According to the 1907 wagon census the Caledonian had 1861 pig iron wagons, of which 1300 were to Diagram 16 in various build lots to either 8 or 14 tons. Certainly the CR moved a lot of pig iron from furnaces to steelworks and foundries, but these wagons were used as a sturdy one plank dropside for anything that needed moved. One of those wagons that turned up everywhere and is very useful for forming short rakes on the layout.
These two are from the whitemetal 51L kit, they go tog
The painting and lining seems to have gone fairly smoothly with this one. I used the same double transfer technique developed for the Grampian Corridor stock which helps. Certainly not as sharp as an expert painter could achieve, but I know my limitations.
I have painted the interior in a simple fashion and added a guard and some parcels, mail bags and a tandem. Very little of that can be seen , but it gives the impression of use.
Anyway, a couple of posed pictures.
Some photos of the brake wagons. Both have a rather rough appearance, but I doubt they were high up the list for maintenance.
I have made a few guesses about the final finishing.
Firstly, I’m not sure about the running numbers. I know that No. 185 was of this type so I have just used a couple of close low numbers. Being built on early wagon frames they might just have been painted on rather than having number plates.
Secondly,
The D38 glass well wagon has given me a challenge but I’m reasonably happy with the overall result.
The support frame has a slight lean, but it is only really noticeable in closeup and square on photos. As specials I think the wagon would be in good condition for the Edwardian era, it is in its first decade in service. I therefore just gave it some very light weathering.
If someone has any transfers a scale 1” high that say “OIL” then I’ll buy some. those 3 dots above the
I seem to be in a wagon building mood these days. Dunno whether I’m locked down, locked up or or which tier of the cake I’m on, so wagon building is a cheap and time consuming activity.
Now it might be argued that I’m getting my ratios wrong again, too many unusual wagons and not enough of the bread and butter diagrams. I’d agree, but the fun is in the odd stuff. I therefore decided to have a shot at one of the 1896 built D38 glass well wagons. Decent pics in the wagon books and a di
The 83 members of the 709 Class 0-6-0 tender engines were built by McIntosh from 1895 onwards. They were the original Jumbos, all Westinghouse fitted for mixed traffic duties. Five members of the class Nos 583 to 587 were fitted with condensing apparatus for working the Glasgow underground lines.
The model dates back to the 90s, some of it from a secondhand djh kit, the rest scratchbuilt. Unusually for me it runs on Gibson sprung hornblocks. I noticed that it had developed a s
Having built all the signals it seems like a good idea to install them. The first step in the process is the baseboard waltz. Way back I was asked about my baseboard construction, and I said I would post some pics when I shifted it all about. Much has been said about baseboard building over the years but it basically boils down to designing them to suit the type of layout you want to build in the space available. So firstly, castors. All the boards and for that matter the workbench and various
I have had some Worsley Works etches in the kit stash for a while, so I thought I’d have a shot at building one. This is a 45 foot Diagram 35 full brake, first lot built 1897. Worsley Works only provide the basic body, though it is a very accurate and nicely etched set. Slots for the guards duckets do need widening a little. The builder supplies the rest.
Bogies are Comet 8 foot SR pattern converted to Drummond style by removing the top flange and adding small inserts to give the cu
I have been relaxing a bit, doing some layout maintenance and just running trains. All is now running smoothly and I can sit back and watch…..
Well that was the idea. One of the problems with having a real good clean up of the railway room is that you end up with a nice clear workbench. All the tools put away tidily, the materials stocked in the right drawers. Yes, well. They say nature abhors a vacuum. I think we should change that to plasticard abhors an empty workbench.
Way back in the 1980s I made one of these from a John Boyle etch ( it is labelled Decent Models No 74 ). I used standard CR parts and it made up into a nice van, but back then I lacked information so a lot of the basics were just wrong. It has been stored a long time but I was having a sort out, rediscovered it and decided to have a go at bringing it up to standard. A day in the brake fluid followed by an attack with the flame torch and I had a new kit to make.
So what exactly is it
Progress on the 670 is delayed at the moment until I get the parts for the gearbox. Can’t be helped, difficult times slow things down.
Anyway, I need to build something. I had a browse through drawings and books and settled on a D27 Machinery wagon. ( the CRA does sets of wagon drawings on a cd )
So with a bit of luck here is one I can make from the stuff I have. The body is laminated from 10 thou styrene cut on the silhouette. Bit of an odd wagon, big plates on the sid
I have been sorting out the western end of the layout so the boards have been wheeled out for access. Getting a bit chilly this time of year so pvas do take a while to dry for the scenic stuff.
Anyway, a few pics of that corner. I’m not entirely happy with the brick gable end of the factory. I keep an eye open for something more suitable but as ever its the problem of getting a good square on photo of it.
