Doctor Who and the Easter of Doom

As I’ve mentioned before, the Doctor, being a time traveller, is not out of place on any garden railway in any period… indeed, one of the consequences of time travel is that there may be several of him. I mentioned on the email that after I’d printed a John Hurt that I’d discovered the Eaglemoss figurines are 1/21 scale and I picked up a few for around a fiver each – which is remarkable given they are painted and actually pretty close to 1/19 scale, extremely well detailed and very nicely finished. Unfortunately, for those whose railways are out of bounds to Time Lords, it may not be easy to convert them to ‘regular’ people as they are cast from a rather brittle resin (the Doctor has lost his head already in a couple of his incarnations). I would also recommend cutting the figures from their pedestals with a razor saw rather than trying to prize them out… I managed the latter only once without damaging some shoes.

Anyway, here, then, are the telesnaps from Doctor Who and the Easter of Doom:

The Doctor, fresh from space-sailing with The Eternals, pays a visit to the Moel Rhos railway in the 1950s, where he pays his respect to The Easter Bunny.

Some time later, and looking a little different after his misadventure on Androzani Minor, he takes a break on the Moel Rhos after exposing the Zeiton-7 scandal. Naturally, he wants to drive himself…

Later still, and with a different face following the Rani’s attempt to create a time manipulator, the Doctor pays another visit to the Moel Rhos when he finds himself in South Wales in the 50s on a holiday he won thanks to being the tenth billionth customer at Navarino Spaceport.

Having been shot in San Fransisco on the last day of 1999, the Doctor changed again, and later still he seeks escape from the Time War on the Moel Rhos where he is clearing the line of the chickens, who have to take care of egg delivery on the 364 days when The Bunny is not on duty. (I ran low on filament and rather than replacing the spool straight away or risking running out during a big job, I tried using it up by printing a chicken and when there was still some left another chicken, and then another… I now have 9 chickens, most still needing paint, and inspired by Peter I’m going to need to design a chicken wagon.)

Finally, the Doctor, in the midst of the Time War, weary of the temporal flux created by the conflict’s multiple paradoxes, lowers his guard whilst visiting the Moel Rhos and is unsuspectingly about to fall foul of the Blinovich Limitation Effect…

Easter Sunday 2021 part 2

A picture of Porthmadog, finished apart from having a crew (painting figures is one of my less favourite tasks). She was last shown in late August last year when I was unhappy with the running, since then replacement nylon (instead of the original metal) gears have been fitted and she now runs well. Simon may be able to add a link of a piece of video of her running on my finescale O gauge test track a few days ago where she also pulled the two red coaches. The loco managed to run over the entire folded figure of eight layout with slight hiccups across the pointwork. The coaches could only manage the plain track. It occurs to me that the wall in the picture could easily form a temporary home to more sm32 track. If these three boards became the right hand end of an end to end run and a new set were made to form the left hand end having a platform and run round loop I could use two 8foot long straight boards from the O gauge test track as supports for some sm32 track mounted to plywood and make a couple of small angle bends to join it all up!

Phil.

Easter Sunday 2021 part 1

A year on from my first posting of a picture of my shunting game layout some pictures of where it is at now. Some ground cover needs to be applied and the level crossing gate finished painting. IT is a typical ignlenook puzzle. Eight wagons are distributed between the three sidings, in this case they have coloured discs magnetically attached. Eight counters of the same colours are shaken in a bag and five selected at random and put in a row. The loco then shunts wagons to assemble the correct five in order. The results of two games are shown.

The loco is my third build. This one is a PDF models Skylark whose kit arrived before the instructions had been written, having built a PDF Port class previously I got most of it done before I saw any instructions and it seems to be OK. A little more work is needed before she is fully finished. I am pleased with the way she runs.

Phil.

First ever run round on the Moel Rhos

The Moel Rhos permanent way team completed track laying on the new station formation this morning, so I have put together the most boring video ever, recording the first run round in my garden. I’ve even included my big hand coupling and changing points, it’s not an action packed thriller but I am very excited to be able to do this…

Simon

An experiment

I had my O gauge test track out in the garden yesterday afternoon for the first time for a year and just had to try some of my sm32 stock out, knowing that it should not run. The loco got through all of the pointwork with only slight hesitation but the coaches derailed. At least I was able to get the loco some exercise and was very pleased with how well it runs now.

Best wishes,

Phil