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Beardybloke

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  1. Beardybloke
    With a number of other commitments being a serious impediment to progress, now seems to be a good time to rewrite history, geography, economics and quite possibly geology.
     
    Numerous plans and attempts were made over the years to create a 2ft gauge railway network in North Wales, largely inspired by the phenomenal success of the Ffestiniog Railway once steam locomotives were introduced. The most famous of these would, I suspect, be the NWNGR line from Dinas to Rhyd Ddu and Bryngwyn which eventually formed part of the Welsh Highland Railway - but what many people aren't aware of is that there were several other lines planned - from Portmadoc to Betws-y-Coed via Beddgelert and Capel Curig, as well as a line to Porth Dinallaen which was intended to share the Cambrian Line from Portmadoc to Pwhelli by laying a third rail! Other railways in the area which existed from time-to-time were the Croesor tramway (part of which was eventually absorbed into the WHR) and the Gorseddau Railway, which was defunct by the early 1890s.
     
    With the lack of success from the North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways, other companies took on the mantle of connecting the various towns and villages in North Wales - all unsuccessfully, with most not getting beyond the planning stages. The most famous relic of these attempts is the 'Bridge to Nowhere' on the A498 from Porthmadog to Beddgelert, produced by the failed Portmadoc, Beddgelert and South Snowdon Railway plan to link Beddgelert and the quarries in Nant Gwynant with Portmadoc, and not used for the WHR route as, being intended for electric traction, the gradients and curvature were far too severe for steam-hauled trains to handle. At least one other proposal that I'm aware of was made to construct a line to Betws-y-Coed by the Snowdon and Betws-y-Coed Light Railway, also running up Nant Gwynant - various methods of beating the gradients at the north eastern end of the valley including a series of switchbacks or a series of reverse curves. I've also been reliably informed that the NWNGR had some 1 in 14 gradients planned on the route!
     
    So where does Hafod Las fit into all of this? A number of (probably fairly wild) assumptions have been made to justify the existence of both a substantial quarry workshop complex and a comparatively busy main line serving the area - the major assumption being that one of the railways to Betws-y-Coed succeeded in being built in the first place!
     
    The quarry side remains loosely based on the Hafod Las Quarry south of Pentre Du, a small hamlet about a mile to the west of Betws-y-Coed. The quarry itself produced slates and slabs and as far as I'm aware was quite a small concern, but with a fairly substantially-built half-mile long tramway (mostly double tracked incline) taking the slates down to the Holyhead Road (the A5) and thence to the LNWR in Betws for onward shipment. The quarry was open from c.1862 to c.1927, employing an average of 15 people and producing 3000 tons of slates and slab per annum as of 1900. It went through a variety of leaseholders (including one James Swinton Spooner, brother of Charles Easton) and closed down a number of times over the years.
     
    I'm not sure whether the quarry's lack of success was due to poor transport links, poor rock quality or a combination of the two, but the completion of the NWNGR line to Betws removes one obstacle and my flagrant disregard for geology removes the other - in my world, the quarry was successful enough to warrant a couple of locomotives and a not-unreasonably-sized workshop capable of rolling stock construction and repairs and fairly heavy servicing of locomotives. The size of the locomotive fleet and workshop complex is far smaller than those at Penrhyn, Dinorwic or most of the Blaenau quarries, but I suspect that something in the vein of the Nantlle quarries (such as the Dorothea and Cilgwyn quarries) which between them had a number of locomotives isn't too great a jump with the assumptions that I've made. The location of the quarry can be seen on the OS Map at grid SH 780 560:
     




     

    The original intention for the location of the station was in the hamlet of Pentre Du, possibly sandwiched between the road and the houses - a coaching inn would have probably been added close to the station as well as the junction having a nominal mainline and quarry connection (which would obviously be reversed depending upon which configuration the layout was operating in). There would have been a stone-built station building and goods shed which coupled with the pub adjacent to the station site would have been rather reminiscent of Waenfawr.


     

    However, I liked the idea of the river running under the railway and with the Afon Llugwy running parallel to and some distance below the railway, I didn't think that I could stretch modeller's licence that far and still justify claiming the station's location to be Pentre Du - it may just be that I'm far too picky - so, an alternative location was sought. Potentially, the station could sit anywhere along the proposed lines near to a centre of population, such as they are in the area, but I thought that it would be rather neater if it was close to the quarries in the Llugwy valley so that I could tie in the traffic and timetabling - for my own amusement as much as anything else. I took a wander up and down the line (figuratively speaking) on an OS Map and Capel Curig jumped out at me as a suitable location for a station; with a river for the railway to cross, a road to cross the railway and river and run behind the two, and some interesting buildings in the area - a church, Pinnacle Stores, a couple of terraces and an outdoor shop that looks (thanks to the sign outside it) very much like it used to be a pub. It sounds like a pastiche, but it's all there and conveniently all on the far side of the road to the railway except for the church, as can be seen below, with the station site overlaid:





     

    A very good photo of the area in the 1890s can be found
    here (unfortunately copyrighted) - my version of history would have the railway passing down the right hand side of Llynnau Mymbyr roughly parallel to the road (using earthworks where necessary to keep the gradients workable) and would swing around the hill in the centre ground, under the road (carried on a higher bridge than exists), cross the river at quite ab oblique angle and into the station, in the field behind the chapel nearest to the camera. The Pinnacle Stores are on the right next to the road, and the white building to the left of the hill is what is now the Plas-y-Brenin centre but was, at the time, a hotel.

     

    Very Freezer-esque! I wonder how many people will think that I've made a train set, as it certainly seems to have all of the required features for one...


     

    This choice of location isn't without its issues. I have been told that the station was intended to be some way south of the village and the line was to follow the road to the south of the rock outcrop by the Plas-y-Brenin centre rather than the route that I've chosen to tie in with the road/rail/river plan on the baseboards. The severe gradients, especially coming up from Nant Gwynant, would probably have limited through traffic from Beddgelert quite severely and I wouldn't expect to see any goods traffic being hauled up that hill when it could come up from Betws instead, and when production from the copper mine and quarries in the Gwynant valley could be hauled for onward shipment via Beddgelert. Both of the above were, I believe, in no small part due to the need to keep as far away from the Swallow Falls as possible due to a recalcitrant landowner.


     

    The negative points covered, there are some positives from an operating point of view - there would be a reasonable local goods traffic bringing in merchandise and produce for the local hostelries and stores, and who's to say that the area wouldn't have developed further with the rail connection and consequent expansion of the quarries? There's also a forestry plantation reasonably close to the village (though I'm not sure when that came into being) and the Moel Siabod quarries a couple of miles away, providing goods traffic for the station. By contriving a particular junction arrangement at the quarry (possibly for land availabiltiy reasons) there could be a requirement for haulage to Capel for full and empty goods stock, to be run-round and depart in the same direction from whence it arrived. Depending on what sort of level of output I gave the quarry, this could also generate a requirement for a specific workmens' train (shedded at Capel overnight) and indeed a local shunter to run minerals, empties and general freight to and from the quarry junction at Pont Cyfyng (not shown on the map, but the branch would lead off to the south-west from a junction near the bridge):


     




    (The 1:25,000 map shows the station more than a little over scale and shows the line crossing the river (and would have to do so twice) rather than contouring around, but between the two images and allowing for modeller's licence and a bit of selective compression to bring the stores and road junction closer to the station, you should hopefully be able to get the idea)



    So, with history re-written to contain a rail link from Portmadoc and Caernarfon to Betws-y-Coed (and hence Corwen, who knows?) and some rather productive quarries and mines in the locale, Hafod Las Mk. III now has a raison d'etre. Of course, for neatness and considering the relative size of the concerns, the quarry workshop should probably be a part of the Moel Siabod complex, but I've grown rather attached to the name by now!
     
    What have I learned this time? Sometimes life looks like a train set, and I think that I'm being haunted by Cyril Freezer...


  2. Beardybloke
    With a substantially complete locomotive now on the workbench we now reach the point where I usually stall on the build and Linda has been no exception. I have several excuses (and excuses they are), but the main two being demands on my time from elsewhere and a pause whilst I evaluated some Microtrains couplers for their suitability. For ‘evaluated’ read ‘tried to get the infernal bloody things to work’ as the two bogies that I bought didn’t seem to want to uncouple with any of the magnets that I tried. Ah well, I’ve got a little more time available now and some of the actual Microtrains magnets rather than random others, so I might continue the experiments. Possibly with a hammer, if the frustration continues…
     
    As I mentioned in Linda’s previous instalment, the replacement backhead arrived promptly and was thinned out to fit over the flywheel and soldered in place – I really can’t fault Parkside Dundas’ service one bit! With this fitted my attention turned to adding the detail – which, in my opinion, can mean the difference between a good model that’s got all of the right bits in the right places, and one that actually looks like a miniature version of the real thing – to date, I’ve not managed the latter on anything that I’ve built so far, but I live in hope.
     
