'n ddiweddar adegau*

Well, the micro layout workshops at the Princeton Train club are going well. I have 4 keen students all with great ideas. Some narrow gauge, some standard gauge. All very creative ideas that I look forward to seeing develop. The age range is wide, from a teenager to one person who should be retired.

Last weekend I spent time working up their ideas into concepts for them to work on and expand. The teenager, Brian, as is the case with most teenagers, is a computer whizz and after he'd attended the workshop sped off home to work up his concept into some sketches on his computer using Trainz rail simulator software. Within a matter of hours he emailed me back some of his computer renderings and some renderings for one of the other participants concepts too. I was really impressed its for Brian to post his concept renderings on his website that you can see here so check out some of his work it's really jolly good. Then he offered to work up some of my sketches in Trainz too. Not one to resist the lure of modern technology I said Yes and these are the renderings he came up with. The images have a US styling of course rather than North Wales but it's still really impressive.

I like them, I really do. In fact his renderings put a whole new slant on my concept.

I expect Brain gets the same joy and pleasure out of doing his renderings on his computer as I do putting pen to paper, and not knowing what it takes to do his work it's unfair for me to comment too much. But I love the action of putting the pen on the paper and drawing. I love screwing a bit of paper up when I do something wrong. Does Brian get those same feelings selecting a texture to cover a wireframe or hitting the delete key? I will ask him next time...

* modern times

A fel ddechrau*

*And so it begins...
Often I start a blog with that phrase. Too much of an unhealthy obsession with the Sci-Fi series "Babylon 5" I guess.
But it's apt. I like it, and I've never seen it in Welsh before. Now having seen it there, I'd really like to hear Ambassador Kosh say it. Most of his statements were unfathomable anyway so that would be prefect for him.
But I'm getting way off the point here.
Research. That's the point.
The place to start if you're looking for inspirational pictures of the Welsh slate industry for a model railway is Dave Sallery's excellent Penmorfa. Pages and pages of pictures of the remains of the slate industry in North Wales and more besides. Everyone needs to view Penmorfa.
Next on my list is Subterranean Brittanica. Prinicpally devoted to underground structures it's surprising how many are rail served. Mines are also covered in great detail. Subrit is highly addictive and should come with some kind of warning.
Another couple of sites I'm using to research Cwm Lwch are aditnow and mine-explorer.co.uk both are basically forums for mine explorers but they have a huge photo gallery covering all their expeditions.

Those four sites have more than enough to keep me going to start with.

p.s. I'm going to keep going with the titles for my blog posts in Welsh for a while.

D edrych ar hon beth

Firstly I'd like to apologise to any Welshman who reads this blog and any pseudo-Welsh language that they might find herein. Please don't take offense.

I love Wales. It all stems from years holidaying in Wales growing up. I developed a love for the stunning scenery of Snowdonia and of course the narrow gauge railways there. I went to college for two years in Wrexham. But because of living in America I haven't been back there for over 10 years. Ten years too long in my estimation. I'd live there if I could.

So what is Cwm Lwch?

Cwm Lwch will be a micro model railway of a small Welsh quarry. The layout is being built as an instructional example for the micro model railway workshops that I will be presenting at the Princeton Model Train Club here in Minnesota.

The exact details of the layout are yet to be finalised. But I do find that keeping a blog helps to organise the thought processes. So blogging is an important part of the design and construction process and I like to start one as soon as possible. I have a blog for every layout I have underway.

The name. "Cwm Lwch" if it was real, grammatically correct Welsh would be pronounced "Coom Loowch". Which could easily be mispronounced as "come look" which is a pretty good instruction for someone to pay attention to the model.

So that's about it really. The layouts' progress and the classes progress will be documented here so you will be able to follow along with the construction much as you could with the blog for my 7 day model railroad blog. The workshops will cover about 6 weeks and are planned to start on February 20th.

Oh and the title of this post. D edrych ar hon beth? That is Welsh that could be translated as "Come look at this thing"