Kevin and Câmilla Fisher's Model Railways
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As Part of the Llandudno Victorian Extravaganza – I had the chance to get Stowey Green, the ‘N’ gauge layout, out of the house for a public viewing.
.. It’s very early days on the exhibiting game, but the layout was very well received. Apologies for the poor picture – so busy ‘running the layout I forgot to take better photographs… Will do better next time.
After an extended gap I am back. I have rather a good excuse, as I have been recovering from a very serious bicycle accident in July that broke 5 ribs, and broke and dislocated my shoulder/collarbone. Fortunately, as I was wearing my cycle helmet and am alive to tell the tale, and 3 months later – able to keep on modelling.
That gives no real excuse to why there were no updated from January.. but there you are
As it is the end of the AirBnB season in my house I have been allowed by my Wife to set up the ‘OO’ gauge Burton Phoenix layout in the dining room.. Which has been a great opportunity to put out a number of new and untested rolling stock on display. It has been a long time since I have been able to run the ‘OO’ – some of which is new and, other than on a rolling road, untested.
First is my much awaited Hornby model of the Rocket.
And a rather unusual buy from a tiny model railway show in Borth-y-Gest, near Porthmadog – one end of the Ffestiniog railway.. a LMS Caledonian Single
The model is in amazing condition for its age, as far as I can tell it was released in 1983, and was very attractively boxed.
…And as can be seen on the price sticker, I thought it was quite a bargain
It has been great to return to the larger OO scale instead of tinkering in ‘N’.
.. Now I’m properly on the mend there is lots more to say, so maybe the next update will not take so long.
It started as legitimate test running of the N Gauge rolling stock at Stowey Green. It is wonderful to have a complete layout to run things on, and some of the rolling stock has never had proper ‘running in’ time.
However, by the end of the evening it became a discovery of ‘How much can I fit on the layout’…
I actually stopped with 3 coaches to go, as they were not part of any rakes, and 8 wagons unused when I realised my lunacy.
.. Still.. 8 Loco’s, 11 coaches, 2 Auto coaches, 2 long Siphon wagons, 10 wagons and 3 brake vans felt pretty good.
A number of Stowey Green photographs have been added to the Stowey Green gallery and the home page slider.
.. More pictures will follow as I try out all the rolling stock that has been purchased for this layout over the last few (many!!) years.
I have been taking advantage of the evenings and weekend running up to the Christmas holiday to work on the N Gauge ‘Stowey Green’ scenery. It was genuinely a surprise for me to see that during the Christmas holiday all was more or less done, and I could now actually run trains….. 
.. So with just some basic tinkering to do to really finish things off I had better finish up (OK start ) detailing the story of ‘Stowey Greens’ scenery as currently ‘not detailed here -> Stowey Green – Scenery. And while I am at it I had better add some photographs…
I have been having hours of fun with my scenery scatter to finally get rid of the ‘greyness’ of the Stowey Green landscape.
.. So, Finally ‘Stowey Green’ actually is … ‘Green’…
I have also added the powder blue ‘Sky Boards’ around the side which makes for a much better photograph.
The next job is to add trees and bushes etc to cover up the gaps in the removeable sections and finish off the ‘road space, around the main railway station and ‘goods yard’ area.
…. It is actually starting to look like a proper railway layout.
Now the Stowey Green ‘N’ gauge layout is properly out its time to crack on with the scenery.
.. I am in the process of working out where the road to the station will go and which cottages in my collection will be on it.
In the meantime I decided to unroll my printed scenery sheets and glue them to the back ‘sky board’ .. looking good so far
.. Once the road has been sorted out I can get on the hills and vales..
Just prior to this I decided to tackle an annoying track problem on the upper section.
After many attempts to make the track transition between the incline and the removeable upper board I could not remove a ‘step’ in the track which made either the locomotives or carriages ‘enthusiastically’ derail. So I decided that it had to go’..
I removed that ‘glued down’ section of track and added a new section of track that ‘bridged’ the gap – but ‘could’ be removed on the rare occasion I needed to remove the upper section. Now things run a LOT better.
I just need to work around it with the scenery to either hide or obscure the transition.
I have packed away the Burton Phoenix layout so I can continue working on the scenery for the N Gauge ‘Stowey Green’ Layout.
This has given me the opportunity to do a few test runs of the3D Printed Narrow Gauge (OO9) ‘Emma’ Locomotive and stock on the ‘open’ sections of the N Gauge track.
Note… I still have not sorted out a coupling system for the rolling stock. My current thinking is to use ‘chain links’ to simulate 3 link couplings.
Here is a video showing my current ‘complete’ slate train.
As promised in an earlier post, I have upgraded my rolling road so I can work in ‘OO’ and ‘N’ gauge.
.. Mostly to save space.
Here I am working with an old ‘OO’ Triang Hornby Class 37 and an ‘N’ GWR Pannier tank
I have finally been able to catch up on a number of pending jobs on the ‘OO’ gage layout.
.. The first of these is some repair work on one of my locomotives.
My pretty little Weston Clevedon and Portishead Light railway Terrier loco has been behaving a bit too realistically of late giving out smoke after a minute or so running, and when it was running it was nowhere as sprightly as it should be
So – I have managed to get a replacement motor and had a go fitting it. The trickiest job was carefully stripping and re-soldering the very fine wire power feeds – 6 in total – 3 for each side
.. It was also a chance to try out my budget Rolling Road.
I am really impressed with it – not bad for £35
.. In fact I am so impressed I have ordered rollers so I can also use it on my ‘N’ gauge loco’s.