    I reckon that the parts provided for the cab fittings would be perfectly adequate to represent the loco in as-built condition (i.e. coal fired and not vacuum fitted) and would probably do for Blanche with her smaller cab opening from 1970 onwards, but I seem to have become something of a perfectionist – even though I probably don’t have the skills to be – so I decided to try to make the best representation that I could from bits of scrap plasticard and brass (I might be in a southern exile, but I’ve still got northern blood!) The backhead, made up as per the instructions, can be seen below:
     



     
     
    With a few photos discovered on Flickr that showed a good amount of the cab detail from a couple of angles, I made a start – not on the cab though, because the sheer volume of pipework and valves is rather daunting, especially compared with what’s provided in the kit. Simpler things were in order first; so the handrails and vac pipe that runs along the tank from cab to smokebox were araldited in place with the pipe requiring a chunk to be taken out of the sandbox. True to form I, of course, took a chunk out in the wrong place to start with which necessitated the judicious use of a spot of filler to hide… hopefully it’ll look okay once it’s painted! A fine piece of rod was also used to replace the rather chunky whitemetal protrusions atop the sandboxes and the linkage that runs between them – part of the operating gear for them, I presume.
     
    Eventually, I couldn’t put it off any longer (God only knows I tried) and had to make a start on the cab fittings. Despite the multitude of photos, I still couldn’t quite work out in my head where everything went or, indeed, what connected to what! A couple of sketches were in order, and I managed to produce a passable representation of a vacuum ejector and the mass of pipework on the opposite side of the cab. Passable if you’re moving past it at about 40mph, anyway. The safety valve assembly on the firebox was drilled to take some of the remaining assemblies, and some very rough valve wheels were made up by cutting some squares from 10thou plasticard and rounding them off. The results (along with the cabsides and steps fixed in place and a little excess araldite) can be seen below:
     



     
    Subsequent to this photo, I also got around to adding the small table to the left of the firebox – I’ll have to get around to making a 4mm scale oil can and mug of tea to go with it!
     
    The next step was the injector pipework and the mere thought of attempting this put me off for some time once again – I’d apply for membership of the Procrastinator’s Society but I never seem to get around to doing it – so instead, I soldered up some cylinder drains – I’ve not got around to fitting these yet as I found them so insanely fiddly that the injector pipework seemed like it would be a breeze in comparison. How wrong could I be! Close-up photos of the pipework were singularly lacking and many of the available shots showed the pipework wreathed in steam. Very atmospheric but not, unfortunately, much cop for using as a template.
     
    After a trip to the FR on the ‘Back to Blaenau’ weekend, I found Blanche sat in the spare platform at Blaenau Ffestiniog, having recreated the buffer stop delivery that came into the station alongside BR’s inaugural train back in 1982. Clearly not an opportunity to be missed, I started snapping away like the tourist that I was and despite the funny looks, came back with some decent photos of the injector pipework. A comparison with the available photos of Linda in her current form showed that the pipework seemed near enough identical, and so I had a working diagram at last – or at least the next best thing. I never got a chance to take similar photos of Linda herself as the only time that I saw her was taking on water at Porthmadog… some decent photos of the backhead, lubricator, cylinder drains and whistle mounts were forthcoming though!
     
    The first port of call was to add the tankside steps on both sides, as this would give me a datum point to work to as well as a sneaky place to which I could attach the pipes if necessary. Bit-by-bit, the pipes were built up and test fitted individually and tailored to fit the location, and a thinner bit of brass rod added to represent the control lever. It’s not perfect, but I reckon that a bit of paint (and possibly a coat of superglue to thicken the central part) will hide a multitude of sins. The current state of affairs is shown below, including the new table on the firebox. In an ideal world, I'd have made the pipework removable to make painting that much easier, but it's too late now. Also, having seen the regulator handle in the Brian Madge Alice-class Hunslet kit, I may have to replace the rod with something more accurate:
     



     



     
    Next steps are to attach the cylinder drains and sort the whistle mount… and try to get the lubricator made. I’ve attempted the latter twice so far, and if it’s sturdy enough to survive it looks nothing like the real thing, and if it looks like the real thing it disintegrates if I look at it askance. Ah well, time to stop procrastinating and get on with it (yeah, right!).
     
    Lesson for today? Plan ahead, as I reckon that that pipework is going to be a sod to paint...
  3. Beardybloke
    It seems that nothing is ever finished. The Langley ‘Prince’ that was the second working loco on Hafod Las (and the only reliable one) has been back in the workshops. By this stage in its life, Prince has had 3 different coupling types fitted – Bemo, MSE/Sprat & Winkle and most recently Microtrains – but has otherwise remained unmodified and untouched since the final shovel-load of paint was applied back in 2008.
     
    I finally seem to have managed to get the Microtrains couplers to function (mainly by using the magnets actually intended for the system) and have built up a coupling height gauge – I’m not using the recommended mounting height as I needed to account for the height of Linda’s bufferbeam, so the proprietary version is about as much use as a chocolate fireguard – and have fixed it to a short length of track fixed to some plywood. A view of the height gauge along with an FR bug box can be seen below:
     



     
    However, the modification to the loco to fit the new couplers (specifically the removal of the wires for the S&W couplings) saw some cosmetic damage to the tender in the form of paint flaking off and structural damage to the front of the loco, knocking off the vacuum pipe and dislodging the footplate. I could have patch-painted the tender and probably re-glued and touched up the footplate but I probably wouldn’t have been happy with this – another factor being that, foolishly, I didn’t prime the loco when I first painted it hence the propensity of the paint to flake off in bloody great big bits. With this in mind, I donned the hair shirt and started stripping the loco.
     
    As always with Beardybloke projects, nothing is ever simple. As the loco was originally assembled with superglue (if it had been soldered, it would inevitably have ended up as a rapidly-cooling heap of metal on the workbench) I was more than a little reluctant to apply any form of chemical paint stripper to it lest it be reduced to its component parts. There are obviously several problems with manual stripping – namely in this case gouge marks (mostly shallow, admittedly) from the small jeweller’s screwdriver and craft knife used to strip the paint, and small bits of paint stubbornly refusing to leave even with the most blatant of hints. After tidying with a fibreglass scratch pen the most obvious missing chunks were filled, particularly areas where the filler from the original build had inadvertently been removed, sanded back and a coating of primer applied. Unsurprisingly a number of imperfections were still clearly visible and several iterations of this process ensued, including the removal of the handrails and filling of the holes for subsequent replacement with less oversized components. During this process the vacuum pipe was also araldited back in place 3 times and the footplate / chassis assembly glued to the chassis – if it ever needs removing, it’ll take a little bit of force to do so! Coupling mountings were built up to the appropriate height, and the tender has also been retrofitted with brass pinpoint bearings to ensure free running over the long term.
     
    In general, the weather has been slowing the rebuild process down quite significantly as high winds or rain prevent any spraypainting from being carried out – and as a small job it’s all being done by aerosol as I’m too lazy to keep cleaning the airbrush, though the matt varnish will be airbrushed on. Handrails, transfers and a coal load (the latter two absent from the model previously) were all added and the two gold-painted whitemetal whistles replaced with Springside variants. These don’t appear to be exact matches to any known prototype carried on the FR, but given that a significant proportion of the brass components were *ahem* acquired by collectors during the years of closure, who’s to say what would have been used to re-equip the loco in my alternative universe? Finally, the new nameplates and worksplates from Narrow Planet were fitted (with the latter requiring some tweaking to the cabside lining) – from the photo below, you may also notice that Prince has had a sex change!
     



     




    The numbers on the rear of the tender are a little high, but as I was running out of bits of the HMRS BR loco and coach numbering sheets to cut out, I decided to leave it at that!


     



     
    By way of comparison, I have included a photo of Prince as-was, in pre-cosmetic restoration state below:
     



     
    Unnecessary? Perhaps, but I’m a lot happier with the model now, and I think that I can actually call it finished - or will be able to do so after the spectacle plates and sandpot/cabside handrail knobs have been touched up in gold and a few bits of black touched up, followed by a final coat of matt varnish to seal the transfers and tone down the finish (and fitted a coupling to the front too).
     
