Hello Manchester!

All packed up to hit the road once more - destination Manchester this weekend.

My son’s been learning how to use Photoshop at school. (School in the 2020s sound more fun than school in the 1980s, eh?) Very striking images of our Backwoods Double Fairlies on Dduallt I thought worth sharing.

Next weekend is our last exhibition of the year, and the last known opportunity to see Bron Hebog. All the crew are very much looking forward to the show in Manchester. 👇 www.mmrs.co.uk/exhibition/

Our pair of Glasgow-built locomotives made for work in the Indian mountains and seen here in the beautiful Eryri National Park 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿➡️🇮🇳➡️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Big diesels, a tamper and a hybrid curiosity- today’s selection from the Bron Hebog collection. See them in action in a fortnight in Manchester.

A selection of unsung heroes and gala guest visitors from the stock box for your enjoyment today.

A selection of unsung heroes and gala guest visitors from the stock box for your enjoyment today.

Black Garratts from the stock box selection today. Both are brass Backwoods kits.

Narrow gauge new builds and baby Hunslets make up your stock box quartet for Budget Day.

FR single engines with tenders is today’s theme for the stock box selection. All kit built, the oldest still in use after 36 years.

The four Double Fairlies of Bron Hebog - one of them still not finished

Park Royal on the Cambrian. Nice! Instead of a fight to the death all making the same diesels could the big manufacturers consider some DMUs which have never been modelled instead?

A colourful group of Garratts. Four of the NGG16s from our collection which will be doing their thing on Bron Hebog in Manchester next month.

Has a tipping point been reached for #modelrailway content on Bluesky? I cross-posted here and on X the other day, but despite having only a fraction of the follower numbers on here I got more likes & reposts! Anyone else starting to notice that?

It’s time to put the focus back on our monster layout Bron Hebog. We’re three and a half weeks away from the very special centenary show in Manchester. We don’t have any more shows booked for it so please don’t assume there will be another opportunity to see it running.

Many modellers strive for accuracy, but we also enjoy making up wee stories that bend history a little… Like the London Midland Region bigwig who was very proud to have the first inspection saloon in the new Blue Grey livery and showed it off with a day trip to Minffordd.

People seem to like it again. ‘Best Steam Layout’. Thanks Falkirk!

Good news Simplex fans - Mary Ann rides again! A cheeky CV8 reset this morning its digital brain is following instructions once more.

Day 1 at Falkirk. Snags identified at the debut show have been successfully addressed - unfortunate some digital gremlins cropped up today. One of the DCC handsets is on the blink, and Mary Ann went on strike late in the afternoon, refusing to move. Investigations beckon…

Minffordd set up and test run ready for (we hope) a fun weekend in Falkirk!

Coals to Falkirk! We’re making final preparations to continue our evangelical mission to educate Central Scotland in the charms of Welsh narrow gauge, and @festrail.bsky.social in particular, at Forth Valley College this weekend.

First time with its tender. Bogies knocked up with bits lying around or borrowed, and lashed up to the locomotive with a styrene coupling bar. But it goes round the tightest bends and through all the points. What a brute!

More chassis mileage for the NG15 tonight, attracting a lot of interest on the Greenock & District Model Railway Club test track and admiring comments about the Bowaters Models body even though it’s just a rough test print.

With a new keeper plate and pick ups fitted the NG15 chassis can get some running-in laps of the test track.

Now Minffordd is up & running it’s about adding the little details, like having the correct destination blinds on the DMUs. These from Railtec have just been fitted onto the Met-Cam set. Station Master Mr Parry’s giving it his seal of approval.

First update on the NG15 chassis in a while. I’ve replaced some of the Farish 08 crank ‘pins’ with the screws from the 8F which meant very carefully opening out the plastic cranks with a 0.6mm drill. Running much smoother with less ‘play’ now.

Two weeks from today we’ll have Minffordd out on show again. Hope to see some of you in Falkirk.

Another post-exhibition investigation was why our Dundas bogie wagons objected to running through the scratch built curved points in the yard - all the 4-wheel stock was quite happy. Some tweaks to the point blades seems to have fixed it. We’ll know for sure in a fortnight….

Fault-finding at exhibitions can be stressful, especially first time out. We had an issue with ‘Barn’ carriage 104 derailing at the exit of the traverser/ fiddle yard. Back at base the cause was traced to a small section of track slightly wide to gauge at the board joint.

