Hello from West Wales.

[ChrisGreaves]

...if I was any further west I would be Irish!

Be careful, Dave. After Ireland comes Newfoundland!
There again, I do have a guest room ...
Cheers
Chris

[End2end]

There again, I do have a guest room ...
Cheers
Chris

Surely you mean 'temporarily displaced layout room'!!
Thanks
End2end

[Chops]

Visited Wales back in 1975. Thought it was one of the most attractive places in the world, what with the meadows and valleys and streams. I suppose the Romans felt much the same way.

Recall riding on some heritage narrow gauge steam line. That put me over the top.

Just as I was ramping up for a UK holiday people were dropping like flies from the sniffles. Maybe 2022,then?

[Mountain]

Hopefully Chops. Did you visit the Tal-Y-Llyn, the Vale of Rheidol, or the Ffestiniog railway? Or one of the others? (What was running in 1975?) What colour/size were the locos? The VofR has very wide and big 2-6-2's that run on quite narrow track. (Just less then 2ft gauge. I say wide and big. Maybe not compared to what you have over there!). The Tal-Y-Llyn has very small locomotives that look full of character, and the Ffestiniog has quite a fleet, but you will really have noticed their Double Fairlie locomotives, which are not exactly unique to that line as Fairlies made it to other railways in the past, and neither, like what was once thought, did they have the earliest Fairlies as boiler remains of two standard gauge examples have been found of a pair that date from a decade or two earlier... But they can claim to be unique in running them in the UK. (Are any still on the rails anywhere else in the world?)

[Tigcraft]

Just looking in as a total new comer with no experience of railway modelling but eager to learn.
:wave: Dave.

Thank god im not the only ‘total novice’ on here then! I know narthing at all about this new hobby my wife threw at me for Xmas and now I’ve a fresh ‘unusual’ shaped baseboard on the construction! Oh and a ‘welcome in’ from ‘Last of the summer wine’ country! Eric

[Bigmet]

Visited Wales back in 1975. Thought it was one of the most attractive places in the world, what with the meadows and valleys and streams...

You definitely need another trip! The whole archipelago is of tiny little islands on the global scale, but so full of varied geology in a very small area that practically all the surface geology of the planet is on view. It's largely attractive, but the greatest concentration of impossibly pretty landscape is on the West side on the older rocks, such as you saw in Wales.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_Great_Britain

[Journeyman]

Hi Eric.
You are making better progress than I am I’m still drawing out various layouts to see what can be fitted into the various spaces Once I make a decision I will order track.

The first British geology books were written after studying the Pembrokeshire cliffs!

Wave, Dave.

[Bigmet]

You are making better progress than I am I’m still drawing out various layouts to see what can be fitted into the various spaces Once I make a decision I will order track...

Time spent working out what you might want saves a lot of mistakes. But even experienced railway modellers still get it wrong! A well known story is that of the late and much lamented David Jenkinson, who had a custom assembled sectional building roughly 20 by 40 feet put up in his garden, in order to build a very comprehensive section of the Settle and Carlisle, a 4mm layout titled 'Little Long Drag'. He got it finished as a running layout in pretty swift order, before realising that this really wasn't what he wanted after all! But he still wanted a model railway so instead built a (mostly outdoor) O gauge layout. Some of the locos and stock are on the NRM York O gauge layout, where David was for many years the education officer.

[Mountain]

I did hear that Wales is unique in that the amount of geological minerals mirrors the entire USA but in a small space. (I think they mentioned geological features as well?) If one lives in Wales one does not have to go far to find interesting features, though one of rhe problems in Wales is that roads from east to west or west to east (Anything heading towards London or Birmingham etc) are lovely wide roads, but if one lives in Wales and needs to travel through Wales which mostly means one will be travelling from north to south or south to north and it is actually quicker if one happens to live somewhere in the middle of the south coast of Wales to go all the way into England and use their nice motorways, and then go all the way back into Wales then to try to drive the lovely but arrow twisty roads between north and south.

[Bigmet]

...it is actually quicker if one happens to live somewhere in the middle of the south coast of Wales to go all the way into England and use their nice motorways, and then go all the way back into Wales then to try to drive the lovely but narrow twisty roads between north and south.

What Wales needs for rapid internal North-South travel, is a motorway in a tunnel, on a line Swansea -Conwy. The 140 mile Swancon motorway, dead straight with interchanges every 20 miles, will be the world's first fully automated route for autodrive cars, all vehicles moving at 150mph, and an end to end journey time of under an hour.

[Mountain]

...it is actually quicker if one happens to live somewhere in the middle of the south coast of Wales to go all the way into England and use their nice motorways, and then go all the way back into Wales then to try to drive the lovely but narrow twisty roads between north and south.

What Wales needs for rapid internal North-South travel, is a motorway in a tunnel, on a line Swansea -Conwy. The 140 mile Swancon motorway, dead straight with interchanges every 20 miles, will be the world's first fully automated route for autodrive cars, all vehicles moving at 150mph, and an end to end journey time of under an hour.

I can't see that happening anytime soon as I have already gone through six car tyres in around a year ad a half and two of those were due to pot holes and others were due to thorns from hedge cutting(Averaging about a tyre a year. A few can be saved but often they go in too close to the sidewall so they need replacing) or other objects or excessive wear as our tarmac is rather rough in places these days especially at corners where it is worn. It is not cheap to replace so many tyres and I only have a small lightweight car.
I am lucky in that I have not broken a wheel. I would hate to have a car with low profile tyres these days!
What I am sayig is that there is so little money available to spend on the roads we have already got, I can't see money being spent on new roads in Wales for a long time. Admittedly they are doing their very best to maintain our roads on the limited budget they have, but the thought of a major new road network anywhere in Wales in the near future I can't see it happening. There isn't really enough money to even plan such a route let alone build one.

[Journeyman]

Good advise Bigmet, working out various deigns is very enjoyable, have even started negotiations with the management to appropriate different rooms! The design spiral is getting smaller .

You two Mountain and Bigmet are crazy, all those beautiful twisty roads just made for motorcycles and you want to put me in a tunnel!! Must admit modern bike tyres don’t last long on our roads and it’s a bugger to fix punctures on them.

Dave.

[Mountain]

Actually I do love the nice scenic twisty roads and I prefer to use them rather then use motorways where I could risk hitting a traffic jam.
It is more that there are no alternatives without driving all the way over into England and back which is said to be quicker from south to north Wales (And vice versa) even though it adds 80 to 100 miles onto the journey. (It won't be quicker from where you live though, but for those who live within easy reach of the western side of the M4, I have been told that it cuts an hour off their journey as long as they don't hit too many traffic jams).

[Journeyman]

Yes I know you are right Mountain, there has been a debate for ages about how the north and south are divided by the roads.
Can you tell me how to post an image on a thread I was going to start a new thread about some of my ideas for a layout but can’t see how to include the drawing?

Thanks, Dave.

PS.
Just sorted it when I found the bar at the bottom!

[Mountain]

I have just seen your reply. I look forward to your thread.