young37215

I doubt that there will be any lowering of the road because it was primarily the limited width of the old bridge that created the bottlenecks; anything tall had to stradle the white lines and go through the centre of the bridge thus blocking off oncoming traffic. Whilst I would not rule out Network Rails ability to get this wrong, I would be surprised if there were height issues!

I think a picture provides a better answer than words to answer Ian 's (ISW) question. The short bit of track by the oil terminal platform was connected to the adjoining siding but I do not have sufficient space to include the point hence just my token piece of track. I deviated from the usual approach of weathering track prior to ballasting in an effort to achieve the dilapidated and dirty appearance that typified a secondary BR station in the early 1980's. A fiddly day yesterday spent constructing the platform walls and the taller wall to the seaward side of the platform that attempted to protect passengers from the Atlantic breeze!. By the end of the day I was nearly finished and hope that today I can complete the platform walls and start on the platform itself.

Yesterday was all about painting. A bottle of Railmatch sleeper grime was airbrushed over the track and surrounds. My intention is to add some colour variation once everything is dry and the platform walls are built up.

The glue did not fully dry overnight and as I spent the day fine tuning the ballasted area which involved more glue, it was still damp last night. I managed to add the base of the oil terminal, a simple affair made of an off cut of baseboard and Wills coarse stone as a wall. I am still pondering oil tanks, as David identified yesterday, the glue bottles are acting as a proxy in between use. Not a lot to show for several hours work but hopefully the fine tuning will pay a dividend with the finished station.

Hi Andy What are you using as the fuel tanks? I have ruled out Bachmann's 44016 fuel storage tanks which would have been a simple solution for the two main tanks and am now pondering my options. I am guessing that the smaller tanks include Ratio's kit 530? Thanks Rob

At last Mallaig finally test run and ballasted. I even found what I was doing wrong with the lights and now these are working. Depending on how dry the ballast is this morning, I may be able to get a first coat of paint on the track. I celebrated by by running an engineers train!

Hi Ian Weights are from Road and Rails, the attached link takes you to what I bought https://www.roads-and-rails.co.uk/collections/accessories/products/five-strips-of-model-railway-weights I agree that it is easier than cutting lead although I have a supply of scrap lead being the offcuts of a recent job I had done on my roof. I used the lead to weight the OWV's and found it easy enough to cut to get to the 10g I wanted. The Roads and Rails weights have the benefit of a sticky pad which makes them perfect for the underside of a wagon.

Thanks to everyone for their speedy and helpful input. I am embarrased to say it was as simple as me not appreciating that LED's and polarity matter. At least I am now familiar with what anodes and cathodes are!

I recently purchased 10 LED lamps on Ebay for use as lamps on a station platform. They are cheap Chinese imports but look like they will do what I want. I started by reading the limited instructions which state: Operating Voltage: 12V~18v (must connect a resistor in series), AC or DC Compatible. Operating Current: 20mA. 10 complete lamps & 10 compatible resistors (for being used on 12v~18v). As there 10 of each it appears that a resistor is required for each lamp. In an effort to test the theory I connected one of the supplied resistors to an LED positive cable and attached power to the resistor and negative cable. Nothing. I tried a second light, again nothing. The power source is a 12v DC regulated power supply which powers my Megapoints network which has plenty of spare amps to power the LED's. Can anyone put me right and explain what I am doing wrong?

Hi Ian Excellent research, thank you for providing more clarity on the china clay subject. I stand corrected on the UCV point although they unsurprisingly appear a minority performer on the WHL. I am content that for WHL4 the 4 OWV's and 4 PRA's that I run provide representation of the Corpach destined china clay. Whilst I could justify more OWV/UCV's this comes down to space and I do not really have the space for more wagons. Yesterday was another frustrating one, I soldered all of the polarity wiring quite quickly only to find that I had the 2 power supply wires the wrong way round on each bracket because of my misreading the micro switch settings. Late in the day I briefly managed to get a loco running around the station but unidentified issues meant I gave up. I am getting irritated by the problems I keep creating and might take a rest from Mallaig today to calm down. In an effort to get away from the Mallaig frustrations I spent a little time adding weight to 3 TTA's. The few derailments that I encounter usually ocur with the lightest wagons and the TTA's at 40grams are amongst the lightest that I run. I prefer to add weight where it cannot be seen but in the case of the TTA, I have glued two 5g weights on the underside of the chassis directly above the wheels. I will monitor performance and if the 25% increase in weight delivers a reduction in derailments, I will do the same to the remaining TTA's and paint the weights black to reduce their visibility.

