Playing trains

Morfa is intended to be a long term project. I've always estimated that it will keep me amused and busy building for about twenty years. I suppose that as I started construction three and bit years ago that leaves another seventeen to go. I had thought that the main circuit would take another year or more to finish; hand building track with individual sleepers results in slow progress. However thanks to the efforts of friends who pitched in with staple gun and a box of flexitrack off-cuts and misshapes the circuit was completed two weekends ago. It is of course a temporary fix, and proper track will replace the ugly bodge we created but for now it's huge fun to see trains circling round.

Inspiration, here and now.

Though it's always interesting to work out how one got where one is, it's also good to take a look at the current influences. One thing that I keep going back to watch is this you tube clip of loco hauled summer Saturday trains on the Cambrian main line between Machynlleth and Welshpool.

It's not just the internet that inspires, I'm fortunate to live twenty miles or forty minutes away from Morfa Mawddach so trips to the area are frequently possible. One of my current favourite views of Morfa is from the terminus of the Fairbourne Railway on the sand spit sticking out into the Mawddach estuary.

In the begining.

It's likely that like most things in life our tastes in model railways started to develop at an early age. I know most move on from ready to run trains whizzing round the carpet, though there's still something captivating about tin plate rattling away on scenery free bare boards. I'm also fairly sure that it's not just the obvious that influences what we choose to make models of. Looking just at the real railway or the modelling press can only lead to an incomplete picture, at best a railway centric vision of the real world at worst something disconnected from the other realities of life.

It's hard to tease out the exact starting point that Morfa originates from, but in general terms it's strongly influenced by childhood family holidays to north and mid Wales. That it's a Sulzer stronghold probably owes a lot to watching class 24s splutter away in the sidings at Penmaenmawr as they walloped mineral wagons and hoppers about. Though Penmaenmawr was the most frequented holiday destination the Cardigan bay resorts of Barmouth, Tywyn and Aberystwyth also featured. I carry some half remembered magical memories of  journeys over Talerddig, the ramshackle halts at Abertafol and Dyffryn, the cool of the slate caverns at Pensarn and having the freedom at fourteen of being able to go out on my own with a rail rover and explore all this fascinating and enchanting world.