Himself has been powering through the snagging list after the first exhibition for Minffordd. One of the issues identified was to replace the original Bachmann plastic couplings on Britomart with Greenwich brass ones to match all the freight stock for dependable uncoupling with the buried magnets.

A new arrival in the Minffordd stock box. I’m going to go out on limb and suggest Mr Churchward’s mogul is a more handsome and better proportioned machine than Mr Collett’s ‘Manor’, helped by its stockier boiler and the purposeful stays in front of the smokebox. Who’s with me on that?

How do you guard against operator error at exhibitions - those ‘things you must remember not to forget’? In this photo the operator has forgotten to throw the crossover before starting off, sending Linda off down the Mineral Line. What are your top tips?

My, that was a quick week! And this is a very slow goods train 😆 Just 3 weeks until we get to take Minffordd out again to Falkirk and I’m excited already!

🧵 Why doesn’t our layout have any signals? A question I was asked this week. Minffordd is in the middle of the token section between Porthmadog and Penrhyndeudraeth. The ‘signal box’ on the platform is really just a posh ground frame for shunting the yard. 1/2

Mr Parry was the last station master at Minffordd (BR) station - in fact he was all there was at the end before it was reduced to an unstaffed halt. He keeps a careful watch on proceedings also conveniently marking where the uncoupling magnet is buried beneath the main line.

If there was an unsung hero of the weekend on Minffordd it was this wee beastie. ‘Mary Ann’ was constantly phut-phut-phutting around the yard, smoothly and reliably. It meant there was almost always something to see (and hear) moving on the layout, vital to ‘the show’.

A prize winner first time out! We’re honoured to have received the votes fellow exhibitions at the Greenock 40th anniversary show this weekend and be presented with the Keith Taylor Shield, awarded in memory of one of our former club members and a very accomplished modeller.

A very intense first exhibition day for ‘Minffordd’ - I’ve never before run a layout for 7 hours without a break!

After nearly three years in the planning & construction the time has come to put Minffordd on show in Greenock this weekend. It’s been tremendous fun and a great challenge creating this together. We hope you enjoy watching it as much as we’ve enjoyed building it.

This weekend at Greenock with Minffordd will be the first time I’ve been able to attend a debut for one of our FR layouts. With Dduallt I was over 400 miles away at university. Two decades on with Bron Hebog I was still 400 miles away busy with work and a young family.

A lot has been achieved in a little over two and a half years. Feb 2023 vs Sept 2025.

It’s 2 years since w filled the gap in Bachmann’s FR ‘Penrhyn Ladies’ range with a 1960s era ‘Blanche’. To do this we had to buy 2 models to make 1, taking the bottom half of a ‘Linda’ in 0-4-0 condition with original shape cylinders and fixing that to the body of a ‘Blanche’.

A final afternoon of yard shunting rehearsals ahead of the big debut for Minffordd next weekend. Anyone who tells you practice makes perfect with Kadee couplings is lying! They are wee bastards and will do as they damn well please, every single time!

A layout is never ‘finished’. Less than a week until it’s public debut and tonight a rush order for more slate stacks for Minffordd Yard. Out with the resin, then….

Spending the last few days preparing for the Minffordd debut by flicking a dry brush in the general direction of the Cambrian passenger stock to make it look less ‘out of the box’. I must say for a 40-year-old model those ex-Mainline Collett carriages still look the business to me.

A motor-less Moelwyn. We haven’t the ingenuity (bravery?) to shoehorn a decoder, speaker & stay alive into the Great War veteran tractor, but it would have been a frequent visitor to Minffordd yard in the 1960s, so Himself decided it should be a static exhibit on the layout.

Testing out the DCC on the Dukedog. Some playing about required with the CVs on the Loksound chip to try to get it to coast a bit more, but it looks right at home on Minffordd. (As the window sticker on the car might say, our other locos have Zimos onboard.)

Layout building & exhibiting is always a team effort and we must record our thanks to ‘Herself’ for machining up a new set of drapes as the finishing touch for Minffordd.

A day discovering Churchward tenders weren’t designed for the digital age - and maybe these gizmos need to come with more idiot-proof instructions! Got there in the end, though. A chuffing Dukedog for Minffordd.