Really Useful Engine(s)…

In my workshop and in my imagination, right now, are this clean shaven, cropped duo. They sit on Paxton Road reminding me (and perhaps you) of their prototypes waiting for Monday at Llanelli or Pantyffynon. Potential energy…

I shared this photo on social media yesterday because I liked it. It was seen by my good friend Chris, and now I love it. He articulated something, expressed an excitement, a real joy at these little engines, pictured at rest but poised for work. This felt worth exploring in words here today.

His joy was for the energy he felt captured in photos of small or industrial engines, where being in motion equated to earning their keep, making money. Stationary only for the potential to move once more, and something almost human in that basic premise - for we too understand from our teens, the connection between activity and earning our keep.

I reflected on a different potential, that of the models themselves. Underneath Paxton Road is the mock up of Cwmbach, a place for them to call home, somewhere to shuffle around and earn their keep. This photo then, providing a top up, if one were needed, of the creative fuel required to move from cardboard and paper to plywood and rail. 

There is something else too, an idea that Chris, separated from my workshop by the Atlantic noticed some time ago. How all these N scale layouts feel they’re part of the same system. I imagined the 03s stabled here and reminded myself of the 37 I had seen at Pont Dulas. A product of the way I have developed the ideas and rolling stock for Cwmbach, alongside building and enjoying similar but seperate cameo layouts… this is an interesting reflection. An unintended extension of the branch beyond the colliery, perhaps a sense of a longer run, that ‘basement empire’ I only dream of - yet created on just a handful of shelves.

All this from a photo of pair of tiny model trains. What power our imagination can hold, until next time, more soon…

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