Wow! I've not updated this for a while...
Well, Isle Ornsay's first exhibition came and went, I learnt a few things to improve re. operation, particularly replacement of two 12" radius Peco points. I will be swapping these for the newer 'mainline' ones which will necessitate the realignment of two sidings, but it will be worth it in the long run to improve reliability of operation.
Photos of stock made by myself, Mick Thornton and Ted Polet in operation on the layout at Narrow Gauge Sou
.. to paraphrase Monty Python.
More rock castings have been placed around the yard end of the layout to sort their positions before fixing them in place and carving the areas between them.
All these castings came out of one mould on one pour!!
Tweaking of the foam base needed to make sure there's sufficient clearance for stock, and to move it back from the turntable a bit.
I have been doing some work in the yard to add some ballast a la Nevard, i.e. air drying
Here are some piccies of how the headland is looking at the moment with the initial batch of castings from my Bragdon Enterprise moulds after filling and carving.
As you'll see, the casting at the rear is full of cracks. This is because of the way I'm doing the casting. To save weight all castings are very thin (wafffer thin if you're a Monty Python fan) and are cast flat, then cracked to fit the foam scenic base beneath. Filler is then applied to the gaps and carved to shape.
The recently documented strange phenomena occurring at Isle Ornsay must have had a positive effect, as more buildings have appeared in the village immediately next to the station and harbour.
As I've mentioned before, the street is based on the curved series of properties at Plockton, but is made up of a more eclectic mix of buildings from prototypes all over Western Scotland.
Left to right you have:
The hotel (still needs a name) + lodge (Dundonnel Hotel), croft (modified from t
Tonight I have received reports of some strange phenomena occurring around Isle Ornsay.
Many of the local residents have been taken ill with suspected cases of severe fright. It seems this was brought on by them witnessing random areas of their landscape spontaneously changing from off-white to brown in colour.
There was no warning that this would happen and it has caused many residents distress. The local doctor was overrun with people needing a lie down and a paper bag to breath
For the rolling stock on Isle Ornsay I've decided to use a method that's been tried and tested in 009 for many years - Ratio coach sides. They are actually good for the larger stock that I'm trying to portray - sharing more with the Irish narrow gauge than the Festiniog.
I've already completed (well, almost) an observation coach, but I've been working on another 5 today. I would have done another three, but I knew I wasn't going to have enough L section to do so.
At the start of work th
Just to prove that, although this blog hasn't been updated for a while, there has been progress on the layout.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xthDHBmtvzM
More details are available on my blog: http://hlrco.wordpress.com or on the layout thread on NGRM: http://ngrm-online.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2449
Well, the final day of operation on the Glencloy Light Railway came to an end only a little over an hour ago. The scenes at Dunbracken have been captured for all to see.
Here are some images of the final day. All the trains carried large heather wreaths* on their front to commemorate the occasion.
Barra arrives with the early train.
Barra and Staffa head the special into Dunbracken whilst the railcar waits to depart. In all the years of operation of the line this is the first
A momentous occasion at Isle Ornsay today, the first public operation of the under construction Hebridean Light Railway. The contractors had cleared their tools and equipment out of the way to allow the public a clear view of how the site would look when the line is completed.
All point operation was carried out from the central box and several locos and one railcar were in operation for display runs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq4O55Zsx_s
However, now that this milestone has pa
All the servos are now fitted to the layout, I've used some brackets made by Motrak Models to hold them against the underside of the baseboard. A piece of piano wire is then looped and threaded through the servo horn, and passed through the baseboard and the tiebar of the point.
Only one point was too close to a baseboard member to be mounted like this, so I had to resort to using wire in tube and operating it from an offset position. It took me 3 attempts to get it right, but I wasn't go
No progress on the servos for point operation as the Tam Valley Octopus that arrived was faulty. Duncan has been very helpful in fault finding and is sending me another free of charge.
In the mean time I've been making a start on the basic shells of some of the buildings:
Two of the ones so far are based on prototypes from Plockton.
The small single storey building on it's own is a freelance fisherman's store. The other two buildings are based on these:
I've been cracking on with getting the basis of the goods yard in place.
Here are some photos of progress on building v2 of the goods shed (v1 just didn't look right), this time I decided to cut out the card that will form the base of the road and tie it into the platform surface too.
As you can see from the above photo, I've stuck the shell of the loco stabling shed together too.
It's enough to easily accommodate one of the large tank locos, has space down one si
I've done a bit more work on describing the route of the system, Part 1 covered the section from Isle Ornsay to Broadford.
