Cwmbach: Lights on and we have power…

Fantastic progress in the last few weeks has culminated, on Sunday, in this latest cameo layout being ‘boxed in’ and wired up…

This project has been something of a slow burn - in fact, I was asked the other day if there is a sketch or design for the project and I don’t think I even got that far. It is a collection of ideas and thoughts on making an operational coal loading scene based upon Cwmmawr in South Wales. 

It was a blend of operating Paul Marshall-Potter’s lovely Maple River with its parade of brown 40ft box cars and colourful locomotives, with the cut down 08 I had built ‘just because’ I fancied the challenge. Will from Coventry Railworks tipped me over the edge with his HEA wagons - here, I could see the opportunity to have a sea of fairly mundane, similar but different wagons being shuffled about by colourful locomotives…

I have wondered at moments if this could end up as another Gerald Road - a layout lost within a cameo box - N is an interesting scale to work in, up close on Paxton Road works beautifully - but Gerald Road (1) felt lost in the space… seeing the models now though, the line of red wagons and blue locomotives shuffling around, you know, I think it works…

Despite the lack of back-scene and scenery I’m already excited by the potential for photography of these cherished models. The blank canvas giving the space for my imagination to paint in the scene I can picture, inspired by Cwmmawr but adjusted and shrunk somewhat to the space I have available. A bank will run down the back of the layout with an old oak wood on the right hand side. The screens will dominate the left. The foreground will be a waste ground of former sidings snowing rationalisation and the evolution, the retraction of the coal industry in this period.

Whilst it was the cut down 03 and 08 that have ‘placed’ the project, there are a couple of standard height shunters that were built for the layout - it is nice to see these here too - and each has run around the trackwork. There is still a little work to do on the turnouts to improve running, but the isolating sections and traverser all work well - as do the uncoupling magnets. It feels as if the basics are all here, and working.

It was this weekend that saw all this come together, until then each step was deliberate but didn’t seem to move things forwards. Wiring up the droppers and adding the wiring loom, then painting the track, ballasting… it wasn’t until I started adding the cameo box uppers that each of these elements became one. The wiring loom made to quick to get things moving and once the LED fitted lid was added, it all came to life. This has been an injection of energy at just the right moment. I can enjoy tinkering for a week or so, but then back on to scenic work, which I think these days is one of my favourite aspects of cameo conception and construction. Until next time, more soon…

Support my work

I love writing and creating material for the blog. If you enjoy what you read and engage with I would be appreciative of any donation, large or small, to help me keep it advert and restriction free. Alternatively, feel free to buy me a coffee, where regular memberships start from just £1.