Moel Rhos

Doctor Who and the Easter of Doom

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 them. After I’d printed a John Hurt I discovered the Eaglemoss figurines are 1/21 scale and I picked up a few as they are pretty close to 1/19 scale.

Easter Bunny

A couple of Easters back I realised the line had no Easter Bunny (not counting the scale 4 meter high monsters who visit occasionally) so I downloaded a rabbit from Thingiverse and printed him. Here he is riding in luxury on a Binnie flat wagon…

Sir John Hurt

“Great men are forged in fire. It is the privilege of lesser men to light the flame.”
– The Day of the Doctor

One of the first things I did when I got my printer, back at the end of 2020, was of course to download Sir John Hurt and print him at 1:19 scale.

Priming Prints

Having made a start in 3D printing I found that priming some of the bits and pieces I’d testing with different print settings helps to show up differences in the finish you get.

Hot Cross Bun train

It’s Good Friday! But owing to engineering work, the hot cross bun train may not run this year, so… here’s a video from 2020 of this vital service.

Lights

A couple of weeks back I posted a photo from a late night steam running session which took place back in May 2020. The top photo on this post is taken half an hour later the same evening. By this point it was pretty dark, and you can see to good effect the illumination provided by the light mounted above the smoke box.

Snow in the Sun

When I caught the sun on this patch of snow before it melted, I couldn’t resist another pic. It’s thawing fast now, but there are still patches around.

Snow on the Moel Rhos

Unusual conditions this morning! As you can see I didn’t have time to steam up (and snow never lasts long on the Moel Rhos – it’s beginning to thaw and the sun has barely risen). But I posed this anyway, it’s irresistible when the white stuff comes.

Late night steam

I was pleased with the effect on this photo which was taken during an evening running session in May 2020 at around 9.15pm. The low light forced my phone camera to slow the shutter, and a panned round with the loco to keep it in focus while the background blurred.

2023 in garden railway visits…

Looking back over the garden railway year, one particular pleasure has been our South West Wales 16mm Association Area group resuming a substantial programme of garden railway visits after lockdown shifted us online in 2020, and while we had some good meetings in 2021/22 it was only this year we got back to monthly (sometimes even twice monthly) gatherings in each others’ gardens.