Pont-y-dulais memories...

It's 20th June 1978, the last full week of operation at Graig Merthyr colliery and our photographer has caught an anonymous Austerity one shed at shift change...

The colouring of this photo has been adjusted on the iPhone to evoke some of the colours in Gordon Edgar's excellent book on Industrial Railways in Wales, where the caption above is paraphrased from (pg 50 for those who have a copy). 

Of course, this is actually a DJ Models (not the new EFE model) J94 I repainted as a more generic industrial example using Humbrol 131 and then some careful blended weathering and some real coal for a load... this is posed on my micro OO layout Pont-y-dulais, which is inspired but not a slavish copy of Ponturddulais in South Wales. It's a lovely little layout, and I snapped this today whilst waiting for weathering on the Hudson Hunslet's to dry before taking it for a little spin up and down the sidings...

In the shed are a pair of Modelu coats hung up (great details in the range these days), I love these little touches that don't over do the cameo but bring a scene to life... this is another one of my firm beliefs, that although a locomotive looks better with a driver, I don't think layouts need cluttering up with them - suggestions of life are more effective in these smaller scales.

One thing I was reflecting on as I took the photo, was how lucky I was to have been able to build something that was fulfilling and mindful during construction but now sits and forms part of my life every day. It would be easy to loose this feeling, in the yearning for something more expansive, but the accessibility of the layout, and the feelings and emotions it evokes for me are more valuable than I perhaps had realised, especially with the toll on my mental health with lock down, financial and family pressures. Model making, when you have the mental capacity, is a real tonic. I hope you're all well and perhaps can find some time for yourselves during the latest lock downs wherever you are in the world. 

More soon...