Aberaeron Station

[Les le Breton]

        Bonjour, fellow model railway students and Dons of RMweb University.

        Crikey, taken to hospital with a heart attack on page 621 of “Castle Aching” and the parish publication had moved to page 640 after my surgery and returning home.

        Now I am struggling making sense of the latest iteration of the RMweb. I haven’t discovered a way to arrive at the post I last perused in each topic I follow. The current set up is so time wasting and eats into the small spare time available.

        Since my Coronary angioplasty I have found it hard to get motivated with my railway modelling. However, waiting up each morning I treat as a lucky bonus.

I am grateful of the good wishes that RMweb parishioners posted to me, thank you all.

        I did manage to visit a model railway emporium in the Forest of Dean and cheered myself up with a flock of sheep. Although the pictures below are only a small improvement of my motivation I hope the pictures below aren’t too boring.

 

 

                                                   A holiday excursion starts to leave Aberaeron

 

 

                                                                       “City of London” steadily gets up stream.

 

 

                                          The new flock of sheep seem oblivious of the train passing.

 

As for me, except for my heart attack, I feel as young as I ever did.

                                                                                                                                    Robert Benchley  (1889 – 1945)

The worst time to have a heart attack is during a game of charades.

                                                                                                                                   Demetri Martin(1973 – )

 

Edited February 8, 2019 by Les le Breton

[BlueLightning]

Hi Les,

 

Good to hear you are feeling good following your heart attack!

 

It's great to see some new pictures of Aberaeron, and I'll be looking forward to more once your mojo comes back!

 

Gary

[Les le Breton]

  

        Bonjour RMweb folk, I hope today’s posting isn’t boring.        This post is probably telling folk to suck eggs but my humble post may help someone!

        I am slowly attempting to add to Aberaeron. Kick starting myself; I searched my storage of planned kits to find a relatively simple item.

        I shuffled my layout baseboards so I could work easily with the two station boards. I decided to try and build the Wills level crossing; I cut the wooden planks between the track and the planks on either side into the correct sizes. I also cut the stone setts ramps on each side. My next task was to cut out two panels of each gate out and then glued the remaining three panels together.

        I bored the holes in the (plastic) stone setts for the gate posts, the hinged posts were kept free but the lock posts were glued to the stone setts ramps. As I had reduced the width of the gates there was no need to use the wire strengthening and the hanging post was shortened with the tops then rounded off. I painted the warning target discs with two coats of signal red gluing them into place, facing the road traffic in the centre of each gate. I have decided that the planks will also be placed next to the down station ramp allowing station staff to travel easily over the track onto the goods area.

        Unfortunately I discovered that the Wills kit didn’t have sufficient strength or significant depth of hinges to keep the gates in place!

        A friend of mine, a brilliant modeller, e-mailed the following philosophy:-

        “I have a feeling that I’ll be building my own gates but it’d never been my intention to have them operational. If I achieve a degree of realism, I’ll need at least the hint of a traffic jam on either side; how daft would it look if, when the gates opened to road traffic, nothing moved? Such scenes were characterised by something hardly less dramatic than the charge of the Light Brigade. OK, Lincoln is an extreme example but I’m never comfortable with even the bucolic scene of a solitary cyclist waiting patiently and still doing so through several openings and closings of the gates.  For me, there’s a greater realism in permanently closed crossing gates, anticipating the next train to pass.”

 

        I sensibly glued the gates in place stopping road traffic across the track!

 

 

Level crossing being checked for width.

 

Why make life difficult when, with a little bit of thought, you can make it damn nigh impossible?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[The Johnster]

FWIW I reckon you've got the right approach to the level crossing problem.  I do the same with platforms; no passengers, just a group of railwaymen having a chat.  The passengers are all in out of the rain, they know the timetable off by heart and only turn up when there's a train for them to sit in anyway.  IIRC this is a minor road that would not have carried a lot of traffic at your period in any case.

[Les le Breton]

       Thanks to cravensdmufan and Gilbert, I have been able to enjoy all of the sounds chipped in my loco’s. I have started to weather my kit built vans and wagons and added coal to some.

