IC126

I have a couple of shots that might assist - the first was taken in late summer 1986 showing 47530 and Mk1 19008 I spent the day on the platform of the station for Kilmarnock Open Day 11-09-1988 - this event as I recall was organised to mark the introduction of Sprinters to the route. I have a similarly composed photo (too blurry to post) taken in the morning with the leading vehicle identifiable as Mk 2a BSO 9436. I'm not sure whether this afternoon train was a regular set, or a replacement given that the service would shortly go over to Sprinters - A named 47 (not sure which one) with most of the vehicles on this working in Intercity red stripe livery.

Hi Ken, after some searching I found a couple of shots I had taken of 92091 in this variation (with ScotRail branding at outer ends) 47 703 & ScotRail BG 92091 - Montrose by Intercity126, on Flickr 47 703 & ScotRail BG 92091 - Glasgow Queen Street by Intercity126, on Flickr

Afraid not - the only thing I can tell for sure is that it's not 9706 as the cover clips are painted slightly differently.

Hotlink special: Here's one from me of an overly branded Inter-City Scotrail DBSO (identical livery to the unfortunate Sc9706 posted by Keefer above) with, as fourth coach, in the set one of the camera-shy rail-blue-stripe Mk 3s DBSO Inter-City Scotrail + Rail Blue stripe Mk3 RET by Intercity126, on Flickr Here is another DBSO in the later livery DBSOScotrail Blue stripe - Queen St RET by Intercity126, on Flickr Moving across town to Glasgow Central, we have a 107 with headcode blinds still intact - I always thought these had been plated (or at least painted) over, but it seems it was just filth all along... 107 433 with headcode intact Glasgow Central by Intercity126, on Flickr Last but by no means least - a couple of Intercity sets - 126 408 (Sc51038) in Ayr shed Sc51038 @ Ayr Shed by Intercity126, on Flickr 126 413 (our preserved Sc51043 www.class126.co.uk) at Lochside. Lovely lattice post signals with repeater arms. 126 413 (Sc51043) - Lochside by Intercity126, on Flickr

A nice, unusual conversion, well done! I posted a photo of the prototype at Yoker on the Scottish Region photos thread a few weeks ago that might be of interest:

I had to laugh here, Bob, thinking about Keefers explanation of the Scotrail / ScotRail transition: "it's to do with the way we read words". He is spot on. I read your post as "Never mind the tartan bag - what about the "burd" wearing a wee tweed jacket, Wranglers and the red Knickers" I had to check the photo again, just in case....

Some more from the last few days' scanning activities. As usual, I've put the original full-size files on my Flickr photostream. A change from the blue diesels that normally feature in this thread, but it was Scottish Region 1980s, so I've posted it.... No.9 on shed at Ferryhill on a railtour. One of the last 126 units departs from platform 13. 126 units cross at Elderslie - still then with two signal boxes, a 4 track formation and the junctions between the main Ayr/Glasgow route and the Canal / Kilmacolm lines. Note the sidings pleasingly full of 16 tonners. Happy days. 107 431 at Ayr - Unit 431 comprising a Metro Cammel trailer sandwiched between the Class 107 power cars. At this time the Ayr services (formerly in the hands of the Class 126 Swindon units) had been generally taken over by Derby and Metro Cammel units. The cracked driving axles on the 107s had yet to surface at this point. Last one for tonight is ADB 968021 (ex 84 009) in the sidings at Yoker. Late 80s, this one.

Thanks for the information gentlemen - I have the Parkin book (and the supplement) so that is most likely where I read about the ScotRail capitalisation. Can't tell from my photo what variation the Rail Blue vehicle carries or the vehicle number, unfortunately. Pity - it would have made an interesting model. I seem to remember thinking that the sky blue variety was the odd one out when I first saw it, which might suggest that there were a few rail blue stripe vehicles around, at least for a while.