I've just finished detailing the next section of the line, from Broadford to Sligachan. This is a section of railway line that, I think, could have provided views of some of the most spectacular scenery in the country, excuse enough to provide some tourist stock with larger windows, perhaps like the Ratio LNWR coach sides.
More details on my blog: http://hlrco.wordp
I've just bought some products from Tam Valley depot to control servos to act as the point motors. Similar speed as tortoises, and the servos cost £19.99 for 10. The Octopus II control unit + associated gubbins is working out at around £85 to control 8 points. Additional bits include 16 mimic board controllers which consist of a push button and two LEDs (single, not bicolour) for route indication, as well as Y servo leads to link two push buttons to one servo. I'm excited to see how these
A special occasion at our 009 Society meeting tonight, THE FIRST TRAIN at Isle Ornsay!!!!
The loco is Society member Charlie Insley's conversion of the Parkside Dundas W&L #85 kit on a Fleischmann 2-6-2T chassis.
Nice to see things moving under their own power! The only wired bits of track were the two platform roads, so there's still lots to do before one can make it's way along the entire length of the layout.
I got the track laying as far as it can go for now with help from a friend today. All the main running lines are down now, apart from the section leading up to the tunnel, I will leave this until I have built the fiddle yard board. The only other sections are the line leading up to the turntable, I will begin designing the components of the T/T soon, and the front line on the mineral quay as it will be raised above normal track level on metal beams and columns.
Having laid all the track I
There is some progress to report on the layout
The woodwork on the baseboards is now largely complete, bar some minor sanding to get things matching together across joins nicely. I'm pleased because it means one of my least favourite parts of building a layout are nearing completion. I've learnt a lot about building baseboards, and when I do it next time I think I'll know how to make them considerably lighter than these!
Here are some photos of how the layout stands now, all fascia
For my birthday I received a Roxey Mouldings Cyprus Government Rly 'Famagusta' kit which is for a 2-6-2T to fit the Farish Prairie chassis. I've always liked big tank engines and this kit is the ideal starting point for a kitbash to represent some of my favourite locos from Irish 3' gauge lines.
Shutters sanded off the cab sides, and beading along tank tops removed - i'll be replacing this with plasticard strip which will go a slightly different route to that on the castings. The boiler
Some photos of today's track laying...
The track is a mix of Peco 009 Mainline and N gauge code 55 for the diamond crossing.
Testing the curves on the entrance to the tunnel with a piece of temporarily placed flexi track...
Underlay underway!
To get some track down for the demo I'm doing at the Tonbridge MRC show next weekend I've spent the morning glueing down the underlay on boards one and two.
To start with I glued the track sections of the full size layout plan in the desired position on the baseboard, this will ensure that I get the track in the intended location compared to my original doodle. The next stage is exactly what John Clutterbuck has used on his O14 layout which resides in his loft (Artic
Some layouts have a history developed to accompany them.
Mine is a little different, history has defined the layout. It's based on a proposed line, details of which were found in the National Archives. So I have some parameters to work within whist developing the layout. However as it was never built I have to assume some things along the way to get to an operational line.
To do this I've been producing a history to accompany the layout, and I've now gotten it into a more completed fo
as an update to my last entry, here's how the boards are shaping up:
The sub assembly of glueing and screwing the trackbase and sea bed to the stripwood formers has been completed on all the boards now, thanks to some help from Cornelius today!
Here's how it looks now:
And with the track templates to show how much (or how little, if you want to look at it that way) of the layout will be taken up by track.
I'm going to call a halt to the baseboard construction now unt
Today I've made a start on building the baseboards, here's no.1 - the board next to the fiddle yard which contains the goods yard, turntable, tunnel mouth and cannery.
Hopefully over the next couple of days I'll get the backscene boards screwed on too.
All screwed and glued, it's now nice and rigid. The running surface will be covered in laminate floor underlay to provide a little sound deadening and to help with expansion matters when it's up in the loft.
For those interested I've been looking at the Hebridean Light Railway proposal details to determine just where the Isle of Skye's railway would have run. I've now managed to get it onto Google maps in a very basic form. It doesn't 100% match the drawings yet, one day I'll update it so that it's as accurate as possible.
There is a description of the first stage of the line from Isle Ornsay to Broadford on my blog here: http://hlrco.wordpre...y-to-broadford/
In other news, I've been work
Returning to some stock construction for a while, I've been working on a large bogie fish van inspired by the ones used by the Londonderry & Lough Swilly Railway in Ireland. The seed for this idea was planted when looking back through my book collection and coming across the Peco book on modelling Irish Narrow Gauge by David Lloyd. David built a van for Coolcalaghta by using a converted Airfix Siphon G.
As his layout was representing a 3' gauge line and mine is 2'6" gauge I felt that t
