Back to the future

The steady accumulation of incremental growth seems to be the way that progress is made with this project. I'm quite happy to put it to one side for weeks or months until the mojo swings round to Victorian narrow gauge once more. I still keep a watching brief for the signs of how the complete entity may shape up, but for the moment I'm happy just to build the occasional jigsaw piece that will ultimately assemble into the complete picture. Sometimes it's good to get a glimpse of what that might be. Loosely inspired by the Emett designed railway at The Festival of Britain I've been constructing a station building. Though far from finished I couldn't resist the urge to mock up what might have been seen through the lens of a heavy plate camera more than a century ago.

 

There's a slight irony that this view of the past, gives the best insight into the future.

Parallels

I've mentioned in my last update about my growing interest in the DHR; as a consequence I've picked up a few early postcards of the line from e-bay recently. It struck me that some of them do have something of a look of mid-Wales about them. This one in particular goes some way to show how I visualise that Ganllwyd Tram's winding progress along the roadside.

Dawdling along

Like all the best minor lines the speed of progress of the Ganllwyd Tram can best be described as ambling. So what's new? Precious little, is the answer I'm afraid. What has been done are the construction of a few wagons, a card mock up of the turbine house and the development of a simple loop and pin coupler.

Part of the reason for the lack of dynamism is that I've recently become distracted by the Darjeeling Railway, which with one of those weird parallels of fate originally went under the name of the Darjeeling Steam Tramway. Anyone for tea?