Llanastr – Newport Model Railway Society

Week ending 8th December

Monday saw us welcome a prospective new member, Dennis, who enlivened the afternoon with a sick 00 engine and memories of Mountain Ash NCB. Amongst other activities Rhobat was working on his etched brass Hunslet; Mr Chairman the short wheelbase wagons and LBH fettling Llanastr track work. No pics to show though, sorry.

Tuesday was a Zoom session and time for the Christmas Quiz. Steve Bell entertained us first with a short video of a preserved line in Japan, complete with shunters wearing white gloves. The quiz tested us on railways of all sorts in Wales, e.g. name five current stations in Wales that contain the letter J? Steve finished off the session with history and pics of the Knoxville to Sevierville short line in Tennessee.

Two of us snuck in on Friday evening before Storm Darragh could do its worst.

*LBH tested the fettled trackwork on Llanastr with his three B&MR locos with (ahem) acceptable results.*

Luke added motor and pick ups to the chassis for the Model T based railbus.

And LBH tested out his newly-converted-to-S7 Peckett E class and fitted it with a DCC decoder. It will be named Alma and operate at the works shunter on the Tŷ’n-y-Coedcae Tar Works. Its DCC code is naturally 1854. Conversion to S7 was undertaken by Colin Dowling.

Later its dome-safety valve was fitted and now it needs weathering.

Week ending 1st December

25 November 2024 / ABB, B&MR, Llanastr, Loriot, Manning Wardle, Model T railcar, South Wales Wagons

Perhaps Storm Bert deterred a few this week, but we had four members present and two guests, Phil and Cory, good to see you.

Dave is still working on the short wheelbase coal wagons and we took the opportunity to pose some of them with LBH’s Manning Wardle Class I, the B&MR’s Lady Cornelia, which was built thirty years ago, on Llanastr.

Not entirely coincidently the image is not so different from this, taken at the Rhymney Iron Works probably in the 1880s

Operating Llanastr at the open day threw up some issues with the track alignment between the baseboards, so after 40 years we thought it might be timely fix some proper dowels. Here is Paul discharging the drill’s battery to this end.

Tuesday and numbers are up to 8 today. But despite the number of people there were periods of studious silence when we were just getting on with modelling. Perhaps that was due to the drill battery going flat so PaulS had less to do.

Luke continues work on his Loriot, now applying buffers and ABB was moved into the workroom for attention to the electrics by TAFKATYS. We are hopeful for some test running on Friday.

Friday and numbers were back to normal, with Fred, Paul 🏅🏅, Mr Chairman, Luke, Wagonman and LBH all making an appearance.

The operation of Tŷ’n-y-Coedcae’s fiddle yards at Statfold proved problematic, with the operators unable to view the front of the layout so see what was happening.

So we’ve decided to try operation from the front. This necessitated removal of the board on the front of the Fiddle Yard above approx 1″ the surface, which Paul did on Friday.

Having got the Loroit to the paintshop, Luke is now working on a model T railcar. Or more exactly a pair of them to work back to back. Here’s the result of the first 30 mins work.

The Southern U class progresses on Wagonman’s workbench. The smokebox, boiler and firebox are now joined as one piece.

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