Trawsfynydd (EM) - the Blaenau branch in the 50s

[BenW]

It feels very self-indulgent to be writing about a project that hasn't yet made it off my laptop, but I've been told following a throwaway comment elsewhere on RMweb that musing and planning is also of interest, so here goes.  The first couple of posts will be mainly back story explaining how I arrived at Trawsfynydd as a prototype, so bear with me while I get to the topic in the header!

 

The story starts in the late 90s when a studious, bespectacled 10 year old spied an advert in the local paper for 20 years of Railway Modeller back-issues.  Excited perusal under the covers when he was meant to be sleeping brought a huge variety of models into his consciousness, but one unassuming article really stood out.  Plan of the month in January 1988 (by K. Jaggers) consisted of a single black-and-white photo of Bala Junction, with a track plan showing this station on one side of a room and Bala Town on the other.  Our studious hero was struck by how interesting the plan was, so different to the usual double-track mainline with branch modelled so often in the other magazines.  He even drew the plan out by hand to understand it better, thinking to himself that one day he would like a version of the same plan.

 

Fast forward 20-years and our hero has finished school, sixth form and university, fulfilled a lifelong ambition by volunteering on a preserved railway, enjoyed a career, been made redundant from said career and ended up pulling levers on the big railway for a living.  All throughout this there was model railway involvement, most significantly with the NW Surrey area group of the EMGS, where the benefits of finescale 4mm modelling in terms of appearance and running qualities overcame the need to just 'get something running'.  Various layouts have been planned, started and discarded, always depicting compressed fictional locations that were never quite satisfactory.  Bala and Bala Junction lurking in the background didn't help; very desirable but always far beyond the means available.

 

A house move 18 months ago finally presented an opportunity; the previous owner of this forever home had converted a former garage into a sizeable office, complete with mod-cons like heating, electricity and access from the house though a very civilised internal door.  This was it, the opportunity to scratch that 25-year Bala itch!  Planning began before purchase was even completed, resulting in the plan below being drawn up in Templot:

 

 

The plan was to be a two-tier affair, run to a timetable with a minimum curve radius of 3'.  I (the hero, obviously...) even got so far as doing a full-size print off and play-testing to check that the timetabled moves would be doable in the space provided; they would, just about.  It should be pointed out that the soon-to-be Mrs BenW and the family hound were both away for a week while I took over the lounge - I'm still studious and frankly a bit obsessive, but not a complete sociopath!

 

 

There were a number of complications with this plan, most obviously how to gain access to the fiddle yards beneath the stations.  Gradients? Train elevators? Cassettes? Sector plates?  All very complicated but not completely insurmountable, especially given that this was the layout of a lifetime.  Sure there were also the compromises to fit it all in the space, especially the curve that Bala Town had to be built on, but surely I could manage to see past these.  What finally scuppered this plan was that most humble of railway activities, the shunting of the goods yard.

 

To be continued...

[BenW]

Background (cont.)

I know you've all been on tenterhooks, so to follow on from the last post...

 

It's my opinion that every modeller has one part of the hobby that they enjoy more than any others.  For some, it's building incredible locos or rolling stock, to others it's scenery or buildings.  For others it might be electrics or just the enjoyment of bringing a scene together - these latter modellers in particular seem to be prolific layout builders, but never seem to keep layouts long once they are finished.  I myself think that operation of a model railway should reflect the real thing as closely as possible, by which I mean to a purposeful timetable, obeying signals.  To achieve an immersive experience of operating a railway, locos & stock need to work, running smoothly at realistic speeds through pointwork without interference from the dreaded big hand from the sky.  To this end I think some form of automatic coupling & uncoupling function is essential, and it's here that the goods yard on the plan above (top left, if you're puzzled) falls down.

 

The line between Bala Junction and Bala consists of a bi-directional single line (innermost line on my plan) and a goods line, off which the yard was normally shunted.  Due to space restrictions in my new railway room, the access to the goods yard at Bala was situated on a tight curve, much closer to the junction station than in real life.  This would have resulted in coupling and uncoupling regularly taking place on said tight curve, something that is anathema to reliable coupling operations at all scales right up to 1:1.  My preferred coupling is the Alex Jackson, which I find to be quick, cheap and reasonably simple to make once you've got the knack for it (still working on that, but getting better!).  On tight curves the end of the coupling is well away from the centre line of the track, something extensive home testing has shown to make operation of the couplings hit and miss at best.  I investigated a number of other couplings, rejecting them all for different reasons:

• three links - not automatic & tricky to use over the rest of the layout in the foreground
• kadees - don't look right and a PITA to fit to the many kit-built 4 wheel wagons I was going to use
• Spratt & winkle - also don't look right and require an unprototypical autocoupler shuffle to use.  Single ended and also proprietary so reliant on the parts being available.
• DGs - not sure about looks, poor reputation for coupling on curves, availability can be limited
• Flippem (a development of the DG) - still not sure about the looks, difficult/impossible to fit to RTR wagons (of which I have several) and only available from a single, very small supplier.  My closest 2nd choice though, they worked pretty well on tight curves
• Burford coupling (search the Scalefour Society pages if you're curious, it's quite clever) - too much of a faff to make up and fit, although I acknowledge some etches are being developed which will help this (making them reliant on a small supplier again!). Also single-ended making turning stock a no-no.