Yesterday was a bit of a shocker, if it could go wrong it did go wrong. I managed to install the remaining 4 Dingo servos but these proved more challenging than the first one which only served to emphasise how much I miss the so simple but effective Alurailtech brackets. To finish the day off I was outbid on an Ebay auction that I really wanted to win. My experience of servos is that you get a wide variance of installation even when attempting to follow a standardised process. Some just slot in to place and work first time, others require repeated tweaks to the alignment before they work as required. The crowning glory yesterday was a fault which I could not resolve, the installation worked fine when under test using the servo controller but when the network was connected up, the servo refused to work. I checked and double checked the wiring was all correct which it was, I then started looking at the connections on the control panel only to find I had not connected the switch to the network! Even more annoyingly I did not have any more cables which meant I had to remove one of the as yet unused signals and use this. Problem solved, the servo responded to the control panel and finally all was well. The net result was all 6 points are now motorised but the frog polarity switching is still outstanding. Hopefully I will get this resolved today and be able to test Mallaig fully before ballasting this afternoon. After yesterday though I am not holding my breath... A couple more shots of 37085 departing Crianlarich for Fort William.

Whilst delivering supplies to my parents I passed by the work site at Gypsy Patch Lane. The old bridge has gone and a large gap is evident, the new bridge was visible some 20 or 30 metres away on the Rolls Royce side. When I told my mother where I had been she advised me that the impending replacment of the bridge had been notified to them by their solicitor when they bought their house 61 years ago!

I dont think you are far off. I suggest that you paint the rocks with a base rock colour and I think you will be surprised at the transformation in the appearance. Overall I think you have captured the essence of the area very well, in my opinion if you get to bogged down in micro detail you will struggle to move forward. After all everything we do when modelling incorporates a compromise to some degree. Sometimes it is easy to lose sight of this and get hung up on a point that in the bigger scheme of things is relatively minor.

Although I spent several hours soldering and wiring yesterday, I did not get as far as I had hoped. I am having to use a new type of servo bracket which is taking time to get used to, fortunately there is a review of the Dingo brackets in a recent ModelRail which helped build my confidence. I also hit an obstacle with wiring up some cheap Chinese LED lamps bought which I think I can make them look reasonably like those found on the platform at Mallaig. Try as I might I could not make the lights work; I hope it is my electrical incompetence and not a problem with the LED's! By the end of the day all BUS wiring was complete and secured to the underside of the baseboard. 2 of 6 servos were installed albeit without the frog polarity microswitch wiring being checked. Today I aim to finish the servo installation so that I can test run a loco around the station to prove it all works. If all goes well then I can ballast. I can still run trains although it is all a little congested with the temporary loss of 4 long storage sidings. 37085 followed the sleeper north with 7B02. Note the lady collapsed on the platform in the 3rd picture, it must have been the excitement at hearing 085 arrive!

Electrical stuff is not a strong point for me, I am seeking guidance on wiring 12v lights which the instructions tell me require a resistor wired in series. The picture shows what I think is required but when I attach my 12v source to the two wires the light doesn’t! Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong?

1984 Loco Hauled Travel shows the diagram to be a round trip starting and ending at Fort William. I suspect in reality the loco was often changed when the operational needs dictated.

Clarify the structral position and provided you can use the loft safely insulate, insulate and more insulation. Dont scrimp on the insulation, it will pay dividends in terms of reducing your heating bills and protect your valuable models from extremes of temperature. If you use one of the extruded types of insulation the offcuts will provide the base for scenery and you will probably enjoy modelling a lot more all year round as it will be a much more pleasant environment.

