Llanmadog

[Sioned Arrowsmith]

It's well over a year since I started posting a whole series of questions on this forum, anticipating that I would soon be started construction on my first layout in, well, decades.

No plan survives first contact and all that, and no only did those plans fall through, but so did the next, and the next, and ... six track plans and three approaches to the Ikea hack to support it, I'm finally here:

(Sorry about the angle -- it's rather difficult to get it all in.)

The track isn't really laid yet, it's just there to check measurements and basic running, and to see if any baseboard (12mm ply -- no intention of making it portable) fettling is required (it is).

The original design called for two 4'x2' modules with a scenic break of some literal bookshelf running connecting them, but the intended bookshelves turned out not to fit in the space, and it ended up as a single 10'x2' (really, 3m.x0.5m.max) with a nominal scene break. The intention is that it will be set up for automated running rather than manual operation, hence the paucity of sidings in such a large area. (Plus the plan is for an upper level to go in at a later stage, so all the empty space will have something in it.)

The setting of Llanmadog is through freelance and into the realms of mild whimsy. And the town of Llanmadog itself is off-scene. More on all this, hopefully, as things progress.

[Sioned Arrowsmith]

If there's one thing approaching realistic with Llanmadog, it's construction delays. It was already running about 18 months behind schedule when I discovered that I'd fixed all the track at one end with the incorrect wiring for the intended automated running. So I've just had to rip it up  :-[

Still, seeing some of the work of the Owers at Bala the other weekend gives me confidence that I'm not attempting the impossible.

[Sioned Arrowsmith]

Delays getting the track operational haven't slowed down, or perhaps have even accelerated, building construction. I've now got more buildings than trains, which must be a bit odd:

Although they're not remotely in place yet: as you can see, there's not a hint of landscaping.
I'm particularly happy with some of the detail I've got into the chapel (Capel Seion, I think).


For all that the setting is tending to the whimsical, I do feel a compulsion to a degree of plausibility. So the palette of building materials is deliberately restricted to limewash (traditional), dressed ashlar (engineering construction around the quay here at Aberefail) and red brick (most construction at the other end, which may turn out to be Llanmadog after all).

Most of these structures are Scalescenes. Of the others, the small cottage is from Smart Models, the chapel is Petite Propertie's Little Acorns school clad in Scalescenes texture, and the bay windowed bungalow, the large brick house and the wooden shed are from a Superquick kit. The Scalescenes stuff is obviously fantastic value, but the Petite Properties are much nicer to build (I also kitbashed one of their cottages into a musical box as a Christmas present for my sister-in-law) on account of not having to cut out sheets of 2.2mm card which then needs to be fettled because the model has been engineered to assume it's exactly 2mm. I was distinctly unimpressed with the Superquick, which was neither super (it feels less detailed than the others) nor particularly quick (time gained though not having to cut out such think card weighed out by much fiddlier construction technique necessitated by not having any thick card). I'm using card construction because my hands aren't steady enough to paint details, whereas gluing is just about within my capabilities.

[Sioned Arrowsmith]

Realised that my images haven't been showing up. I know this can be something of a SMF problem, but I think in this case it's because the blog site I was hosting them on wasn't allowing links from external sites, and I wasn't noticing because they were in my browser's cache. Anyway, I've bunged them on my FlickR account (which is supposed to be for my more serious photography), so hopefully that will work.