Railway Research Trip; Portmeirion

Today on the blog: I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, de-briefed, or numbered! I am not a number! I am a man! A FREE MAN!

There, I've got the obligatory The Prisoner references out of my system. I've an upcoming model project which is themed around Portmeirion, and whilst I've paid a few visits here in recent years, I thought it best to hit the place for another walk-around just to get the atmosphere of it all, nack in the summer. OK and the other elephant in the room, there isn't a railway here... but there might have been if some early plans had come off, hence the model build.

I do really love the compositions of the buildings, the mark of a place designed from scratch by an artist with a keen eye; Sir Cough Williams-Ellis.

One of the things I wanted to get was the colours on the buildings.

Also the little details like the urns.

I also wanted some panorama shots over the village as backdrops for the eventual model build.

After doing the village, we took a walk in the woods, though there were other things to photograph up here to that would feed into the model build.

So more on the model build in a later post, depending on when it gets into print.

 

Railway Research Trip; Barmouth Viaduct

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the Cambrian Coast Railway. Mainly the hate is because I think this is a criminally under-valued, over-rationalised and neglected railway line. For many years, it's been pretty sterile- it went from having regular holiday excursions, steam specials, and cared-for stations to being picked as a test-bed for the European digital signalling scheme, after which it became limited to a few tired Class 158's, a slippy timetable with long journey times, next to no excursions and absolutely no steam. Long delays, overgrown stations, cancellations, and a threat of closure whenever the infrastructure needed mending.

I was stunned when Barmouth Viaduct was not just repaired, but repaired this well. Replacing the ironwork like-for-like! When they did the Penrhyndeudraeth road/rail Toll Bridge further up the line, it became a soulless concrete viaduct (which the cynic in me noted would be very easy to lift the rails and put an additional road deck on instead). There was a lot of talk of Barmouth Viaduct getting rebuilt in concrete, or being turned into a road bridge with a railway afterthought. But no, it looks glorious.

This was a disappointment- I wanted a nice bright backdrop for some shots for a model I'm making, and it was gloomy as hell.

The refit of the viaduct included keeping and re-installing a lot of the details, like the controls to swing the bridge (even if it wouldn't ever swing again).

Lots of people on the bridge getting in the way of the shots.

Still, always nice to see a train on the bridge. Having somewhat taken the 158's for granted for a while (and until the refits, the ones on the Cambrian were a pain to travel on and very knackered), their imminent replacement by soulless plastic tat 197's has encouraged me to want to record them whilst I still can.

Look at it- so nice and shiny!

So yeah, a useful trip, even if the weather was a bit shocking. More coming up soon on the blog on the models this has resulted in...

 

In the Micro Model Railway Dispatch; Star Lane Sidings, 000 gauge- a folding shunting puzzle

The Micro Model Railway Dispatch The Home of The Micro Model Railway Dispatch – Just another WordPress site is an excellent source of inspiration for anyone looking to build a small railway. People from all over the globe showing their layouts, and they tend to be very much on the achievable end of the spectrum.  There's a lot to be said for doing a mini project, as opposed to working on some giant layout that takes years and years.

The editor put out a shout for people to submit articles on 'Inglenook' shunting puzzles- this is a type of model with a fan of three sidings, usually 8 wagons, a single loco, and you select a train of 5 to make up in as few moves as possible (you usually select the consist by shuffling cards with the names/pictures of the wagons on).

I'd had a plan to make some sort of portable, folding puzzle layout, and this brief fit the bill nicely. 

Here's the box that would be used for the project- an old wooden art box, no contents.

The hinges would need moving to the ends of the box to make a longer layout- one half for the sidings, one for the headshunt (and integrated storage for the rolling stock).

The original plan was for two longer hinges, hence the blocks either side of the end joints, but in the end the original hinges were good enough to re-use.

The removable cover for the tunnel/bridge to hide the line going off-scene.

Standard Lone Star 000 track was used, with the rest of the scenic details a mix of packing foam, plaster, offcuts of plasticard of various types.

And here it is; scenic work was very simple, a bit of scatter and some very basic bog-brush trees.

The donors for the rolling stock; Lone Star 000 models (these very early predecessors of N scale) tend to turn up in this condition. They're good, solid, but tend to have very battered paint finishes.

A bit of repainting, to keep them distinctive; Citadel acrylics to recolour them, then washed over with nuln oil to bring out the relief details.

The buildings are mainly some old Bluebird Thomas the Tank Engine playset items; a derelict station, a signal box, a water tower, and a crane (this latter was an original Lone Star item, taken off its wagon which was too long to be shunted on the layout).

I liked the idea of everything being contained inside the box, to keep this a portable playset; two wooden pencil boxes formed the storage, disguised as a car park...

Lined with foam, they -just- contain a set of stock to run the puzzle. The plan eventually is to remove the centre spine and fabricate a new lid, that would give room for a few more wagons for a bit of variety.

Showing just how portable the layout is- it can even be used outdoors (because these are push-along models, no need to worry about power supplies or controllers).

And here it is, in the mag.

This was a fun little holiday project in the end, even if it was a bit of a challenge to make something away from the workshop. It could do with some finishing touches, but that's something that can be worked on.

 

Garden Railway Saturday; P.S Models flat/open wagons

As the Engineers Train grows, a couple of flat wagons seemed like a good addition. And once again, operating on a budget, we turned to the excellent range from Phil Sharples. Partly because they'd match the two vans we'd already done, and partly because they're fun, simple kits that reward a bit of extra detailing.

As with the other vehicles we've built, we added extra rivet details from stick-on gems. A bit overscale, but it adds relief and keeps the stock looking consistent.

You can get some excellent detail parts 3D printed... or you can do what we did, and buy a big box of secondhand playmobil stuff very cheaply off eBay, which seemed to work just as well.

The train set up at my (Ben's) parents house, as our layout wasn't looking good enough to photograph on at this point.

And in the mag.