Back at the bench again. The Caledonian built 40 Dia 25 lime wagons from 1886 to 1888. They were essentially a Dia 22 mineral wagon with a roof.
The CRA do a drawing of it, which gives the wb as 8’6’’. I don’t think that is correct. The Dia 25 is essentially a Dia 22 mineral wagon with a roof, and they are definitely a 7’9” wb. The Diagram book gives the Dia 25 wb as 7’9” as well.
So I scanned in pics of both types of wagon, scaled them to size and superimposed t
So like many I’m stuck inside unable to work, so keeping optimistic I’ll treat it as a rehearsal for retirement. Time to take stock, have a good dig through all the boxes and see what I have available to make things with.
Signal parts come on frets or bags of several bits. Of course all the spare bits are put away, so having sorted through them I realised that I had enough bits for a couple more signals. An ideal project, fiddly and time consuming. Takes the mind off other things.
Way back I made a blog about the traverser. I’m the first to admit that traversers are not the ideal storage solution, but space dictated the use of one. At the time I used some heavy duty drawer slides, smooth movement but I always had some problems with backlash when running round a train. To add to the problem they had some sideplay, only a mm or so, but that turned out to be an issue.
Anyway, couple of weeks back I turned the layout on to run a couple of early evening trains whil
A blog in several parts, due to photo size.
The kit is designed so that the body folds up from the floor in two halves jointed at the floor centreline, with quite large gaps to be filled with card. The corridor wall is then soldered in. I thought about this and decided it worried me. The sides fold inwards about 5 mm at cantrail height narrowing the aperture to get in and do the interior. I made coaches this way in the past and it was a real hassle getting in to add details and glaze
Scenic work is not something I am very good at, but there we are a gap filled. I wanted it to look like one of the old estates that got enveloped by the progress of Glasgow to the west but has yet to be developed. The result is some lengths of very old boundary wall in some odd locations if you dig about in the area.
Anyway, it fills a gap.
If you are going to have a gate, you might as well have a working one.
Last year I needed some styrene sections and as it happened the only place with stock was Hattons. Oh well. Anyway having ordered the stuff I needed I had a look at the pre-owned stuff. Just for fun, honest. Anyway I saw a Hornby generic 4 wheel NBR brake which had been dropped. The end was well bashed, buffers and couplings broken, the whole thing bent, body off. But all the bits had been put in the box and it was a tenner. Add to basket.
But why ? A lot has been said about these co
I made up most of the tender body and then spent a while getting things level. Set the buffer heights and shim the compensation beams so the footplates are lined through. Then place the loco and tender on the tightest curve I have ( about 48 inch radius ) and that gives me the minimum length for the tender - loco drawbar. The Caley coaches tender kit includes these, but the size I needed was between the two. Easily adjusted. I put the whole thing together and ran it up and down for a while. Tend
Bit by bit I am getting on with with the backscene. I think I have set myself a difficult task, trying to get a feel of depth and perspective in 2d. If I was a skilled artist it might be easier just to paint it, but I am not so the only thing I can do is the collage of photos method. I have played around with the panorama tools in Affinity. They work well with stitching a set of nice countryside photos together but can’t really cope with the complexity of a row of slightly different tenements.
Well, there we are, a slap of paint makes all the difference.
Rivets are Archers, easy to apply and they make a big difference on a model like this. No idea what is under that sheet, but it is heavy so this wagon moves as if it does have 16 tons on top. The chains and shackles were fiddly, but add to it all I think.
Catching a bit of evening light.
You can see that this wagon is properly sc
It has taken me longer to build these than it took St Rollox. So, a few pictures and a bit of video of the rake in service.
A bit of video, they move quite well.
All things considered I have found this to be an interesting build. There have been challenges which meant t
Having got a rolling chassis I turned my attention to the footplate. The one from the kit was unusable so a brass plate cut out and the valance added.
Next part, splashers. The DJH Dunalastair 1 is a kit for OO. With EM you need about 23 mm to clear the wheel fronts, the cast wm ones were much too thick to be any use. That also made the cab too wide. I rather think that the kit was always a bit too wide, in EM it was going to be far too wide. There was no way the outer splashers would clea
2022 was the year in which the politicians told us it was all going to bounce back to normal. Instead we have production and supply chain issues which are affecting far more important things than model railways whilst the politicians bounce off into financially comfortable obscurity.
However the Caley staff at Kelvinbank continue to work day and night to get the goods delivered. A few pictures on that theme.
Coal from the Lanarkshire collieries to the north Clyde ports wa
Well there we are, a backscene in place. I’m not completely happy with it but it is just pictures stuck to cardboard and I can look to improvements over time. Taking a break from it and thinking about it while standing back from it all and running some trains is more likely to inspire me to better things than flogging on with it at the moment. The mirror across the end does give a feeling of depth. Again I think I’ll leave it there for now, if it begins to look wrong I could try and generate s
