Owned by: Peter Booth
SNOWDON (NWNGR) 8mm-1ft (1:38) 2ft Narrow Gauge
This layout portrays the 2 foot narrow gauge railway at Rhyd Ddu, the southern terminus of the North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways’ line from Dinas. The station was called Rhyd Ddu until the late 1880s when it took on the name Snowdon (South Snowdon in later years). It is modelled as it is thought to have been in the early part of the 20th century, and is largely based upon photographs and information found in the Welsh Highland Heritage Magazine. This railway was eventually incorporated into the ill-fated Welsh Highland Railway in 1922. However, it is now the mid-point of the new expanding Welsh Highland Railway, which is one of the most impressive narrow gauge railways in the British Isles.
Every attempt has been made to model the station buildings as accurately as possible. However, it has been necessary to shorten the run round loop considerably to keep the layout down to a reasonable size. It has also been necessary to model the areas away from the station buildings as it might have been, using a degree of licence, due to the lack of detailed photographic information away from the immediate station area.
As with my earlier Dinas layout, the intention has always been to model everything virtually from scratch, and this has largely been accomplished, the unusual scale of 8mm=1ft leaving little option. The track is spiked to wooden sleepers in the prototypical manner, the ballast being produced from crushed slate. The locomotives operated on the layout were constructed from nickel silver and brass, closely following the dimensions on the manufacturers’ original drawings. Coaches and wagons were constructed from wood, nickel silver or plasticard on brass/nickel silver underframes.
Stonework on the buildings has been produced by building up layers of polyfilla onto a scribed plaster base, the resulting textured finish being painted in water colours. The corrugated iron for the sheds and roofs was produced from Slater’s sheet, suitably trimmed and pinned. Grass is made from individual pieces of Gaugemaster grass mat together with static grass.
The major structures are now fully completed with internal lighting to show the internal detail. It is hoped that it will be possible to connect Snowdon NWNGR to Dinas NWNGR at some time in the not too distant future. This would be total combined length of about 34 feet.
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