The engine body is not far off complete. A close photo shows areas that need some cleaning up. The gap between the rear of the boiler and the cab needs to be filled, the cab is square to the footplate so I’m not sure how that bit of drift happened.
As you see there are a lot of holes, but I have the pipework bent to shape ready to go on post painting.
The frames are ready to go. The cylinders have been moved out slightly and solid brass cross pieces and
A pair of these control movements across the trailing crossover beyond the platforms. The Stevens pattern dropflap signals themselves are the 51L etch, I had them powered with a servo via a linkage. It was designed to cope with servo overthrow under transient conditions, but it didn’t. So for quite a while now they have been cosmetic. Time for a rebuild.
The signals are mounted on a bit of double sided copperclad with some 6mm U section brass on the other side. The flap and conterwig
Having built some of the station building I now need to hold it up. So I have made a start on the girders for its frame and Benalder st bridge.
They are styrene sheet, the curved stanchions being cut on the silhouette. Not sure if it shows well on the photo but there is a gap between the curved ends and the horizontal angle irons, a visible feature of the prototype. I prevaricated about the rivets. I have tried various methods over the years, all were very fiddly and difficult to get
Following the excellent discussion on the storage of lamp oil I have built a combined lampmans hut and coal store.
A dimensioned sketch of the type favoured by the Lanarkshire and Ayrshire ( and other CR lines built later on ) can be found in "Signalling the Caledonian" by Jim Summers. A very common feature in many stations and yards, clearly having a separate small building for maintaining signal and general lamps would minimise damage by fire should an accident occur.
It has often been said that the camera is the harshest critic. I tend to agree with that so I thought I would post a couple of photos of completed sides to see how they look in the context of the layout before going ahead with the other two.
So, here we are.
Diagram 96 all third, compartment side.
Diagram 94 composite, corridor side.
Those look reasonable to me, apart from the dust. Getting there.
I have now made all four underframes. Perhaps not in itself blogworthy, but I thought I’d share a bit of silly video. No couplings so I can’t pull them round, but with bit of tape to stop the buffer bodies locking I can do a push test. I’m happy with the way they move, the bogies do seem to follow the rail well.
The buffers are made up, but a few tests needed to ensure I get them just where they can spring correctly.
Electric lighting for rail
The layout is now back in one piece with a full set of plugin signals. A bit of evening sunshine tempted me to play about with the camera. An artist might call it atmospheric.....
The D 34 trolley is now finished and in service. I think it captures the look of the original though without a drawing I cannot be sure it is dimensionally correct. Wheelbase and overall length are from the diagram.
I decided to fit a rather narrow load so as not to lose the open frame look of the trolley and an out of gauge load would foul the platforms. Well sheeted and chained down it gives some mass so that the springs do not make it all too bouncy.
Some photos
I have never been entirely happy with the control of points and signals on Kelvinbank. Three way switches allow a signal to be set to on, off or auto. Switches set the points, in auto mode they also control the signals via short timers. It is vaguely interlocked, but not perfectly. All workable but somehow not in keeping with the period feel of things.
So. Lanarkshire and Dumbartonshire section of the CR during the Edwardian era. Built in the 1890s. Boxes would have a Stevens & S
The main assemblies for the wagon are now largely complete.
Frame has been detailed, spring castings should have more leaves but those look ok to my eye.
Body has the sides fitted. and the floor is planked. Note the holes in the body sides. I think these were to enable the screw clamps to be tightened up when used at a lower level, together with a pair of clamps at the bottom of the well.
The fiddly bit was making the support frames.
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.
Another year passes. At a first glance it might seem progress at Kelvinbank has been slow, a few wagons made and an old loco refurbished. However from the perspective of me enjoying the layout the major step forward has been the building of a lever frame and sorting out the signalling system. So some pictures on that theme.
1 class No. 2 heads east towards Kelvinbank. The home is off if a correct route is set out of the storage yard and the section switches are set properly. The dist
Boiler next. Hmm. I had a look at the DJH one and decided to give it a bash. Well, quite a few bashes. Removed the alignment tags which didn’t align, got it in a jig of scrap wood bits and whacked a lot of lowmelt solder at the gaps. I then filled all the bits that needed filling with lowmelt and attacked the whole thing with a variety of knives, sanders and files.
