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Huggy

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  1. Huggy

    Settling Down

    By Huggy,

    Well we finally got sorted out with our bedroom move at home, and shifting stuff about, and much clutter has been disposed of in the process. The added benefit was acquiring an old chest of drawers and a bookshelf to go in the "railway room" alongside my layout Tillingham - after getting rid of the big bulky and seldom used Futon that occupied loads of space. Hooray! At last some storage for items of rolling stock, locos, bits and bobs instead of having to fish them out of plastic boxes stacked on top of each other. I've made that better still by acquiring a DCC Concepts storage box - outrageous price, but at 560mm long able to hold my Class 205 DEMU set intact (they are a bit of a beggar to re-rail and couple up) and a Peco Loco Lift , which having proved very handy also will be joined by two more shortly, and perhaps most useful of all and at less that a fiver, the Peco re-railer ramp. Everyone should have one!
    Anyway with Tillingham able to be run in between adding loads more detail and getting a decent station building sorted out, my mind wandered towards a Micro layout, mainly because I love reading about these in the forum and in magazines, have a little space now under the main layout, and mainly that the lovely little P Class tank loco from Hattons needs somewhere to potter about that will suit it's pre-war Southern livery. Hence the hatching of a simple, no-points, sector plate fed layout - you'll see it in Micro and Boxfile layouts forum as Filsham Yard - which I'm making a start on ASAP. I have a couple of Terriers which can join in, and want to try my hand at building a few post-grouping wagons from the Peco/Parkside range. Also, with a few decent spells of weather coming (here's hoping) I want to revive a bit of model RC flying, and have a fairly large model to finish; the constant windy and wet weather has been a major disincentive over the last six months and more, but one does need to get out in the fresh air a bit more. A few gigs coming up with my band will help finance finishing the job off, and start the ball rolling with Filsham Yard. This retirement lark ain't half bad!
  2. Huggy

    Relocated!

    By Huggy,

    Nothing reported here over a few months doesn't mean nothing has been done, honest! Besides a month-long trip to visit family in New Zealand and Australia (from which it took a while to recover!) before Christmas, I've got a fair bit done on Tillingham, and it now resembles a model railway - in my opinion at least - rather than a random collection of stuff on a board. Talking of opinions, I had hoped that transferring the latest progress to a thread in Layout Topics might elicit a bit more comment and spur me on a bit more, but although it's been viewed a few times, not a sausage as regards any kind of comment, encouraging or otherwise! It may be totally mediocre or boring, I have no idea (hope not) so thought I'd bang a couple of recent pics on here, and link it, and see what happens. I'd assumed it was more likely to attract a bit of attention in the open forums...maybe not! Here's the link:
     
    http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/130692-tillingham/
     
    or just search Tillingham in Layout topics. I'd really like to hear a few thoughts on how it's been going as I've hopefully learned a lot going along, and have particularly enjoyed getting to grips with landscaping, buildings and a bit of detailing, as well as putting in a couple more electrical feeds to iron out some faltering in the goods yard. It's been nice to have a bit of a play with locos and a wagon or two in the scenic section before I reunite the board with it's "fiddle yard" partner and crack on with the rest of the smaller stuff and do some serious running while doing so. More photos in the layout forum post.
     

     

