MatP

Hello! I have another trader to add: Raven Eve Designs (www.ravenevedesigns.com). They're based in Dwygyfylchi on the North Wales coast and produce laser-engraved wood and slate products. They're not a model railway company as such but we want to support local and local-ish businesses, plus not everybody attending the Show will be the sort of person who can tell a Hall from a Grange at 1000 yards in the dark... (or, to put it more politely, a lot of our Show visitors come in family groups!). Best Wishes, Mat

Good Morning / Bore Da... I have another trader to add to our list: 'Collector Stash' of Wrexham. Their website is www.collectorstash.com and they also have an eBay shop. They sell both scale model railways and gifts suitable for younger visitors. I hope you can come to the Show, Branchie - we'll also be having a two-train service on the Lake Railway. That's why our exhibition is in September - it's also designed to attract more passengers to our last 'fling' of the operating season. Vaguely related to the subject of driving tests, I suppose, is a report from the Highways Agency which we included with our planning reapplication (and indeed with our original set of papers) affirming that extending the Lake Railway into Bala will have no negative impact on traffic through the town... Best Wishes One and All, Mat P. (Bala Lake Railway Society Secretary and Bala Model Show Organiser)

Hi Everyone, Just when you thought it was safe to go back into Meirionnydd... This year's Bala Model Show will be taking place on Saturday 21st and Sunday 22nd September. Opening times are 10.00 - 16.00 both days. The venue is the same as in previous years: Ysgol Godre'r Berwyn (Bala School), Heol Ffrydan (Ffrydan Road), Y Bala, Gwynedd LL23 7RU. There will be approximately 30 layouts in gauges from T to 45mm, with a roughly 50/50 split between standard and narrow gauge. There will also be approximately 12 trade and Society stands. For the provisional list of all of these exhibits and stands, please see below. There is free parking at the School and at the Bala Lake Railway. A vintage Crosville bus will run between the School, other car parks in Bala (pay and display) and the Lake Railway Station. With the exception of the stage in the main Hall, all parts of the venue are fully accessible to people with reduced mobility. Please note that, in order to comply with School regulations, only registered assistance dogs are allowed on the School grounds or inside the School buildings. We have been told that we must be very firm about this from now on, if we want to keep using the School as our venue. All dogs are welcome on the Railway itself (and the BLR Society offers canine memberships too!). On 27th March 2024, the BLR's application to extend the line into the town of Bala was re-submitted to the Snowdonia National Park Authority. Please see the website below for more information. We should receive their decision well before the Show date. Fingers (etc.) crossed! https://www.balalakerailwaytrust.org.uk/news/ Below is a provisional list of exhibits and stands for the 2024 Show, which may well change between now and September. I will keep you posted. There are several layout owners, traders and railway societies with whom we are still finalising financial details, and these are not included below (yet!). I will also update this thread with information about the individual layouts in due course. Best Wishes, Mat P. (Bala Lake Railway Society Secretary and Bala Model Show Organiser) 2024 Layouts: Boston Lodge Jn (16mm, electric) Enwin's 3D Models Industrial layout (00 Gauge) Bryncrug (0-16.5) Bayview (00 Gauge) Cwm Parciau (00-9) Tanner's Hill (N) Afon Adit (0-9) Puffin Colliery (00 & 00-9) Porth Penrhyn (00 & 00-9) Goldford Aston (00-9) Z and T micro-layout display Sanderling-on-Sea (00 Gauge) Wormhill (N) Coed Helen (N) Llangower (00-9) Black Drake Wharf (0 Scale, Standard Gauge) Halfpenny Green (00 Gauge) Campbell's Quarry (16mm, electric) Tutherside (00-9) Rhos-y-Gwaliau Road (00 Gauge) Wrapton (00-9) 16mm Scale Narrow Gauge Modular Layout (electric and live steam) Mikesbiltom (00 Gauge) Alswear (00-9) Normington (N) 2024 Traders and Societies: Sawyer Models Elaine's Trains Enwins 3D Models North Western Models Andrew McDougal 0-16.5 Models Maid Marian Locomotive Fund Bala Lake Railway Society Richard Sterne Electronics Porterhouse Models Grainge and Hodder Baseboards Steve Currinn Books and Models

