Good afternoon everyone... slight dusting of snow last night - 2 or 3 inches, but it's fading fast. Better than the torrential rain we had at the start of the week. Llechryd bridge under water once again, and a lot of flooding in Carmarthen too.

Anyway, that's not affecting the Chuffers, I'm happy to say. Pictures have arrived this weekend from both Pete and Colin. 

Before that, I've changed the heading picture, continuing the castle theme. Anyone know it? (still in Pembrokeshire) The last one was easy - Cilgerran.

I've noticed that when I change the picture, it's changed historically, so the new picture appears in all previous posts for some odd reason...

Back to the Chufferduffers. Over in the Taf Valley at Login, Pete has been busy with the static grass, and the snow is rapidly disappearing from Woody Bay:

Additions to the farmyard, which is in the top left-hand corner are a chicken coop:

(this in a scale of 1:87 but blends in well)

To give you an idea of the size, each division on that cutting mat is 10mm, so the coop is a shade over one and a half inches long!

It is a Czech kit, laser cut, the same as this next model that Pete has made of a pig sty:

Also for the farm, Pete has scratch built a barn, using card and printed paper overlay, and has modified a Hornby resin chapel.

The paper overlay sheets are downloaded from Scalescenes, and the Czech kits come from a company called 'Model Scene' found on Ebay.

Colin has not been idle during lockdown either. He's been busy making loading gauges for his N gauge layout, based on GWR prototypes:

Once again we are looking at 10mm squares...

And here are the gauges pictured against a magazine photo of the originals:

The works overhead gantry crane has been completed, and is shown below in action above a scratch built Class 517-

Which is pictured here during its construction on a Dapol 14xx chassis, prior to going to the paint shop:

To illustrate the difference in scale of Colin's scratch building, he took a picture of an N gauge Locomotive on the same piece of track as a 009 scale engine that he built:

The one on the left is a modified Farish large prairie tank, while the right hand one, the 009 is called 'Enfys', Welsh for rainbow. Here she is during construction, and then following on a shot of the completed engine.

I guess that's about it for this edition - two in quick succession. My goodness me...

 

Cherrio, Shaun.    

Evenin' all.

How many remember hearing that?  George Warner, Dixon of Dock Green... Shows your age, doesn't it.

Anyway, first the Chuffer blog in the New Year, and the first from Pentrecagal. The new property isn't really photogenic, so I'll change the heading photo from time to time. Here we have a Pembrokeshire castle. No prizes for identifying it...

Not a great deal to offer for this edition - lockdown impositions are curtailing any joint activities, so I have to rely on't t'internet to provide us with content. Unfortunately BT decided that they couldn't wire me up to their system until January 13th (I moved in on December 18th - which was a story in itself, as Patrick will testify - but we wont relate it here)

Suffice to say I'm now connected, albeit dropping from 100 Mb down to a lowly 5 - but Netflix works!

Pat sent through some images of the 0 gauge setup that he has up in his railway room, so we have something to look at.

One of his Christmas presents was a photographic back-scene, which he duly put up against the wall - and here it is:

Another image of it, this time taken from the village up on the hill above the railway:

To enable him to have more control of the layout, several isolation breaks in the permanent way had to be created, and in keeping with the vintage of the layout Pat has utilized  1940's on/off switches - one of which can be seen below -

Thats all I have at the moment, though I believe that Colin has some completed projects that he may well send through to me...? Also I'm sure some additions have been made to the L & B layout over in Login, and no doubt Pete will mail images to me in due course. The old bill might not take kindly to me swanning off 30 miles to take pictures of trains - no matter how essential we might think it is...

 

Here in Pentrecagal I have a spare bedroom that comfortably holds the Teifi Gorge layout - after getting it back out of container storage I set it up, and all was well - there is even just about enough room for the Llechryd extension, but it needs another trestle built before I can attach it.

Layout pictured below (the wall isn't really pink. I'm blaming the new camera)

 

 

 

Another advantage here at the new house is a 'loft' space above the garage. I stuck a few off-cuts of carpet on the floor, put together some Wicke's kitchen units, topped them with the redundant back baseboard from the Login layout, and I have the makings of a hobby workshop...

 

 

There we have it - first blog for 2021.

Sympathies are extended to Duffer Mike up in the hills, who hasn't been too well over the Christmas period, and to C-B Chairman Emyr, who is also experiencing medical problems. Neither of them have Covid-19 though, which is good news.

I can't remember if Dixon said goodnight, or just gave a salute...

 

Cherrio,

Shaun.