Yet another week gone by...
Met here again last night, as we need to crack on with Crymmych Arms. Pat had invested in a pair of 'Xuron' rail cutters - we had always ignored these in the past... "Ten quid just to cut a bit of rail? Pah!!"
What a revelation they turned out to be. Cut rail like a knife through butter. No more struggling with the Dremel, bits of disc going everywhere, ragged edges. Well done Pat!
He also put some crew into his 3D printed locos:

 

Colin put his hand into his bag and pulled out the finished Glyn Valley look-alike:

 

The only trouble is he told me that I have to do the painting!! 

Not a task I'm looking forward to - it seems such a pity to spoil something so exquisite.

Preliminaries over, it was down to a bit of grafting. I had put up the Crymmych boards all ready to continue with the track laying, and managed to join the three boards together. Work progressed quite quickly, with, to come up with an old cliche - 'many hands make light of work':

After a couple of hours things were coming along swimmingly - we even ran a test loco along the points to check, and it all passed with flying colours.

The layout towards the end of the evening:

Shortly after this we called a halt, and repaired to the social end of the room for some light refreshment.

All in all a productive session.

This morning after clearing up the scene of mayhem and chaos, this is Crymmych Arms so far:

No Chuffers next week, as we have a Cardi-Bach Society meeting.

Bye for now,

Shaun.

Morning all.

It's been a busy week since the last posting - Last Friday Annie and I took a trip on the Heart of Wales Line from Llandovery to Shrewsbury to see a Celtic Rock Band - Skerryvore - stayed overnight and came back on Saturday. For anyone living in Wales, did you know that if you have a bus pass, the Heart of Wales Railway is free from October until March... Swansea to Shrewsbury and stops in between, for nothing!! (and we had free parking at Llandovery...)

No rest for the wicked though, as on Sunday we were exhibiting the Teifi Gorge at Rogers Modelling Show in the Hermon Community Hall. An excellent venue with a remarkable cafe - whole range of meals, sandwiches, paninnis and much more.
Pat and I had a great day there, with lots of interest shown in the layout. Good to see Pete Towns, Peter Francis, Martin, Chris, Ron, and several others.
Couple of pics taken before opening:

On to ChufferDuffer business - after all, thats what this blog is supposed to be about.
Met here at Llechryd last night, without Charles, who is still a bit under the weather, and not really up to an evening of hectic graft and socialising!
The first thing to show you is another fine effort from the Herrington Light Industrial Manufactory Co.
I bought one of those Kato chassis from Japan, like the ones that Pat had a couple of posts ago.

I gave it to Colin last week, to see if he could do anything with it. No sooner said than done!
Last night he produced this:

Loosely based on the Glyn Valley style tram loco. The skirt, which is supposedly there to protect the public from the moving parts when the line is on the roadway, also hides the fact that the chassis is 0-4-0, not 0-6-0, which was the prototype. More pics of it as work progresses.

And talking of progressive work - two hours without a break last night!
The Gandy Dancers were in fine fettle, laying track on the Crymmych Arms layout like there was no tomorrow:

The result of our efforts (I say 'our', but it was mostly Pat and Col) don't appear to be much, in the picure below, but as it's N gauge, it requires a lot more precision and care, and as you can see, removing small fishplates that get stuck in one's finger (Pats, to be precise. We heard one or two new expressions...)

Anyway, this was the state of play at the end of the evening:

You wont recognise it in the next post!

Bye-bye.

Tuesday evening we met here at Llechryd, without Charles, unfortunately, as he was recovering from a bit of a health problem. Hopefully he will be able to join us next week.
We finally sorted out the Crymmych Arms layout - for those not familiar with Crymych (modern spelling) this was what the station looked like in its hayday:

Putting the track plan down on paper to the scale that we want was quite involved, but hopefully it is going to work out - this time we want to have a continuous layout, or a 'roundy-roundy' in technical terminology.

Here's our planned configuration of the station:

What isn't shown are the loops at each end that will take the track around the back of the station and form a fiddle yard behind the backscene. I already had timber in the garage in readiness, so yesterday made up the three boards that we require.
9mm ply wood, screwed and glued to 19 x 44mm frame work. Hopefully I will varnish them today to seal the timber, and then next week we should be able to start laying track. Actually it will be Pat and Colin laying track - I'm rubbish at it!
These are the boards - total size when put together, the layout will be 7' long by 2'6" deep.

Finally one more old photo of Crymych to finish.
(That station building is all of 2" high in 'N' gauge. I'm dreading trying to model that!)

Off to exhibit the Teifi Gorge layout at the Hermon Model Show on Sunday in the Hermon Community Hall. Come along if you are in the area!

Chuffers meeting tonight, but in the meantime I thought I would add an extra post.

I made a bit of a blunder a couple of weeks ago (I can't say c#ck up, as that is rather vulgar, and the god of blogging would probably censor it anyway) I meant to order 5 lengths of N gauge track, in preparation for Crymmych, but when it arrived I found I had ordered 009 track instead. Not worth changing it, as Pete, in the meantime bless his heart, had given us over 10 yards of N track.

Consequently I made use of a bit of 9mm ply that was spare from the Crymmych board. Braced it with 1 x 2 framework, and lo and behold, we have a 'Rabbit Warren' layout in the making!
The intention is not to spend money on it if at all possible, but use scraps of what we have available, so it may take a while to complete.

This is the basic layout:

 

The track was pinned and then glued in place with PVA and No-nails in places, I left it overnight for the glue to set, then started Modroc'ing (plaster bandage) to get some of the contours.

This was the state of play this morning:

 

I wired it up and tested various Teifi Gorge locos, and nearly all of them manage the inclines and tight curves very well. Peco couplings dont... so I need a rethink on carriages and wagons.
Most of the track is going to be hidden by mountains, and there will be seven tunnel mouths, which is why this type of layout is called a rabbit warren.
I'll show progress in a week or two. Got to get ready for tonights meet now.

ATB
Shaun.

Did anyone guess the location of the narrow gauge railway pictured above?

It's on the Pelion peninsular in Greece, runs up to Milie. Not particularly outstanding, as it has that lumbering great diesel pulling it, but fairly picturesque. Anyhow, thats nothing to do with chufferduffering.

Congregated at Colin's gaff last night - main item on the agenda was to try and set down on paper the track plan for Crymmych Arms, our next layout project. It wasn't easy, as we are trying to make it a continuous run, instead of our usual 'end-to-end', incorporate the marked curve in the platform that is so noticable at Crymmych, have the viewing side looking over the goods sidings towards the station building, and get it on a board that will fit in a car. (We are desperately trying to avoid the word 'compromise')

This is the start of it:

Interest soon waned!

 

Charles is contemplating the latest Herrington masterpiece - you saw it in the last post in its raw state - since then it has had a trip to the paint shop:

Having found that trying to sort out the track plan was too taxing, we trundled up the stairs to Colins modeling room, where he had set up a section of his N gauge layout so that we could test-run the locos that Pete Towns has kindly donated towards the Crymmych layout. Two Panniers and a 45 Prairie, all three of which were prototypical of the Cardi-Bach line. All three ran perfectly, so we repaired to the lounge and celebrated the successes (well, the locos ran...) of the evening in the time-honoured fashion.

More next week.