Evening everyone - second blog of the year!

Not a great deal has happened, but we need to keep the blog going... The Cardi-Bach Society met last Tuesday at Y Bont. Not A bad turnout for the time of year. Nine of us, and we had an entertaining evening of screened presentations, one on Login Station, and one on the bridges that crossed or were crossed by the Cardi Bach. Also our Webmaster gave us an up date on the progress of the new website.

The Society meets again next month on Tuesday February the 8th, again at Y Bont in Llanglydwen, when Colin is going to show his Fairground attractions, which have been a predominate feature here on the Chufferduffers, and Patrick will give an illustrated talk on the history of Cilgerran Station. And anything else that takes our fancy...

 

On to Chuffering. Colins Steam Yacht attraction is finally completed, and he brought it along to Pentrecagal when we met last night to show it to us.

Pictures speak louder than words:

 

 

 

The ubiquitous Bic is there to give some idea of the scale...

Patricks hand gives an even better view of the size we are dealing with.

There are even apprehensive punters sitting in the boats:

Come along to Y Bont on the 8th of February and see it in reality! (it doesn't work, but his next one might!)

Patrick is still in 3 millimeter mode (quiet shudder from Colin and myself - we thought that was behind us) and he found two very old white metal kits of 1940's vehicles. A post office van, and what is possibly a Ford saloon.

They required quite a bit of fettling, but the castings were really very good, considering the size.

Once again the Bic comes to the rescue. The windows were actually filled in with white metal, and Pat had to carefully cut and file to produce the apertures.

Lots more detail yet to be added, but the parts are very small and fiddly!

I'm embarrassed to say that the other two have put me in the shade - I have nothing at all to contribute to the modeling front for this post, although as I was hosting the Chufferduffers this week, I managed an authentic beef stroganoff...

 

 

Emyr, our Society Chairman, commented on the pictures that I put up concerning days gone by from my career in the oil industry, and wondered if I could show some more of what life was like in far flung countries.

It wasn't always hot and sunny... In 1973 I was part of a commissioning team bringing an oil refinery on-stream in Newfoundland.

This is the refinery:

The temperature was -15 centigrade when that picture was taken, on an old Kodak instamatic, and this was the trailer camp that we lived in...

Bit chilly!

We finish this post with a short video of Patricks 'Lord of the Isles' doing the rounds of the circuit that Pat and Mary had as part of their Christmas decorations (festive stuff all removed when this was taken)

Thanks for dropping in,

Shaun.

 Hi everyone.

First blog of 2022, and I'm combining it with the last one of 2021 - as we didn't really have enough from our final meeting in December to make it worth while going on line. We met here at Pentrecagal, but apart from eating, drinking, and watching some DVDs, there wasn't a lot to report ( Hungarian goulash and Chilean Merlot - but that is by-the-by )

Now into the New Year, we convened at Patrick's last night, and had a bit of a show-and-tell, as we usually do to kick the evenings off.

My efforts were to add a bit more to the Cardigan Station for the N gauge layout that will be down at the Heritage Centre in Login.

Engine shed is a bit out of proportion, but the idea was to just give a representation:

Taking a break from railway modelling I had a go at building a 1/24 Kenworth truck, from a plastic kit that was a bargain on Ebay. White plastic, so a lot of black spraying was involved...

Still a remove away from railways, Colin is progressing rapidly with his 2mm scale fairground attractions, and the steam Yachts are beginning to look really good.

Here we've got the basic structure with the steam engine in place:

and it has a canopy over it:

The maestro has also been busy with the 009 scale stuff, and produced this lovely little 0-4-0 locomotive - 'because I had a spare chassis'...

I just don't know what to say. There are not enough superlatives left to describe Colin's talent (though he does tend to fall asleep halfway through the evening!) (which last night at Pat's was homemade pizza, salad, stuffed olivs and hot sausage rolls. Oh, and a Fitou, and a  Cabernet-Sauvignon...) 

Pat is continuing with the 3mm layout, and has refurbished and weathered a couple of mineral wagons, one shown below:

As an aside, in the last post I showed you how we spent Christmas Day out in Saudi-Arabia. I shaved off my beard, as it was too itchy in the heat (having won the bet) and the following week we had a day off, so had an afternoon snorkeling off the reef in the Red Sea.

It was a harsh life in the oil industry back in the Eighties...

 

 

 

We finish this post with a video of a 3mm Brittania going around Pats 'built from the box' 3 millimeter layout. Mike, this ones for you!

Thanks for watching.

Cherrio'

Shaun.