South Wales Valleys in the 50s

[The Johnster]

 

Mid-moring and 5756 is playing around with some wagons on the pickup job.  She's just put the three into the goods bay, and the next move is to collect the Pigeon Van and put that on top of the goods traffic in the bay for collecetion later by the 'Glynogwr Vans' as the daily District & Overseas Mail Order company clearance is known.  The Pigeon worked up yesterday with 'returns', dealt with in a small warehouse around the corner.  It is in unlined maroon livery, so this must be after the introduction of that livery in 1956.  The pickup has done some work down the other end as well; a 5-planker of pitprops from Lletty Brongu and a bogie bolster of pipes, as well as a hybarshock for Dimbath Metals, exchanged with the sheeted open next to the brake van.  Once the Pigeon Van has been put back, the pannier can pick up it's train for TDU goods, and draw forward to take on water, ready for the ‘off’. 

 

That sheep on the platform probably hasn't got a ticket...

Edited October 27, 2023 by The Johnster

[Nevermakeit]

23 hours ago, The Johnster said:

 

Mid-moring and 5756 is playing around with some wagons on the pickup job.  She's just put the three into the goods bay, and the next move is to collect the Pigeon Van and put that on top of the goods traffic in the bay for collecetion later by the 'Glynogwr Vans' as the daily District & Overseas Mail Order company clearance is known.  The Pigeon worked up yesterday with 'returns', dealt with in a small warehouse around the corner.  It is in unlined maroon livery, so this must be after the introduction of that livery in 1956.  The pickup has done some work down the other end as well; a 5-planker of pitprops from Lletty Brongu and a bogie bolster of pipes, as well as a hybarshock for Dimbath Metals, exchanged with the sheeted open next to the brake van.  Once the Pigeon Van has been put back, the pannier can pick up it's train for TDU goods, and draw forward to take on water, ready for the ‘off’. 

 

That sheep on the platform probably hasn't got a ticket...

Is the sheep trying to fleece the railway then? 

[The Johnster]

The railway shouldn't take it personally, Valleys sheep try to fleece everyone!  You know those lovely plump wooly clouds-on-legs you see peacefully wandering around fields on Romney Marsh?  Well, imagine something as far from that image as you can get within the same species, skinny ill-kempt straggly usually filthy feral street thugs with larceny in their hearts delighting in making pitas of themselves.  They wreck gardens, wander into houses where they trash kitchens, get in everyone's way, carp everywhere, chew the furniture, and look pretty mean as well; there's definitely an 'attitude'.

 

Their owners have a habit of placing their long-dead found-up-the-mountain carcassess on railway lines where they will be further messed up by the next train, with the idea of the farmer being able to claim off the railway, which has an obligation to keep it's fences in order.  For this reason traincrews have to report any sheepstrike incidents.

[The Johnster]

I've had another accidental redevelopment in the colliery yard.  While poking around in one of my 'might come in handy one day' rubbish boxes, I found an rh turnout that I forgot I had.  Bit battered about, needed a good cleanup, but fully funcional!  Now, it is not in my nature to have turnouts hanging around spare, and the yard could do with another storage road alongside the weighbridge road, and there was room between it and the branch fence, so...

 

New No.1 road, everything else goes up a number, place to put empty wagons after they've been tareed awaiting space under the loaders, or loadeds awaiting weighing.  No longer any need to make up trains for clearance on the weighbridge road, so more shunting movements and I don't have to worry about locking the bridge out of use for normal shunting to take place over it, which makes it a less unusual arrangement and me a little happier with it!  I'll hold off on photos for now as I'm awaiting delivery of a new Coopercraft weighbridge with a proper rail-mounting plate, should turn up sometime this week, so until then the area's a work in progress.

[The Johnster]

The Coopercraft weighbridge arrived today, and I've made a start on, with a little trepidation given CC's more recent history and problems...  I've prepared a length of Streamline with the sleepers removed from one end to go over it, and have threaded the rails through.  This is the core essential of this job, and I was worried that distortion or other problems with the moulds might prevent it being easily accomplished; I need not have worried, the fit was firm but straightforward and the thing looks like I wanted it to.  I've trimmed up the base and put the four walls on, and that'll do for tonight.  Tomorrow, I'll paint it and drill a hole in one of the corners for lighting (this will be needed for this buillding, and do some interior detail before lightly tack-glueing the roof on.  It needs a chair and a desk, stove or fireplace, and of course the kit comes with a Pooley bar scale that goes inside the building.  I intend to model it with the door ajar; there are what I assume to be bookshelves just inside the doorway, and there is still a small rug about the place somewhere left over from the Metcalfe signal box interior kit.  One of the Modelu standpipes I recently bought can go just outside the doorway...