  3. Huggy

    Scenic capers

    By Huggy,

    It's been several months since my last bit of bloggery, so here goes. Tillingham is now coming along nicely, and starting to look more like a layout rather than some track on a baseboard. The enhanced progress follows a few weeks where I'd had to dismantle the two baseboards and their trestles to make way for extra accommodation with both our girls on a visit, and took the opportunity to bring the scenic half of the layout down to our home workshop (former kitchen) where a 4x2 sits nicely on a worktop handy for all services and at a good height to work on. Consequently, I've painted a base coat of burnt umber on the "hilly bits" and other areas, and done some more ballasting and yard surfacing, though my next layout will definitely not have what is allegedly 00 scale ballast, as it's much too lumpy, but I'm not raking it all up now to start again! In addition, I've built a Ratio coal office and staithes on a separate plasticard base, which I'll reveal another time, a sleeper buffer stop (Wordsworth download) and a flight of steps which will connect the as yet to be built town to the station. These I did from scratch in Depron foam sheet and balsa wood, both in my model aeroplane stock, with some DeLuxe plastic filler here and there, and which I reckon will look reasonable when painted and weathered as a Southern style concrete construction. Painting and fitting the tiny Ratio railings kit I bought is going to be a bit of a caper though, I suspect I also did some work on the access road ramp, which is also in balsa, with a covering in brick paper and three buttresses, which would probably on reflection have been better as arched recesses, but I was on a roll! Finally, I did the tunnel mouth, another Worsdworth download but modified, which necessitated hacking out some of the raised ground I'd laid, and concentrating on that corner of the layout, had my first go at static grass laying with one of the very nicely priced MR Models tea-strainer based devices that seems to have worked pretty well with a mix of 2mm and 4mm "grasses" for the slightly overgrown area. We'll see how well my diluted PVA sticking and consequent fixing spray worked when I take the board back upstairs! Oh, and the shed road buffer stop is in, with some filling and weathering to do. Working in one specific area to get it looking more like something real I have found very encouraging, so will probably carry on that way - it's only 4' x 2' on the scenic side after all, with the townscape to be built on a higher level above part of the fiddle yard side at a later date - bearing in mind the need to try and match certain things colour and finish-wise as I go, which may be easier said than done. There's the matter of a small river to think about at the diagonally opposite corner from the current section too... onwards and upwards
    Paul
     

     
    Yard and tunnel area with various bits of ground cover going on.
     

     
    Flight of steps in foam and balsa won't add much weight to the board!
     

     
    Station access ramp, weathering of the main part yet to be done, road slab edge and fencing sorted out.
     

     
    My first attempt at static grass application, and the tunnel mouth installed. Starting to look a bit more like a railway I hope!
     
    Oh, one last thing - I may transfer the rest of the layout build over to the general Layouts part of the forum, rather than in a blog, hopefully to widen the viewing and get more feedback. What do others who have done all this before think? Comment or PM me, ta

  4. Huggy
    Having not, for one reason and another, had much building time lately, it was good to get on a bit in the last couple of weeks. The basic "terraforming" is done, and needs painting with a base coat soon. I also did some more ballast laying, and trying out a bit of brown ground cover in the goods yard, which seems OK, though I may need to work on getting the PVA glue to the right consistency. A visit to a local model railway show provided an unfinished station building, which though to my eyes it looks a bit too GWR rather than Southern, with it's tall chimneys, it's the right size (I was originally going to scratch build a station house and platform building in one, but it was starting to look a bit crowded - the station master will have to have "digs" in the town!) and was only a couple of quid with scope for a few mods. I also did some track painting, but can't say I'm 100% satisfied with the colour on the rails (Humbrol 62) so would welcome any other suggestions. Starting to look a bit more like a layout at last!
  5. Huggy

    A start on airbrushing

    By Huggy,

    I'm gradually gathering up a decent selection of brushes, paints and weathering powders, and had already had a go at weathering a couple of very old metal bodied mineral wagons, but having got that particular "bug", succumbed to buying a very cheap and reasonably cheerful airbrush kit to try my hand. It's really intended, I imagine, for doing nail art, or at least anything that doesn't mind the asthmatic little compressor not getting above 15psi and only delivering that in short bursts, but the brush itself doesn't seem bad, not that I would know! Anyway, it's serving the purpose for me to give airbrushing a go - I assume that if one day I buy some better kit, it will seem easier. Interestingly though, a stallholder at the Longfield show told me that for learners, a cheapo airbrush can be easier to get the hang of than an upmarket Iwata, though a compressor with an air tank is what one needs to aspire to. My first effort involved making a scratch "spray booth" out of some of the foam I'm using for landscaping my layout, but I quickly found that not having a ventilated one doesn't really work; even acrylic paint is something nasty you don't want to be breathing or tasting! Proper ventilated ones seem to go for £70+, but a scan of various forums showed me one idea, using a clear PVC storage box, with a small bathroom extractor fan fitted, the additional benefit being you can fit a light of some sort on top the illuminate the work. The originator of the post reckoned it cost him less than £30 with a B&Q fan, but that firm appears no longer to stock them, and I found a suitable one, with no timer or pull switch (not needed for obvious reasons), at online suppliers Plumbworld, which has turned out to be very quiet and smooth running. My only difficulty was cutting out a circle in the box without splitting it, but once the fan was installed, that covered the cracks and made the whole thing more rigid, so we'll see how long it lasts. The fan was from a range being discontinued, so a bargain price of around £7, I also bought a 3m length of flexible duct from the same source for around £3, a large Jubilee clip locally, and the suitable size box was £3.99, so inclusive of the postage from Plumbworld it all came together for around £19.50 - and it works. I had a suitable power cable hanging about the house, and wired it in to the fan. Luckily I can position it on a board over the old Belfast sink in our former kitchen turned workshop, and put the vent out of the window (Before anyone says, no, I don't have any water in the sink under my electric powered device!). It vents very well, though I quickly learned that the pipe end needs to be further out of the window if the wind is blowing, and I will rig up some kind of filter inside the box to help keep paint mist off the fan in due course. More airbrushing practice on unsuspecting rolling stock to follow. Using Lifecolor Frame Dirt and Roof Dirt a lot, with some odd touches of Rust powder etc.
     

