Why?

So, there are a couple of questions that probably need addressing before I go any further. They are both “Why”.
Why bother modelling such ridiculously small trains?
Why the Ffestiniog Railway?
Aswering the second question first, because that’s easiest. I have always loved the Ffestiniog, ever since my first trip on the line as a spotty impressionable teenager on our first family holiday to north Wales. We travelled on many of the Great Little Trains of Wales on that trip. Snowdon, Tal-y-Llyn, Vale of Rheidol, Welshpool and Llanfair to name but a few. But it was the Ffestiniog I fell in love with. Our first trip on the railway was behind the Alco “Mountaineer”. Then the trains only went as far as Dduallt then or “Doo-alt” as we called it, and were totally shocked when the guard called out “The-acht” or something like that. The Railway reached Blaenau Ffestiniog and I was a member of the Ffestiniog Railway Society for many years. But never got to volunteer. Then life got in the way and I probably didn’t even visit for as many as 15 years, until my wife and I decided to visit North Wales on one of our trips to the UK from America. The Railway had expanded, becoming instrumental in the development of the Welsh Highland Railway. We rode both. The Welsh Highland is stunning but the Ffestiniog still grabs my heart.
The FR has unique and beautiful locomotives, like the double Fairlies “Little Wonder” and ‘Merddin Emrys” as well as the England locos like ‘Prince” and “Princess”.  Constructing such distinctive locomotives in such a tiny scale as 1:305 would help to create a railway atmosphere. Otherwise ther would be a danger of just having coloured blobs of plastic circulating around the scenery.
As for the first point. Why model these small trains? I guess that comes down to wanting to push my model making skills and try new things. I dabbled with T gauge before and quite successfully. I even scratch built my own loco. I forget what it was now. It was a hopelessly over scale body on a Eishindo Bo-Bo chassis. It worked so I guess that was a win but the project I was working on stalled and I moved onto something else.
I feel that working in these small scales can help me develop different skill sets and problem solving processes. Take the side tanks on Little Wonder for example. If I were working in 4mm scale I’d cut styrene sheet to size and glue the pieces together. Here in 1:305 scale the side tanks are but a few millimeters in size. So it’s far easier to cut an appropriately sized section of styrene strip to the correct length and use that. Then these different ways of looking at things can lead me to finding different ways to solve problems in larger scales.
Well, that’s my theory anyway. Let’s see if it works.