The bench has been occupied by some non-railway stuff, but back to wagons now. Sheeted wagons tend to be modelled in far fewer numbers than period photos indicate that they were used, so I’m slowly trying to nudge the proportions in the right general direction.
I am still trying to get sheeted wagons to look reasonably right. Having proper tie down cleats and roping from the edge helps, but the sheets themselves really need to look like Caledonian sheets with individual numbers. I ha
There are some things which just don’t scale, no matter what you do the real thing looks wrong in model form. Smoke and water are the obvious ones, but I’l add another. Dust. Scaled down they are not particles, they are lumps.
So I have been enjoying running the railway a bit, collecting info and deciding what to build next. However I couldn’t help noticing that the station had become a bit dusty and once you have noticed it it sticks in your eye. Time for some cleaning, after all we
Things are progressing slowly. Winter tends to slow modelling down, paints and glues take ages to dry, the light is bad, there is a tendency to sneeze all over what you are trying to build. Must be a lot worse for folk who model in lofts and sheds. Really a case of watching paint not drying. Anyway, thats the major sections of the platform building ready to form into a structure. All still delicate, I think I am going to have to add a top internal rail to prevent it warping over time. A coup
A good week, thats the basic structure put together. Simple really, just put some plasticard on a nice flat surface and make sure it all goes together square. I was concerned about the top edge and so decided to strengthen it with some brass strip. A thought struck me, why not use the strip to feed power to the fireplace LEDS? Now I wouldn’t want a soldering iron too close to the walls, so I soldered some sockets from a turned pin IC socket to the strip in the right places before glueing the s
An odd title you make think, but I shall explain.
Firstly the real one. The CR had large numbers of pig iron wagons, in practice used whenever a low sided wagon was needed. Another of those general types you can never have enough of. This example is built from the 51L kit, though I have used my usual method of a copperclad sub chassis for the W irons and sprung buffers.
Ok, the imaginary wagon. I mentioned that I cut some extra bits when I made
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.
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 consider myself to be a very lucky man. 2020 hasn’t been the best of years for me but it has been a damn sight worse for a large proportion of the worlds population. The lockdowns mean that I have been able to spend more time modelmaking, perhaps the upside of it all.
A year most of us will be glad to see the back of, so I thought I would do a few photos of the back of trains.
A late afternoon train vanishes under the bridge.
Tail end of a mixed
This started with me trying to do a backscene. Well, I almost have but it has led to other things. To get the backscene onto the backing boards I have to divide and move the layout about to get at them. Not all that difficult since it was designed to be moveable. While it’s out I might as well pave the street between the station wall and the backscene since its much easier to do from the rear of the layout. Oh, and sort out various bits, add the fixings for the station platform and stair. Of c
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
It was gloomy yesterday so I turned the layout lights on and tried running a few trains in the dark. Daft, but oddly fun.
Anyway, a few random pics of variable quality. The station in general, I need to lightproof the roof more next time it is off.
This is a lucky pic. I cant really see the from of the station building so its just done by point the cam
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.
Since stock has been sitting in boxes for awhile it is now time to dig some out and catch up with basic maintenance, so that I can run stock over all the the trackwork and watch it stop at odd places or fall off. An iterative process, get a loco running well, fix some track, get another going, fix some more track. Sometimes newer modellers see layouts that have been through this process and think it all works perfectly first time. ( sounds of much laughter stage left ) It doesn't, particularly w
As I mentioned in the last blog I have been building some CR ballast wagons.
These were built using my usual methods, styrene bodies, copperclad sub chassis to take the W irons. The outer pair are from the 1890 drawing, the middle one is a pre-diagram version from the photo. The drawing makes no mention of canvass covers for the axleboxes and without a reference photo I can’t tell whether they were so fitted. I added them to the pre -diagram wagon which did have them. I suppose if a
Now that I have fitted the uncoupling magnets it is time for a bit of real world playing, er, testing. Sorry about the rather rough video but it shows what I am trying to be able to do without the magic hand appearing. I think I’m slowly getting there, but all that pushing stuff about really shows up any errors in track or stock. Anyway, hope its all vaguely watchable.
I have been with pottering on with the far corner of the layout, signals are installed, then unplugged and a lightweight scenic extension knocked up from foamboard and card. All a bit rough at the moment, but taking shape. I think it will enhance that corner and take the eye round to the storage yard in a more transitional way. Some sort of wooded area perhaps.
I also painted a couple of figures and added them to this very odd thing that I made quite
I have been reading “Operating the Caledonian Railway”, volume one, by Jim Summers. It is an excellent book, explaining many of the technical, economic and social reasons that led the railway to operate in the way that it did, and I have learned a lot from it.
Let me give you an example. Here is a picture of a goods train passing through Kelvinbank. It might be argued that it is a bit on the short side and that there should be a few more sheeted opens, but generally the stock and the
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
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.....
I could just buy a backscene. Lots of companies offer them but the thing is none of them say “west end of Glasgow”. Or for that matter any real part of Edwardian Glasgow. Anyway where is the fun in just buying stuff? So I have an idea in my head, long rows of traditional tenements interspersed with some industrial buildings. Maybe some older houses tucked in there too. Well, quite a few buildings, I am going to need about 18 feet of backscene in total. Easy then, its what I did on Kelvinbank
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
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
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
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
