- Jumping Cold this Morning -

- by Gwion Rhys Davies -

"Not very long ago, in the top left-hand corner of Wales, there was a railway. It wasn't a very long railway or a very important railway, but it was called The Merioneth and Llantisilly Rail Traction Company Limited, and it was all there was.”"And in a shed, in a siding at the end of the railway, lives the Locomotive of the Merioneth and Llantisilly Rail Traction Company Limited, which was a long name for a little engine so his friends just called him Ivor." — "Not very long ago, in the top left-hand corner of Wales, there was a railway. It wasn't a very long railway or a very important railway, but it was called The Merioneth and Llantisilly Rail Traction Company Limited, and it was all there was.”
"And in a shed, in a siding at the end of the railway, lives the Locomotive of the Merioneth and Llantisilly Rail Traction Company Limited, which was a long name for a little engine so his friends just called him Ivor."

July 31st 2021 I was invited to take part in a diorama building competition up at Warley MRC for their open day with MRYCG. The scope of the competition was quite simple, build any railway themed diorama on a provided 200x200mm baseboard provided by Scale Model Scenery in 5 hours.

At the time I had been putting my new resin 3D printer through it’s paces. Printing a variety of models and detailing parts to further enhance my modelling ability. This included the development of my very own OO scale model of Ivor the Engine, a character I had yet to see made to a satisfactory level.

I had previously attempted this on a more conventional FDM 3D printer but it was far too coarse and couldn’t reproduce the finer details like the had rails and whistles.

After a few weeks of brainstorming ideas, I finally landed on making the diorama based off the little engine. Using google sketchup to mock up the scene, I made quick work of the designing and building of the various parts of the model. The brid house made from a scrapped ventilator tower from an old chapel, Ivor’s bespoke made snow plow made by Beynon Smith and Eli the Baker’s old chestnut tricycle were all drawn up for 3D printing. The shed had originally been designed to be made on a laser cutter however I was unable to gain access to one in time and instead ended up printing the parts entirely out of resin. While I didn’t keep a record of all the printing done for this project it was at least 20 hours worth.

2021-08-02 17_56_27-Ivor prints 2.pdf @ 46.7% (Layer 10, RGB_8_CMYK) _.png

One aesthetic choice I had made was to have all the characters remain 2 dimensional. I though turning them into 3D models would lose some of the charm the show had. It was also easier than trying to find appropriate models…

Turning back to the model of Ivor himself I wanted to try learning a new skill, producing my own transfers. I used reference images from the show to create vector based images of the various lining and text on the locomotive and scaled them before printing them on Mr Decal Paper, special paper for creating decals. One thing to note when producing transfers, conventional laser or inkjet printers do not print in white! Because of this light colours don’t quite show as clearly on dark surfaces as they would on white paper. The yellow lining for example was far too faint to see clearly.

2021-08-02 18_20_41-Ivor Chassis.skp - SketchUp Make 2017.png

One question I have frequently heard while doing this project was what chassis had I used. The answer was simple, it’s made from scratch, the wheels were from a hornby L&Y pug with 3D printed frames and connecting rods. I plan to revisit this at some point however as I’m not quite satisfied with the result and may look towards the likes of Alan Gibson for more appropriate parts.

Timelapse of the build.