Hi All, I concur completely with all those sending their best wishes to Hattons employees and their families. I always found the customer service to be first-rate, for instance on a couple of occasions when I had placed an online order and then realised that I needed 'Widget X' as well - I would ring them and ask if they could amend the order so that I didn't have to pay a second postage charge, and they were always fine about it. I also liked their use of Amazon delivery in more recent years: I found it very reliable and predictable. There is a link on the Hattons new stock page called "View products expected into stock soon". It was working normally right up until Christmas Eve. But after the Christmas break, clicking on it produced a 'page not found' error. I guess I now know why. I often used Hattons for things which my local model shops didn't have (they are good and competitively-priced but have quite small ranges), and I was hopelessly addicted to checking the Hattons second-hand section. There were often far more interesting things on it than appear on eBay and even in this day of T-101 software monitoring all human commerce, occasional real bargains. You could often pick up a loco that was a non-runner due to a botched DCC installation (returning the loco to DC gave me a certain Ludditic pleasure), or a part-completed project. Last year, I bought a Hornby 14xx second-hand from them for £30-odd. The previous owner had removed the top feed and decals (expertly) and carried out a partial repaint (very decently) but stopped there. Because it wasn't mint, the Hattons system had knocked a lot off the price. The loco turned out to be a perfect runner and a tenner's worth of new decals and etched plates produced an excellent little model. I just hope Hattons made some money on the deal too - and I did buy this loco as part of a much larger order, honest! Best Wishes, Mat P.

Hi, There's a commercially-available simple kit of Ivor in 16mm scale which is officially licensed, according to the company which produces it: https://www.rail-roadmodels.co.uk/product-page/ivor-the-engine If you are interested in the search for missing episodes of black and white TV shows, this Ivor-related page might be worth a look: https://missingepisodes.proboards.com/thread/14119/ivor-engine The Ivor stories were set in North West Wales, though some of them had a bit more of a South Wales feel to me. But I'd be delighted to hear from anybody who has a model of Grumbly Town or another part of the Merioneth and Llantisilly Railway that they would be willing to exhibit at the Bala Model Show (which is, of course, in Meirionnydd) in 2024! Or, indeed, any Welsh-set standard gauge exhibition layout, because I'm getting the distinct impression that there are remarkably few of them on the exhibition circuit at the moment... Best Wishes, Mat P. (Bala Lake Railway Society Secretary and Bala Model Show Organiser)

Hi, There are three or four such novels, if I remember correctly, by at least two different authors, but I have only very vague memories of them (I think I borrowed a couple from somebody at my school in the early 90's, when The Prisoner was being repeated). I have equally vague memories of a cage-trap for Rover balloons made possibly from umbrella parts, and a Village production of Measure for Measure featuring No.6 as the Duke, from one or other of these novelisations. And one day I must get round to finishing off my own fanfic project, based on the ending of the Sweeney episode "Jack or Knave", in which Regan resigns from the police.... Anyway, there's only one phrase I can think of to respond to Barry Number Ten's kind interest in the Bala Model Show: I think it's something to do with seeing and involves a second-person-singular pronoun, but I can't quite remember it off the top of my head :) All best, Mat

Hi Number Ten and other citizens, There is a Prisoner spin-off novel written circa 1970, set after "Fall Out", in which Number 6 falls asleep on a train from London to somewhere and wakes up at a standard gauge station in the Village - the station is completely deserted after that. I can't remember any more details - I read it ages ago. You used to be able to buy it in the Prisoner shop in Portmeirion. (The shop is temporarily closed at the moment, or it was last month when I last stayed in the Village) because the lady who runs it is not well. Portmeirion in recent years has had a "Road Train" (which I used to call the Ninky Nonk - it was a bit scary to get chased by it if you were walking in the woods) but they've got rid of it now as the 'locomotive' was unreliable. I wonder if Modelu or some such company could be persuaded to make a 3D printed Number 6 figure.... They could scan the bust of Patrick McGoohan that's next to the Toll House... I realise that none of the above is in any way useful and only vaguely pertinent. I hope the layout construction is going well - you'd be very welcome to bring it to the Bala Model Show when it's done! Best Wishes, Mat P. (Bala Lake Railway Society Secretary and Bala Model Show Organiser)

