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…