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A Welsh Cross Country route... (BR Late Crest)


SteamingWales
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Having finished an inglenook shed scene/layout in 2020 I had a modelling itch to scratch and decided to do my first ever scratch build and construct a lattice river bridge. At the time this was just something to do during the dark lockdown winter nights (and boy has it taken up some) and I had no real intention or ideas for what I was actually going to do with the finished product.

 

Then Accurascale decided to announce their Manor and everything changed. I absolutely love Manors and wanted somewhere proper to run the models, not just a back and forth into a shed so thoughts turned to building an actual layout. I also Iive in Aberystwyth so modelling the Cambrian seemed a logical idea, or maybe somewhere on the Aber to Carmarthen line???

 

However I didn't want to pin myself to a specific location/line so have settled on a non descript Welsh Cross Country route in the 1960s which can be on the Cambrian, Shrewsbury to Aber line, Aber to Carmarthen or even Ruabon to Barmouth. 

 

This decision means I recreate various working such as the Cambrian Coast Express, Dolgellau autotrains and short freight trains to Aberaeron to name just a few.

 

Thats the background of the whole thing now onto actually building it! Space constraints mean the layout will have to be modular and easily transported so don't expect anything massive (yet) so I'm just starting with one module and will slowly expand outwards.

 

The feature of the first module will be the aforementioned river bridge, and baseboard construction was completed last weekend. Admittedly it's not much at the moment but it's better than nothing!

 

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Edited by SteamingWales
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11 hours ago, johnofwessex said:

Is the girder part of the bridge scratchbuilt?

 

Hi @johnofwessex

 

The main girder part of the bridge is made using Scale Model Scenery lattice bridge sections, gussets and 8mm rivet strips.

 

Each side is built using 4 of the lattice sections with each separated a 2mm channel plastic strips. The photos probably explain this a bit better

 

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IMG_20210204_195459.jpg.8232d7c59ffc72c5a2937ce28be950e1.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...

A bit of a progress report for a wet Saturday afternoon...

 

Real railways!

 

I had a week long holiday with my parents over in the Cotswolds last week, which meant I had the opportunity to visit and ride the GlosWarks. 4270 was in action the day we visited seen her running round at Cheltenham Racecourse

 

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Layout build

 

Back off holiday it was time to carry on with the layout and start landscaping. 

 

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This is the result 2 evenings work. Firstly I improved the angle of the embankment seen in the first post with cardboard slats and got the rough shape of the whole thing by packing the underneath with newspaper and gluing over cardboard sheets to give the overall shape.

 

The contours were then built around this using the cardboard and newspaper partion method and then covered this in ModRock. No photos, except the current view, as I was enjoying myself to much to take any.

 

It's fair to say I grossly understimated the amount of ModRock I needed so am stuck with a half finished embankment at the moment

 

Double Standard(4)s

 

Aside from the build I have also been doing quite a bit of research into the Cambrian network and locos present during my chosen time period.

 

Standard 4s were ever present so I wanted to have a couple for the layout and have opted to model 75020 and 75026.

 

'20 and '26 were the first 2 Standard 4s to be allocated to Machynlleth in July 1959. ColourRail has been a valuable source in the research and showed that both locos arrived in BR Black with L/C which I wanted to replicate rather than everything being in lined green.

 

I've had previous experience with the Hornby Std 4s (the S&D models) so wanted to get 2 of the appropriate Hornby versions over Bachmann's offering. The only appropriate model with the right tender (BR2) however is of 75005 which was produced in the first batch in 2012 so cue the eBay hunt!

 

Good news is I was rather successful and managed to get 2 for the RRP of the latest most recent models.

 

Time to get these 2 renumbered!

 

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The post man delivered the RailTec transfers for the two Standards yesterday so my evenings entertainment involved renumbering both locos

 

I have to say I am really impressed with these transfers with the 3D smoke box numbers, plus the cabside numbers are custom so come as one big print so no need to worry about misaligned numbers 

 

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  • SteamingWales changed the title to A Welsh Cross Country route... (BR Late Crest)
  • 2 weeks later...

The past few days I have been focussing on getting the river bridge to a near enough complete state.

 

Firstly, I weathered up the bridge using Citadel Eartshade followed by an airbrush with sleeper grime. I'm happy with the overall look but may dry brush on some rust patches at a later date.

 

The next job was to add the track (finally!). The rail chair are from are from C&L and were preparing beforehand. I don't build track and wasn't for investing in all the bits and bobs for that, so a couple of sleepers to keep the gauge before fixing 4 or 5 chairs at a time worked fine. Everything looks straight and a couple of test run showed no problems

 

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The next thing I wanted to complete was the central pier. I've left this until now as I wasn't sure on the size of river I wanted, however with the polystyrene down and carved (ish) I had a better idea of scale and what I wanted to model. The idea is the pier will sit on a shallow sloping shingle bank on the inside of a river bend.

 

Onto building it. The principle was the same as the main parapets, a card construct with plasticard finish. Time for painting!

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Plodding along slowly with progress on the baseboard

 

The central pier for the bridge has been painted, fixed in place and the rest of the area covered with ModRoc and Sculpt Mold. Time to wait weeks for this stuff to dry now!

 

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In the meantime I have had my first go at weathering a loco and I'm pretty pleased with the finished product. Just need to add real coal

 

IMG_20210610_111228.jpg.9012932d1534f3095cc955c69f830d29.jpg

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