Hi, I've now got hold of some of these wagons and checked the thickness of the slats/rails with a micrometer to see if the non-imperial timber I used on the real one has been replicated. My micrometer is not the best but it tells me that the side ones are pretty much spot on representations of 2" thick timbers, as per the pre-preservation wagons. On the ends, the top slat seems to be thinner than the bottom one (0.6mm-ish vs 0.8mm ish). The top slat is spot on for the 47mm thick timber I used on the prototype. But these are of course wagons which would've been patched up with whatever bits of wood were available, so a bit of a discrepancy (assuming there actually is one, my micrometer is very cheap) is not a problem. And I doubt most people would be that bothered anyway. I only noticed it when looking at the wagons under magnification. I'm very impressed with them. Here are some pictures of the wagons on my model of Llangower Station on the Bala Lake Railway. As usual, I've got no idea where Alice's crew has gone... Best Wishes, Mat P. (Bala Lake Railway Society Secretary and Bala Model Show Organiser)

Hi all, This is very interesting and it is clear to see that these wagons hold a special place for many people. Unfairly I know, I don't have a lot of truck (pun intended) with Boyd, but I did use the Kidner drawing, and tried to track down its originator without success. The measurements for the wagon I built depended though on fitting new timbers around the existing iron parts - the drawbar for the length and the buffing straps for the width. These, being handmade, no doubt had some variation in real life, and from memory my wagon had to be 1/4" wider than indicated by Kidner. We also have quite a collection of rotten bits of original slate wagon timber at Bala, which was useful for getting some of the sizes. Alas I recorded all this information on the backs of envelopes, beer mats etc. and I'm not sure where those documents went! The straps were a bit of a struggle - they naturally sprang open, and the springiness also affected the curve radius, so I had to put a serious amount of sash cramps on them to close them up so that the ends were parallel, before taking any measurements. Also, the inside face of the curved portion wasn't vertical, so I had to plane the headstocks to shape in two axes. Shaping the headstocks was by far the most difficult part of the build. Most of the timber I used, by the way, was Douglas Fir from the Sandringham sawmill. The floorboards were also Douglas, but they'd been stored outside in Julian Birley's car port for ages, and they had imbibed a considerable amount of moisture. When I got them back to Norfolk, where I built the wagon, I stored them in my dry garage for almost a month before using them, but once on the wagon, the Atacaman dryness of East Anglia caused them to shrink by a further 1/8" in width (on a 6" wide board!), snapping some of the screws. I suppose I shouldn't have used screws to hold the floorboards on anyway, but this was one of the mods I made to make the wagons a bit stronger, along with some hidden bracketry underneath - oh, the horror! - as there's very little in the original design to stop the wagons from going parallelogram-shaped. I also put some neoprene washers between the bobbins and the wooden 'rails', partly to stop the bobbins from grinding the rails away, and partly because the bobbins are designed for bang-on 2" thick timbers, and the only timbers I could get without commissioning an expensive bespoke cut were 47mm thick. Perhaps somebody should check if the rails on the Bachmann wagon are 6% thinner than they should be! Anyway, I suppose this thread should really be about making small scale models rather than 1:1 reproductions. I hope you are all very happy with your tiny versions in whatever scale. I'd be interested to know whether the Bachmann ones were made at slightly more than 4mm to the foot, so as to keep the proportions around 9mm wheelsets with generous treads rather than dead-scale ones, or whether they've done something super-cunning to keep everything dead scale. I haven't bought myself any yet as all my modelling funds are currently going on a shamelessly derivative GWR BLT ... Best Wishes, Mat P. (Bala Lake Railway Society Secretary and Bala Model Show Organiser) P.S. Another layout's been added to our Show roster since my previous message, making 14. The next Bala Model Show's on 21st and 22nd September 2024. Please get in touch if you have a layout or trade stand you'd like to bring. At this stage the big gap in my coverage is Welsh-set standard gauge layouts, but all subjects, scales and gauges are welcome of course. We certainly pay transport costs and offer free food and a free trip on the BLR, but can't afford to pay for accommodation. Thanks!