    A couple of lessons learned for the future though – don’t take shortcuts by not priming, or by not filling, filing and fettling properly – you’ll only regret it later down the line. I must admit to being better disciplined at this by now (to the unending frustration of my other half who has yet to see me finish a kit) but the temptation still remains to take the quick fix bodge route as previously!
  4. Beardybloke
    Now, a chimneyless, domeless loco isn’t really going to cut the mustard – I don’t think that even the Ffestiniog cut down the ex-NWNGR stock to quite that extent, and I certainly wasn’t the man to go down in history as having mutilated a Vulcan Fairlie to an even worse degree.
     
    Job one, fitting the dome and chimney actually went far more smoothly than I expected based on my previous experiences attempting to fit the chimney to Taliesin. It seems that the mouldings on the Chivers kit are slightly crisper and there’s a better fit by the locating lugs into the holes on the boiler and smokebox – on Taliesin, I couldn’t seem to get the chimney to stay vertical whilst the araldite set no matter how many methods of securing it I tried. When I go back to the latter, I suspect that I’ll be drilling out the base of the chimney and fitting a new lug made from brass rod or similar rather than attempting to mummify the loco. At the same time, the sandboxes were fitted in front of the tanks in the lower position (they’ve moved over the years, so a photo is essential if you want an accurate model).
     
    At this point, hopeless optimism misplaced perfectionism hair-shirtedness kicked in again. Having gone to the effort of hacking away areas of whitemetal that could have no conceivable use apart from providing structural integrity to the kit, could I really live with a moulded smokebox dart?
     
    The answer almost certainly should have been “Yes†as filing an Alan Gibson smokebox dart intended for a standard gauge loco down to narrow gauge dimensions requires both patience and a wide and varied vocabulary of profanities to see you through the times when bits snap, slip in your fingers or the jaws of the pliers, or, indeed, ping off into the near oblivion that is a living room carpet. Still, eventually, a comparison of the finished product against the moulded smokebox showed that the brass version compared favourably with the cast dart which was then carefully carved away, avoiding the hinges, and drilled for the new part. The results can be seen below:
     

    Nose job?
     
    So, with a new etched smokebox dart ready to be fitted, the whistle and safety valve must come next. The kit doesn’t come with a whistle, so with much research of very small and pixellated photos of Markits whistles, a close match was hit upon in the form of a GWR Whistle (short type) or somesuch. [Why does nobody sell a specific whistle for a NWNGR Single Fairlie c.1906, I ask you? There’s quite clearly a market, I’d buy at least two]
     
    The safety valve was a different matter – one was included in the kit, but it looked a little on the chunky side to me (mainly, I suspect, because it's very hard to represent the original, very spindly Salter type on the prototype in such a comparatively coarse material as whitemetal) and I’ve developed an aversion to gold paint representing polished brass wherever the former can be avoided (yes, yes, hair shirt, I know). However, with the prototype simply looking like a rod running through a tube with a bit of bar coming off at 90°, I was certain that I could find something in my bits box that looked like that. Dimensions were checked against a reasonably-sized profile photo and a trial piece was soldered up, with a piece of fret thinned down to fit onto the recess at the top of the dome. In the event, the test piece looked good first time, which I was rather pleased with! However, comments are welcome on the end result below:
     

     
    When the loco is painted, the brass will be polished up and varnished with gloss, in the hope that it will stay fairly shiny...
     
    A little more effort was required for the next stage, coming close to (horror of horrors) scratchbuilding. The kit doesn’t supply a cab backsheet as the locos were (I believe) originally delivered without them, but as I would be modelling a loco c.1906, a backsheet would most definitely be required. A rectangular piece of brass was cut and soldered in behind the bunker (a little messily, admittedly, but some paint should cover that) and a replacement roof was made from brass. The new roof was intended to give a finer appearance than the supplied whitemetal, and also to be removable so that I could build an interior and be able to see it if I so chose. To this end, I've soldered a couple of bits of scrap fret on either side of the roof to provide locating lugs and the roof should just drop in.
     
    With both new brass bits in place the backsheet was cut to the approximate size and filed to the roof profile shape. Measurements were again taken from the photo and holes for the spectacle plates were cut and filed out. Unfortunately these look like the work of a deranged badger wielding an oxy-acetylene torch, but the rough edges will hopefully be disguised by the etched spectacle plates that I’ve acquired. With the latter as-yet unfitted the backsheet was (again, messily) soldered into place and the cab roof placed on for effect.
     
    I suspect that getting hold of some scrap whitemetal from somewhere and attempting to learn how to solder brass to whitemetal properly will be in order before long. The technique that I used was rather slapdash and involved the use of normal 145° solder and a standard 25W soldering iron, used very quickly. This was mainly through laziness but also through lack of practice at the proper technique – as far as I know, what I should have done is to tin the brass with 145° solder and the whitemetal with low-melt, and then solder the two together with low-melt solder. If someone can confirm this, or indeed, correct me if I’m wrong, then I’d be grateful!
     
    That leaves the loco substantially complete at this point. Drilling will shortly be commencing for the fitment of detail parts such as handrails, blower pipes and all of the other assorted gubbins that make it look like a loco rather than a pastiche of one. Couplings are now on order, although I suspect that some experimentation will be taking place before the loco enters service. I've not used Microtrains couplers before, and apparently they can be a bit of a sod to fit to certain locos.
     
    I sense that you’re waiting for the cock-up. You won’t be disappointed, although it is linked to the previous one. Don’t try to solder brass parts into whitemetal next to a very, very thin area of the latter. It tends to go a bit runny…
  5. Beardybloke
    With Blanche languishing in disgrace, in a box, wrapped in lead and buried under 6ft of rebarred concrete beneath the patio (bet the archaeologists will have a field day with that one) a slightly more Beardybloke-proof method of attaining a working Penrhyn ‘Lady’ was sought.
     
    With the Parkside Dundas Charles/Blanche/Linda kit being re-released complete with a handbuilt RTR Mike Chinnery chassis to replace the near-impossible-to-source wheeled coffee grinder that is the Ibertren ‘Cuckoo’ chassis, there wasn’t much contest. The kit was ordered, with a meagre contribution coming from the proceeds of my pre-house move clear-out of some older stock (well, that was my excuse, anyway) and I sat on the doorstep, eagerly awaiting its arrival.
     
    6 months later, and to the accompaniment of a very numb backside, the kit arrived! I should say at this point that the 6 month wait was explained well in advance, and was perfectly understandable – the chassis is handbuilt, and at the time there was quite a demand for the kits. The last time that I looked on the website the lead time is down to about 3 months and I’m having to seriously resist a replacement for Blanche …
     
    Opening the box presented me with an array of crisp-looking whitemetal castings with only a couple of baffling mystery bits; a sheet of etched parts; a plastic tender chassis complete with wheels; some brass rod and handrail knobs; and a very professional looking chassis. I wish that I could put etched kits together even half as well as this beauty has been assembled:
     



     
    A thorough reading of the well-detailed and illustrated instructions followed, to ensure that I didn’t solder things up in such a way that left it impossible to carry out subsequent steps, or to solder the wrong bit on backwards and upside down. As I’ve learned from the NWNGR Fairlie, mistakes are harder to correct when soldering whitemetal compared to brass!
     
    At this point, the Single Fairlie was soldered up into a passable representation of a box shape and construction had paused whilst awaiting a chassis from Dapol. Buoyed with confidence, I marched boldly on with Linda. Pride, as they say, comes before a fall. Soldering the rear buffer beam as well as the tender drawbar and associated pin went without a hitch and the cab front was attached reasonably well to the cab floor. The firebox was a little more problematic – probably a symptom of the iron being too cold or of me not being quick enough before the heat was dissipated by the rapidly growing chunk of metal on my workbench – so the soldering wasn’t the best, and in the event turned out to be rather brittle. The ‘boiler’ underside was soldered to the underneath of the tank, again, successfully. I can obviously manage to solder flat things, it’s apparently where there’s a corner that it all goes a bit Pete Tong…
     
    …and Pete Tong it went. (You’ve been waiting for this, haven’t you?)
     
    Having soldered the tank to the cab front with a little difficulty (I found it quite difficult to get the soldering iron inside the tank to solder it up, and I suspect that it was still operating at too low a temperature) I noticed that the tank wasn’t quite in the right place – it was rotated clockwise by about 5 – 10° when you looked at it head on. Now, whilst you wouldn’t see it from a galloping horse in the dead of night, if you happened to look at the loco dead on it would look as though it was running on some highly superelevated track and the cab had some kind of strange gyroscopic system to keep it constantly upright (to protect the driver’s brew from spillage? I reckon there’s a project in there somewhere…). Me being me, I wasn’t going to live with this, so I started to desolder it.
     