 

Bit of flash with the sprues, but nothing diffcult to remove and none where it would be a problem, like inside window frames.  The basic structure went together square and flat, and I am expecting no problems with the rest of the build, but no.2 road is out of commission until it has been permanently positioned on the layout, few days. 

 

In the same post I also got a neat little cab interior for Cyclops, my NCB Dokafority psuedo-Bagnall.  This fitted as if it had been made for the loco (er, um, yes, well) and makes a big enough difference to provoke me into thoughts of providing a cab light...  painted it green and picked out dials in white and the power knobs in black.

[The Johnster]

State of play with the new weighbridge. 
 

 

 

Didn’t quite go to plan, but I’m happy with the result.  The kit door is not amaenable to being modelled open as I’d intended and the chimney stack simply can’t be done as supplied, because the bottom of it fouls the back wall and that roof section won’t fit, so the building is heated by a brakevan-type stove with the pie emerging through the end wall.  The hole in the roof where the chimney shoulda gone is patched with some rough wood that began lifie as part of the Faller’Old Mine’ kit that preceded the current Walter’s ‘The Modelu standpipe is to the right of the door and the clerk brews up on the stove with a teacan.  
 

The roads are now, right to left, no.1 arrival/dispatch road, no.2 weighbridge, nos.3&4 loading, no.5 storage/stabling & slack silo, no.6 pitptops & materials in (out of frame left of the slack silo). 
 

It looks the part, especially the bridge plate with the code 100 rail.  The narrower office building is much easier to find a home for than the previous Will’s building, which will be resited and repurposed elsewhere. 

 

 

 

[The Johnster]

 

It’s a dull November morning, the light is a bit flat for photography, but a local enthusiast is having a go anyway with Agfa 120 transparencies, because this is s somewhat unusual event despite the very ordinary day.    94xx were very much regarded as passenger engines at Tondu for some reason, but here’s 8497 waiting for the road on the exchange loop with the first loaded coal clearance of the day. 

 

8497 was built by RSH, to traffic 27 November 1952 and allox Swindon; it was xfer from there to Ebbw Jc and again to Tondu by the 6th January1953 (source: BRDatabase).  I have grave doubts about some of these very short-term allocations; they were I suspect paper transfers and I doubt that 8497 ever went anywhere but Tondu in that very short time. Maybe Swindon for acceptance.  It remained at Tondu until xfer to Cardiff Canton in 1960. 
 

I have never seen any photographic or other evidence of 94xx being used for anything other than passenger work at Tondu, and the preference is mentioned in the Hodge/Davies books, but no reason is given.  Mike Stationmaster thinks it may be related to the position of the reverser in what is a fairly cramped cab. 

[The Johnster]

The recent jiggerypokery in the colliery yard, the laying of a sixth siding because I found a turnout in a box, meant that track had to be replaced in the fiddle yard and this Wednesday I got around to it.  Pricing up Code 100 Streamline was a bit of a shock, best prices I could find (I only wanted two lengths) were about £18 a length, hang on a minute...  Trawled through eBay and the cheap deals were for more track than I needed, new or 2h.

 

So I had another trawl, this time through Amazon, where I found Hornby 36" lenghts of Code 100 flexi at £6.75 a pop.  Well, they're Code 100, and I've used Hornby rail joiners with Streamline without issue, so this should work, right?  Right, eventually.  They turned up Wednesday morning, very quick delivery, well packed.  Unpacked them, each was in sellotaped bubble wrap so getting at them was a bit of a faff, then when I'd revealed the first one, it fell to bits!  Well, all right, that's exaggerating a bit but the rails are very loose and insecure in the chairs and about a third of the length of sleepers had fallen off the ends of the rails.   The other lengths was the same but I was ready for it this time! 

 

Because the rails slide easily out of the chairs it is easy to put them back. but holding the track while you are threading the rails through the chairs while at the same time keeping hold of the rail you've just threaded is one of those jobs that needs three and makes you regret the decision to lose the prehensile tail 6mya.  A spot of superglue on the ends of the sleeper runs (there is a split in the web about a third of the way along the length for some reason) is needed to hold things steady. 

