Hi All,

another quiet spell on my blog, I guess mainly because the Victoria Bridge project has more or less come to a point of 'more or less done-ness' although there are a few enhancements to come. Primarily, I want to improve the lighting within the diorama box from the cheap and nasty LEDs sourced from a caravan that are, one by one, giving up the ghost... (and are a horrible blue colour)

Over recent months I have been learning more and more about colour temperatures and associated things as I have been working in lighting design professionally, watch this space!

I have spent the last couple of evenings decorating the roof of my Arley Station building. What you see at the moment is mostly marker pen and fineliner, which looks a bit 'in yer face' but will be toned down with washes, tiles picked out in lighter paint, and finally dry brushed and matt varnished to bring it all together.

But to the main topic for the post..... another new idea for a micro layout. I have really enjoyed the 'preserved bridge in a box' concept with Victoria Bridge, and had been pondering a similar model I could build to share the same '9mm gauge' plug in fiddle yard around the back, and sit in a similarly sized box as, in itself, another plug in module.

I had been pondering a bit of a shift in scale using the same fiddle yard around a 009 diorama. I have been quietly collecting Ffestiniog Railway carriages in the scale for a while and the project might spur me on to completing the kits which currently sit unpainted but more or less glued together.

The tricky thing was locating the scene. I had a fairly strong memory of an ornate bridge over a road from my early childhood, but in recent years I have only seen the middle of the line from the train itself so pinpointing the bridge was not immediately easy... however, a bit of research soon found the location I was after:

https://www.festipedia.org.uk/wiki/Tan_y_Bwlch_Bridge

Which has been modeled before, but I think in an earlier era rather than preservation. I'm minded to go for a modern view, maybe with autumnal surroundings in a similar vein to Victoria Bridge, a simple run though diorama that would not quite reach the station itself. The road narrows under the bridge which would allow for a realistic traffic jam (of two or three modern cars) which, along with the urgent looking 'ARAF' markings on the tarmac would set the scene nicely in time and space!

I think I have got the right bridge, are there any other (nicely 3D printable) ornate bridges on the Ffestiniog line?

I have also just ordered one of the nice 'Snapper Bar' Peco L&B carriages from the Peco section of http://www.festshop.co.uk/ which may have something to do with my latest layout idea! What I am lacking is a Ffestiniog engine, but I have some chassis in mind, to sit a home designed 3D print on.

One thing I would like to attempt would be a really good model of a (present day) 'England' 0-4-0 tender engine. I have happy memories of riding in the tender of 'Prince' not, oddly, on the Ffestiniog but alongside the river on a temporary track at the 2013 Shrewsbury Flower Show. I'd end up self-indulgently modelling myself in the tender of the model version, which will be interesting as I was carrying a 6' tall carved wooden giraffe at the time....