From looking through the Railway Modeller article again, and also taking into account the way we run the layout at exhibitions, I feel that one of the reasons that Kirkhill interests Glenn and I is the fact we run to a set sequence.
One of the complaints about TMDs is that nothing much really happens: a loco arrives to be fuelled, may go into a shed for an inspection but otherwise is just stabled until it needs to leave for the next service.
Coaching stock, on the other h
Why on earth am I posting photos of the loco fleet for the layout when it's a coaching stock depot?
Well I do appreciate the fact that most of the people on RMweb will be more interested in the locomotives used rather than the coaching stock. That said there is an interesting selection of trains that run on Kirkhill (well I think so) so I've also posted selected items of coaching stock as well. The locos don't really need much explanation but they are all based on photos from fotopic
From the outset we wished the layout to be used as a platform for explaining the amount of work undertaken by staff every day (and mostly at night) to ensure the trains continue to run for the public.
The backscenes by the wash and toilet discharge roads were unable to have any meaningful scenery added before the exhibition so they were chosen to display information to the exhibition visitors (another of Glenn's ideas). This not only finds a use for the screen in front of the fiddle
Attached are a few photos from the first exhibition we attended. The first four were taken by Glenn about three days before the exhibition in his front room/dining room. The remainder were taken rather badly by me on the Saturday morning of the exhibition.
The hole in the depot building roof is deliberate. Without it the public cannot see inside and we can have difficulties unc
The next job for the layout was ballasting all the viewable track and, yet again, we ended up spending far more time on this process than we first thought.
We started the job together but with the layout being at Glenn's all the time I only managed two boards with two lines on each. Writing this report I'm beginning to wonder how much I actually contributed to this layout! In the meantime I was given the responsibility of making the depot shed and Glenn decided to have a side project
Construction of the baseboards is in 9mm ply. Below is a photo taken on 30th May showing the basic idea.
followed by three of the boards put together. Boards are located to one another by metal dowels and then coach bolted.
After construction of all the boards there commenced first the track laying and then the wiring. Operation is by DCC so every length of track on each board is linked to two buses, one for supply of the electricity and one for return. Glenn in
Jobs for the next 7 months are:
cladding the depot building, brickwork below the windows and general ventilation ducts etc (done)
add windows to depot building and finish painting roof (done)
depot lighting towers (ordered)
small depot lights inside the shed and at the shed front (done)
lighting gantries over the cleaning roads (done)
add water stand pipes and hoses (done), shore supply points (done), battery chargers (done)
overall ballast weathering and weathering the track by the fu
For a layout to work properly (especially if other people are going to be watching it) there needs to be a purpose and a possibility that a ficticious layout could have happened in reality. For these reasons a feasible location was required for "Aberdeen Coaching Stock Depot". We did not want to try to model Clayhills depot because it would have been too long and the station is very close, instead an alternative location was required.
My idea was to use the site of Kittybrewster shed
In November 2008 I was chatting to Glenn Daniel (Dunedin) at Mickleover Model Railway Club and we thought of making a layout for the exhibition circuit. Utilising one of the other members branch line layouts was contemplated (it was for possible sale at the time) but we decided to go for our own instead. Initial thoughts were around the area of the country to model and, due to keeping the layout small enough for two people to manage, we realised we would need short trains meaning we had two opti