I was left with AJs and the uncomfortable decision that a major layout redesign was required.  Many options were drawn out, from reversing the siding access to get a headshunt where the short dock siding should be to making Bala a through terminus.  None of these satisfied my desire to model the real location as built so, following a surprising amount of genuine emotional turmoil, I decided to abandon the plan until another opportunity presented itself in the future.

 

The question now was, what to do with a 4.8m x 3.4m room?  Given the glacial speed at which I make models for myself and the desire to 'do' Bala in the future I wanted to make sure that any stock I built for the interim layout would be compatible, so it made sense to look at a smaller station on either the Ruabon-Barmouth line or somewhere else along the branch from Bala-Blaenau Ffestiniog.  Various stations were rejected for being too big (Corwen, Llangollen), too dull to operate (Llanderfel, Arenig, Frongoch and many, many others) or too terminal (Blaenau itself - sometimes I just like to watch trains go round and round!).  It was at this point I really looked at Trawsfynydd.

 

Continued again soon when I promise I'll actually get to the point of this thread 🤣

[BenW]

Some historical info

Opened fully to traffic in 1883, the branch line from Bala Junction to Blaenau Ffestiniog was the GWR's attempt to cash in on the slate traffic originating from the mines and quarries around Blaenau.  The narrow gauge Ffestiniog railway and the LNWR were already the established competition in the town, so when the slate trade dropped off in the 1890s it could be argued that the line was already obsolete.  Tracks ran from a junction on the Ruabon-Barmouth secondary main line through a desolate landscape of valleys and upland moors, with steep gradients and sharp curves abounding.  Trawsfynydd was the largest intermediate station between Bala and Blaenau.  The line soldiered on, never making much profit for its parent company, until the building of the Llyn Celyn reservoir flooded part of the route.  Despite plans being made to divert around the obstruction BR decided enough was enough, and the last trains ran in 1961.  For a more complete history and lots of pictures, readers are advised to purchase the following excellent tomes:

• Scenes from the past 25: Railways of North Wales; Bala Junction to Blaenau Ffestiniog by D.W. Southern
• The Bala Branch; Reflections of a Lost Welsh Mountain Railway by M.F. Williams and D.J. Lowe.
• Rails through Bala; the Ruabon-Barmouth and Bala-Blaenau Ffestiniog lines - a Photographic History by A. Bodlander, M. Hambly, H Leadbeater and D. Southern

 

[BenW]

Trawsfynydd station (finally...)

 

Of all the intermediate stations on the line, Trawsfynydd is the only one where trains do more than just run through on their way to somewhere else.  The layout of the main station is consists of an up and down platform, crossovers from both directions to access the goods yard and further goods yard access from a ground frame unlocked by a key on the single line staff heading towards Cwm Prysor, the next box towards Bala.  This track plan is ripped from https://balaffest.org.uk/track-plans/.  Ignore the intriguing sets of points leading to destinations unknown beyond the bridge on the left of the plan, they don't feature on my model as it stands (although I will let you know about them as part of this series of musings).

 

 

So what makes this station an attractive prospect for a model?  Firstly, the working timetable shows it was something of an intermediate destination for trains on the branch.  Several passenger and freight trains from both Bala and Blaenau terminated here, in addition to the expected through services from junction to terminus.  The lean-to loco shed attached to the goods shed was the loco servicing point for this end of the line, meaning that there's interesting moves to be had in preparing, servicing and disposing branch locos.  The station is also on a curve which, with a little license and application of rule 01, makes is eminently suitable for being part of a roundy-roundy layout.  The platforms are also only 3 coaches long, so won't look more pinched than they ought to as part of an overall layout.

 

There are issues around model of Trawsfynydd though.  The prototype was on a 1:60 gradient running down from right to left as you look at the plan above.  Apparently the gradient was such that freight trains bound for Blaenau would marshal wagons for Trawsfynydd at the back of the train, split before the ground frame then allow the wagons to proceed into the yard by gravity once the loco had drawn the train forwards clear of the points.  The guard's van would then follow the rest of the train and reattach before proceeding onwards.  I have a cast iron dislike of gradients on model railways, finding them to make realistic running too much of a PITA.  Not only do locos struggle, but that one kit-built wagon that you managed to make really free running won't stay where you parked it without inventing some kind of functional brakes in 4mm scale!  The gradient is also unhelpful in that there is a mountain on the inside of the curve, and the landscape falls away on the south (near) side of the line.  Not a deal breaker, but I do like being able to se model trains running from eye level so I will have to plan carefully and compromise on the topography to make something visually interesting that is also an accurate(ish) representation of the prototype.  Still working this out, to be honest...

 

My first practical step has been to work out if I can fit Trawsfynydd in the space I have available, bearing in mind the issues with couplings and curves discussed previously.  Here is my current best effort in Templot showing it should be doable - now I've just got to wait for Mrs BenW and the hound to go away for long enough for me to take over the lounge again.  I'd use the railway room, but it's got a stud wall that needs taking down first and is too full of other modelling junk to get the plan out all over the floor.  Let me know your thoughts on this - I think I've managed to capture the character and proportions prototype fairly well, but I'm sure the RMWeb brains trust will have other ideas.  If anyone wants the Templot file to play with let me know by DM, I can't upload it here.

 

 

Next time we'll look at the timetable, operation of the model and signalling.