 

But the general impression is one of 'cheap and nasty', flimsiness, and weakness, and there is no re-assurance in the 'feel' as the rails slide happily through the chairs as you handle the lengths, the sleeper web behaving a bit like a Slinky.  I would imagine they would be very easily damaged and pulled out of gauge if one tried to curve them too sharply; luckily, my fy roads are straight and this is no probem.  Then the Hornby rail joiners were a difficult and tight fit. 

 

It might, I suppose, help to hold the rails in the chairs if you paint your rail sides, which I do on scenic sections, but I won't be buying any more of these.  But at least I have the full fy back in service!

 

But the long box Amazon packed them in gave me pause, not as much as what dreams may come in that sleep of death, but pause all the same.  With a bit of strengthening and bracing, parts of it could form a raised roadway for the village behind the station, and I've been experimenting this evening (perhaps prompted by my ordering some grey Javid flock powder for road surfaces the evening before).  So far, there's a retaining wall or embankment behind the station with some buildings positioned on it as a tryout, and a slope to access the platform; there will be a ticket kiosk at the foot of this.  I'm leaning (so's the box) towards an embmankment for at least a part of the length, retaining walls behind stations are a bit 'bus on a bridge' to my view, and it would be a good place for a stand of trees.  Or advertising hoardings.  There may be a bit of a road map leading off it at one or both ends.  Nantymoel, and to some extent Blaengarw, were like this.  It is good to get the Lechyd Terrace cottages raised up a bit, as they are very small and low, and the other buildings tend to make them look a bit too low.  With the terrace on this revetment and the pub & post office lower down, this may be avoided.  A sloping road connecting the two with a row of terraced cottages 'stepped' up the hill in typical Valleys fashion would be good, and an homage to my Great Aunt Nell's house in Steep Street (they weren't kidding), Tonypandy.

 

'Auntie Nell' was a feature of my childhood; died in 1965 at the age of 108, but I suspect she'd looked frighteningly old for many decades previously.  Hard as nails, skull-like face, mini-me Johnster was terrified of her vice-like grip.  She smoked a clay pipe which she called a duichean in the old Irish way; she said the word meant 'cheek warmer.  Her parents were famine refugees from Skibbereen and she could remember 'when a squirrel could go from Blaenrhondda to Porth without having to touch the ground', before all the trees went for pitprops.  But she was a lovely woman, and very fond of me! 

[Compound2632]

4 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Pricing up Code 100 Streamline was a bit of a shock, best prices I could find (I only wanted two lengths) were about £18 a length, hang on a minute... 

 

My teenage layout was built at the rate of a yard a week, the price of a length of streamline being equal to my pocket-money, £1 a week, which is about £4 now, according to the BoE inflation calculator. Had to save up to lay a junction!

[Budgie]

5 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Because the rails slide easily out of the chairs it is easy to put them back. but holding the track while you are threading the rails through the chairs while at the same time keeping hold of the rail you've just threaded is one of those jobs that needs three and makes you regret the decision to lose the prehensile tail 6mya.  A spot of superglue on the ends of the sleeper runs (there is a split in the web about a third of the way along the length for some reason) is needed to hold things steady. 

 

But the general impression is one of 'cheap and nasty', flimsiness, and weakness, and there is no re-assurance in the 'feel' as the rails slide happily through the chairs as you handle the lengths, the sleeper web behaving a bit like a Slinky.  I would imagine they would be very easily damaged and pulled out of gauge if one tried to curve them too sharply; luckily, my fy roads are straight and this is no probem.  Then the Hornby rail joiners were a difficult and tight fit. 

 

 

If you only wanted straight or almost straight track, perhaps you should have looked at Hornby's semi-flexible track.

[NHY 581]

Jonners, 

 

Where on earth are you finding PECO Code 100 for £18 a length. That's outrageous ! 

 

RRP is £5.26. 

 

Next time jump on the bus and support your local model shop rather than wasting your money on line. I'll even get the kettle on. 

 

Rob

 

 

[The Johnster]

Yes, I think I probably misread/misunderstood the eBay listings.  I do support my local emporium, Lord & Butler, a shop we are lucky to have in Cardiff, but it's a two-bus journey that takes about 45minutes depending on the bus connections and no fun at all in cold or wet weather or at times of the day when the buses are crowded (which is most time of the day in Cardiff).  Round trip will be at least two hours not counting time spent browsing and chatting to Peter Lord, who used to be one of my supervisors when I worked in the Royal Mail sorting office and always has gossip...  Four buses and an entire afternoon is pushing the definition of local; it is sometimes quicker and easier to go to Newport if I want anything from Hobbycraft (the Cardiff one is even harder to get to than L&B).

