4mm Llanfair ....

[Dave Holt]

That's not a sun tan, Larry, it's rust! (Same applies in Oldham.)
Dave.

 

[LarryG]

I had finished wiring the layout when an Electrofrog point failed. It was replaced with a large radius flat-bottom point along and a short stretch of siding with re-spaced sleepers to match Peco bullhead. Fingers crossed everything works in the morning and the replacement track can be weathered...

 

[LarryG]

Laying an operating rod to the new point meant melting the rod through the plastic webbing on the point in front. The point it replaced wads a medium radius which was shorter and would have meant burrowing under the adjacent points frog.... a no-no...



Through and easier than expected...


New point fully operational ~ and weathered....


Clow up of the operating lever with a frog polarity changeover switch to the Electrofrog point...

 

[Pencarrow]

Hi Larry, grandmother and eggs and all that but... I assume you've checked the brass rod under the rails doesn't short the track?

 

[LarryG]

Hi Larry, grandmother and eggs and all that but... I assume you've checked the brass rod under the rails doesn't short the track?

Yup.

EDITTED 13th (!) October. I had a short this morning and it took ages to find the culprit. Yes, it was one of the square brass rods that had scrapped its way upwards until it finally touched the underside of a rail.

 

[Pencarrow]

Yup.

Just checking like...

 

[LarryG]

A view along the track to check 'flow' of rails. Going diagonally across the distant curve with be a stone overbridge and road on embankment to act as a scenic break between the scenic part and the fiddle yard....



The short section of Peco Code 75 flat-bottom track with re-spaced sleepers connecting the point to the siding...


All the alterations made over the past few months have finally bore fruit. It's all working and I have achieved my goal of completing the track and wiring before the end of October. Buildings and scenery can be added from now on...


The glue, lay & ballast in one go technique takes planning and speed, but it eliminates that "Jeepers, I've got the ballasting to do one day" nightmare. The more robust the track the easier it, but I feel bullhead is worth the effort because it looks realistic especially in the eye of the camera. Same with large radius turnouts that fit in neatly with the foreshortening of everything else.

 

[LarryG]

I was too occupied to open todays parcels, however, I've since dunnit and found buffer stops from Peco (left) as well as Lanarkshire models. The latter are very tidy and easy to solder together using low-melt designed for whitemetal. It's many years since I used low-melt let alone open the little drawer. Counting 10 sleepers back from the end of the siding, I am going to remove the rails and then alter the chairs to suit Lanarkshire's buffer stop. They're not insulated so they will go on the carriage siding the end of which loco will never tread! . The yard headshunt, on the otherhand, will will have a Peco buffer stop or a sleeper-built stop, then it won't matter if I miss-judge momentum...

 

[Pencarrow]

I was too occupied to open todays parcels, however, I've since dunnit and found buffer stops from Peco (left) as well as Lanarkshire models. The latter are very tidy and easy to solder together using low-melt designed for whitemetal. It's many years since I used low-melt let alone open the little drawer. Counting 10 sleepers back from the end of the siding, I am going to remove the rails and then alter the chairs to suit Lanarkshire's buffer stop. They're not insulated so they will go on the carriage siding the end of which loco will never tread! . The yard headshunt, on the otherhand, will will have a Peco buffer stop or a sleeper-built stop, then it won't matter if I miss-judge momentum...

View attachment 150166

Hi Larry, with the Lanarkshire buffer stops I superglued some squares of tissue paper to the rear of the buffer beam and, when set, superglued that to the rail uprights. Worked well, firm fix and electrically insulated.

 

[LarryG]

Lanarkshire buffer stops fixed in situ at the end of the storage siding...

 

[LarryG]

Track-testing was courtesy of a Dapol DCC FITTED GWR 53xx, seen taking water. The Peco buffer stops have had a rod connecting both sides fitted behind the beam and a spare Lanarkshire beam. I've been learning DCC all over again, although there's not a lot to alter on non-sound decoders. Must admit I am missing 'sound' and so I will be thinning out the loco collection. This 2-6-0 will be the mainstay on Llanfair D.

 

[oldravendale]

Isn't there a GWR loco named Llanvair Grange?

