colmflanagan

And some more pictures taken more recently. The scenery is encroaching from both sides towards Kilmore. first of all, the Kilmore area showing the developments; the station will be to the left hand bottom of the picture; this area is still bare board. a view of the two sheds - goods and loco - the latter the building which was formerly at Cookstown Junction. the goods yard and shed; the first picture is an old building formerly stables and some other areas: the minor road crossing behind the engine shed. UTA No 58 2-6-4 tank on shed; a very elusive loco which has not featured previously.; looking towards the yet to be developed area of Kilmore

I think it is from a firm called "townstreet" - it's a plaster moulding -heavy! Ken uses this firm's products for many of his structures including bridges and the big mill complex.

First of all, some pictures of the signal cabin at Quarry Junction, on the high level lines. The quarry itself has already featured. The quarry is off to the right behind the cabin ; the two lines running under the girder bridge are the line to the lower storage loops (on the right) and that to kilmore Junction on the left; this latter is climbing as Kilmore is at the higher level. It will b e quite a pull up for longer trains.

It's been rather a long time since we posted any news of this SDJR. I have been pretty preoccupied with a major house move sequence (and other things which friends will know about!) and ken has also had a busy spell with other occupations, so although there was some work being done on the line, its only now I am getting down to sharing it. As I was about to post the pictures it occurred to me that I had to think twice about where they actually were on the layout, which has a number of levels and junctions, so I am attaching below an updated plan with names on it so those who wish, may geta more complete picture of the different sections of the line. BTW "Quoile Bridge" has both a station and a junction, and has been referred to in the past as "Quoile Bridge Junction station"!! Just to keep your brains active...... The "Quarry Junction" signal box is more to the right of where it is shown - see the pictures which are on the next post. New pictures will follow soon.

Having seen Leslie's "production"model at the NDMRS show, I can report that the "brown van" roof is indeed an elliptical shape rather than pure round. On my earlier short versions (based on a Tri-ang chassis) I used pieces of an old Graham Farish LMS coach roof for them; I would never rule out the possibility that differences exist and possibly some vans had a different roof profile. (the RPSI one does look higher in the centre). I think the vans were turned out in a bauxite shade but lack of paint. dirt etc., soon changed this to a greyish brown colour. Some were turned out in UTA green and also later in NIR maroon. They too will have suffered similar "weathering". Colm Flanagan

That certainly looks the part and for my period a UTA one is fine - I hardly ever look below solebar level anyway! See you at Bangor, Leslie. Colm

Following a recent spurt of activity by Ken, here are some pictures showing further progress on the railway. An overview of the Strangford Station area; it was originally conceived to have had a quay and a more lough side setting but it has gone inland a wee bit now... There's been quite a bit of work done on the station buildings here. Looking across the as yet undetailed platforms to the other side of the layout, (Quoile Bridge station) From this angle it you cant; see the operating well. There's been a short excursion train of ancient GNRI stock to the town (village?? The "mill" is now in place. A shot of the line's resident 2-4-2 tank with train. Loco servicing facilities exist and an NCC Class "Y" is in the shed today. It may have worked the GNR coaches in. Lots to do still, the main station, Kilmore Junction, is next....

I have some Murphy Cravens coaches (CIE) and they run fine, but the system used by David has worked well on a number of my coaches - even though I usually just put two strips on, down each side of the bogie on one bogie only. This doesn't always completely eliminate "wobble" but cuts it down by 70% - ish - a big difference! Older Airfix LMS coaches, which I use for LMS NCC variants, are particularly afflicted with wobble, as are some of the Hornby range.. Fortunately the coaches I chop up the most - the Mainline/Bachmann LMS 57' panelled LMS ones- do not seem to suffer from this issue, despite their plastic wheels and light weight! o olm

As regards "trainset" curves, those shown in the pics of central and so on, would, in 4mm be at least something like 4-5 foot radius!! Our Mk3 coaches are 75' (300mm) long - think of the overhangs and how far the doors would actually be from the track. I have a station on a 3' curve and carriage doors still look much too far from the platform edges - the gap being about a scale 2 feet! Even our 3rd radius curves would, on the real thing, be the curve where an 0-4-0 tank could just about get a few short wheelbase wagons round.... Colm

A final different angle on the pier: In case anyone is interested the engine is an LMS ex L&Y 2-4-2 repainted and lettered in NCC colours - and very plausible it looks too! brings nice touch of crimson to the green and blue of the estuary.