 

This makes online purchasing tempting, and online plays to my innate laziness.  As one of my previous bosses, Peter will readily confirm that I am perfectly suited to a life of complete idleness, or 'energy saving' as I prefer to call it..

[The Johnster]

Sitrep; ordered a small ‘drive through’ (sic) goods shed off the bay, lasercut kit from LCUT Creative.  This follows some soul-searching about Dimbath metals and the indubitable need for a goods shed; all the Tondi branch termini had them though Abergwinfi’s and Gilfach Goch’s were off the colliery branches.  So the kickback road off the goods loop will be repurposed as the goods shed road while end-loading and craning will still be done at the station end.  Dimbath traffic will be handled down at Glyogwr, which must be growing into a major industrial complex down there beyond the scenic break, but the traffic still has to come up to the terminus to run around.   


 

The inward lean of the railside wall should be sorted when it is put into final position.  Needs more work; I want a proper slate roof and will have to make my own, thin strip overlays on the door bracing, I think something is needed in the round ventilation reveals, a fan or louvres perhaps.   It wouldn’t be hard to cut the roof to take skylights, in which case I’d need to show the tooftrusses inside, and we need gutters and downpipes

 

[The Johnster]

I wrote the above screed on Saturday evening and apparently didn’t press send!  Since then I’ve painted and weathered the goods shed and installed it on the layout, and scenicked up the general area a bit, so the present siuation is…

 

 

 

Further weathering and detailing as and when. The gutter and downpipe (not the algal staining around the broken bottom end) are cocktail sticks from Aldi. 

[1466]

Always good to hear of the organic growth of your layout and the rationale that drives it !

[The Johnster]

One of the doors has already fallen off, and I will be investigating better methods of fixing them shortly when I go in for my evening session!

[The Johnster]

I've girded up my lions for giving the backscene a bit of a seeing to, starting with a raised area behind the station building for the post office/pub area, which will feature a sloping path to access the platform; this was a feature of the real Abergwynfi and Nantymoel, with a road version at Blaengarw.   The form will be painted cardboard supported underneath by packing materials, nothing hi-tec, but the grass mat that forms the mountainside has to move upwards several inches, and there will be holes at the bottom to fill in, so more cardboard formers have been cut as the base of a transition slope between the valley bottom and the mountain proper.  These will continue around the entire layout and hopefully will enable it to make more sense scenically.  Cwmdimbath, the real one, is a pretty uncompromisingly steep and narrow defile, clearly formed by the Lechyd stream eroding downwards in a v section, so it must be fairly geologically recent, later than the retreat of the last Ice Sheets on the central Glamorgan massif about 15kya; the stream quite possibly orignally formed as meltwater runoff.

 

So the slope needs to start immediately behind the station, as it does at all the Tondu Valley termini except Gilfach Goch, and at Nantymoel and Blaengarw the villages sort of terrace themselves up the slope (this also happens at Ogmore Vale, but that isn't a terminus, but there can, I think, be a low sloping shelf on which buildings can be sited; Cwmmer Afan is like this!

 

All these are ideas that have been brewin' and stewin' in my pretty little head (!) for a while, and a lot of moving cardboard about has taken place and will continue to do so for a few days until I settle on something I like and glue it in place.  I looked at photographic backscenes, and there are some very good gloomy mountainy industrial wasteland ones out there, but nothing that looms over the scene effectively enough for the effect I want to create.  All in all there's quite a bit of activity going on, it's all kicking off in the railway room.  More buidings will ultimately be needed to fill the spaces created and I need to give some attention to how the roads are laid out.

 

Funfunfunfunfun.

[The Johnster]

1466 mentioned on Tuesday that it was always good to hear of the organic progress of my layout, and the last few evenings have certainly been nothing if not a organic process.   The job, providing stiff card formers over which to lay scenic mats representing the lower slope of Mynydd Maendy, has entailed cutting shapes out and placing them in various formations around the rear of the layout, not much less organic a process than chucking them up in the air and seeing where they landed!  No plan to follow, just a rough idea of the basic shapes I wanted, but it worked!  A breakthrough occurred earlier this evening when I found a combination of shapes that were to an extent self-supporting and made sense of the tight space in the 'town end' back corner; the rest of the support structure more or less sorted itself out from that point.  The key was a low retaining wall or grass slope behind the goods platform, which must now have road access from the western side of the valley. 