Hi Garry, You're absolutely right, I'm sure those wagons were usually repaired with whatever they had at the time. And it was the slate that mattered - unlike long-range FR vehicles, these wagons had a certain flexibility in the design and, I suspect, were meant to some degree to be sacrificial, as long as the slate made it intact. But it looks as though they did a special job on the ones carrying the Duke and his entourage (perhaps on the same basis that, at least before WW1, standard gauge staff allegedly went round polishing the rail tops on hardly-used sidings if the Royal Train was due to go past). Your 16mm wagon looks super, by the way! All the best. Mat

Hi Garry, Thank you very much for sending us those pictures - I thought they were excellent! I rebuilt and painted the full size wagon that Bachmann measured up (though no doubt they used other sources of inspiration), so the fact that the strapping is body colour might be my fault. When I started painting the wagon, on behalf of Julian Birley, who put together a kit of parts for the ironwork, I instinctively went for black on the buffer straps. However, I then checked and all the pictures I found (and the general opinion of the cognoscenti I talked to) indicated that these straps should be body colour. Even in the black and white photos, there doesn't seem to be much contrast between the body colour and the strap colour. So I repainted the straps red. However, I am perfectly happy to be proven wrong: I don't have many pre-WW2 pictures, for a start. And they do look good in black. And they're your wagons so please do as you wish, of course! The go-to paint for slate wagons at Bala is Blackfriars' Red Oxide Metal Primer, by the way - it's used to top-coat the wood, too. We're going through a programme of boring out the axleboxes and fitting hidden roller bearings as the real things weren't designed for 9-mile (and hopefully one day 11-mile!!!!) round trips on their own wheels. Incidentally, does anybody reading this know when this type of wagon was introduced? There are some Victorian pictures of Port Dinorwic which appear to show wagons for finished slates with dumb buffers, a bit like the Talyllyn ones. I have a theory that the type modelled by Bachmann was introduced in about 1890, in conjunction with or coincidentally with the introduction of the Hunslets, but I can't prove it. I do however use it as an excuse for referring to these vehicles with a single 'g', that being the standard spelling by 1890, which has also got me into trouble... Best Wishes, Mat P. (Bala Lake Railway Secretary and Bala Model Show Organiser) P.S. Our next Show is on the 21st & 22nd Sep 2024. We had 30 layouts in 2023 and have 13 layouts booked so far for 2024. They're all great, but I need to find some standard gauge exhibition layouts set in Wales, and they seem very thin on the ground - or am I missing something? Offers and suggestions are welcomed!

Hi Number 10... Best of luck with this project. I'm looking forward to seeing the layout with some Village buildings. I thought about doing something similar in 16mm but didn't get further than naming some locos after characters from The Prisoner (locos no.1 and no.6 were identical and no.6's number plates kept dropping off). I was inspired by a brief reference in one of the guidebooks to the abortive attempts to mine both slate and gold on the Aber Ia peninsula. It's only right that an equally short-lived tramway would have been needed, maybe joining up with the Ffestiniog somewhere in the vicinity of the level crossing into Minffordd Yard. Surely, Clough would then have reinstated it. Well, that was my never-built model scenario, anyway - I hope that yours goes very well and ends up deserving a marble column with "achievement" inscribed on it. May I humbly suggest that you consider building a Helium Tanker (for topping up the Rover Balloons) and a Whisky Tanker (for topping up Patrick McGoohan)? Best Wishes, Mat P. (Bala Lake Railway Society Secretary and Bala Model Show Organiser - next Show 21st and 22nd Sep 2024!!!)

