Carmarthen Station
An 00 gauge modelling story
When Eddie Cooper bought an old layout he didn't know what he had let himself in for.
In the beginning
In the early spring of 2018, I was persuaded that purchasing the late Brian Dukes boards and track work of Carmarthen station and locomotive shed, was a very sensible idea
This was probably not the most sensible as I had grown up in the Midlands, in fact our house was virtually on the route of Glenfield tunnel. As such I was a staunch LMS man with quite a collection of OO gauge LMS stock. The fact that there was another company apart from the LNER was almost a total shock to me. I consoled myself with the fact that the LMS did run into Carmarthen, but this did not change the fact that I had no OO gauge GWR stock at all
Midsummer Misgivings
By August I had had time to start assembling the boards and realised what a large layout it was. It didn’t look so big in a small cow shed. The biggest problem was that to disassemble the boards we had cut a lot of the underboard wires and unwired a lot of the 72-point motors and turntable. This was a steep learning curve with a few steps forward only to go backwards again. The problem is with a layout this size if you have s short circuit, where is it band how do you track it down. Fortunately, a saviour, Gareth my fencing friend, spent half a day underneath and we worked out the sequences for rapidly finding where and what is shorting. The point circuits were shorting as well as the track circuits and I’d been going round in circles for days. I now knew how to isolate a short down fairly quickly, progress was being made
Building it into a robust DCC layout
The layout was built DCC from the start with no isolation sections and a robust DCC bus running under the boards. It is running as DCC, based on Lenz base station and handsets. The point motors run on 12v DC, the points controlled by switches on a track diagram with LED route markers The H& M’s in the fiddle yard are run with a large CDU mounted under the base board
Work in progress
A lot of the scenery is not prototypically correct at the present time, but I felt it was important to have some scenery and change items when time allows
Carmarthen looking towards Aberystwyth
I continue to have a lot of fun and enjoyment ( I don’t get out much) modelling Carmarthen. I have got the trackwork so that time table running is possible, so another chapter can begin
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Plasticard Wagon building
a new O Gauge venture
I was looking through a box of old OO gauge bits , when I came across this wagon
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I made this when I was 14, out of plasticard sheet and the lead foil from wine bottles.
We must have had better quality wine back then
I never got around to brake gear, but it seems to have given me the bug again and look what came through the post on Saturday....
Thought I'd give it a go it a go in O gauge this time around