 

As a village, it will be a bit spread out and disjointed, but this is a late Victorian mining settlement forced onto unsympathetic geography, not a medieval hamlet with a church, pub, and village square where the naughty boys (and girls) were put in the stocks.  Lechyd Terrace is 1850s cottages which predated the sinking of the pit, and later housing and shops have fitted in where they could; it must have had a bit of a frontier aspect in the 1880s or 90s and 60-70 years later there is still a sort of informality to the place, no fences on the mountain roads, an obvious lack of central planning.

 

Organic, in fact...

 

1466 also mentioned the rationale behind my modelling.   Note that rationale is not exactly the same thing as 'rational'...

 

Progress, though, I can start on the proper scenic work this evening!

[The Johnster]

The mountain, actually running from Mynydd Maendy to the western spurs of Mynydd Maes Teg at this location, has been re-erected, or hung, actually a mixture of both.  Basic ground cover scenery has been applied and I can't do much more tonight, so I've wrapped it for now.  Next stage will be retaining walls, rock faces, couple trees to hide some corners (buildings and backscene corners, and some bushy stuff to hide the blemishes and joins, and ultimately a lot more sheeps. 

 

There is a gap between the end of this part of the mountain and the lower slopes further down the valley behind the colliery and the bottom end of the exchange loop.  I will need another scenic mat to act as the basis for this part of the eastern side of the Lechyd valley.  The road layout of the area is slowly emerging, all still narrow mountain lanes in the 1950s, but there probably needs to be a bridge from the western to the eastern side, crossing Nant Lechyd, the branch, and the colliery branch.  This needs a bit of thought and I am holding fire on it for now until the roads develop themselves in the haphazard organic way I like and which is quite prototypical for this area!  Important that they look like a natural part of the landscape that has been there for hundreds, actually quite probably thousands, of years, in exactly the way that most modern 'improved' roads don't, but instead look as if they'd been laid on top of the landscape without any consideration for it, which by and large they have! 

 

So were railways when they were first built of course!

[The Johnster]

Matters are progressing in the sort of unplanned organic way they sometimes do when I am rebuilding scenery like this, but a form is starting to emerge.  What is needed now is some foilage (as Marge calls it), some rocky bits, some walling, some fencing and a few trees; rowan, or mountain ash as we call it locally, and if I can find some one or two alder for a low lying bit that I reckon will look best left as it is and turned a bit boggy.  Had some fun scoring a piece of stiff foam to make freestyle stone wall sections Saturday evening, not sure where they'll go but I'm sure I'll find a use...

 

Took a bit of a break from all this stuff this evening and had a thoroughly enjoyable running session.  Took this:-

 

 

 

5524 propels the 13.25 auto down the valley towards Glynogwr and Bridgend (Clifton Downs W 3338 and A30 W 194 W), just passed 5633 standing on the goods loop with a brake van, which it will shortly attach to the rear of the loaded coal train visible in the colliery exchange loop.  It will then run around to the head of this train, and wait for the road, which it will get as soon as the 13.55 miner's empty stock clears inside and out of the way.  Still haven't sorted the goods shed doors properly, one's hanging off it's hinges, and an LMS all-steel sliding door van (Cambrian on a spare Bachmann chassis from one of those clunky planked sliding door vans that they inherited from Mainline) lurks inside the shed.

 

 

[The Johnster]

It's Pension Day, let Joy be unconfined, and this time for once there are no bills to worry about and I've already put money aside safe for the Dap Diagram N autotrailer, so I've had a bit of online retale ferrapie.  Item 1, a Bachmann Scencraft concrete bus shelter for people to shelter from concrete buses in...  Not a fan of Scenecraft RTP in general, mostly not particularly suitable for my South Walian needs and a bit pricey, but this pre-cast reinforced concrete shelter is typical of the area and the period as I remember it and looks the part, so I've splashed out...  As part of the scenic redevelopment, I've made a loop of road that appears in front of the goods loop with my home-made rough stone walls, and this is an ideal spot for a cameo, Western Welsh ECW single decker (Original Omnibus), the shelter, and a bus stop sign, maybe flat tyre and the bus crew havin' a fag waiting for the wrecker (the message being that buses are not as reliable as trains, so ya boo sucks Dr.Beeching when you come along in ten years' time, and it's an excuse for the empty seats and driver's cab because I can't separate the rivets to get inside the bus).  Appropos the bus stop sign, made it Monday night out of scrap box bits, but have ordered item 2, printed bus stop signs and timetable sheets (jmupton 2000 on the Bay).  IIRC this is the guy I got my colliery signs off, me, 'J,H.Richards Esq.' as manager, the last four digits of my real phone number as 'Blackill 1270', and 'This Colliery Is Now Operated By The National Coal Board On Behalf Of The PEOPLE', very much the feeling of those days though it didn't last, and in tune with my innate small s socialism.  

