Category: Model Railway Blog

Found this 08 shunter in an already weathered state in a second hand shop in Cardiff. It needed some repairs and a stay-alive fitting but it’s come out looking pretty good.

I remember seeing this unusual engineering vehicle at Tonbridge when the line was being prepared for Eurostars. I found a 3D print available on eBay by ‘class_66_driver’. It is a fairly good representation but came with poor quality wheels. Replacing these with good metal wheels and pinpoint bearings required the model to have the axle mounting broken carefully on one side then be glued back on with the new wheels and bearings in place. Transfers are from Precision Labels.

I’ve installed a lovely new signal with two feather indicators from Absolute Aspects. This is where the line from the upper level joins the main line at Tedford junction. No feather indicates joining the down main. A left feather indicates joining the relief line and a right feather means briefly joining the down main but then crossing over onto the branch to the lower level. Really pleased with this quality signal.

A small bear arrived and briefly took up residence!

The excellent Metcalfe Models castle was something we wanted to add to the layout but initially couldn’t find a location for. We worked out how to fit it in a corner near the door to the room at the end of Bearham, replacing a small factory building. It needed the land building up and parts of the castle walls were used to achieve this.

I like the signalling to be as accurate as possible. Various details help enhance this. For example there is a banner repeater from Absolute Aspects on the up line into Tedford for the home signal which is round the corner.

Also the reversible line has a modified Peco AWS ramp set up for bi-directional running.

I travelled to school on 4-CEP EMUs in Jaffa Cake livery and travelled on pretty much every unit over a few years. The Bachmann model is superb but it is improved with the 1066 Electrics logos. I found a photo that was more or less square on and sized it in Word then printed it onto white transfer paper

The last wagon to roll off the production line in 2023, of 23 in total. This is a Cambrian kit built ZEV ‘Catfish’ finished in typical beaten up condition as seen in the 90s. This kit had a bit of an adventure during assembly and is missing a brake shoe but it’s barely visible. I’ll find a spare at some stage to replace the missing one.

Parcel traffic is a major part of Tedford and Bearham but there’s no point in having parcels trains without any parcels on the platform so I added a selection of mail bags, Brute trolleys and so on. Mostly from West Hill Wagon Works…

Bearham was originally built with a steam depot with turntable. It was a good place to display steam locos but the turntable was poorly located. I have gradually moved my collection of steam locos from the layout to display cases and decided to rework the yard area to represent a small engineering depot. The old engine shed building remained but the turntable went a gantry crane was added. These photos show it as a work in progress.