    I mentioned in the first instalment of the Moel Siabod saga that the melting point of low melt solder increases once it’s been fused to whitemetal – don’t ask me the specifics, I’m not a metallurgist, but I suspect it’s something to do with alloying and the changing molecular composition of the materials at the join – but I tried to desolder the tank anyway. It didn’t work (remember, I still think that the temperature of the iron was too low) so I foolishly added some more solder in an attempt to get the original stuff to flow. Unsurprisingly, it still didn’t work, and now there was about 3 cubic feet of solder in the space where the motor should fit under the tank.
     
    Increasingly desperate, the standard soldering iron came out. I should mention at this point that this can be quite dangerous depending on the type of low-melt solder that you’re using, as the higher temperature can produce some fairly nasty gasses – I believe that the Carrs 100° stuff that I’ve been using isn’t quite as bad, though it should still be used in a very well ventilated area. A rather hotter soldering iron was applied with some success – the tank separated from the cab! The former was filled with solder on the inside, but had not lost structural integrity in any place – I was in luck.
     
    Until I looked at the cab front. The crisply-cast whistle and spectacle plate detail was buried under the other half of the solder, which had flowed rather too easily when the normal iron was applied. Just as importantly, so was the locating lip for the tank and I wouldn’t be able to clean up the solder with confidence as I could quite easily file away the lip that was buried under there somewhere.
     
    Luckily for me, Parkside have an extremely good after-sales service and will replace any damaged part of the kit if you return said part along with the appropriate P&P. The sorry remains of the cab were removed from the footplate and the badly-soldered firebox was removed at the same time. I was almost back to square one.
     
    Today’s lesson? More solder is very, very rarely the answer, especially if you’re trying to desolder something…
  6. Beardybloke
    Quicker as it would be to simply buy a job lot of flexitrack and run it on the floor, I don’t think that I would receive a great deal of my rental deposit back once I de-ballasted and lifted the track from the carpet when I move out. So, with the safety of my deposit and the longevity of locomotive mechanisms when carpet fibres are concerned in mind, I decided that some baseboards may come in handy.
    With a track plan and dimensions to hand, the next stage involved much scribbling and estimation in the back of a work notebook in order to arrive at the total length of softwood and plywood required for the baseboard framing. After taking into account the surviving wood from the demolition of HL2, I took a wander to a certain orange DIY store in the company of a helpful friend with a far bigger car than mine… and after some time, managed to find sufficient straight bits of wood to make up the boards. (Having discovered that I was one length short some time later, after relying on a piece intended for the unbuilt fiddle yard for HL2 which turned out to be propeller shaped, I looked at over a dozen lengths of 2x1 until I found a piece that was actually true)
    I won’t send you to sleep with the details, but the boards were of conventional construction with a lap joint screwed and glued at each corner and a cross brace in the middle placed to avoid being in the way of the point motors – even so, I still needed to chisel away one of the end pieces later on once the track had been laid (on an inter-board joint) in order to fit the point motor in place. Oops! Diagonal bracing was added in the same way, with one piece being lower than the others to form the support for the riverbed. The boards at this stage can be seen below:
     


    With the boards intended to be fitted together in multiple ways, a reliable method of precisely locating the baseboards was sought – Station Road Baseboards provided the solution with their 'bullet-type' locating dowels (I couldn’t afford the number of pattern makers’ dowels that I would require – 12 in all!) and some 8mm diameter coach bolts with wingnuts. These are far better than my previous attempt on HL2 which used cheap wooden dowels and smaller bolts with conventional nuts, so once again, I have demonstrated an ability to learn from my cock-ups… it’s the one good thing that can be said for my multiple model railway disasters over the years! I made the decision to fit integral plywood backscenes up to full height to start with, with an eye to possibly cutting them down to match the terrain in the future. The important part was to ensure that a flat, square surface for mating the boards together was available and bitter past experience has taught me that I really couldn’t rely on the softwood to do that. The same was done on the inter-board joints on each scenic side (though far shorter and below track level, obviously!) The boards were clamped together in turn and drilled for both locating dowels and securing bolts, with the 4 boards comfortably fitting together in both configurations.
    Copper clad board was cut and glue-gunned into place at the board edges on the curve to use as a starting point and tracklaying commenced from there. Again, the decision to use PCB sleepers (albeit oversized) is another thing that I learned from experience on HL2 along with trimming the rails back sufficiently to make sure that they don’t catch on anything! All rail sections have a separate feed to them (or in a couple of cases of very short lengths are soldered directly together) as I’m not a fan of relying on fishplates for electrical conductivity. At this stage, no decision had been made on couplers (and they’re still being evaluated) so the track was pinned down and the pins left unbent underneath the layout to facilitate the later lifting if it becomes necessary to fit magnets.
    Tracklaying progressed quite rapidly, apart from a brief pause to lift a ‘Y’ point and replace it with a RH version to eliminate a dogleg and reverse curve in the goods yard of the station. A couple of the sidings have been left with very rough ends as I’m not sure about fitting wagon turntables in a couple of places yet. Point motors were fitted underneath – mostly Peco as that’s what I’ve standardised on, for good or bad, but a couple of old Hornby ones from my abandoned teenage standard gauge layout have found their way onto the junction points. Polarity switching is provided by the same microswitch method as used on HL2 but with the wooden supports cut to the right height this time rather than bodged with cardboard – see below for the original version from HL2 to get the idea (and once again, I've plagiarised it, and I'm afraid that I can't for the life of me remember who from to thank them – I think that it was on RMweb3). Isolating sections have been fitted to the two arms of the junctions so that the one not in use can be used as a siding if necessary, though some blanking plates for the holes in the backscene may be in order to prevent rogue rolling stock from attempting flight – my Double Fairlie has already tried it once, with limited success…
     

    Below can be seen the station side of the layout with track laid and all droppers fitted underneath – the white patches that may be seen are sticky labels that are patching the point rodding and wire dropper holes that remain from the aforementioned de-doglegging. Some spare stock – a Langley FR Bowsider running on Parkside bogies and a Parkside GVT-style van – were both used for checking the rail joints and clearance on the points as some of the older Peco 009 points (though not the new mainline ones) require some modifications and fettling to the frogs, flangeways and check rails to ensure reliable running. This process hasn’t quite been completed yet, but will certainly be required before any significant running takes place…
     


    You might also notice from the photos that the extra spur running off the front of the boards on the plan doesn't exist on the layout as built - both were deleted as superfluous, especially at £10 per point!
    So, with the track laid and mostly wired up (if not to board connectors and switches) I am now nearly at the same stage as HL2 was prior to demolition, but with a much better-constructed set of baseboards and no requirement for a fiddleyard board to make it useable – learning from my mistakes and others’ recommendations (usually after I’d already done it wrong) was rather helpful – the next stage is to finish the wiring and do a bit of test running.
    Hopefully when I’ve got it all running, I won’t then pause for two years whilst I just play trains!
  7. Beardybloke
    Superb as the Parkside Penrhyn ‘Lady’ kit is, I didn’t think that a whitemetal dome painted to represent brass would do it justice but I wasn’t quite sure how to go about solving the problem. The subject has been discussed at length on the NGRM-online forum and, following a similar (but briefer) discussion on my workbench thread, Robert Thompson of RTmodels offered to turn me a dome using the original part as a master and made specifically to fit the saddle tank for a very reasonable price. Quite clearly, this was an offer that I couldn’t refuse!
     
    Yet another pause in modelling now occurred as one of the key components was sent to the Welsh Marches. The original dome from the kit will, I’m sure, find a home in my bits box and possibly on a future kitbash or scratchbuild – but I’ve got enough to be going on with for now, without starting something freelance! After Christmas, construction was resumed, and Hafod Las erecting shops began the assembly of Linda once more.
     
    The cab front and tank were soldered up rather more successfully than previously – by this point, I’d had some more practice on the Single Fairlie and had learned from my mistakes – the soldering iron was set hotter, used quicker and plenty of flux was used. I’m still by no means an expert, but I’d like to at least think that I no longer have 10 thumbs when it comes to whitemetal soldering.
     
    I made the decision to remove the cast detail from the cab front with an eye to replacing it. This isn’t because of the poor casting quality, in fact they’re extremely well moulded, but it’s because I’ve acquired some brass whistles (one is coming from the Backwoods kit, and the other is another Markits product) which will look finer and, more to the point, like brass. The spectacle plates have been removed so that I can fit etched brass alternatives, and the loss of the rivet detail on the latter is something that I’ve chosen to live with. The bodywork was placed onto the chassis and the inside of the firebox was thinned out to fit over the flywheel – several test fittings and the scraping out of small amounts of metal at a time with a flat-headed jeweller’s screwdriver eventually produced a well-fitting part that gave sufficient clearance for the flywheel to run freely.
     