 

Then item 3, some corkbark rock faces (hunny72, also Bay).  Not 100% sure of these, prefer resin or actual rock, but they look good in the photos and are cheap and a decent size so I can cut them about if I need to, so here goes.  Item 4 is pure indulgence, something I haven't got, a Baccy 9' wheelbase 8-plank XPO mineral in BR grey livery.  Back to the scenic side for item 5. a photographic backscene to go behind the colliery, Lineside & Locos 'Hills and Mountains pack B, suitably rainy and glum.  The scenic side has a palpable feel of starting to come together after an overlong period of wanton and inexcusable neglect, but I think I've got the bit between my teeth now; it's starting to sort of gel, and has taken on it's own momentum and is sort of building itself; all I'm doing is what it's telling me it wants, and I'm happy to trust it's judgement, fling some flock about the place, and listen to it... 

 

A feature is a restricted narrow area at the town end on the platform, and this will be caused by a rocky outcrop.  Some resin strata, originally supposed to be limestone but I've painted it to resemble the local Pennant Sandstone, has already appeared at platform level, but there is a narrow road accessing Lechyd Terrace about 15 feet up from this that needs to be backed by more outcrop to explain the pinch point.  The OS I:25k shows real outcrops on the slopes of Darren y Dimbath in this location, and my backstory is that more rock became exposed by soil erosion when the trees were cut for pitprops about 50 years ago for my period.  I'm rather enjoying myself with it as a wee projectette!

 

Should all be delivered, worked up, and installed by the end of the month, which is not too much of a rush but not hanging about either!  Need more sheeps!!!

 

Funfunfunfunfun!

Edited November 22, 2023 by The Johnster

[The Johnster]

 

Western Welsh’s ECW single decker no.846, actually a Cardiff Penarth Road bus showing a Penarth destination, lurches away from the new concrete (dead modern we are in Cwmdimbath, see, bwtti bach)  bus shelter heading for Pontyclun.  The shelter is a Bachmann Scenecraft resin RTP, lightly weathered to take the new off and very typical of these precast concrete shelters as I remember them in the Valleys in the late 50s, often lasting 30 or 40 years in increasing decrepitude, and to be fair you wouldn’t look your best if you’d been hanging around on a Valleys street corner in all weathers with dogs doing terrible things in you and teenagers doing much worse for a few decades either, would you?  The bus stop sign is as mentioned above, there is a timetable inside which if you look very  closely is for no.3 Elm Grove to Devonport, but i’m not going to let that worry me. 
 

It might actually be a tad modern for a 1948-58 timeframe, but so’s the BR land rover and I’m not about to lose any sleep over that either.  One day, I might get around to drilling out the rivets and opening no. 846 up to put a driver, conductor, and even a passenger or two inside.  I was about to leave some bits of white paper to represent fagends on the floor, but of course everyone smoked on buses in those days (whether they wanted to or not)!

 

Another thing I might get around to, since Bachmann couldn't be bothered, is cutting disc-ing a groove in the concrete top beam to make it into a gutter. 
 

 

Here's the new setup at Lechyd terrace, the row of cottages about 20 feet above the platform, and set up and back from the road because of the steeply rising land; this is a very credible Valleys feature, as is the walled communal front level approached by the steps.  Triumph Mayflowers were a favourite of mine in my childhood; I thought the angularity of it looked like a pocket Roller!

[The Johnster]

 

A better perspective of Lechyd Terrace and it’s relationship to the station, ‘The Forge’, and the rest.  The 18.50 through to Porthcawl is in the platform, crew seeing to a swift half in the Forge, and the colliery’s 18” Hunslet’s driver & fireman have probably joined them while they wait for the next train of empties, last of today.
 

