Bryn Nadolig

Croeso i Bryn Nadolig. Pentref dychmygol o Ucheldiroedd Cymru ar fy nghynllun cul, lle mae'n Nadolig drwy'r flwyddn.

Or loosely translated from Welsh language into my very best Australian... Welcome to Christmas Hill. A fictional Welsh Highlands village on my narrow-gauge layout, where it is Christmas all year round. This tabletop layout is modelled in OO9 Scale, meaning the scenery and structures are 1:76 OO scale yet the track width is only 9 mm wide (equivalent to N gauge), making it the perfect size for an apartment-based modeller such as me.

Living Down Under in Australia, my inspiration for modelling narrow gauge steam has slowly been simmering ever since being invited to photograph behind the scenes at the Puffing Billy Railway near Melbourne, Australia. There's something about those tiny yet powerful narrow-gauge locomotives that just begs you to model them.

That's me acting as fireman for the day on the Puffing Billy Railway near Melbourne, Australia.

In more recent years, Bachmann have produced some absolutely brilliant OO9 scale off-the-shelf models, and the more I researched where these locomotives operated, the more fascinated I became by the Ffestiniog & Welsh Highlands Railways. The heritage railway in the heart of Snowdonia is the combination of two historic former slate railways and being a major tourist drawcard in the north of Wales, has an extensive website, gift shop and many readily available books for me to draw upon when modelling something from the other side of the world. Though I've never been there, one of the attractions of model railways is the ability to become immersed in something that is completely different from your everyday surrounds.

Fictitious as it may be, Bryn Nadolig is a welcome change of scenery for me after modelling in Australian outline for the best part of the last decade. A small village set somewhere along the line in the hills outside Porthmadog, it provides some continual running set amongst a Christmas theme. And who knows? With enough book sales, I may one day get to afford to visit and ride aboard the Ffestiniog & Welsh Highlands Railways. Until then... come along on my fictitious ride.