Tuesday 27 April 2010

Stone By Stone

I spent a lot of time over the winter on the buildings at Cwm Cloch Isaf Farm, which lies to the north of Beddgelert station, in the middle of the lower loop of the S bend.

The five buildings range from some very dilapidated traditional stone longhouses to a modern corrugated steel barn.

We're having to play some artistic tricks on this section of the layout, so the buildings have been scaled down to fit in the space we've got available on the layout and to give some perspective and a sense of depth to the viewer.

Francis surveyed the site and made up some cardboard mock ups to finalise the dimensions before sending on to me a wonderfully detailed set of hand drawn plans for each of the buildings which I hope he won't mind me showing here.



Here's how the real building looks, and my version for comparison.





The walls are built from 60" styrene sheet and each stone has been scribed on using a dental pick type thing. I have experimented a couple of times with DAS clay spread onto styrene, hoping it would be softer and easier to scribe, but I've found it is too pulpy and fibreish (I know that's know a word but hope you get my drift) when it's scribed and you don't get the clean, deep scoring effect from scribing into the styrene.

The slates on this model use the 4mm Slaters product, which has to be thinned down underneath at the edges to look right.

This barn, one of the smallest on the site, has now been delivered to our resident artist, Francis, for painting.

Friday 23 April 2010

Bron Hebog On Show

It's about time I put a few pictures of the layout up on the blog.

Bron Hebog's first public appearance was at the Porthmadog show in May 2009. Only the station boards had been completed at this time. Thanks to Colin Lea for allowing me to reproduce his photographs here.



Track and scenery formers have been laid for the lower portion of the S bend. The first of the Cwm Cloch farm buildings is also in position. The picture was taken at Warley 2009.



The water tower at the Rhyd Ddu end of the station.



A close up of the Pullman observation carr. (to be named 'Glaslyn' by HM Queen Elizabeth II next week)



The Porthmadog end of the station. K1 entering from Goat Tunnel. The Oberon Wood housing estate will be built on the high ground to the left of the picture.



A view of the layout in its current state, as shown at Warley 2009

Thursday 22 April 2010

My Cherry Amour

Apologies for the bad pun! This is my other 'work in progress' the FR S&T Dept's Cherry Picker.

It's pretty much complete and ready for the paint brush now, just the handbrake on one of the bogies, couplings and some jewels for the lights on top of the main bodywork to be sorted.

This model probably won't ever appear on Bron Hebog because of the rules about only fitted stock allowed on the WHR, but it'll make a quirky addition to the Dduallt fleet.


Wednesday 21 April 2010

More About Bron Hebog

I described the concept of our Bron Hebog layout in the first post on this blog, but a picture tells a thousand words, as they say. So here is an artist's impression of how the layout should look, and a track plan (both by our tame artist Francis Gomme).



Sunday 18 April 2010

Super Barn 103




The latest project on the workbench is new FR carriage 103 - the so called 'Super Barn' made longer and wider to more comfortably accommodate today's super-sized passengers. (Compared to mid-Victorian midgets that is)

It's a new look for FR stock, blending the classic lines of the 1960's barn design with the recessed doors and vestibules of the current WHR designs.



I'm using my usual all-Styrene technique. The trickiest part of this build so far has been the roof. Unlike the WHR saloons there is no solid frame above the recessed doors, which instead have top lights continuing up into the roofline. This means for up to 10mm at each end of the vehicle there's nothing solid to attach the edge of the roofskin to. At the moment it's behaving itself and has remained reasonably straight and level. But it's only been there for 72 hours.....

Saturday 17 April 2010

Hello there!

Welcome to the Bron Hebog blog. I reckoned it was about time our project had a presence online, so here we are.

With 'Dduallt' in semi-retirement and 'Bron Hebog' still a long way from completion we haven't had many opportunities recently to show our models off in the real world, so it's time to go virtual!

The embryonic 'Bron Hebog' had its first outings in 2009 at the Porthmadog show and also at Warley at the NEC. For those who haven't seen it yet, it's a contemporary 009 model of Beddgelert station on the rebuilt Welsh Highland Railway.

But, when it's complete, our model will also include the S bends behind the station, the full length of Goat Tunnel and the line towards Cemetery Crossing. That's why we've called it 'Bron Hebog' and not just 'Beddgelert'(which has been done many times anyway).

The layout's being built in Oxfordshire / Buckinghamshire, (by David Waller, Francis Gomme and Rob Cooper) but I live 400 miles away in Ayrshire. So this blog will be more about the rolling stock and buildings which are my major contribution to the project.

I'm still making plenty of FR models as well so I'll be posting updates about them too.

I hope you enjoy reading about what I'm up to.

Rob