     
    Huggy's home made spray booth, for less than £20.
     

    Bit of novice wagon weathering with cheapo airbrush kit doing most of the work. Does make bottom of the range Hornby rolling stock look better though.
  6. Huggy

    Further down the road

    By Huggy,

    Part three of today's frantic bloggery should get me pretty much up to date with my little rookie railway modelling project. The track laying and first bit of ballasting on the scenic side of the layout went reasonably well, with just a little wailing and gnashing of teeth at having to take some up again here and there. Track is Peco 100 Setrack; the simple reason is, the finer scale track doesn't have turnouts that aren't too big for the room I have. Some flexi-track, second radius curves and No 2 points have been used though, and with what locos and units I've run so far, the dead frogs haven't been a problem if the track is kept clean, easy enough to do on a layout this size. The track is on cork bed throughout, the reason for doing it on the non-scenic side was simply so it lined up better at the baseboard joint. On reflection though, laying the track and THEN snipping through it at the joint with the cutters wasn't the best plan! Naturally, it kind of didn't really line up after that....... Track is stuck to the cork with Deluxe Adhesives excellent Speedbond super PVA; not too much is needed and it dries fast, and clear.
    Wiring is simple, for DC control. I put feeds in at four places on the oval, two on each board, and an extra one, not yet connected in, on the goods yard siding branch, in case it's needed later. At last buying a decent soldering iron (Antex) meant I got the job done along with a couple of connector blocks, and one for where my simple little Bachmann 5 controller plugs in. Points will be operated by the Great Hand in the Sky, at least for now. I have now decided that, to operate with just three sets of rolling stock at a time, the rear fiddle siding that goes to the right will eventually be cassette fed, for goods train marshalling mainly (Tillingham will have an invisible chalk quarry just down the line - it's located somewhere on the Kent/Sussex/Surrey borders near the North Downs by the way), and I need another short siding to the left just long enough to park up a one-coach motor train, the other longer one to accommodate the DMU set, which admirable and nice running though it is, seems to shed small details like horns if handled too much... Dart Castings items have been purchased for replacements. The extra siding will be laid when I pluck up courage to lever up the track that exists on that side.
    I have decided that 00 scale ballast is actually too big, this view reinforced by visiting a couple of decent exhibitions, so will probably use N gauge variety to complete the job. The Goods Yard will need a rough textured surface - advice on what sort of plaster/filler would be best for such a task, meanwhile the raised section that the town perches on has it's basics in place, and I've built part of the access road down to the station, and made a start on raising a bit of landform behind the platform, using 10mm medium high density foam panels, there will be a few slopes and retaining walls here and there to do, and the foam will form the basis over which I will lay some plaster bandage ground, and I've just acquired a static grass applicator for when it gets that far, but its a way off yet. I'm also anticipating delivery of a fairly basic airbrush set-up, with which to practice some stock and building weathering, as I've found there's only so much you can do with brushes. A likely victim on the loco front for a bit of dirtying up will be my Hornby M7 0-4-4T that's subbing for the H class that should arrive in the autumn. It was cheap enough for me not to worry about making a mess of things! I have also have a bash at weathering some old mineral wagons, and enjoy this side of it a lot, just one of the various things I'm having to learn at the end of my first year and a bit in the hobby. As I said before, all comments, tips and ideas gratefully received, and I'm finding other peoples blogs as well as RM and other magazines very inspirational indeed.

