Ben Alder

Can't say I'm greatly taken with the carbuncle on the tender either.

I have been asked by a fellow modeller about the best way to do this, and it is out of my modelling zone any advice would be welcome, thank you.

One worked the Killin branch till closure in 1965 and several were up in the North East but steam finished there before the mid sixties.

Here are a couple of pics I've found of the Tracklay. One shows three lengths of track - straightened, with the Tracklay applied, and ballasted. The other shows the ballast shaken over the track and then tamped in place. Excess - Greenscene - is saved and used again. On the layout I used Peco foam ballast point inlays covered with Copydex, ballast applied and left to dry. They are all still in perfect condition after twelve years, but as these are now discontinued I now cut a piece of the closed cell foam I covered the baseboards with to shape, cover with Copydex, ballast and let set under a weight. Pic of a recent alteration to illustrate. The baseboard has some of the foam cut away to fit the point in - the plain track sits on top of the foam and is lightly pinned until I am sure that all is running well then infills of cork are laid and a bead of Copydex is run along the sides of the ballasted track and a sprinkling of ballast applied. Once dry the pins are removed which leaves the track held in place laterally but with a degree of vertical movement that gives very good, almost silent running. It works best visually with thin sleepered track but I have in the past used it with Peco Code 75 track happily enough, but that was before the digital camera applied its relentless lens to ones work, showing every shortcoming cruelly...but as can be seen with the bullhead point above, a thick coating of Copydex and a press down of the applied ballast results in an acceptable result. All in all, it takes all the pain and effort out of one of the least enjoyable parts of the hobby.

I'll dig out some photos that still exist - most were lost when the IT disaster happened and I had dumped a lot from my files but there are some about- just got to track them down. The points aren't any problem though. Back in a day or two.....

Big shout out for Tracklay - a roll of foam with an adhesive side that the track is laid on and pressed in place and ballast scattered on top, tamped down ,surplus shaken off, and a metre of track ballasted in less than a minute...it can then be curved to shape as required. I lay mine on top of a 5mm foam base which gives a silent, easily adjustable road bed. I have a blog on it but the images are gone. If you want I can post some here. https://www.tracklay.co.uk/product/oo-gauge-underlay-5m

Thumbs up for the Evergreen - a great time saver, and available in three widths as well although the 4543 is the one I most use. Here is a crop showing the footage of Thurso shed - it did exist but latterly debris had built up so much around it that it was hardly apparent.

I'll drop a line to the Modeller and ask them to pass on our condolences in case the family don't look at the forum.

HR goods sheds, as Mark says, were the same but different, especially when it came to offices. There were internal ones, external ones and it seems some with none... It is difficult to ascertain from photos the extent of alterations over the years , particularly from the board and batten exterior where any changes can soon blend in to the existing structure. Wick was a case in point, with a demolished attached office that when newly done showed up as a ghost on the replaced wall cladding, and a few years later had blended in with the remainder of the structure. Every external office seems to have been different, which is strange considering the apparent uniformity of the basic shed structure, and Thurso had an extensive attachment that vanished in the early sixties, its presence indicated by the footage. It was one of the many aspects of railway operation that appeared to have been unrecorded in image - there are glimpses in several photos, but two pictures have emerged that show the building. Here is a crop from one of them. As an aside, the doors were latterly a chocolate brown as opposed to the overall creosote, but by the eighties they had faded to be indistinguishable from the equally faded walls.

This fascinating layout has a feature in the current Railway Modeller, along with the sad news that Ken died last September.

Perfectly OK as a "layout" coach as it is now - well done. These old Airfix coaches are the backbone of my fleet, with Comet sides and underframe detailing frets from MJT and I've never felt any need to upgrade them.

Thanks all - appreciated.. I'll follow it all up.

I've been asked by a non digital modeller about the availability of S&C structural drawings. Done a bit of Googling and index digging but nothing substantial is showing up. Can anyone point me to printed options please. He is a competent modeller and doesn't want to do the Metcalfe option. Alternatively, are they accurate enough to extrapolate details from.

Latest from Pop Up is Grangemouth loco shed. This will suit both steam and earlier diesel modellers as it was kept in use as a diesel depot till the early 90's. Pics from Pop Up.

The kiosk ready for plonking...I built a batch for several destinations, with variations on window and door coverings.