    Satisfied, I got up to make a brew and in one smooth, easy movement knocked the firebox from the table and crushed it under the heel of my slipper as I stepped ahead of it. I’m pretty sure that I couldn’t do that again if I tried (and I’m not sure that I’d want to!). Dejected, and furious with myself, I sent a grovelling email to Parkside asking for yet another replacement part, which they kindly agreed to send for the cost of P&P only, without me sending the replacement part. I think that I can salvage and straighten the backhead (which was my ‘Plan B’ if I couldn’t get a replacement) and could use it on a stationary boiler or another kitbash, but the firebox itself was completely crushed – this is how it looked after my attempts at rectification with various tools:
     



     
    Nevertheless, I pressed on. Ignoring the rather sizeable exposed flywheel on the footplate for now, the smokebox was soldered into place. A check of some recent photos of Linda showed that the bracket-type assembly that covered the hinges and straps on the smokebox was no longer extant (I’m building Linda in her most up-to-date form) and so this was carefully removed with blade and file, then tidied up with a fibreglass pencil and some abrasive paper. At the same time, the smokebox door dart was removed and replaced by an Alan Gibson one, much as for Moel Siabod (well, after going to the effort of doing one, I couldn’t very well ignore the other, could I?). At this point, the chimney and cylinders were araldited in place (I did attempt to solder the cylinders, but with the interior space being so small it was a non-starter) and the loco was mummified in masking tape to allow it all to set. Once it was, the sandboxes were added to the front of the tank:
     



     
    Whilst the araldite was going off, I didn’t stand idle: I took the opportunity to get the tender built up, which was a fairly simple exercise – I’ve reached the point where even I can solder up a simple box of whitemetal without cocking it up too badly – though the secret is definitely to check and check again, and make sure that it’s definitely well secured in place and won’t move as you try to solder it. After a little bit of head scratching, I think that I managed to work out which side was which for the ‘front’ of the tender, though I may have got them upside down and the wrong way up. Having said that, they look alright to me!
     
    Since the photos were taken, the replacement firebox has arrived and has successfully been thinned out and soldered in place. The next step is all of the fiddly little detail bits (as well as the cab – the sides are simply blu-tacked in place for this photo and the dome balanced on the tank):
     



     
    No lesson from this post – as any fule kno, don’t stand on parts of your kit…
  8. Beardybloke
    Post-Railex, I spent a boring couple of hours soldering up some Spratt & Winkle couplings for the newest rolling stock - the WHR Ashbury, slate wagons and sundry other freight stock. There are still quite a lot to do, but many of the older wagons still need weight fitting and it's a somewhat mind-numbing task, so I keep allowing myself to be distracted!
     
    However, with the fitting of couplings to No. 23 and wire loops to Prince in place of Bemo couplers, Hafod Las now has its first complete train (barring transfers, vac pipes and touching-up. The interiors are all accessible to have some passengers added at a later date:
     

    and the remaining two slate wagons that I had in hand have been built, giving me a total of 12 in various states of completion - 5 are coupled, 10 have been weighted, and 5 have been painted, and 5 primed. Working out which is which from that lot is a bit of a Sudoku really...
     
    The full train can be seen below, with a two-balcony brake van that needs S&Ws fitting still. There are a pair of 3T slate wagons in the rake that don't look quite right to me - I think that the lip around the top of the wagon is far too wide, so they may have a bit of filing done on them. The Knightswork kits (which these are), whilst more expensive than Parkside ones, also look and run far better so I'll be sticking with them I think...
     

     
    A house move is pending in the next couple of months, so what is already a slow crawl of progress may become positively painful. I've heard nothing back from Backwoods yet about replacement parts for Blanche, so they may have simply decided to cut their losses with me but I've started the process of acquiring some transfers from Peter Blackham. However, I have got another project in the wings - I've acquired an Arnold 0-6-0 chassis from eBay, and have a Chivers kit for it on order from Parkside... watch this space
  9. Beardybloke
    Well, as it’s now rapidly approaching 18 months since my house move and nearer to 20 since my last update, I suppose that I’d better write something!
     
    Progress has been by turns non-existent, considerable and backwards over the last year and a half, with a heavy emphasis on non-existent. That’s not to say that I’ve been idle, but taking up running and reducing my chin-to-face ratio from 2:1 to 1:1 as a consequence took up rather a lot of my time – especially in the early days when I was running myself into the ground enough to pick up an injury and was ready for bed rather early on in the evening. Couple this with a commute that changed from a 20 minute walk to over an hour in each direction and hopefully I will be somewhat excused.
     
    Anyway, enough waffling about car journeys and my quest to stay off the pies – that’s not why the three people who used to read this blog are here (if indeed, they still are – hello, if so!) but I suspect that you’re reading this in order to learn how not to do things. Certainly, going from my past track record, I excel as a bad example…
     
    So, to the update. Hafod Las Mk. II is no more, a protracted stay in the garage having an unpleasant effect on the state of the plywood board edges, with the track being lifted. If I’m honest, it was probably repairable but the layout was a little limited in scope. A semi-modular layout has replaced it, and is almost at the same stage as HL2 was at the point of the last post – that is to say, the track’s laid and each board is wired individually, but there’s no control panel, no switches and no jumpers between the boards. Nothing’s run on it yet, although an old bogie carriage and a 4-wheel van have been used to check curvature and clearances. I’m intending to merge the moribund Hafod Las Mk II thread in the 2010 Challenge forum with this blog, so I’ll go into a little more detail on the layout in a subsequent post.
     
    There has unfortunately been no change to the status of Blanche from this blog post, but plans are afoot to get her into running condition. It appears that the coupling rods are very slightly longer than the wheelbase which will have a significant impact on the quartering! Apart from (obviously) replacement coupling rods, I’m looking at sourcing some replacement axles and cranks and will be checking that the wheel centres are still concentric after the escapades with soldering and a bowl of water. Finally, I’m intending to make the gearbox removable rather than a permanent fixture on the axle (trapped by cranks soldered to the outside) and to make both axles gear driven if possible so that the connecting rods and quartering are purely cosmetic. I lay no claim to the above ideas as my own, but I will document my progress so that you can all learn from my mistakes!
     
    An initial rebuild attempt was made at the power bogie of the Single Fairlie (documented originally on RMweb3 here) but has resulted in only slightly worse running; I’d managed to seize the layshaft when gluing it into the chassis frame – due to me cutting it slightly undersized, something of an excess of cyanoacrylate had been used and it was glued in wonky to boot! This was replaced with a longer one, and (if I remember correctly) with bushes used to mount it correctly. However, there’s still a serious lump in the motion with the motor attached, and a more substantial rebuild is required, possibly stripping it back down to components. Thanks to Nick Welch’s excellent book ‘A Festiniog Odyssey’ I have another cunning plan of how to get this running and if I’m honest, the book has rather re-enthused me to get things running. Taliesin can be seen in current form below, but is very much in a non-running state:
     

     
    However, it’s not all doom and gloom. Two locos in the works are nearing completion (both using RTR chassis – lesson learned, for now at least) and some more rolling stock has been built up. One of the new locos should be visible as the header image, if I've managed to figure out how to work the new software, and my only completed carriage (apart from couplings) is below:
     

     
    The major stalling point now (apart from my time) is couplings – I’m currently awaiting a Microtrains starter set on back order, and as I’ve been waiting since November, I’m not looking forward to ordering the rest of the couplings once I work out which types I actually need as at this rate they may be delivered not by the postman but by four dodgy-looking blokes on horseback…
     
    With the planned new blog structure in mind (i.e. actually giving it a structure, rather than it simply being a stream-of-consciousness) and also the length of this post, I shall leave it here for now. The next updates will cover the current loco projects, and then the rolling stock and eventually the layout. Fret not, because there are plenty of cock-ups in there that you can learn from!
     
    Finally - if anyone does actually read my ramblings, please feel free to comment, ask questions, give me any hints and tips or, indeed, tell me to go back in my box - I suspect that this blog is not one which will hold people in awe and so any help and advice would be much appreciated...
  10. Beardybloke
    I'll be honest, I've made absolutely no progress with Blanche - I can't face filing a coupling rod from scratch just yet, and I'm seriously considering making Pete and Jen at Backwoods believe that I should never be let near etched metal with a soldering iron ever again... and they may be right.
     
