Gwynraven

Platforms......always trickier than they look. I've scratch-built them before but this time, I went for Peco platform edges and fine sandpaper tops to represent cinder. The faces are covered in Slaters plasticard. The 3 buildings are all wriggly tin, assumed to have replaced the rotting old station building at this once manned station.

Gwynraven platform sits in the cutting made by the railway as it bisects the village. The road is carried over the railway on a scratch built girder bridge. The Footbridge to the platform is a Dapol kit( free on Facebook ads (I know right!), bashed about to suit the location. It is removable so I can access the signal mechanism that is yet to be installed. This weekend platform fitting and finishing off the girder bridge see the end of the work at this end of the layout.

The fireless loco gets an outing from the stock-box. Yhe 8pin dcc socket will make life easier. I feel that a repaint,detailing and etched plates are going to make this loco fit into the Bevan Brothers livery alot better.

This is the top view of the viaduct. The 3mm ply top will be suitably covered to represent the metal viaduct. The sleepers have been cut to represent the rail running on baulks on the viaduct deck. The river bottom is in place,the road is has taken shape.

....."Made in Scotland,from Girders" went the old Iron Bru advert.......and I need girders for my viaduct. In the box of bits from the old Gwynraven layout were 4 Peco Truss Girders which I had used on a preceding version of the viaduct. Here you see two girders stitched together to form a longer girder. The abutment on the valley side will be built up so the girder end is embedded in the wall, not simply dangling there as it is now.

Thank-you Mikkel. Yes indeed, that wall paper is pretty good stuff. It is vinyl so will endure light rain as I open and close the shed door. I actually wanted light grey but this roll turned up in the bargain section of my local DIY Warehouse so I nabbed it. Sadly, unembossed and unpatterned wallpaper is not "en vogue"at the moment. As I like to model autumn (figures with umbrellas and autumnal foliage), I toned down the light blue with a "Welsh shower" which is why i spray painted the top of the wallpaper,getting lighter towards the bottom. There will be some backscene also which will be attached to the modules and not the wall paper. They have been mocked up but I have not committed to mounting them on card yet. More on this by the end of January.

I hope this photo demonstrates the link between board 2 (the Village) and Board 4 with the Viaduct, Board 3 as the literal bridge between the two scenes. I hope I can find the rest of that wallpaper for the sky!

This evening,whilst pottering in the shed, I spent a few moments mocking up the next board after the viaduct. From the viaduct, the railway will be at the approach of the station of Pontylanod. The 2ndRadius curves will be on view here leaving a big space (well comparatively, by my standards...) so what do I fill it with? Well, this is South Wales so a factory/forge/foundry of course.... these buildings were are recycled from my old layout.They will have to be in a different order here because need the space to add..... an internal railway (well part of one). The loco for this will be the fireless loco seen in a previous blog. You can see the running line's location. There will be space for 3 sidings forming a shunting puzzle to keep me occupied whilst the 56xx's bring coal from the collieries of the Eastern Valleys. I use alot of personal references on the layout. Bevan is along deceased and much loved cat named after the founder of the NHS.

My boards are a scant 1 foot wide! So space is at a premium. I wanted a loco shed but the only place it would go was at the very front of the layout. I'd rather it was not so close but needs must. At eye level,it forces me to look around it and acts as a view blocker. You'll notice the coaling stage. Not a normal feature of South Wales Colliery sheds I notice but I needed to cover the mechanism that joins and unclips the baseboards with something removable. It works but I don't like the bulk of it. I may replace it later. Why? Because it spoils my view of the locomotives on shed. The loco shed was the old Airfix kit with corrugated iron"wriggly tin"liberally applied. It has an interior too and a stonebase to add variety to the endless red brick.

A close up of the 3/4 wagon. It looks ridiculous from above however at eye level (bearing in mind my layout is 4 feet above the floor) the deceit is more acceptable to my eye.

So,I thought I'd share the first board/module I created. It is the one where the recovered colliery model was recovered from the previous 3 in carnations of Gwynraven. It did have an extensive rebuild this time though. The plan was to make a shunting plank the layout that would better suit the enforced house moves every few years but I just couldn't resist modelling a Western Region element too. So now the Colliery sits above the Western Region Branch, hardly prototypical but I needed to disguise the 2nd radius curves needed to make the layout a circle eventually. I scratchbuilt the buildings but the head frame is the Bachmann Model. For the models I used drawings in the book Modelling Aspects of the Coal Industry which has all the details you need and some inspirational photos too. The whole colliery lifts out to facilitate track cleaning. The washery is made of a domestic funnel, that I thought my wife had never used...... then of course she was looking for it! I did confess. The branch goes under the girder bridge and turns sharp right. There is also a headshunt which acts as a place to park an Engine and Brake (having brought empties to the exchange sidings) or a 64xx and Autocoach or single car DMU, representing services to Brynmawr. The screens can only hold 6 wagons. The one that you can see in the photo is part of the scenery. It is there to disguise the fact that the stone wall that supports the screens is very curved because behind it is the Branchline curve. The rails for this screen run in to the wall. The 3/4 wagon is my attempt at disguising the disappearing rails. The buildings need a spruce up to repair some damage during storage and moving however I think they look the part.

This is the view from the valley floor. The layout is 4 feet off the ground so I know I can sit here watching those South Wales Coal trains and local passesnger trains rumble over the bridge, scarcely noticed by the people below. This view does mean that I'll have to model the underside of the viaduct in some detail though!

This was supposed to be a mock up so I could work out how the railway was going to cross the shed door to form the circular layout I wanted. Then the mock up worked so well, I just got stuck in! I was determined to have a Walnut Tree style viaduct, all girders and spindly, with the valley far below. The valley you see here is only 20 cm below the bridge deck simply because when I made the valley deeper, the valley sides would have exceeded 45 degrees and it just looked wrong! I wanted the valley to have the following....a double track railway line (an early competitor to the Gwynraven line), it also had to have a river, a main road and a garage. This makes the valley floor quite cramped which is typical of the Eastern Valleys Lines around Blaenavon. I took great care to make this module to scream South Wales, even if there was no loco or stock on show. The road,river and railway line are on a skew to add scenic interest. The railway line in the valley is cut in to the valley side and will feature a retaining wall. on the right side of the railway line is the river. There will then be a stone wall and then the road with it's Esso Garage. The viaduct deck is 3mm ply. It is going to rest on brick pillars, one of which is in the middle of the viaduct, squeezed between the river and the road. The girders are probably going old Peco ones as I have some to recycle from the old layout. The whole unit is a lightweight box which lifts in and out and can be bolted into place also. All in all a successful bank holiday.