Most of the “detail” on the castings was overscale and I would have removed it anyway. So after a fair amount of work I now ha
Whilst waiting for the gearbox to arrive I thought I would have a go at the saddle tank.
I cut the templates on the silhouette and glues them to 10 thou brass. The notched ones are 3 layers soldered together, with a single layer for the front face.
The frame soldered up. Flat board with some stripwood and various clips to hold it all .
Wrapper annealed, cleaned and formed with various tubes and rods. T
I have added a bit of scenic detail to that corner. Much improved in taking the eye round at the end of the viaduct. I am going to have a go a tree making to disguise the rather abrupt end of that big retaining wall, but for now thats the layout back together and some trains running again.
A couple of rough snapshots.
Hope everyone is managing in these strange times.
Mikkel asked what was between the main part of the layout and the Viaduct sections. The simple answer is a gap. The boards need to move towards the window wall to give them enough room to swing round into the room to be worked on, so they stop short of the window wall by a foot or so.
I always had a vague idea that I would build a lightweight scenic extension to take the eye round towards the window. Well, I have finally got round to it.
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
The signal box on Kelvinbank consists of a photo of Boness box stuck to a light bulb box. Ok, its the right style and size, but time to make something a bit more accurate.
So the silhouette has been busy. The windows are all done as a single layer, the frames both sides laminated onto that. Cutting all those soffit brackets took a while, but I’d never manage it by hand. This is the second attempt, I got my dimensions wrong on the go.
Some brickwork for
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
Making all the poles and fitting sockets for them has kept me going for a few weeks. Chilly weather and bad light slow it all down a bit.
The poles are 3mm dia dowel sanded to about 2 mm dia at the top. I doubt I could drill a 3mm hole through the baseboard square enough to make the poles stand upright so I made some sockets from spare brass tube, 25 mm long with bits of wire soldered on. The bit across the bottom acts a stop but still lets any debris fall through.
The furniture van wagon is now painted and in service. Slight weathering to bring out some of the detail. I do think that the masterclub bolt heads are better defined than a transfer rivet though from much more than a few inches away it is hard to see.
I added a pair of crossbeams pegged into the holes in the sides to which the van is lashed. The relatively new looking sheet may have had a few more ropes in practice, though that was fiddly enough.
A few posed pictu
Happy new year to everyone.
So not one for celebrations and fed up with the dead time twixt Christmas and New year I decided to make something. I looked about and ferreted in various boxes, what did I have at my disposal? One last sheet of 10 thou styrene. An idea formed, a brake wagon. Something that has been sitting in the back of my head for a while. So I dug out the wagon book, scanned and sized the the drawing and re-read the section about them in the book and the CR forum.
I have had a couple of weeks sorting out a few problems on the layout. I have had some difficulty with the long crossover to the storage sidings which had decided to get themselves out of gauge a bit. Add to that a couple of other electrical problems and all in all it has taken a while to fix.
Of course getting it all sorted meant running a few trains to test it all. Which led me to improve the traverser control panel a bit. I haven’t really mentioned the traverser much, its not the
The latest kit from True Line Models represents a horse box built by Metropolitan in 1870 for the CR. This is a different method for TLM being a resin print. I have used 3d printed parts but this is my first go at a complete 3d printed wagon.
Removing the body from the supports taught me just how brittle resin prints can be. Since I want a practical layout vehicle I decided to reinforce the steps and springs with 0.3 brass wire. Wheels are on MJT internal compensation irons soldered
The latest kit from True Line Models is for the CR Diagram 6 brake van. Build dates range from 1883 to 1889 and cover three known body styles across possibly 55 vans. Kits are available for two body styles, the narrow and wide panelled builds.
So a pic of the bare etch.
You might think that these look very like the NB D33 vans. Well, the link is that man Drummond again. So since NBR developments do an etch for that it seems sensible that TLM asked them to d