I’m not certain that the Forge/Post Office combo is in it’s best place yet, and another row of houses might be better in that location.  But Lechyd Terrace looks very comfortable where it is, as is right and proper for buildings that preceded the railway’s arrival by at least four decades, so I’m think that it’ll stay there for the foreseeable.  The bus stop needs a street lamp close by, or how’s the bus driver going to find it in the dark?

[The Johnster]

So I've started laying the groundwork, literally, for moving the pub and the post office back close to their original site to the NW of the station.  But this time there are different levels involved and they may well end up on quite a steep hill.  The deciding factor was the sheer difference in size between them and the terraced cottages, which are tiny in comparison.  This is correct for this sort of 1850s-1860s workers' housing, which would originally have been provided by the forge owner, but they do not look credible next to later, larger builidngs.  The pub is not so much of a problem, you expect corner pubs to be a bit bulky, but the post office, a terraced shop building, is taller than the pub, and looks wrong if it is in the same eye-frame as Lechyd Terrace.  I think I need to separate the houses from what passes for a commercial centre to the village, and the obvious separator is the pinchpoint at the buffers end of the platform and the putative rock outcrop, which is in the post and should be here over the next few days. 

 

It'll all work out and I'll let it do it itself rather than overthink it and assemble it forced into into unlikely formations.  Cwmdimbath is a small village of perhaps no more than 150 residents in about 40 buildings, and unliike many small villages there are not many surrounding farms in a hinterland.  I'll model probably about a quarter of it, which leaves room for maybe another shop, or an Italian Cafe*, and three or four more dwellings.  This should suggest the presence of the rest of 'this end' of it, and there may be assumed to be another end containing the rest, perhaps down by the colliery. 

 

Apropos the colliery, the backscene I ordered to go behind it arrived this (yesterday) afternoon, and I'll install it later this evening.  I have high hopes for this, as the southwestern spur of Mynydd Maendy behind the pit needs to 'shown' to make sense of it's shape and form, squeezed between the mountain and the stream.  Some experimentation may be needed to eliminate or minimise reflections from the lighting and to merge it with the existing scenery representing Darren y Dimbath and the tributary stream which disappears behind 'Calfaria Jc', the tin chapel NCB loco shed.

 

 

*Everywhere in South Wales, a combination of refugees from Mussolini persecution and war prisoners that stayed on, cafes, expresso bars, and ice cream parlours/gelato emporia.  They survive in most Valleys towns, and Fulgoni's in Penarth and Sidoli's in Porthcawl are well known.  We liked our Italians, and they have flourished.  'Idwal Bracchi', a character from the 'Ponty & Pop' cartoons by 'Gren' that were a staple of South Wales life for so many years in the Cardiff-published South Wales and Football Echo, will probably be it's proprietor.  Gren created a whole 70s valleys world, the village of Aberflyarff, obsessed with rugby and full of characters like Idwal, Flymo the sheep, Bromide Lil the barmaid in the 'Golden Dap'.  There would four or five panels as our heroes, Ponty and his dad Pop, discussed the rugby news; 'Scandal,  shock horror, Abertillery prop goes north for five-figure sum (moves to Brynmawr for £10.12.5 p)'  There would be 'South Wales Echo newsboards telling a sub-joke in the panels, 'Newport, Home of the Mole Wrench', then 'BR cheap excursion to Newport to see them wrenching the moles'.  Railway stations were usually shown with cobwebs from the signals, terraces of houses hung out over the edges of mountains, rugby pitches were on the side of slopes, and there always seemed to be a railway viaduct.  I thought it might have been based on Pontrhydyfen.

 

 

[The Johnster]

 

 

 

 

New backscene for the colliery delivered Sunday teatime, hung earlier this evening. Pleased with it; it blends well enough and colour/cast/levels &c are close enough for jazz between the layout and the backscene.  My preference for side-on lighting has thrown some shadows on the sky, though.  Good to see an overcast sky and a dull scene in a world of bright, sunny, backscenes.  Hilly areas like Cwmdimbath see much less sun than the lowlands, and this is far more typical.

 

Plenty tidying up to do around the baseboard edge and the colliery embankment, maybe even during this current scenery jag...  No idea where the photo was taken, but it reminds me of the countryside around Brynlliw and Morlais, or perhaps the Gwendraeth Valley.

Edited November 28, 2023 by The Johnster