Kelvinbank, a Caledonian Railway project.

Very nice, that certainly deserved being brought it back into the light. 
 
I keep seeing a Hornby SDJR Nellie in the background of your photos. It does suit the scene well...  

 

Good luck with the stairs, sounds like one of those projects that needs a bit of runup to get the motivation going.

Well, if Hornby ever did anything vaguely accurate for the caley I'd buy one Mikkel. Its actually the back end of a 104 class, made from the excellent Caley Coaches kit. 

 

Must do something about a backscene too.... 

By flitched frames I take it you mean solebars reinforced with an iron or steel plate? - hence the lack of crown plates etc. 

 

McIntosh's patent brake looks like a variant of the Dean-Churchward brake, acting on one side only but operable from either side. Presumably it too fell foul of the BoT rulings that (a) the brake lever should always be at the RH end of the wagon, as viewed from the side you're looking at it (pardon the Irishism), and (b) you shouldn't be able to release the brake from the opposite side to that on which you applied it. 

 

And Mikkel, how can you be so rude? I suspect Great Western anxiety at the thought of the Midland's surrogate interloper in its territory. Engines in the true S&DJR blue livery had blue not red valences and yellow-black-yellow not white-black-white lining; the S&DJR Nellie had plain black valences. I will not pass judgement but only say that the Caledonian's livery was very fine, though Scotland had some rather nice green engines too. 

Yes Compound, the solebars and buffer beams were plated , 1/4 " I'd guess. Maybe 3/8"

 

Now, it could start a war in here, but some would claim that the Dean-Churchward brake was a variant of the McIntosh one. My own opinion is that they were parallel developments with the same objective; a short brake lever with unambiguous positioning operable from both sides, hence the slack adjuster pinned to the lever. As you say the BOT really didn't like either and in the end the Morton, and eventually the double sided Morton cam became the norm. 

 

S&DJR is a bit too far, but given that the NB and the Caley lines were a stones throw ( or a lump of coals throw ) apart all the way out to Dumbarton I could justify a bit of NB green. I know that there were some LNWR coaches worked through to the west, so they might turn up one day. 

I can well imagine that the GWR's DC brake gear was imore than a little "inspired" by other contemporary developments.

 

Sorry about the Nellie SDJR reference, very inappropriate but it was my first ever model loco and so I have a thing for it :-)

Och, all comments taken in jest Mikkel.

 

Actually I do rather like the S&DJR, if I had infinite time and resources I might have a go. I also fancy a 7mm GWR branch, but I might resurrect some N gauge first ......