    I've not been completely idle however: the new goods stock has been primed ready for painting, and some airbrushing of the two scratch-aid bogie carriages has started... though one needs a respray and the one in decent nick (No. 12, below) is in need of some touching up. Not bad, I reckon though, for a first attempt at airbrushing and with canned air and a Model Rail subscription gift airbrush at that! Criticism, advice and tips are, of course, welcome
     

     
    It's painted in various Precision colours; the green and ivory 1950s livery being based on LNER tourist stock, those are the colours recommended in the range to provide a good representation of the livery. The green looks about right to me, but having used the cream before on the Victorian vehicles it seemed a little too yellow to me, and so I experimented: I made up a matching card with increasing proportions of white mixed into the cream and made use of a variety of colour photos that I have in my FR library (to allow for differences in lighting and film quality). What I arrived at was a mixture of 3:1 white:cream, as I found that most of the photos had it looking white rather than cream, but... Oh well, I'm reasonably happy with the appearance, though I await with bated breath for someone to shoot me down
     
    The ends are to be red oxide, and I've been told that P630 is the way forward... but I can't find it anywhere on the Precision website! I ordered a tin proclaiming 'red oxide' from the interweb along with the rest of my bits and bobs, but it seems to be more maroon than red oxide! What I may try is BR freight stock bauxite, unless anyone has any better ideas?
     
    Transfers will need to be ordered for it, along with a job lot of other FR stock at the same time, methinks. Now, onwards to respraying No. 11!
  11. Beardybloke
    Progress has been made on Blanche, but I've suffered something of a setback. I shall start at the beginning, and build up in a not-so-dramatic fashion until it all falls to pieces (though thankfully not quite literally). First of all though, a comedy photo of me and my Land Rover to give an excuse for my lack of updates:
     

     
    The last update was at the point where the rods had been placed cosmetically over the cranks... all well and good? No, not really... the bushes were also rather wider than the holes in the connecting rods and the washers, and this made the washers impractical as they couldn't be opened out enough... easily, anyway. So, a cunning plan ensued - I'd make some more washers myself! The nickel fret from the chassis provided the material of a convenient width:
     

    The pointy contraption that can be seen in the lower right part of the photo is a cutting broach - I acquired a set as recommended in the Backwoods instructions, and now have no idea how I ever coped without them - they're far better at opening out holes than files and craft knives... not surprising really, given that's their design purpose! The washers were then trimmed to a rough size (as my side cutters are very, very knackered I made sure that there was plenty of space around the holes that could then be trimmed to size:
     

    The rods were then opened out - the photo below shows just how thin the metal is at the top and bottom... I suspect that either these aren't the intended bushes, or there's been something of a cock-up in the design process
     


    So, with rods opened out and washers filed down and fitted in place, I was ready to fit the bosses to the cranks - which I did with a deft flick of the soldering iron. Sorted! Well, no. There were a couple of tight spots - namely, where the cranks on each side were at their rearmost point of travel. I'm not sure if that's a case of my poor efforts at quartering, or if it is a case of the rods being slightly out-of-length, or the bosses being off centre. It seemed to be too much of a problem to fix by tweaking... but then, disaster struck! (I told you that it wouldn't be dramatic )
     

    So... now I have to make a new connecting rod and when I do, I'm still going to have the problem of the tight spot. I don't think that it's an issue with the compensating beams as it's at 90???? to their motion, but I could really, really do with some help here
  12. Beardybloke
    Well, the second installment of the Dinorwic photos have finally been shifted onto the new RMweb... Linky
     
    There are still a few other photos on the original RMweb3 thread (linked in the first post on the photo thread), but here's a sample of my poor photography of a good subject from the transferred images

  13. Beardybloke
    Original entry: 09 October 2009
     
    The two cylinders are both soldered up along with their cosmetic covers - photos will follow as soon as it's light! Managed to splash some solder on my face too whilst removing some of the excess that I'd managed to build up through trying to correct errors with an iron that I'm starting to suspect needs a new tip...
     
     
    The gearbox is also about 1/3 complete, having been folded and soldered, and had the motor mounting bracket expanded to allow the motor to be screwed in to it. I also managed to cock up the gearbox by bending the mounting piece the wrong way... I blame the fact that there were half-etch lines on both sides! (Obviously, I don't blame the fact that I wasn't paying attention) This is now corrected, but it was touch-and-go that metal fatigue would cause it to fall off. The plan is to have the gearbox finished tomorrow, and a complete rolling chassis by the end of the weekend... it may be wishful thinking, especially as I'm half planning on attending the Bedford Beer Festival tomorrow
     

    Original entry:10 October 2009
     
    Well, that was quicker than I expected! With a minimum of fuss (especially for me) and almost no panic moments, I have a free-running 2-4-0 chassis (as opposed to the 2-2-0 of this morning ). I'm vey surprised that nothing siezed up when I was using superglue to secure the layshaft and final drive gear, as I'm pretty sure that's what killed Taliesin's power bogie... I obviously live and learn!
     
    Last night, the motor mounting plate was soldered up, as can be seen in this photo of one of my trademark bodged jigs:

    after this, the primary drive shaft was fitted, secured and trimmed - after spending about 5 minutes trying to fit a 1.5mm bearing onto a 2mm dia. shaft . The idler shaft and gear were loosely fitted, and I went to the pub satisfied.
     
    Post-bacon and egg banjo this morning, I trimmed the idler shaft, and went about fitting the rear axle, which was somewhat more involved - needing to be passed through the main chassis bearing, wheel, gearbox, gear, gearbox, wheel and chassis in turn... and all in a space of 12mm or so! It must have succeeded, as the chassis now looks like this:


     
    Apologies for the fairly poor photos - I always seem to have to sharpen up bits in Irfanview as the focal depth on my camera is pretty poor. Any recommendations on how to get around this would be greatly appreciated!
  14. Beardybloke

    A (re)introduction

    By Beardybloke,

    Evening all!
     
    Having acquired the link for the new forum and discovered that I'm one of the infamous 15%, I decided that I'd make a fresh start rather than copy across all of my old workbench! If anyone actually cares, the originals are linked in my signature.
     
    My current project is a Backwoods Blanche, in 009, being made as a 2-4-0 STT with tender cab and piston valve cylinders - as she is now, in fact. My previous attempt at a Backwoods kit went a bit awry when Taliesin's power bogie didn't want to play ball, so I decided to make a start on something with a fixed wheelbase instead, and come back to the gear train at a later point.
     
    As I'm currently trying to get a couple of cylinder wrappers soldered up, I'm going to make this a brief post, and leave a teaser of the state of affairs so far (which I don't think that I've put up on the original forum yet, so think of this as a sneak preview ) Blanche is currently running as a 2-2-0...
     

  15. Beardybloke
    Blanche, I'm ashamed to say, is still languishing at the back of the workbench awaiting a new coupling rod. I've not been very busy in a modelling-related way recently, but I've not been particularly idle either.
     
    A stalling point in starting to ballast and lay scenery on my Hafod Las layout has been uncertainty of where to bury the permanent magnets for the Sprat & Winkle couplings that I've decided to make a go of... this is mainly because I have nothing fitted with the couplings yet, and so can only guesstimate maximum train length at best. So, with Blanche on the back burner, I've embarked on making some new stock and fitting it with couplings... although so far, I've only fitted two and a half slate wagons with couplings! Still, it's a start:
     

     

     
    All of the kits are Knightswork from Mercian, in etched nickel, and go together very nicely. If anyone's interested in a step-by-step, I still have two slate wagons and a gunpowder van to make. The 2-ton coal wagon shown with the door open is going to be sat at the end of the headshunt for the loco shed, where I'm planning to have a loco boiler powering the works machinery (possibly an 'Alice' class boiler, á la Dinorwic). I've not decided on a load (or otherwise) for the 1-plank open.
     
    As the slate wagons are as light as a feather when unloaded, I've also chosen to add some weight to the undersides in the form of chunks of lead flashing. Top tip: if you get a chunk of lead stuck between the blades of the secateurs that you're using as tin snips, don't try to get it out with your fingers: blood's a b*gger to get out of clothing Below can be seen the progression of fitting weights, mounts, and finally couplings (filed down to give clearance for the wheels as the wagons are rather short).
     

     

     

     
    Other work done has included fitting bogies to the two Worsley Works vans (11 and 12), though I'm not happy with the mounting method yet - the pillar of washers used for the bogie mount causes a rather pronounced rolling motion, and so will be likely replaced with something with a touch more support - probably brass strips soldered to the bogie to give some lateral support. Couplings may be interesting to fit to these, but will come shortly after the slate wagons are so fitted. More on that anon!
  16. Beardybloke
    Well, the badly-bodged carriage 11 was stripped down completely and resprayed from scratch - I could have lived with the slightly raised nature of the ivory paint compared to the green if I hadn't then noticed that it was a distinctly yellower shade than on its sister! That taught me a lesson - clean the syringe thoroughly between paint shades, and you can actually see how much you're picking up
     
    The ends have been sprayed in BR early (pre-1965) bauxite, and seem to look okay. The next thing on the list (apart from painting the roofs) is sundries such as vacuum pipes and picking out the handles in brass - I'm not confident enough of my ability to scrape away the paint on them without damaging the rest of the paint job that I've finally got right! To save on masking, I'm intending to glaze them after they've been varnished... so I need to get some transfers ordered! I'll be getting transfers for several others at the same time, as I intend to make myself a model of the late 1950s "Flying Flea" relief train made up of Bug Boxes put back into service to cope with the traffic to Tan-y-Bwlch.
     
