthmadog (where I'd shot the pics with the Rogal Dorn and the Rhino, see the earlier posts).

Some low level, over the planet shots, trying to use forced perspective to make the moss look like a woodland scene.

I really like this model. Not enough to tempt me into Epic, sadly, but I do have an Aeronautica Imperialis box set somewhere, which I could get into...