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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.

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.

As has been covered in the ‘Whats New’ blog I have been busy tinkering a bit with OO9 Narrow gauge over the summer.
.. For all sorts of reasons work on Burton Pheonix and Stowey Green has slowed, so it has been good to have something to keep me busy.

Up here in North Wales we are close to the famous ‘Little Trains of North Wales’ that were built for quarry work – particularly slate.

This has become particularity relevant for me as we have friends that are now living within the new Word Heritage Site that covers the North Wales Slate industry. In fact the path of the Gorseddau Tramway, which served the Gorseddau Slate Quarry, ran through their garden.

Using the 3D Printer, and so far inadequete relearnt skills in painting… I have been able to create some OO9 rolling stock.
.. So far I have a little locomotive ‘Emma’, powered by a Kato chassis, along with a good variety of Slate and general support wagons. I have even made a few passenger carriages.

.. The ‘final’ intention, egged on by my friend, is eventually to create one (or more?) De Winton vertical boiler locomotives.
These locomotives were nick named ‘Coffee Pots’ – as can be seen below …

These locomotives were locally built in Caernarfon especially for use on the North Wales slate mines.
I have some interesting drawings which hopefully mean that when I get up to speed in CAD I ‘can’ produce a 3D model that can be printed..

A proper winters evening project I think.
.. Especially since Peco, due the stresses of the current pandemic, are still to release the medium radius bullhead points that will be a key component of the new Burton Crumpnold layout.. So plenty to get involved with in the meantime….