Further Progress on the SDJR Needless to say, Ken has been beavering away at the layout since the last posts; scenery has progressed from Quoile Bridge Junction (and there's more from there) - towards Strangford Junction and Strangford (check the plan if you need to at this point); these pictures were taken within the last couple of weeks and show progress pretty well to date. In the meantime, and out of sight, work has progressed on the storage sidings area and these should be operational soon. The big job will of course be Kilmore Junction, track work all laid and energized but no scenery - yet. So, the pictures: Quoile Bridge Junction station and surrounding lines: first, an aerial view The view of passengers disembarking from the ferry. The ferry berths in a dredged channel on the seaward side of the pier (see below); as Kieran points out the water round the bridges themselves is shallow and has sandbanks for the unwary mariner... At one time, boat trains were run (though there's no ferry on the layout yet!) And finally a view along the line towards Strangford Junction Above Strangford junction signal box is an interesting area where Ken has used a cunning perspective approach as seen below. The upper level storage sidings run behind the house. Strangford Junction itself is merely a signal cabin and one point; here the track splits (it is to the left of this picture) and goes into a short tunnel (centre) under the upper main line storage sidings on a rising I in 40 ish gradient to Kilmore Junction,and a bridge leading to Strangford Station itself. Following round to Strangford station the goods yard area is mainly complete, Strangford Junction cabin can be seen in this shot, it is largely obscured from many angles by the trees and other foliage! All this adds to the sense of space; this is really quite a small area. But there's still much work to be done on the platform/station buildings side and also at t'mill. However, a pier has been constructed at Quoile Bridge Junction. Dredging is continuing in the hope that a ferry can operate in due course, but despite an offer, Ken feels that the TSS "Caledonian Princess" might be a tad large and likely to run aground or demolish the pier; furthermore there would be nowhere for the cars to disembark...ah well. To be continued

Very definitely the best 4mm model of this unique vehicle which I've yet seen; well done. Like others I had thoughts of making a representation of it using window and side panels from the Airfix railbus, with lots of plastic card and a black beetle bogie, but never got anything done. I had the good fortune to travel on 2509 (as it became) during its last days with CIE (in 1968) as part of a railtour round Dublin; it was remarkably quiet in the passenger accommodation. Will we ever see it restored? Currently it seems unlikely. Colm

I've posted a link to a video of the NIR Hunslet running on the "Killagan" thread , for those who may like that kind of thing! Colm

Some more pictures of the Quoile estuary area, and Strangford junction signal cabin. The pier will be constructed in due course. A waterline kit of a small estuary paddle steamer would look well here.

Here's a video of the first train to run round the "lower line" through Quoile Bridge Junction station via Kilmore Junction (incomplete) as yet. Work is nearly done on the upper line over the river. A view of the recently named "Quoile Bridge Junction" station; the directors hired an NCC class "X" and GNR coaches as they wished to encourage the two bigger companies to co-work their railway. But just as in real life their compromise pleased neither company. And the NCC were definitely not amused to see their loco with SDJR on the tank sides.....! The GNR insisted that their coaches were NOT "re-branded...oh dear.... https://youtu.be/hpqt-idkrlQ Colm PS Hope the video link works, there's something funny going on with my computer today.

hello folks, A couple of you have queries and Ken is currently unable to access RM Web but he's emailed me the following: First:- The ballast wagons are all mainline items resprayed with Halfords grey primer, G N transfers applied and then the whole lot weathered. The other questions are answered as follows:- The baseboard does utilise quite a bit of 'tee girder' construction, In respect of the quarry buildings they are a mix of Townstreet, Ratio coaling plant and scratch building using Wills corrugated perspex sheets on a card frame hope that helps Colm

Some more pictures of developments on the SDJR, chiefly around the corner where the quarry is,(see plan above) and at the small harbour station (now referred to as Quoile Pier - by me anyway!) The station building here is in fact the Bachmann "Oakworth" which certainly looks the part, and has further detailing to follow. ken built the signal box and signal(s) from ratio kits tweaked to suit the location. Whether there will ever be a ferry is a moot point; "Caledonian Princess" might be a tad big for the pier. Scenery to Ken's usual (very high!) standard. No official date has been announced for the first through services but points are all now wired and sections in and tested so watch this space; meantime the little recently introduced Hornby industrial 0-4-0 tanks are looking the part as contractors engines! The coaches of the workman's train are Bachmann HO "Emilys" painted in GNR (I) livery.

