A Brief History 

The Brynhyfryd Light Railway, some call it The Bodgers Railway, came about in the late 20^th century, 1999 to be precise. As the owner retired early from a successful career, (ha-ha), he happened upon a programme on the TV showing Richard Blizzard putting together a kit of parts to make a Lady Anne. The following Monday an order for the kit was winging its way to Roundhouse, no thought as to where the loco was to run.  The loco arrived and was built, it was at this stage the owner joined the 16mm Association and on receiving his welcome pack recognised the secretary's name as a fellow worker in a previous life and so joined the local section. So far the section has been unable to evict him.

After visiting several garden railways it was decided to redesign the rear garden not only to make it more maintenance free but also to have a railway in it. The plans called for a three tier Garden, bottom tier to be slabbed with BBQ and seating, 1^st tier to be grass and top tier to be gravel with some heathers and plants in it and a dog bone shaped railway around the outside. This meant that a good third of the track is at a comfortable height of about 3-foot.

At this stage we encountered the bodgets, little beings that throw nothing-away, live underground and help run the railway. It’s actually quite a good job they live underground because her that must be obeyed has stipulated “no railway buildings or stations”. However on some running Sundays the bodgets do seem to find some buildings that appear around the track, only to disappear again when her that must be obeyed arrives back home.

The actual track was brass rail from Brandbright with some Tenmille points, later still some Peco sm32 points appeared. Now the bodgets came into their own, pallets were cut to become the sleepers and lengths of wood also cut from pallets formed the stringers that the length of track were fixed to.

Originally the track was laid directly onto the golden gravel, however this gave an awful lot of movement and derailments were not uncommon. It was then decided that the track required a more solid base of smaller stones, limestone chippings, these would knit together and form a base to support the track. It was decided that some plastic guttering would be inserted as shuttering between the gravel and the limestone so that the two did not intermingle. All looked well the track was re-laid and a test loco run. Disaster!!! The loco derailed everywhere. After a short investigation it was found that the shuttering had been positioned too close together and the cylinders were fouling the plastic. Not wanting to pull everything up a lot of thought went into the solution, chief bodget thought that if we soaked the limestone chippings with a mixture of water and cement the base would solidify and we could remove the plastic for reuse on the house facia. This seemed a bit too simple but we tried it and lo and behold we now have a plastic facia on the house and the track has worked perfectly for the past 5 years.