     
    I've decided 00 size ballast is a bit big, but I've only done between the rails so far, so can change the rest. At least I've found more than one colour of the stuff. Rail weathering soon ....
     

     
    The old M7 is likely to be the victim for my first loco weathering bash.... So is the goods shed, much too clean for 1960-ish BR!
     

     
    The access road down to the station starts here on the "hill", weathering a bit too enthusiastic perhaps?
  7. Huggy

    One I made earlier.....

    By Huggy,

    Hi - my railway interests have always included the byways rather than the highways; branch lines rather than main line expresses, odd industrial outposts of the old days, present day Heritage lines, that sort of thing. Hence, when I decided, as a long time model aircraft builder and flyer and with more time on my hands post-(semi) retirement, that I needed an additional hobby as weather patterns seemed to have gone a bit too much towards wet and windy down our way, model railways seemed a good wheeze. Along with, in no particular order, photography, various motor sport interests and playing bass guitar in a bar band.
    But where to start? Many wise men in various forums seemed to recommend something small, that you could finish fairly quickly. As we have little available space at home, that sounded like a plan. Having a few modest modelling skills from plane making gave me a bit of a start I suppose, and as will become apparent, balsa wood and adhesives etc intended for aero-modelling have found new uses on my layout(s)
    Project number one, with encouragement from a couple of local fellas into narrow gauge, saw me first make a 4 x 2ft baseboard, and plan a roundy-round industrial project, then abandon that for something even smaller before doing so much as lay a single inch of track. It will come in handy later, no doubt.
    So here it is, my little micro layout - pretty much a diorama really - which in a tiny space about 30" / 70mm x 10" / 250mm enabled me to try out track laying and ballasting, points control with wire in tube (aircraft control cable), basic landscaping with card and plaster bandage etc, building construction and backscenes, and a tentative start in weathering, in just about four months over the winter 2015/16. Buildings include Scalescenes downloads (the factory and terrace houses), the Metcalfe shop kit that came free with Railway Modeller in November '15, mildly customised, plus a scratch built balsa-based platform and ticket office, a diesel tank, and an overbridge across the exit to a "fiddle yard", one length of track for my little EBay sourced loco, hopper wagons and Liliput coach to potter up and down on.
    Sandyvale is a country town with quarrying nearby that supplies Sandyvale Building Products, makers of various concrete slabs, manhole sections etc, and who's boss (that's him in the factory doorway looking a bit like David Jason in Still Open All Hours) is a bit of a railway nut, and besides bringing in the aggregates, opens it up at weekends as a tourist attraction. The period is late 70's, early 80s. You may have seen these pics on another forum, but having settled on RM as my regular forum of choice, any appraisals are welcome, before the next blog, concerning my start in 00 gauge (as N gauge is a bit teeny for my slightly fading eyesight, and 009 a bit too niche without much secondhand stock to suit my fading bank balance. And I thought model flying was expensive!). Cheers all.
  8. Huggy