    I've not been watching paint dry, however... whilst the paint was drying on the two composites, I've built a third coach - FR No. 23 as currently running on the WHR. As the sides provided in the scratch-aid kit were as it is today (i.e. with full height doors) I couldn't bring myself to paint it in green and ivory... as you all should know, I'm no rivet counter and studiously work to the 3ft rule; but that would have been a step too far! (Think running an LNER-liveried B12 with BR blue Mk1s if it will help you visualise the point )
     
    Anyway... here's a photo of the latest stock for HL2 - more will follow when I can afford them!
     

  17. Beardybloke
    The first new loco on Hafod Las’ roster since the interlude is a Single Fairlie. “Shurely shome mishtake?†I hear you cry, “You’ve already got one of those, and what an unmitigated disaster it turned out to be!†Well, you’d be right, but so am I: the new loco is one of the original North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways Single Fairlies – I’ve diversified from my original Ffestiniog Railway interests (admittedly not by very far) and have started on some of the stock from the WHR and its predecessors.
     
    If I’m entirely honest, the kit was more acquired as a test-bed for my whitemetal soldering skills – having never used low-melt solder before and remembering the hash that I made of brass soldering on my initial attempts, I decided that I should get something rather less expensive than the £120 Parkside Linda kit complete with hand-built RTR chassis on which to hone my skills. The Chivers Finelines kit of Snowdon Ranger fitted the bill of both being inexpensive and something that would have quite feasibly run on my might-have-been NWNGR based layout. An Arnold 0-6-0 chassis was duly purchased from the fount of all tat that is eBay, the loco body kit was bought from Railex 2010, and both then promptly sat in a box for 10 months.
     
    Step forward to March 2011 and the advent of some nice weather (and the impending arrival of Linda). A variable temperature soldering iron was purchased, along with some 100° and 70° solder and the appropriate flux and neutralising rinse. I say ‘nice weather’ as until I was used to low-melt soldering with the associated nasty chemicals I intended to do it with as much ventilation as was humanly possible without having the air intake for a turbojet sat next to me, and as far away from anything on the inventory of my rented house as I could get… well, you should all know how clumsy I am by now.
     
    Reasonable success was, surprisingly, encountered when soldering the combined footplate, tank sides and cab sides together. The Chivers kit required very little fettling to get it to fit well, and the two sides were soldered up quickly (and squarely – rather surprisingly for me) to the front footplate spacer and the rear bunker sheet. The latter did need some filling to give a uniform depth across the back of the bunker (with the centre piece being recessed slightly) but that may have been down to my early ineptitude with the soldering iron.
     
    It took me a couple of attempts to get the measure of low-melt soldering, eventually being solved by increasing the temperature of the iron slightly, using more flux and generally by being quicker. Due to the size of the castings, they dissipate the heat from the soldering iron rather quickly, and as I was reluctant to hold the iron in one place for too long lest I find a molten pool of whitemetal where once a side tank sat I frequently ended up with solder that looked like badly-set icing. I also found that the soldering iron cooled down rather quickly, and rapidly left me with something that was incapable of melting solder unless I let it re-heat for 30 seconds or so – the subsequent problem being that the melting point of low-melt solder increases once it has been fused to whitemetal. The solution which I found to this was to simply tack the pieces in place and then run a fillet along when I was happy with the positioning. However, I’m sure that I’m not the first person to come up with that idea!
     
    With a square(ish) arrangement of tank sides, cab sides and front, and bunker back set up, I then started my inevitable deviation from the original kit. The cast blanking plates in the cab doorways were removed, and possibly I should have done this before soldering up the sides to enable easier access and make the hackery a little neater. However, the remaining thin piece of cast whitemetal that remained on each side attaching the bunker to the tanks had a few hairy moments before the cab floor was soldered into place and, on reflection, perhaps I did the right thing by soldering it up first rather than detaching the rear of the loco accidentally!
     
    The second cosmetic deviation was the removal of the inside of the ‘top’ of the cast coal bunker, leaving only the flared lip around the outside – the piece was soldered in place first before the centre was removed to make sure that I didn’t irreparably damage another bit. This will allow me to give the impression of a hollow coal bunker rather than a few pieces of coal plonked on top of a couple of planks. Of course, this would now necessitate the addition of a lower-half cab backsheet so that it wouldn’t be quite as obvious that the crew should, by all rights, be knee-deep in coal!
     
    The next change was rather more than cosmetic, and nearly resulted in yet another of my trademark catastrophes. The more that I looked at the Arnold chassis with its pizza cutter flanges and no connecting rods, the more I thought “even I can do better than this… probably.†So, without further ado (and a brief hiatus in construction to await its arrival) a Dapol 45xx chassis was summoned to chez Beardybloke. Now, the 45xx chassis is a little larger than its steamroller-wheeled antecedent and a little higher, so some judicious filing, milling, scraping, gouging and praying was required to both the chassis block and the inside of the body kit. Once again, I can’t lay claim to this idea as my own, having acquired it from the Bethania blog. The one disadvantage is that the coupling rod is on the centre driver rather than the rear (and the wheels are spoked rather than disc) but, frankly, I can live with that for now – at least until the misplaced perfectionism kicks in again.
     
    Unfortunately (and predictably) I rather over-thinned the inside of the boiler just in front of the cab and managed to make it look like a well-abused Barry wreck – except shiny instead of rusty. Thankfully, a bit of filler and some filing seems to have hidden this (despite it getting knocked through at one point) but I suspect that a coat of primer will show how bad it really looks. The state that the loco was in at this point can be seen below:
     



     



     
    Note that at this point, I hadn’t actually removed the material from the bunker top, but it can hopefully be seen why a backsheet to the bunker will be necessary!
     
    With disaster averted and the chassis fitting inside the body, the boiler and tank-top piece was soldered to the assembly, as well as the tank fronts and smokebox. A very brief test run was undertaken on the one bit of the new layout that was laid at the time and didn’t require any more wiring than a couple of leads poked under the rails – and it worked. Huzzah! As an added bonus all of the weight is carried on the powered ‘bogie’ rather than the trailing bogie, so the loco should hopefully have a reasonable amount of adhesion.
     
    Bearing in mind the rapidly increasing length of this post, and mindful of the fact that you’re all probably falling asleep, I shall leave you here with the mental picture of a chimneyless, domeless, bogieless loco trundling up-and-down a short curve of track on a bare board. Not exactly the first train on the layout, possibly more a well-used contractors’ loco! Still, at least you got to read about another of my numerous cock-ups, and have learned a valuable lesson – if whitemetal looks like it’s bubbling outwards with no heat applied, it’s probably because you’ve made it paper thin…
  18. Beardybloke
    Progress has finally been forthcoming on the Blanche kit! The last progress that I made before Christmas was way back in October, when the bosses were laminated onto the rods and the cranks were soldered onto the axles. The latter was an interesting exercise as to prevent the plastic wheel centres melting as rather a lot of heat was applied to the axle, the locomotive had to be about 95% submerged in water to dissipate the heat, like so:
     

    The paper bush that can be seen is there to prevent stray solder from securing the axle to the bearing and giving me a sledge instead of a locomotive...
     
    That, however, was it until Sunday, when I plucked up the courage to have a crack at the valve gear. First order of the day was to cut the lost wax brass crossheads from the sprue and try to tweak them into straight pieces. After this, the slidebars needed laminating together, and then had to be tweaked (and the crossheads opened out slightly) to give a free-moving piece:
     

    Next came the rivets - although I found that they were missing from the Blanche kit (and Pete & Jen at Backwoods are very kindly sending me some replacements) I found some spares in my moribund Taliesin kit, which allowed me to solder the crosshead and connecting rod together, using the standard Backwoods method of a paper bush between the two pieces to pivot - and very well it works too! (It was one of the few things that went well on the Tal)
     

    So, time to solder the cylinders and slidebars in place? No! As AER_2263 intimated, the front spring hangers are the wrong way round on the instructions, and as the slidebars mount into those, some de- and re-soldering was necessary luckily there was minimum effort involved, or I wouldn't have been a happy bunny! Once the springs were resoldered on the correct sides, the oversized cylinder wrappers were trimmed to size and the holes in the cylinder rear faces opened out to receive the piston and slide bar. The smokebox was temporarily secured in place and used (along with the slots in the chassis side) to locate the cylinders in the correct positions. These were then held with blu-tack and the connecting rods placed loosely over the rear crank to give me the length that the crosshead needed trimming to.
     
