Crocodile414

Evening All, Happy New Year! We attended the Edington Exhibition this weekend just gone and thankfully our fiddle yard modifications have worked. During our previous outing at Lydney in September 2023, the draw runners for the traverser started losing their ball bearings. Rather than risk a total failure at the next show we opted to install new runners acquired from Station Road Baseboards. These are far more heavy duty (the previous ones were donated from scrap furniture and worked well for a while). However, the new runners were of course a slightly different size to the previous versions. We also opted to use them as they were intended - ie to work in one direction, rather than trying to get them to go backwards and forwards to line the tracks up. We therefore now have our approach tracks situated at the rear edge rather than the middle. This has caused the fiddle yard board to now sit closer to the scenic boards so we also had to extend the corners by 50mm to compensate for this. Hopefully the attached pictures will give some illustration and understanding to the latest modification. Our next outing will be the Bristol Model Railway show at Thornbury Leisure Centre from Friday 3rd - Sunday 5th May 2024. Cheers, Nick

Looking forward to attending with Kleine Albula, test running is currently underway. See you next month!

Evening All, A long time since the last update mainly because I've moved house again, and secondly due to the layout not having any invites since Tolworth last November. With our only 2023 appearance at Lydney fast approaching, we thought we'd better have a test run. Everything worked fine but we were having trouble with the draw runners which the traverser sits on and weren't able to consistently get it to reach the outermost tracks. After taking the deck on and off several times we are currently running experimentally with the 2 outer runners only. Following at bit more fine tuning with a planer and some wd40, it seems to be behaving itself for the moment....fingers crossed it continues to do so. If any of you get to Lydney, please come and say hi, details are in the link below. https://www.ukmodelshops.co.uk/event/y2023/25504-ForestofDeanModelRailwayClub_Exhibition Cheers,Nick

Another vote for Taliesin as it is now! In my wildest dreams, one of the 2-8-2 NGG15's would be far too irresistible!

Hi, Our only confirmed exhibition at present is Lydney on 23rd & 24th September. We've been asked about several others but no firm invites have been received so far. We've also had some potential enquiries for 2024 but again, no firm invites at present. Cheers, Nick

Agreed! I much prefer the 2-4-0STT version, fingers crossed it might be in the February announcements. Fantastic to see Bachmann bringing out these stunning narrow gauge engines.

Well said Paul. I am too young to have seen it when Rev Awdry himself took it out but was delighted to see it at Warley. The guys from Tallyllyn did an excellent job and to see/hear the original notes and sequence just added to the enjoyment. I made multiple return visits throughout the day. I thought overall it was a good show, I picked up a few bits and visitor numbers were comfortable. Very much enjoyed the "swiss village" as well. Thanks to Warley MRC for all their efforts in putting the show on.

Seconded! James and his team did a fabulous job of organising the show. We all thoroughly enjoyed the weekend. Thank you to the club for the invite with Kleine Albula.

First day completed with Kleine Albula, really enjoyed the show, we have been looked after extremely well. Looking forward to day two.

We'll be there with Kleine Albula. Very much looking forward to the weekend. Nick

The 100 coach train was also recreated on The Andeer Line at Pecorama on Saturday

We can but hope! Can I add Taliesin to the mix as well?!

I bought a few of them second hand from everyone's favourite auction site over the last 12-18 months. As others have said they're not as well detailed as the bemo stock but still look fine alongside them. They run nicely so I've no complaints with them, I often mix one into a rake of coaches for variety. Cheers,Nick

I've no idea about the SRS AGM at the moment. As for the others you've mentioned we don't currently have any invites for any of them. The layout is naturally still fairly new to the exhibition scene so hopefully we'll be going for a while yet! :)

Thank you, I'm glad you've enjoyed reading the thread. We hope to get out and about as much as possible depending on the usual factors. At present we've nothing really in the North. Our current confirmed exhibitions are: Cardiff - 20th & 21st August https://www.cardiffmodelrailwayshow.co.uk/ Highbridge - 27th & 28th August https://bdmrc.co.uk/2022-exhibition/ Yealmpton - 8th October https://www.ukmodelshops.co.uk/event/23363-ChrisCraftsandModelRailways_Exhibition Another one on the verge of confirmation but I won't say until it's certain. Cheers, Nick

Looking forward to this show, we'll be there with Kleine Albula 😀

Hi All, Pleased to report Penarth was highly successful - the worst problem we encountered was operator error and me forgetting to charge the drill up on Sunday which meant undoing all the nuts by hand!! Many thanks to my good friends for assisting me with transport and operation for the weekend. We'll do it all again in about 7 weeks time at the Cardiff show https://www.cardiffmodelrailwayshow.co.uk/exhibitors.asp and then again the weekend after at Highbridge. https://bdmrc.co.uk/2022-exhibition/ We also had a visiting loco which did a few demo runs for it's admirers! Cheers, Nick

Ready for the morning.....and we didn't forget anything! https://www.ukmodelshops.co.uk/event/23704-BarryPenarthModelRailwayClub_Exhibition

Nice to visit this show again, very much enjoyed just watching the trains go by on Moors View and Dawlish Warren!

Thank you so much Keith for the kind words. I've just checked the construction photos, the first piece of wood was cut on 9th Feb 2019! We were slightly delayed by the pandemic but I'm very pleased to see it reach this stage. The entire project would not have been possible were it not for one of my very good friends (who'd had his own HOm layout for many years) helping me at almost every stage of the build from drawing it out full size on wallpaper on the kitchen floor, right up to what you see now. What started as an individuals idea has very much become a joint project. Cheers, Nick

As promised, here is the video of some of the test running. You'll have to excuse the traffic noise and the lighting. Remaining jobs to do are to glue to gutters and downpipes on one of the buildings and attach the station name signs.

There are 3 figures near the station building carrying ski's but I may not have got them in the shots!

That's the idea! We have discussed putting a dry ice machine underneath the layout! 🤣

A video is coming soon..... Intensive test running is currently in progress. We'll be at the Penarth shown on 2nd and 3rd July https://www.ukmodelshops.co.uk/event/23704-BarryPenarthModelRailwayClub_Exhibition Cheers, Nick

Evening All, The catenary is now complete and has been tested with numerous locos with different pantographs. Thanks to my two very good friends for spending two days stringing it all together and soldering everything in place. I can safely say I've learnt a lot about how it all goes together!! I've also been adding the extra bits to the switching tower - this was quite a challenge as Sommerfeldt didn't provide any specific instructions, just some pictures too follow. I've therefore made my best interpretation from the pictures available. Further trees have been planted along the front of the layout but plenty more are still required! It's amazing how many the space uses up. Two weeks to go until the first show at Penarth https://www.ukmodelshops.co.uk/event/23704-BarryPenarthModelRailwayClub_Exhibition . We're hoping to have a test run next week. Many evenings have been spent adding the various additional pieces to the rolling stock where possible. More news soon. Cheers, Nick