I've followed this thread with some interest. It really comes to how accurate you want to be, or whether you're effectively happy with capturing a "BCDR atmosphere", such as I've tried to get on the SCDR thread at "Ardglass Station". And everyone develops their own "red lines" of what they can accept and what they can't. There are some things which really give this "looks like" effects, as well as locos and stock (they are of course important!) - - e.g signal boxes, signals, station buildings (and there are some pics of Downpatrick around in various sources) - and "location" - remember there's a hill behind the station and a cathedral and so on, which really shouts "Downpatrick"! And then there's the bridges over the little stream that ran near the station, which was on quite boggy ground. You don;t need necessairily to have all of them, but the more the better. Personally i wouldn't be too fussed about the exact turntable length - it is true that turntables on some irish lines were pretty short - and you would need a 50' to turn the bigger Mogul type engines. There certainly was a triangle at Downpatrick, with a platform and canopy there (still exists restored by the Downpatrick railway folk); tricky to model due to the shape the layout boards would need to be. All our layouts are bound to be compromises, and as Kirley points out, at the end of the day "its your railway"! Colm Flanagan-

Jeremy, I would have thought that both "types" would have been shoved behind any of the railcars ina totally random manner -, but I never actually took much notice of numbers etc, when I saw them. they were just "brown vans" (well,more of a faded greyishbrown shade) Precision Paints do a "weathered wood" colour which is excellent for this. Colm

Ken has been away for a bit but on return has once again exploded into life, and hence the progress on the railway. I've been wiriing up sections and point motors (as has he) but this is not terribly interesting from a visual point of view, However, there's now a continuous run round the layout and the back has been broken of the trackplan. This suits ken who's always been a scenery man! the two pictures above are an embankment with bridge on the far side of the layout, opposite Kilmore Junction; it shows the method of land forming employed by ken as well as some headlines from the past you may have missed.. But the "big ticket" item is the quarry which has replaced the proposed factory in a corner of the railway. . The factory was simply too big and too tall for this site, and has been moved to Strangford. A loop and two sidings will provide more operating interest too, and there's a small halt for workmen's trains.

Greetings all, Following some correspondence from a confused observer of this thread, I am posting a sketch track plan. It's a complex layout in a relatively small space (15' x 12' approx.) with different levels and so on, So this hopefully will help those of you who haven't seen it (most of you!) to make more sense of where everything fits in; there may still be some small inaccuracies but it is essentially correct. Colm

Once the Board of Trade have given their approval, and all safety checks and due diligence has been carried out, we will see what can be done....

There's been quite a bit of activity at Strangford and Kilmore Junction on the County Down SDJR over the last few weeks. First of all, the mill has moved! It looked much too dominating where it was (see previous postings) and so has been moved nearer to Strangford station; in the former mill corner site Ken is working on a quarry type setup, with a loop and some sidings (closer to the very first plan he showed me!). Strangford station itself is now operational, with all sections wired up and points motorized; the layout uses 3 way cab control and controller "C" is on the small panel here -this allows a single operator to urn the Strangford - reverse loops as a virtually separate small out and back layout. (A and B) are on the main panel at Kilmore. All are Gaugemaster controllers. Meanwhile, the 5 storage loops have been laid in and powered up, with their own small auxiliary control panel. -this allows some decent length (up to 5 coach) trains to be held here. They are behind the mill in the first picture. We've had a rethink about the small pier opposite Strangford: originally intended as a sort of fishing port, this is now morphing into a small passenger/goods ferry landing place; the small platform (with hut) you can see in the second picture has been displaced and this will now be a triangular platform with a "proper" station building. The pier will probably be based on a small Scottish loch style wooden structure but that's all still to be finalized. There's been much activity at Kilmore Junction too with the through tracks being connected up (though only the outer loop is operational at present) A complex station throat area installed; this has yet to be wired - double slips and diamond crossings in close proximity make a bit of head scratching necessary to make sure we wire them right; (I'd have bottled out and gone for insulfrogs but Ken wants "proper" ones...so lots of micro switches and things underneath....!). We're waiting for a visit from the line signalling and electrical engineer to finalize this. Many of the other points have been wired up, terminations to the main panel and now top of the list..

It's great to see another following the "bodge" route; This forum has a very healthy mixture of different "brands" of modelling - the road you choose will be determined by all kinds of factors - including cash and skills, of course. May I offer a working definition of "bodger" - which is NOT a derogatory term. and which I am proud to use for myself! A model railway "bodger" is : 1. An enthusiast who knows they have not the skill, or the time, or the cash to acquire, produce and run a desired selection of finescale models but who nevertheless is prepared to have a go at making something different by…. 2. “Bodging” (chopping up) plastic r-t-r and kit models in an effort to produce a railway which has the atmosphere and essential character of the real thing. 3. Who knows and grows to love the word “compromise" Happy New Year everyone keep them coming. Colm

It's a beautifully built and lined model but to be honest I'm not sure. It looks just too "big and long" to me. And I'd need to take a serious file to the cab cutout. I've been mulliing over how I might do a "bodge Baltic" for a long time now and have not yet found a suitable r-t-r chassis. The B12 might do, if you can fit 5'6" wheel and the complex valve gear. Way beyond me. Colm