    The 00 project

    By Huggy,

    Clearing a bit of space in the attic room that my good lady kindly permits me to use as an office/den/model railway and aeroplane room/music studio, still left only enough room for a layout no more than 4ft / 1200mm square. It has to be more or less central in the room, as the sloping roof would make running it round a wall difficult, even if there was enough clear space; there are a number of storage boxes also crammed in for general "stuff". I should point out, as we both have constructive hobbies, we converted our old kitchen into a joint workshop, me for planes and railways, she for jewellery making, after putting in a kitchen diner in half of our ground floor in the summer of 2015. Worktops at a good height, power light and water, a few fixed power tools e.g. Dremel and drill press stand, lots of storage space in the old cupboards (now pretty well full up of course) - all very handy, and the distance between workshop and layout / hangar two floor up gives one useful additional exercise!
    After sifting through free designs for small layouts on the net, I came up with the one you see here. I wanted a roundy-round layout to give trains a bit of a run, but with the front half nearest the camera scenic, and basic fiddle facility behind the scenes. This was started last autumn, two 4x2 baseboards being made as it may all need to be taken apart on occasion, should all far-flung offspring all return from various parts of the globe for a visit at once any time in the near future. The baseboards are typical ladder framed ply top jobs, carried on two modestly priced trestles, the only slight problem being that the floor is as level as all that; when the house had the attic converted to a third bedroom years ago, it had already been off-kilter for best part of a hundred years no doubt - it used to be a shop in the old days, next to another, which by coincidence was once a model shop!
    Anyway, after purchasing various secondhand bits of stock to get started on a bit of "playing trains", most of which has now been disposed of again to offest some of the cost of the project, I eventually decided that, being a Southern Man, having grown up in old South Eastern territory, a BR Southern region layout it should be. The nearby town of Rye, with it's station sited at the bottom of the hill the town stands on, was a bit of an inspiration, so Tillingham will have it's bit of townscape located at a higher level, to offset what will otherwise be a bog-standard flat railway layout, with low relief buildings in slightly under 4mm scale for a bit of perspective. I also tried to make it look just a bit less train set-ish, and gain some useful track length, by making the basic oval lay diagonally on the boards. The period will be late 1950s/early 60s, so I can use a bit of steam traction that I recall from childhood - H Class motor train (on advance order) with maybe a C class for freight, and their brief replacement a BR standard 2-6-2 or 2-6-4 tank, and for the later part of the period the Bachmann/Kernow Class 205 DMU. I treated myself to that long before any real scenic work was done, as the green set with small yellow panel they sell just happens to be one which in real life actually ran from my now home town of Hastings to and fro on the Marshlink line to Ashford - I probably travelled on it at some point! Had to have it, even if it busted the budget....... So these pictures are very early days, since then a scratch-built balsa based platform has been added, which is in all truth barely adequate for the two-car DMU, and only for use by the little 4mm scale passengers who have long-jump capabilities, but it does just fit. There will be the two-road goods yard with a coal merchants and the Superquick kit goods shed, maybe a bit of river in the front right hand corner, trains entering from the main line junction the other side of the hill through a tunnel, and exiting under a road bridge to the right. So far so good, one more post and I'll be up to date....
     

    As you can see, the 205 DEMU only just fits in my platform - mind the gap everyone!
  9. Huggy

    Extra siding space

    By Huggy,

    Now that was easy. Having figured out how running on my layout might actually work, I'd though for a while that an extra siding in the behind-the-scenic-bit fiddle yard might be good. Started 4 pm yesterday, pulled up the old siding (on the left), installed a Peco turnout recently purchased secondhand along with some other odd bits of track, and stuck the new shorter one - just long enough for a single coach autotrain (appropriate rolling stock yet to come) alongside my "Thumper" DMU, job done by 5.15, and glue left to dry. All works well. Using DeLuxe Materials Speedbond for track laying actually works pretty well, because a little bit of it goes a long way; it grips well, but if you need to tear it up again, using a steel ruler under the sleepers pops it off with a twitch of the wrist, you can re-use the track, and it does indeed dry speedily. The siding in the foreground of the pic will also be coming up. This will be my "goods yard/quarry" further down the line from Tillingham, changed to a cassette system for turning round and changing stock and locos. Trying to get a workable layout into 4 x 4 feet is proving not only possible, but fun too. MDF and some light aluminium angle should fit the bill, at about 21" for each cassette. No 30/40 wagon freights on my line; that you can't do!

  10. Huggy
    Not too much modelling activity of late, although further playing around with my modest airbrush kit had the effect of making me want to do more of it! Missed a nice secondhand Iwata outfit on EBay by about three seconds (t'other fella got a bargain I reckon!) but this moment of madness further enhanced the desire to spend money, however the element of common sense remaining meant having to settle for the rather more modest and comparatively cheap as chips "A186" compressor with air tank and two new airbrushes that seem to have sold in very large numbers. It should at least have a bit more "puff" than my tentative first buy; should be with me next week so we'll see how it goes... Will bung a few photosof my weathering attempts to date somewhere in the forum in the near future for comment and critique.
    Meanwhile, I'm on the first stage of some hilly bits of landscape on Tillingham, my Southern style 00 layout, and a combination of 10mm foam sheet and cardboard has created a small section up to it's raised townscape back half. I was going to just stuff bits of newspaper in to fill out under plaster bandage, but then thought I'd try making an undersurface with thin perforated aluminium sheet, held in place with 5 minute epoxy and see how that works out before tackling a larger area, hopefully without any blobs of the super-sticky stuff landing unnoticed on any adjacent track.....
    As they were jolly cheap, bought a pair of the little Hornby class 06 shunters as repaint and weathering projects - yes I know, you wouldn't have found many of those south of the Scottish border - but oh dear me, I now have ideas about a little factory/brewery/distillery layout on a spare 4x2 baseboard I've got - and I've barely got cracking on the infrastructure of the current project! I gather I am not alone in this kind of modelling folly.....
     
