3 - 1976 - Banwy Valley I

As I was setting the Banwy Valley "somewhere in Wales" I wanted mountainous scenery, slate-built stations, and a slate quarry. I also wanted to have a continuous run rather than an end-to-end. I could re-use the two baseboards I'd built so far, so I made a third one, with the same constructional techniques but rather smaller.

Joined together against the roof brace, these gave me a 12 foot long layout, but with the central section dropped to form the quarry. The tracks between the end boards ran along the roof brace at the back of the quarry board, and much of the rear of the layout was hidden under mountains, which were made easily removable to cope with the inevitable derailments well out of reach.

The mountain scenery was made with cardboard contours built up with cross members in egg-box form, the whole covered with plaster bandage. This was coated with textured ceiling paint and scatter material was glued on the gentler slopes. Rock faces were either treated to more texture paint and coloured, or cork bark was set into the construction. This never managed to look like anything other than cork bark. The quarry face was layers of thick card cut to look like the effects of years of quarrying, again painted with the texture paint.

The quarry had its own oval of track, with only the front portion visible, and an incline down to the floor of the quarry from where a siding emerged out of the hillside.

The buildings were made from card, covered with DAS. This was inspired by

David Rowe's Llagerub, and the slate courses were delineated by pressing a

sharp edge into the DAS before it hardened. "Slate" colours were then

painted on individual slates, but I hadn't learned that the best effect was

achieved by not overdoing the colour contrasts. Roofs were strips of Slaters

slates. There were also one or two corrugated iron sheds, using Slaters

products again. At least there was a uniformity to the scene.

Looking down onto a busy Llangadfan Station. A passing loop for the goods

yard would have been helpful. A pleasant scene, nevertheless.

The main station building at both Llangadfan and Dol-y-Maen was modelled on

WHR prototypes. I made drawings based on photographs before construction,

and these subsequently appeared in Narrow Lines and, I think, a Narrow Lines

Extra on buildings.

The loco shed at Llangadfan, with the mummified Pug-bash alongside. The

shed was based, albeit loosely, on Pendre shed on the TR. Shed facilities

included a hoist, coaling stage and water tower.

Evans' Garage sat rather precariously up above the Llangadfan loco shed on

one side and the quarry on the other, but made a nice scenic break.

A view across the quarry, showing the incline and winding-house. There was

a little loco shed for the Armoured Simplex that handled traffic on the quarry

floor. Traffic to and from the quarry went through the tunnel at the top of the

incline. There was a derelict line into a tunnel on an intermediate level.

A closer view of the incline, with the Armoured Simplex below, and the GEM

Dolgoch handling wagons on the rather precarious line above. There were

PECO wagon turn-tables at the various track crossings, but I'm not sure locos

should have been allowed to run over them.

Dol-y-Maen Junction Station was on a pretty sharp curve, but it was only a tiny place, with the WHR-inspired station building and a small loco shed with water and coaling facilities. In fact, there were two water tanks there. The road down to the station was a bit precipitous; indeed, the owner of the old saloon parked by the station had to leave it there as it didn't have enough power to make it back up.

Page created 12 May 2011

Last edited 28 Dec 2020