Been a busy period with one thing and another, so not much to report modelling wise. However, a weeks holiday in Prestatyn gave a boost to getting back on it, not ;east because we had a couple of nice walks along the course of two famous North Wales branch lines. If you have a week or two up that way, the walk up the course of the Dyserth branch from Prestatyn is lovely, a steady climb up into the hills on a well laid tarmac patch (watch out for high speed cyclists coming down the gradient!) with a couple of tea stop opportunities including the golf club cafe near Meliden, and some nice railway artefacts left to remind people what it was like. Nice to see the Meliden goods shed nearing the end of a sympathetic conversion into a village meeting and heritage centre (and another cafe), with the remains of the old loading gauge gently corroding away in what was the goods siding. It's 2.6 miles each way between the 45 years odd of tree growth since the line finally closed, very welcome on a hot sunny day, and you can easily imagine steam exhaust blasts echoing round the place as a hard working loco shoved it's empty wagons up to the various mines and quarries before coasting back down with the previous days output. The long-gone passenger service with the tram-like LNWR steam autocoach, perhaps with well turned out Edwardian folk going up to Dyserth to have a wander down to the waterfall, is also easy to imagine.
I didn't know much about the Holywell Railway, that served the heavy industry in the Greenfield Valley - rather a misnomer in the 18th and 19th centuries for sure, but now a lovely, tranquil, heritage park with the Holywell stream feeding the various reservoirs built in the day - but to sum up, over two centuries a horse drawn tramway to the mills, quarries, copper works etc was supplanted by a short-lived steam version in the later Victorian era. Then after a few years while the LNWR directors tried to recall exactly why they bought it in 1891, turned into a quite successful shuttle passenger line from re-titled Holywell Junction on the Chester - Holyhead main line (actually in the village of Greenfield) to Holywell Town, which got up to 23 round trips a day in the 1920s and 30s among a steadily decreasing goods traffic, again, with a loco pushing wagons and carriages up the taxing incline, Britain's steepest wheel adhesion reliant railway, and coasting down on the brakes. This too has a rather fine well surfaced wide path to follow up through the woods to show where it once was, and the whole heritage park is picturesque, with lots of bits and bobs - some extremely large, like the iron waterwheel segment in the old mill complex - that show what a great job can be done when attempting to remind modern day folk that once the UK wasn't full of investment bankers, software developers, stockbrokers and the like, but did rather more tangible things, albeit with the same kind of effect on the environment that modern China is experiencing. Both well worth a visit.
These walks were very pleasant indeed, and I must also put in a good word for Arriva Trains - yes, really! - and a faith- restoring honest citizen when my smartphone fell out of my pocket on a train between Llandudno and Rhyl, and was handed in and traced to Chester station lost property almost within the hour! Better yet, our daughter lives in Chester, about five minutes walks from the station, and was able to pick it up and return it to me nenxt day. Result!
Anyway, all this railway related stuff got me at it again back home in Hastings, and a long awaited signal box for my layout Tillingham has been completed, and is now in place on the layout - pics on the layout topic in a while.

Meliden goods shed nearing restoration as a Heritage Centre.

One of several intact overbridges on the Dyserth branch line walk.

Restored goods yard crane at Dyserth.

The Greenfield Valley looks a lot more picturesque now than in did when the Holywell branch ran through it.

Big chunks of Victorian engineering remind us of what used to be in the Deeside area.
(All photos Paul Huggett)