Hi All, I would very much appreciate some help in sourcing some locally-themed or locally-located (!!!) layouts for the 2024 Bala Model Show. We had 30 layouts at the 2023 Show and those with a strong local theme were very popular. For instance, one of the highlights of the Show was when a 91-year old lady, who had been born in the old signalman's house at Drws-y-Nant, saw a miniature version of that house on the 2mm Finescale layout modelled of the station. We will endeavour to keep the Show 50/50 narrow gauge and standard, and have some very interesting possibilities already. We are happy to welcome layouts representing any part of Britain or the rest of the world, in any era, gauge or scale, and in any format from micro- to mega-, and all suggestions are welcome. All that said, I have found since I took over the Show that the hardest type of layout to source is Welsh-set standard gauge, particularly 4mm and larger. That strikes me as odd, but perhaps I am not hanging out with the right people. Suggestions based on more than a guess that the owner of a particular layout would be interested in our Show would be particularly welcome! I already have quite a long list of layouts that can't come and am in contact with most of the model railway clubs of northern Wales and across the border. We can't afford to pay for accommodation, I'm afraid, but we can supply free pitches for camper vans and the like. We do of course pay travel expenses but the total exhibitor expenses bill for our 30-layout 2023 Show was c.£800 and we can't go much over that. Oh, and by the way, our 2024 Show dates, 21st and 22nd September, are the weekend before Stafford, in spite of what some show brochures may have suggested! Best Wishes / Cofion Gorau, Mat P. (Bala Lake Railway Society Secretary and Bala Model Show Organiser)

Hi, me again. Here are a couple of YouTube videos of the Show. The first is by Enwins 3D Models, who had a stand at the Show. The second was drawn to my attention by the owner / builder of "Sandy Lane", one of our layout exhibits this year. Regards, Mat

Thank you to all the exhibitors, traders, volunteers, staff and visitors that made this Show, I humbly claim, a great success. And thank you to those people who have posted messages about the Show since it took place, here and in other places. I needed a day or two of total isolation in Portmeirion before looking at another computer! In spite of the Wales-Portugal game on the Saturday afternoon (things were a little bit quieter then), and the other fine railway events going on that same weekend, visitor figures were up 28% on last year, and possibly more because the Company's ticket recording system doesn't show the (many) under-16s who get in free, one per adult. One thing that worked particularly well was having exhibits in the cafeteria to entice people in, something we didn't do last year. I have it on good authority that we sold over 300% more chips! I've already had loads of very interesting offers (and suggestions) for next year, and am happy to receive more, from exhibitors, societies and traders. Although we had 30 layouts, we have to remain a frugal Show in order to support the Railway, and, alas, cannot pay for accommodation. Thank you to all those participants for your generosity in terms of expenses claims and fee-payment agreements and being prepared to find your own accommodation and particularly for making this such a happy show behind the scenes, which I am sure creates a happy atmosphere for the public. Next year's Bala Model Show is on 21st and 22nd September. We will continue to make it roughly 50/50 narrow to standard gauge and to cater for the particular interests of as many people as we can. I did once work out, though, by multiplying modelling eras, regions, subjects, layout sizes, layout operation types, scales, finescales, and having a couple of each thing so nobody would feel that a particular type of modelling was under-appreciated, that we'd need to have over 500 layouts in the Show truly to cater for everyone - and that's just for layouts set in the UK! Anyway, below are some pictures from the weekend: as well as layouts there is one of the exhibitors' barbecue being prepared on the Saturday night (Hi Dan!) while the exhibitors' special train was off down the line. For no very good reason, I have also added a couple of pictures of some notable full-size narrow gauge vehicles I also saw during my week in Wales. One shows Tippy the Tipper (my own wagon, LKM 1950's) going down the line on Friday 15th to help with an embankment strengthening project, and the other is of new Double Fairlie, James Spooner, which I spotted on the Ffestiniog on Monday (the owner of MPB Models, who was also at the Show, happened to be in the same coach). Although there were a couple of stressful moments, I had a great time too, and I look forward to meeting many of our new and old friends from this year at another Bala Model Show in the future. By next year's Show, if we can keep fundraising, we should have re-submitted our planning application for the Extension, and hopefully will have good news on that front, too. All the best, Mat