Irishrailwayman

Why not aim to bring it down to the Wexford Easter Exhibition 2019 and show it as a work-in-progress?

Recently I have developed a 2 foot "tuning fork" fiddle-yard for this layout to better enable shunting and to bring passenger rail-cars and auto-coach on and off scene. The top of the fiddle-yard may be removed for operations from the front or replaced for exhibition operation from behind the layout:

For anyone who missed the Exhibition, a few photos and a big thanks to the exhibitors, traders, WMRC volunteers and all our 637 visitors for making this the most successful exhibition here to date!

And the winners are: John Izzard Best O Gauge Layout Award: Brendan Butler and John O'Toole Garrison Model Club: Best N Gauge (Stephen McNally Memorial) Award South Dublin Model Railway Club took two prizes away Best OO Gauge Layout and Best Layout Scenery Awards! and, as noted above, Fran Burke with the amazing new Tara Wagons won the Best Model Award:

'pun my word, we are treading on egg-shells here.

What kind of yolk will they come up with? Will we have to shell out a lot to pay for them?

Looking forward to seeing these in the flesh at the Wexford Model Railway Exhibition!

Richard at marsh.lane@outlook.com does a magnetic shunter's pole (for 4 mm or 7 mm) costing £14 with payment by Paypal. These work well on Dapol O gauge couplings which can be purchased separately and the third link of any wagon can be changed to work with the magnet. You can see these here: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/50279-o-gauge-auto-couplings/page-13

Modern era? This is now vintage gold!

Was it not January 1982?

A lovely video to get you in the mood for the upcoming Wexford Model Railway Easter Exhibition!

HE do OO and N gauge reed switches and magnets. I have used the N gauge versions on my Cynwyd and Llanuwchllyn layouts controlling automated operation.

No worries, I have had complaints about choosing prototypes with difficult to pronounce names! Including Cynwyd I have modelled three stations on the Llangollen (Ruabon to Barmouth) line. There are other stations worthy of modelling but I am running out of storage. Looking forward to the Wexford Exhibition which won't be long now!

FYI Heathcote Electronics supply much smaller magnets which should suffice to trigger the reed switch.

Thanks Rich. I will be showing a different layout - Llangollen - at Wexford at Easter. Llanuwchllyn (above) is booked to have its exhibition debut at the exhibition at Bala, North Wales in May this year. Bala town is at one end of a restored section of the line to the (real) Llanuwchllyn station. My layout represents the station a it was before closure in the early 1960s i.e. standard gauge. The restoration has been done as a narrow-gauge line (which would make a nice OO9 layout - Bachmann have plans to make a model of a narrow gauge locomotive resident on the line called Alice).

A couple of shots of Llanuwchllyn with BR 1960's rolling stock although GWR stock might be equally at home here:

Thank you - I will be showing my Llangollen layout in Wexford at Easter and Llanuwchllyn will have its exhibition debut at Bala, Wales in May. I hope to attend the Ulster MRC show in August and hope to chat to them when they visit us at Easter but not sure which layout to bring. I won't make Enniskillen this year as I will be away at the (real) Llangollen!

Llanuwchllyn has had its trees planted and numerous other details added. Functional testing has begun to iron out any technical glitches. Note the unusual GWR Calling-on signal lower arm on the Down Starter: Two guys have a chat by the Goods Shed while their colleague services the lamp on the Advance Starter signal on the Up line:

Preparations are well underway for the Wexford Model Railway Exhibition at Easter. Here is how the line-up is looking so far: 26 layouts (15 new to show); 7 model displays (4 new to show) and 14 traders (5 new to show): Model Railway Layouts: Swanbourne Vale Light Railway O gauge: John Izzard Taylor's Yard (16mm narrow gauge) and Sandown Valley Railway (O gauge): East London MRG Rosslare Strand OO: SDMRC Castlefinn OO9: MRSI {Exhibit withdrawn} Galloway Road N: Ulster MRC A Country Scene N and Airborne 1941 N: Garrison MRC Kemberton T-Trak: Midlands MRC Ballyredmond OO: Eamonn Redmond Percy & the Circus Train: Bobby Joe & John O'Toole HOe narrow gauge layout: Nigel Harris WMRC Badger's Heath OO: Paul Shannon WMRC Ballinrobe OO: David McCabe WMRC Llangollen N: Gerry Byrne WMRC Joseph's Bridge OO: Tommy Nolan WMRC Ballygannon OO: Patrick Nolan WMRC Thomas OO: Seán & Mark Allen WMRC O Gauge Work-in-Progress: WMRC Scully's Dock OO: WMRC Bushville HO: WMRC MacMine Junction OO: WMRC Bridge Street OO: WMRC Two Hornby Interactive Layouts OO: WMRC Z scale layouts: Walter Oberle Traders: Sean Ryan; PW Models; Brian Collins; Martin O'Hanlon; GModelscene; Model Rail Baseboards; ECM Trains; Marks Models; Model Rail Accessories; Irish Railway Models; Provincial Wagons; Weir Park Books; Walter Oberle; Top Choice Embroidery. Other Displays: Go-Pro Cab-view of model railways video show; Vintage Hornby O Gauge; Live steam working models; Viking diorama; St Joseph's Warhammer Club; Model Die-cast; RNLI; Exhibition Raffle; WMRC information stand; Second-hand models stall. Station Café will be offering hot and cold drinks, home-made cakes, savouries, sweet treats to all visitors and exhibitors.

A couple of finished seafoam trees ready for planting on Llanuwchllyn. Note the lack of uniformity and variety of colours and shapes - just as with the prototype. In nature, trees are quite tall relative to the train so quite tall ones may be used on a layout even in N gauge.

Fiddle-yard to fiddle-yard is definitely an option and is a change from the ubiquitous roundy-roundies. In DC the movement of trains can be automated including station stops/station passing loops etc (in DCC no doubt the computer buffs could set up automation). This is the approach I have taken with my N gauge DC Cynwyd (automated station stops) and most recent Llanuwchllyn (automated station passing loop). The beauty of F2F is that you don't have to bend the track at each end to get the trains back around meaning the flow into/out of the layout is more prototypical.

Will you have to do some drastic surgery to get the chassis to fit?

George, looking forward to this layout making it's exhibition debut at the Wexford Show Easter 2019! I really like the Art-Deco signal box so be sure to incorporate a few more of those era buildings. Best of luck with the build. Will you be going DCC sound?

While my trees are drying, here are a few photos of Llanuwchllyn with some detail added. I also am working on the signals at present.

They must have been hanging around too long in some sidings unsupervised alright. These are a set of rub-on transfers I got a few years ago.