Ale On The Rail

Today I made more progress on the Harbour Station area. I firstly laid the track on the Harbour Station Entrance board, and as I was approaching the bridge, I realised I had quite a lot of space between the tracks and the back board, so I had a quick think, and decided a brewery would look very nice there, with its own siding. And luckily enough there is a brewery in Porthmadog, not too far from the Welsh Highland’s cross town link, Purple Moose.
So this gives me more scope of rolling stock that can be ran on the railway and a new meaning to the F&WHRs specials ‘Ale on the Rail’.

The track work was all soldered up, holes drilled for the point motor arms and it was then glued into place using Araldite 2 part epoxy resin.

A majority of the wiring underneath the Brewery board was then connected up, with only a few things needing finishing. Hopefully, it should be done in the next few days ready for testing and finally some scenic work.

More wires than the Thunderbirds!

Today, I’ve spent all day working on the Harbour Station Boards. Firstly I secured the 9mm plywood, which the tracks will be sat on, to the frame. I then made the section which will become a bridge, undecided on what type yet, it could be either a Britannia Bridge, with no roadway, or similar to the road bridge close to Tan y Bwlch on the Porthmadog end. As the track will be entering the cob closer to the rear of the layout, it will have to be modified in due time.
By this time, it was about noon, so I mounted two point motors (all the other I had done previously) and wired them in. Whilst I had the soldering iron hot, I thought I could make a start at wiring the board. I connected up the 5 point motors, 5 uncouplers, 5 point indicators, and ran wires ready to carry power to the Harbour Station entrance board. I stopped (7 hours later) when I almost finished the board.

Hopefully, when some points arrive from Hattons I can start wiring up the Harbour Station Entrance Board.

To connect each board to the next, I am using these neat little terminal block-like things. This should save time when setting up at exhibitions. Athough very handy, they are expensive, £4 for 1 (with 12 terminals) they should be great for connecting up the boards to each other, but too expensive to connect up the control panel to the layout.

Tomorrow, I need to screw the ‘other end’ of each wire to a terminal block and label them (somehow!), buy some more of the self adhesive cable tidy clips and buy some copper tape.

Taliesin update

On Thursday the kit arrived! So Friday was spent thoroughly reading through the instructions and looking at which parts went where. When I received the kit it had a note inside saying that Peter (the maker) didn't have the driving wheel sets in stock, and he will forward them when he receives them. It's a fairly simple kit, it's the only reason Taliesin was bought and not Blanch/Linda/Charles. Whilst in Warely last year, I talked with Peter at the Backwoods stall; I said that i was interested in buying the Blanche kit. He showed me the WHR Russell kit, and after discussing what experience i had in building etched brass kits, he suggested that Blanche might be too complicated for a 'first' Backwoods kit.
So, I’ve started the construction of the body, bending the 'inner tanks', tanks and the cab side. Then I bent the running plate, to match the bend at the base of the water tanks. Hopefully more progress will be made over the next week and pictures will follow soon!

Taliesin

After a few months of saving money, and a few weeks of wondering, last night a Backwoods Miniatures Taliesin was ordered. I'm confident enough to start to build the body, but the chassis is the one part which I am worrying about. I've built a Meridian Models MPD18 chassis, but it doesn't have small parts such as connecting rods, crossheads, cylinders, piston rods and the like.
I've been reassured by another 009 FR modeller which has many Backwoods kits which include a very nice NGG16, said that the instructions are simple to follow and are of exceptional detail.