December 2023 – Moel Rhos

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.

Tunnel mouth silhouette

Sometimes when trains run frequently on the Moel Rhos (usually in the summer months) I’ll leave a train in the tunnel, to save taking it off the tracks, but to give some shelter from any showers in the hours between running sessions. This pictures was taken through the northern tunnel with a train of full gravel tippers, poised to be called back into action.

A Mamod Boulton for the Moel Rhos

No. 5 arrived on the Moel Rhos in April 2020. It’s a Mamod Boulton – a steel-bodied battery-powered diesel outline loco with an MFA motor on an Essel designed chassis.

Lego wagons

One of the first drawings I did to 3D print was for parts to make Christmas presents for my nephews and niece.

Boxing Day 2022

No trains running on the Moel Rhos today, unfortunately. But they were, exactly one year ago, last Boxing Day.

Here’s an album of photos from Boxing Day 2022.

Christmas Eve 2020

Merry Christmas everyone! Dipping into our virtual meet-ups from 2020/21 again, here’s a set of images from Christmas Eve 2020.

A start in 3D printing

The biggest development on the Moel Rhos in the past few years has been the acquisition by the railway’s workshops of its first 3D printer.

Looking back at lockdown virtual meet-ups

Back in 2020 lockdown came just in time to disrupt our (the South West Wales 16mm Area Group) programme of monthly meet-ups. But with everybody stuck at home – and in their gardens – what else was there to do but work and play trains? Our solution was to keep going with the monthly meet-ups, but to do them online…

Moel Rhos in the Fediverse

Just a little bit of housekeeping for those who follow this blog via social media. I’m dropping X/Twitter but you can follow us in the Fediverse (for example on Mastodon) now.

Quick 5 year update

I’m going to try to get back to blogging on here with a new approach.

Apart from the stock boxes post last August (which had actually be sitting in drafts for almost three years) I haven’t posted on here since my last update on Konrad’s cab in August 2018. And while I haven’t actually done much on the cab since then (though I did fit R/C and a whistle) I’ve made lots of progress in other areas, and this is part of the problem: I want to thoroughly document it all chronologically. But I’m never going to get round to doing that, so here’s the new plan…