    PS new kit turned up this afternoon, three days ahead of schedule - will be eager to give it a proper go, but all seems to work
  11. Huggy

    Barn building

    By Huggy,

    For the first bit of actual modelling since having a few days off with the 'flu (had to go for a three day lie-down in the end, much of it spent watching a box set of "Breaking Bad"; (I probably know as much about being a drug producer now as I do about model railway building, but there's much less violence involved with this!) I though I'd work on the barn I started for the corner site farm on Tillingham. I'm glad I left the appropriate outline in the filler used to simulate a muddy farmyard before completing the base, covered with "mucky concrete" paper, the barn itself uses photo quality image of a weathered, unpainted concrete block wall, much used for such buildings in the 1950s-60s, on heavy grey card walls, the roof is Ratio corrugated iron sheet, I made the apex flashing from the same stuff, which while it shows that the sheets are actually a bit too think for scale, looks OK to me, it all needs a bit of filler and some moderate weathering with only a bit of rust as its not supposed to be that old a building, and I will face the fiddly task of gutters and downpipes (with a couple of barrels to catch rainwater possibly) when I feel a bit more focussed. Think it's looking OK.
    I can use this as a sample piece of my scratch building when I get along to the club I recently joined, who are building a pretty large exhibition layout, and the fella in charge surprised me by saying after only a couple of visits, "OK you can build a Goods Shed, dimensions are.... off you go!" Gulp. And it has to be pukka LBSCR style too.... Looking forward to the challenge!
    Again extra pics and detail on the Layout forum at
     
    http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/130692-tillingham/
     

     

  12. Huggy

    Farmyard

    By Huggy,

    Well quite a productive weekend so far, foul and frigid weather out encouraging me to get on with things! The corner farmyard is coming on - few more details in the Tillingham topic on the layout pages - with the buildings basically done, just needing gutters and downpipes for the barn still, then I really must do the fences around it, and those alongside the line. I've kind of been putting that off as I'm sure it will be fiddly in extremis...
    Got a good deal on a terrace of low-relief houses by Superquick for when the town portion of the layout gets done, which won't be for a while yet, still not decided on the rest of what will go on there, but the main thing now is to get the scenic part and the fiddle yard board back together and make sure everything runs and clears all the bits of infrastructure.
    Here's the farmyard building group, roughly in place, the little stable on the left, a pig sty - the farmer doesn't go in for big scale pig rearing, just a few for the home - and the barn, all weathered up without going mad, as they are supposed to be reasonably new structures in the 50s. The muddy yard needs some flatting as it's a bit shiny, then I'll get busy with some rough grass tufts, general debris etc, and put some DeLuxe materials instant water in the puddles and ruts, finally I have a couple of figures to paint, pony and pigs. I got hold of a Field Marshall tractor and a Series 1 Land Rover for the farmer recently.
     

  13. Huggy
    While the "Beast from the East" did it's best to blow our windows in, I was at least able to crack on with getting enough done on the bench to take the scenic half of the Tillingham layout back up to the railway room and nook it up to the non-scenic fiddle yard section. So I now have a semi-complete working layout in a 1200mm square, and can run a few trains, after quite a while with two halves of one!
    There's lots to do, mostly, but not all, detail stuff, and in due course a "town" section to be built as part of the backscene, but I'm pleased that I have a working station and goods yard, and the adjacent farmyard starting to look their parts, and that after a bit of fettling, I managed to line up the tracks again with the added feeds I put in while it was in the workshop making running rather better. There will be plenty of photos and more info on the layout page
     
    http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/130692-tillingham/
     
    Here's an overall view of what we have so far, with a few vehicles, people etc placed to see what the general effect is like.
     