 

 

A birds-eye view of my overcrowded station

 

       I re-painted Friesian cattle, to resemble early 19th century Welsh Black and ancient strains of Banded cattle, although the conformation is different; Friesians being built for milk production and the Welsh Black and Banded cattle are meat producers. I don’t think it is a real problem as they are grazing at the back of the scenery, behind the station.

 

 

The farmer was keen to test the new Field Marshall Tractor which was delivered to Aberaeron by train.

 

       Railway modelling has been a great help to keep me calm after my heart attack.

 

     “Inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.”

 

      “I come from a very old military family. One of my ancestors fell at Waterloo . . . someone pushed him off platform nine.”

                                                                                                                                                                      Eric Morecambe

 

Edited March 23, 2019 by Les le Breton

[Les le Breton]

 

        Hi RMweb folk, my modelling has been put on one side, because two weeks ago my wife had five hours of surgery to remove a second bout of breast cancer and we have been a couple of crocks!

        I have managed to add a few items however.

 

 

Based on a photograph taken in the 1920’s, I added a pile of spare ballast opposite the signal box, near the river Aeron.

 

I have added Liquid Gravity to some wagons then covered them with a load of coal

 

       I hope that normal conditions will arrive soon!

 

“Human beings make life so interesting. Do you know, that in a universe so full of wonders, they have managed to invent boredom”

                                                                                                                                                                  Terry Pratchett

   Clearly not Railway modellers!

[The Johnster]

Sorry to hear you and Mrs Les have been in the wars; hope you’re both out of them soon.  

[Les le Breton]

     Greetings, RMweb folk, I have made little progress with Aberaeron, but I took my convalescent wife to visit the Forest of Dean, (which was painful for her on the terrible road surfaces). We visited the Forest of Dean Railway emporium in Norchard Station, seeking inspiration for my next layout. We heard the sound of 5541 lurking by the station and I managed to get a few photographs.

 

 

5541 waiting for the guide’s whistle.

 

 

5541 gently accelerating towards Parkend.

 

 

 We followed the sound of the train and caught up with it at Parkend.

 

 

Having uncoupled from the carriages, 5541 gently crossed the level crossing.

 

     I hope my post is welcome.

 

     “There are two ways of doing things; The Great Western way and the wrong way, because one of mine will pull two of their bl**dy things backwards!"

                                                                       George Jackson Churchward.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 7, 2019 by Les le Breton
Improving my english!

[Les le Breton]

     I have another picture of 5541, which I failed to post yesterday! Having crossed over onto the down line loop, the fireman has switched the turnouts back, ready for the next arrival of an up locomotive, 5541 moves gracefully in reverse to re-join its carriages.

 

 

 

     Today I have managed to build a grounded coach for worker’s tools and miscellaneous items that might come handy one day.

 

 

     I’m not sure whether I have gone too far with the weathering though!

 

       “They turned to look at the engine, which had come to a stop in a kind of human way, not all at once, but settling down like an old lady making herself comfortable in a favourite armchair, except that at that moment Iron Girder, the locomotive, blew out a hissing stream of shining water vapour, which does not normally happen with old ladies, at least not in public.”

                                                                                                                         Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett

 

 

 

 

[Les le Breton]

      Greetings RMweb folk, I haven’t managed much railway modelling recently, but I treated myself to another grounded van for a farmer in Aberaeron.

 

     I was surprised that a floor for the van wasn’t in the kit, so I built one with plasticard, to ensure the van was square. As it will become a farmer’s shed, I used an unused station barrow crossing to be an easier ramp from the field to the van, using model filler to strengthen the joint.  I painted the walls of the van with Vallejo neutral grey and decided to weather the roof with black painted paper representing roofing felt with the corner turned over, revealing the Vallejo medium brown representing the timbered roof. Further weathering added dirt and rust to the van then weeds and grass were added to the ground level and onto the roof as well as bird droppings, (lots of seagulls on the Welsh west coast.)

 

 

The early build of felt being blown off the roof.

 

 

 

The Finished build, although it might be enhanced by evidence of water flowing down the van sides.

 

    

      I hope the above isn’t too boring.

 

                                 No matter how fast technology advances, the world will always find a more advanced idiot.