Not sure that I recall seeing any of the UCV's on the WHL, I think this was discounted as likely to have taken place although there is a thread running about them somewhere which might give you a better insight. Most of yesterday afternoon was spent soldering dropper wires at Mallaig. I hope to complete this today and install the point motor servos. If all goes well on the electrical front I might even get to ballasting this evening which would be good because it should dry overnight leaving me free to start painting tomorrow. Before lifting the baseboard I had a short running session, partly for fun and partly because I wanted to clear the hidden sidings that are underneath Mallaig and the surrounding areas just in case of any mishaps. 37051 took the sleeper north from Crianlarich.

Finally found a picture to underpin the rationale of how I run the OWV's. Itch scratched, now I can go and do some proper work

Hi Ian We must having typing at the same time. I am familiar with the clip of video you refer to, its an excellent example of a Corpach trip working. My uncertainty surrounds the journey south of Fort William and consist of the trains that the OWA's were in. The only 'evidence' at this stage is the RE report of OWA's on their own which would have run as a vacum braked train. There were only 3 freights in each direction north of Crianlarich each day on the WHL and I have not seen anything to suggest that the OWA's got their own exclusive train. Indeed I am confident that they were included in the scheduled services and marshalled to the back of the train hence how I model them. The PRA's appear in a number of pictures showing consists just as I think with the OWA's albeit their air brakes meant that they could be anywhere in the consist. My issue is I would like a picture to confirm my view about the OWA's.

Interesting thoughts Ian, you gave me the excuse to spend several hours watching dvd's yesterday on the hope of finding an example of a train with vacum braked OWA china clays wagons. I failed to find anything but thoroughly enjoyed watching some of the historic material. I will be chuffed if you can find an example whether in film or picture. My interest in checking how the OWA's were marshalled stems from the fact that both they and my PRA's are the most derailment prone wagons. I think it is because both are relatively light and so in an effort to further reduce my low level of derailments, I have added 10 grams of lead to each OWA. The weight has been seated on blue tack on the floor of the wagon conveniently hidden by the tarpaulins which has improved running considerably. I ran a typical length train with the OWA's on the rear around the loop yesterday at full speed for several minutes with no derailing. It means that the tarpaulins will remain in place to hide the weight in both directions of travel but I can live with the anomaly. All that I want now is to find out how to remove the PRA body from its chassis so that I can add weight to them. I have queried how to do this on the PRA thread but have yet to find a solution. After several days of preparation for its upgrade, Mallaig will probably get lifted today. On the to do list is a revised platform with walls being made from 15mm strips of plasticard with a 2mm square plastic rod painted in concrete and then heavily weathered.

Likely to be a big section and I would be an interested reader/viewer. I could provide the base material for several series!

It's an early start so I'll begin with the easy questions first. My very simple backscene currently only appears in the Crianlarich area and was very much an afterthought once I had built the section scenery. It is rudimentary but effective comprising 3 different coloured emulsion paints. I intend adding further areas of backscene in the coming weeks, again these are likely to be the last thing that I do on a section. There is no good reason why I work this way, I suspect on a better planned layout the backscene would get dealt with at an earlier stage. The width of my baseboards is 800mm maximum which means it is easy enough to cover the scenery and reach over to paint at whatever stage I choose to do it. 37051 heads the northbound sleeper into Crianlarich showing the backscene and the home signal which have been restored to full working order.

I have attempted to lever the body away from the chassis as suggested but without success. I slid knife blades between the body and chassis quite easily but the body is reluctant to move. Has anyone else had any success in seperating the two parts?

37014 seen at Crianlarich with 7D20, 1520 Corpach to Sighthill which incudes empty vacum braked china clay wagons being returned south. The train was otherwise comprised of air braked wagons and so I assume that the vacum braked ones were added to the rear to make up a partially fitted train. I do the same for the loaded wagons on their northbound journey. Prior to the arrival of the PRA's I have found it hard to find pictures of china clay wagons on the WHL which makes it difficult to confirm that I am following prototypical operations.