I have used Orbit controllers - DC dinosaur that I am - for the last thirty years with success and recently reinstated my H&M 3000's and Walkabouts, which to my mind have never been surpassed for smooth operation. Both makes do quibble at the few coreless motors I have so a Morley is added for these; another good buy but really could do with a more positive centre off. Having said this, it is the two or three Heljan locos that need the Morley - a hacked about O2 responds well to both older makes with no problems, more so once I disconnected one of the geared axles and let the connecting rods do their work. As for all the modern internal circuitry in many offerings, it is all stripped out and the pick ups hard wired to the motor. Still have a 1970 Duette parked as a bench unit and everything is tested on it before layout trials, but although it makes them go it doesn't have the subtlety of the later technology.

Latest from Pop Up - two more for the Dornoch portfolio - a gable ended goods shed of a type used in various places on the HR and a John Menzies kiosk that graced the platform there. These two kits mean that all the railway main structures needed to model Dornoch are now available with only one or two small huts needing to be scratchbuilt. The kiosk also has applications all over as these were sited at many stations for decades.

Did you reinstate them or have they come back by themselves?

Pup Up is thinking of adding a corner section to his tenement kit if enough interest is shown so it might be an idea to let them know if this appeals.

Rocket will be fine - Redutex wil probably be a bit coarse for n; a paper covering will be better.I build the model and then spray with a grey acrylic and then finish with building papers or acrylic paint depending on the prototype exterior. You will manage Rannoch by painting I imagine as the embossed brick finish is fine once painted. Plenty on line images of Rannoch over the years if you do a search, but Ernies Archives has a West Highland album of mainly colour pictures that is a treasure trove for the modeller as it concentrates mainly on infrastructure rather than trains.Any modellers range of acrylics will suit these kits. HTH.

The loss of images has been a great blow to the forum in general, and has rendered my previous posts and threads more or less meaningless. Replacing images is impractical - I deleted many as I went along and those that are left are scattered over several files which would mean an enormous amount of time devoted to any attempted restoration. I started this to an extent by gathering and sorting the Kylesku pics that still are around and that has taken about two weeks of what would have been modelling time. That thread ran to some twenty pages - the building of the current one was a bit shorter but the FNL was over fifty pages, a daunting length. I did start to restore some from just before the cut off point for image loss, but they vanished in one of the hiccups that the site went through which further dissuaded me from any further efforts. The incompleteness of all this has been chewing away at me for months now, so at the start of the month I sat down and read through all my threads, and salvaged what I could from them with a view to some form of Mk11 version which wasn't much TBH, and this week made the decision to close them all, which has been a weight off my mind. Any future posts are going to start from this point in time, but I have become dissatisfied with several aspects of the forum lately, so think that a rest will be beneficial for me, and will give more modelling time as well....It has been a bit of a wrench to see ten years work go, but that's the nature of the digital beast - all my pre 2009 Kyle work went when the old site wasn't included in whatever upgrade happened some time ago, so it wasn't as if it was an unknown possibility. Sorry for the removal of everything, but onwards and upwards, I guess.... That was the bad news.....the good news is that I have been running a parallel topic on Your Model Railway, in a condensed version since the start of the build of Helmsdale, and previous progress can be seen there - same names as here - Far North LIne and Ben Alder - and since 2014, another thread on the same subject on Western Thunder. This one has been more sporadic but better than nothing; again same user title and name. I have also recently posted a pictorial summary of Kylesku on it as a trial - a Look Back at Kylesku and The Mound- realised its ten years plus since I dismantled it and it was quite nostalgic to see it again, although it is all of its last two years of existence. Well, apart from all this, I can only wish everyone a Good New Year, and whatever it holds, that railway modelling will provide some relaxation and pleasure for us all.

Thanks, works on current topics but that is not available on archived ones.

After going through my several seperate threads I realise that they are beyond salvaging, both for the time it would take to track down images in scattered files and having deleted much of them anyway, so it will be easier to start afresh, but cannot find an option to remove them. How do I go about this?

Some more from him - CR stuff this time - Glenfinnan signal box - the station itself is on the to do list, and a typical station design from the southern part of the system based on Kir knewton.

Yes, all gone and I really don't have the time to reinstate them. Besides, a lot haven't been kept and it is only the last three or four years that I started an annual RMweb folder and all previous images are scattered over several large files, with no real indexing.I have a thread about the range but it is away in a sub forum somewhere I never seem to find, so may as well add any future kits to this one. Here is one of the latest from Iain, the designer, - a Glasgow tenement.