  14. Huggy

    Holdups, but it works

    By Huggy,

    It's been good to run a few trains in odd moments (the layout is right next to my PC ) but further progress has been halted by major room-swapping at home, and trying to clear room for more storage units etc, and a hospital visit. If all goes well, I should be able to crack on a bit with the myriad jobs that count towards a "complete" layout. Once I stop playing with my lovely new P Class tankie - what a nice job Hattons commissioned there, it looks great and runs very nicely, even over my "dead frog" points. Now I'm going to need to forward plan a little pre-Nationalisation period layout for that little gem and one of my Terriers.... but first, address the thorny problem of space and time. Now I sound like Dr.Who. Maybe a sonic screwdriver would have got all those new flatpack things done a bit quicker.....
  15. Huggy

    Welsh Wanders

    By Huggy,

    Been a busy period with one thing and another, so not much to report modelling wise. However, a weeks holiday in Prestatyn gave a boost to getting back on it, not ;east because we had a couple of nice walks along the course of two famous North Wales branch lines. If you have a week or two up that way, the walk up the course of the Dyserth branch from Prestatyn is lovely, a steady climb up into the hills on a well laid tarmac patch (watch out for high speed cyclists coming down the gradient!) with a couple of tea stop opportunities including the golf club cafe near Meliden, and some nice railway artefacts left to remind people what it was like. Nice to see the Meliden goods shed nearing the end of a sympathetic conversion into a village meeting and heritage centre (and another cafe), with the remains of the old loading gauge gently corroding away in what was the goods siding. It's 2.6 miles each way between the 45 years odd of tree growth since the line finally closed, very welcome on a hot sunny day, and you can easily imagine steam exhaust blasts echoing round the place as a hard working loco shoved it's empty wagons up to the various mines and quarries before coasting back down with the previous days output. The long-gone passenger service with the tram-like LNWR steam autocoach, perhaps with well turned out Edwardian folk going up to Dyserth to have a wander down to the waterfall, is also easy to imagine.
    I didn't know much about the Holywell Railway, that served the heavy industry in the Greenfield Valley - rather a misnomer in the 18th and 19th centuries for sure, but now a lovely, tranquil, heritage park with the Holywell stream feeding the various reservoirs built in the day - but to sum up, over two centuries a horse drawn tramway to the mills, quarries, copper works etc was supplanted by a short-lived steam version in the later Victorian era. Then after a few years while the LNWR directors tried to recall exactly why they bought it in 1891, turned into a quite successful shuttle passenger line from re-titled Holywell Junction on the Chester - Holyhead main line (actually in the village of Greenfield) to Holywell Town, which got up to 23 round trips a day in the 1920s and 30s among a steadily decreasing goods traffic, again, with a loco pushing wagons and carriages up the taxing incline, Britain's steepest wheel adhesion reliant railway, and coasting down on the brakes. This too has a rather fine well surfaced wide path to follow up through the woods to show where it once was, and the whole heritage park is picturesque, with lots of bits and bobs - some extremely large, like the iron waterwheel segment in the old mill complex - that show what a great job can be done when attempting to remind modern day folk that once the UK wasn't full of investment bankers, software developers, stockbrokers and the like, but did rather more tangible things, albeit with the same kind of effect on the environment that modern China is experiencing. Both well worth a visit.
    These walks were very pleasant indeed, and I must also put in a good word for Arriva Trains - yes, really! - and a faith- restoring honest citizen when my smartphone fell out of my pocket on a train between Llandudno and Rhyl, and was handed in and traced to Chester station lost property almost within the hour! Better yet, our daughter lives in Chester, about five minutes walks from the station, and was able to pick it up and return it to me nenxt day. Result!
    Anyway, all this railway related stuff got me at it again back home in Hastings, and a long awaited signal box for my layout Tillingham has been completed, and is now in place on the layout - pics on the layout topic in a while.
     

    Meliden goods shed nearing restoration as a Heritage Centre.
     

    One of several intact overbridges on the Dyserth branch line walk.
     

    Restored goods yard crane at Dyserth.
     

    The Greenfield Valley looks a lot more picturesque now than in did when the Holywell branch ran through it.
     


     
    Big chunks of Victorian engineering remind us of what used to be in the Deeside area.
    (All photos Paul Huggett)
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