Bron Effans

Happy New Year to each and everyone and welcome to the new decade! In the last post I promised that I would give an update on the carriage situation and explain what I intended to do with the burgeoning fleet of carriages that I had acquired over the last few months. As I explained in a previous post, I was planning on running carriages in fixed rakes so that there would be a theme for each train that I ran. At the time of writing I own 15 carriages in varying stages of completion. They can be formed into 5 rakes that can be accommodated at Effans Uchaf. They are named: VoR Set. Consisting 2 Dundas Vale of Rheidol style carriages. NWNGR Set. Consisting 1 Dundas Vale of Rheidol carriage and a Bro Madog Observation Carriage.  Short Bogie Set. Consisting of 3 freelance bogie carriages. Bug Box Set. Consisting of 5 Bug box style carriages of various builds.  WHR Set. Consisting of two Liliput Carriages 2070 and the new Pullman Carriage( Name TBD) The hitherto unnam...

In my last post I mentioned that I had acquired four bug boxes for the railway. In addition to that, I managed to get hold of one that had been built and painted. However, it was in need of some restoration, which is what I favour in my builds. So I purchased the little green quarrymans coach and set to work.  The coach pre-restoration I began by removing the original plastic windows and applying the paint stripper then leaving it for an hour or so.  Below are the results so far. As you can see there is another layer of paint underneath the original which will still need removing. More on that later.

I have pursued the construction and restoration of my GEM model bug box carriages. Today, I completed another two examples. The first being the Quarrymans coach that I have been restoring for some time and the second being an Ashbury style compartment coach. The Quarryman's coach has been an exceptionally involved process. Considering that I started the restoration about four/five weeks ago, it has taken me much more effort than I first thought it would.  After stripping back the first layer, I discovered that a second layer of orange/ brown paint lay below. I attacked it with the paint stripper today in order to properly relivery it and complete it.  The Quarryman coach with the final layer of orange underneath.  I have also taken the liberty of adding some adhoc seats for passengers to sit on. I wasnt too fussed about the detail of these seats as the windows are so small on this carriage. To that end I made use of some spare carriage steps from one of the Dunda...

I have recently been very fortunate to be able to acquire four new carriages for the layout. They are from the GEM range and will form four different "Bug box" style carriages, similar to the ones found in the Ffestiniog fleet. They are going to stay wrapped up for now whilst I concentrate on the scenery side of the layout. The carriages in kit form still unwrapped. I am so grateful to the person I bought these carriages from. They will look the part when they are coupled with my original bug box to form a 5 carriage train. I am going to try and get hold of another FR style guards van just for this set. The red bug box style carriage running with 590.