Indeed, Larry. Here it is at Southall (well, Llanfair), next to a GWR 2-8-0.



Brian

 

[Focalplane]

Why not anglicise?

Lanvuthlin.

After all the Welsh changed Portmadoc! Their right, of course, though some of the rationale is a bit contorted.

 

[AJC]

Why not anglicise?

Lanvuthlin.

After all the Welsh changed Portmadoc! Their right, of course, though some of the rationale is a bit contorted.

Not sure even 14th century clerks made that sort of mangling (and believe me, in the day job I have seen a few). Portmadoc/Porthmadog is one of those - madly ahistorical, but also atypical - aberrations. Denby and Tenby (which have the same Welsh root, Din-bach, the small fort, which would be pronounced rather differently) are more organic examples.

Interestingly (if you're me), Llanfyllin is one of those places with remarkably narrow range of variations. Below is an example from the Melville-Richards place name database - Melville Richards Archive Place-Name Database - Agreement - which shows how little, over about eight centuries, the spelling has been changed - note that the larger variations are routinely by more distant authors.



They'd be little point in picking an Angiclised, wholly alien, spelling in a Cymrophone area with an established written tradition - though the Post Office was prone to that as this resident of Tunbridge/Tonbridge can testify...

Adam

 

[Yorkshire Dave]

Interestingly (if you're me), Llanfyllin is one of those places with remarkably narrow range of variations. Below is an example from the Melville-Richards place name database - Melville Richards Archive Place-Name Database - Agreement - which shows how little, over about eight centuries, the spelling has been changed - note that the larger variations are routinely by more distant authors.

They'd be little point in picking an Angiclised, wholly alien, spelling in a Cymrophone area with an established written tradition - though the Post Office was prone to that as this resident of Tunbridge/Tonbridge can testify...

Hi Adam, interesting stuff and just thinking aloud - is it possible the Form used in the table is partially phonetic based on how the scribes heard them at the time of writing?

 

[AJC]

Hi Adam, interesting stuff and just thinking aloud - is it possible the Form used in the table is partially phonetic based on how the scribes heard them at the time of writing?

Oh, one of those deceptively simple questions.

Yes, it is, though for a variety of reasons, it's less likely in the case of place names than personal names.

Obviously all the sources we have are written and most of those will have originated locally, in the form of petitions or local administrators, secular or religious, many of whom would be Welsh speaking (to an extent, at least - it's usually fairly obvious when a clerk who'd never heard the language turned up or was doing that, but that's bitter experience of wrangling medieval handwriting). In other words most of these spellings will have come from people who knew those places.

One thing to note about that table is that we are also looking at transcription conventions which are derived from transcribing Latin. So many of those 'u's should be 'v's because in most medieval hands they look the same. So do 'n's. In Latin it doesn't much matter, in English it does as it does in Welsh. So William Camden (a Londoner) whose attempt is perhaps most off beam was probably looking at someone's handwriting with a bit of guesswork.

Personal names are a bit different because it's much more likely the clerk will just write what he (as it usually was) hears. My favourite examples include four chaps called Llywelyn (other choices are available on that one even in modern orthography) where the poor clerk was simply guessing and went with Thlewelin/Luellin and others. Some of the French attempts at Welsh names from 15th century Normandy (lists of soldiers names from garrisons there formed a large part of a project I was involved in) are decidedly eccentric but again, the clerk could only write down what he heard.

That's a long way of saying 'yes, but not especially', isn't it?

Adam

 

[Yorkshire Dave]

Thanks @AJC . It's one of the areas which does interest me.

 

[Focalplane]

The history of place names interests me too but I would hate to get off topic on such a well managed thread. Suffice it to say that I have been guilty of recording what I heard said in one language, translated into another and then anglicized.

The naming of layouts has always had a sub-theme of the absurd or ridiculous, particularly when, as in Larry’s case the layout is not strictly (100%) based on a real place.

 

[John57sharp]

Not so long ago I heard a bloke speaking loudly into his mobile phone while parked up in Bala, “I’m at Lake Llyn” …..
John

 

[Stephen Freeman]

I think we can take it then that the gentleman concerned was not a Welsh speaker, I confess I am not (though I do have part of my family tree that was), but I thought everybody knew that, sadly not.