    This done, the crossheads were slid onto the slidebars, which were then passed through the cylinder (there's a small slot on the inside front face that these locate into, giving the correct angle) and soldered into place on the inside of the cylinder. Luckily, the cylinders held up to the abuse as repeated cock-ups when soldering the wrappers into place had led to metal fatigue, which in turn led to the front face falling off one of them! Finally, the cylinders and slidebars were soldered into place, leaving me in this position as of last night, with the coupling rod placed over for cosmetic effect:
     

     

    Onwards now, to some filing of rod bushes and soldering them into place on the cranks. The bushes provided seem to be rather short, only just passing through one of the rods and bosses rather than both, but I think they'll do the job. If not, it's a relatively simple job of de-soldering them and obtaining the correct ones. Wish me luck!
     
    UPDATE: The bushes won't play - they're too short and cause the running gear to jam as the connecting rod is effectively acting like an eccentric. I've just asked for some bushes to be added to my request for spares!
  19. Beardybloke
    Another set of photos transferred over from RMweb3 - this time of the FR, with some in the snow - from sometime around 2005 - 2007 (they were dated on my old PC before it died )
     
    Hope they're of use/enjoyment to some; as is becoming standard form on this blog, here's a taster:
     

  20. Beardybloke
    First, a bit of background:
     
    The first two (never finished) incarnations of Hafod Las were based around a fictional quarry workshop loosely in the style of Red Lion level at Penrhyn; Gilfach Ddu; and the Mills Tramroad at Dinorwic, with a reasonable dollop of modeller's licence and Rule #1 (IMTS) thrown in. HL1 was an ironing board layout started as a distraction from my final year of university and the build is described on RMweb3 here - the layout became rather knocked about in my initial post-uni house moves and a combination of this, the rather limited scope of the original, and the RMweb 2010 Challenge spawned HL2 (documented here). The second layout was based on the same premise as the original but greatly enlarged and with potential for expansion. As well as consisting of multiple boards, it also featured my first (comparatively successful) attempt at electronic point control using Peco solenoids. The two scenic boards were built; drawer runners were purchased for the traverser; track was laid; a loco shed half built; and everything was wired up. Then a house move intervened again, work and training got in the way, and when I investigated the state of the boards they weren't in the best of nick. Parts recovery commenced of the track, electronics, and any reusable wood... which takes me nicely to the start of the new layout.
     
    As with my cunning plans for getting the irreparably-bodged locos into a condition where I'm not ashamed to show them running on a track, I can make no claim whatsoever to originality with the plan that spawned Hafod Las Mk. III. I'd made up my mind that I would attempt to build a double-sided layout - the original idea coming from a suggestion from my other half, along with a dimly-recalled 009 ironing board layout featured in Railway Modeller in the late 90s / early 2000s that followed a 'U' shape end-to-end design on the board with a backscene running along about ¾ of the centreline. I wanted to go one step further and make the layout a full circuit as the one thing that all of my previous layouts (including my never-finished (notice a pattern emerging?) 00 layout from my teenage years that still languishes in my grandparents' garage) lacked was a continuous run for the locos to stretch their legs.
     
    The other thing that I wanted to do was to give myself an excuse to run passenger stock rather than just slate wagons and assorted general goods stock - this was the major reason for the use of Rule #1 on the previous layouts as there was no feasible reason to have bogie passenger stock on a quarry level, even a major one. As I didn't want to lose the quarry layout theme (I'm quite attached to the idea by now, and determined to actually finish one!) then the solution seemed relatively simple - to extend the backscene along the full length of the layout and have a station on one side and a quarry workshops on the other. If reasonably well designed, each could act as a limited fiddle yard for the other when in use as I'd only be able to see one side at a time anyway. Shades of Cyril Freezer!
     
    It did become a little more complicated in my mind though, and this is where the 'semi-modular' approach kicked in. I wanted the ability to change the layout from operating 'back-to-back' to having the two scenic sides adjacent to one another and having a fiddle yard at the rear. If well designed, it would also be possible to operate one scenic half with half of the fiddle yard, as a 'conventional' layout too. I did a bit of doodling with a few ideas in mind (of a station based very loosely around Waenfawr; and a quarry workshops containing a loco shed and wagon repair shops) but hit a bit of 'modeller's block' and couldn't seem to come up with something that looked right.
     
    A discussion on my layout thread on the NGRM-online forum led to a suggestion by Invercloy of an Ian Rice plan that had featured in Model Railroader some time back, using an expanded version of the semi-modular jigsaw principle that I was working to, and involved extra spurs coming off the layout rather than the idea of removable ends providing the curves which I had fixated on. The original plan was redrawn by Tom in a slightly more Welshified form, and I've reproduced it below which he hopefully won't mind:
     
     




    Welsh 009 Vari-Layout by invercloy, on Flickr

     
    I did a bit of sketching and modification myself (mainly to reduce the 8' x 4' plan down to 6' x 3' and to fit the already-built loco shed into the equation) but hit the inevitable block again when I just couldn't seem to convince myself that it would work - so out came the flexitrack, point templates and lining paper. Some Twister-like contortions later (which involved flexitrack held in place with a foot and a hand, and the other hand used to draw an outline around it) produced eventually produced this (and apologies for the poor photo editing):
     




     
    Efforts to ease the curves and potentially lengthen the loop slightly (and to give about an inch at the edges of the boards rather than have track right up to the edge) resulted in the layout being re-thought at a scale of 13" to the foot, giving a final size of 6'6" x 3'3" and a minimum radius of 12" on the points and substantially better (around 16") on the mainline. The loco shed from HL2 can be seen on the bottom right (of the Quarry board) and will have a workshop at the opposite end, with a slate tip sloping down to the right and generally around the layout side. Essentially, it's a re-imagining (for the umpteenth time) of Hafod Las works yard. On the left is the station, planned to incorporate various NWNGR features with a bow girder bridge over the river, a carriage shed with some quietly rotting stock behind, and a station building and goods shed based loosely on buildings at Dinas and Waenfawr.
     
    I'll leave you with an image of the first train sat in the station, awaiting passengers, station, track, and indeed the ground. This is a pre-enlargement track plan, so the loop is ever so slightly longer and further from the board edge - and I know that the loop is a bit on the short side but as it's the biggest that I can physically fit in it'll just have to be explained away. Tanygrisiau on the Ffestiniog Railway was for passing of goods trains or goods trains with passenger trains only - who's to say that this wasn't the same? Of course, if it's been pressed into service post-preservation...
     



  21. Beardybloke
    A brief entry...
     
    There hasn't been a great deal of progress with Blanche for nearly a month now - the bosses have been laminated onto the rods, and the eccentrics soldered on to the axles, but that's about it - I spent far too long getting my boots looking like black glass for Remembrance Sunday... worth it though!
     
    I'm oop north this weekend, so no physical work, but some planning has been going on - dusty areas of my brain, related to layout planning, have been blown clear of cobwebs, and the hum of electricity and whirr of cogs can be heard as life slowly returns to the mothballed machinery. Hafod Las is to have a rebuild, despite never being finished! Think of it as one of those Victorian locomotive blunders, where the offending article was covered in a tarpaulin, placed at the back of the works, and never spoken of again.
     
    The current thread is here, in the 2010 Challenge forum, but I'll either merge it into this blog or create a separate one as I come to make progress. One consideration though, is to ensure that Blanche can run on it without the unsightly holes in her frames being necessary for the pony truck. Of course, this may require a 2 mile radius (I wonder what that is, scaled to 4mm/ft?) but it's worth a try.
     
    Plus, I intend to have some better trackwork, and take better care of it during construction - the operation of some is a little iffy already. I may also seek a more reliable way of point control than badly-bodged brass wire...
     
    Anyway, enough rambling. The proposed plan is shown below, and for anyone interested, the original layout thread (on RMweb3) can be found here. Comments, advice, abuse and postal orders are welcomed.
     

  22. Beardybloke
    I've just copied some photos I took last summer of Dinorwic Quarry from RMweb 3 to the NG Prototype section - http://www.rmweb.co....-quarry-photos/
     
    As most of my photos are stuck on a half-dead hard drive, these are pretty poor quality (the maximum that the old forum would allow) even accounting for my poor photography skills. If I ever recover the originals, I'll replace them with some better ones! I will add a 'taster' here though:

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