Another one with a question: Late 1980s - Prior to the adoption of the light blue for ScotRail vehicles I noted several Mk3s (mostly on the E&G push-pull services) in a Rail Blue variation of "Intercity Red Stripe" livery. I have to say that I quite liked it - the rail blue stripe matched the then standard blue & grey vehicles quite well (the advantage of using a limited colour palette as an interior designer might say) This variation didn't last long before the standard sky blue stripe ScotRail livery became standard. The treatment of the beige above the cantrail strip also varies from the later "standard" ScotRail livery on the adjacent coach. I have also vague recollections that the capitalisation in "ScotRail" might not have been standardised at this time (Scotrail?). Does anyone (Bob?) have any more information on this livery?

A few more from me: Glasgow Queen Street was always a popular destination for a quick photo trip One of my early shots taken before I realised that obstructions show on the final print... Not the good record of the Class 27 I had originally intended, I like this shot now mostly for the unintended "stuff" happening around the scene - the platform sign, the BR uniform, the "BRUTE" tractor, the tartan bags, etc. A couple mighty DMUs at Johnstone. Wormit I've put higher resolution copies and a few other shots on my flickr album here

A few more: My favourite shot from this batch of scans. When in Ayr be sure to visit the DMU shed - a popular tourist destination in those days for the fledgling Swindon Diesel Preservation Society. www.class126.co.uk A local vantage point for me - I lived most of my formative years in Johnstone. No doubt I was disappointed at the time by the 107 instead of an Intercity unit. Another grabbed shot at Shields Road. This time to capture the disgrace of 08 718. The rerailing train with doors wide open at the depot replacing the usual ranks of 303s/311s in similar pose. Last one in this batch - one for Bruce - not a Scottish Region shot, but 97 804 (06 003) at Reading during an open day in 1985. Surprised to read that this loco had moved to Manchester recently. Also: found this shot of 06 002 and 06 003 together at Reading recently: http://martynhilbert.railpic.net/gallery/displayimage.php?pid=1054

Brian, just like to say that for "us up North" the Clayton looks spectacularly nice. It reminds me of trips into Glasgow Central in the "Golden Age of Trains". There used to be a little swarm of them on Central Station Bridge... until one day they all disappeared. To my child mind, I thought they would magically reappear, but I was to be disappointed. They were gone for ever.

Yes - it was quite "exotic" to see such things then. The SF silver roof and the APT (aka Snoopy) really opened the floodgates of livery variations.

A few from me: 10 years after buying my slide scanner, I've finally started to really try to use it. The main reason I bought it was to scan my old colour print negatives - the prints back then were awful - muddy and lacking contrast of any sort. I'm pleased to say that the negatives look a lot better scanned than on the original prints - especially after a bit of image adjusting/retouching on Photoshop. Not the best of shots - but it was on the film and I decided to post it due to the subject matter. Who would have thought that the window of opportunity to photograph such a modern machine would close so soon? This last shot was one from the reject pile in the old days - poor light, camera held at wild angle and electricity lines right across the foreground. A good one to practice image enhancement on.

Thanks, Bruce. PM sent.

I've recently been making progress with detailing the Barclay. Some handrail knobs are included in the kit, but I noticed from photos that the Barclays have a quite distinctive, very plain, tube instead of the more "normal" shape. I made these out of microbore copper tube drilled through. By filing all the ends to length together whilst threaded onto a piece of handrail wire I got quite consistent results. I used a combination of card and masking tape to hold these in place whilst I soldered them in place, same with the door handles. The end result. Also in place now are the strips along the tops of the doors (to retain them and keep the water runoff out) and the short sections of angle iron to retain the doors at the bottom. I ran out of etched angle, so used some 4mm bullhead rail with the back and one head filed off to make a small "L" section. Attention turned to the fuel tank - I didn't like the casting for the top hatch, so bodged up a replacement from washers. Detalis of the hinge and fastening were scraps of strip pinned together, as was the top fixing for the exhaust pipe. Breather pipe is a piece of wire. . The tank - complete for now. Some photos I have seen hint at a lifting lug on top of the tank - I'll scour 'tinternet for a detail shot, but this area seems to be little photographed Horns were supplied as a white metal casting, which bent when I looked at it too hard. I planned to remake this using scrap etch for the bracket and MMP brass castings, but these seemed just a little bit too fine and liable to damage, so I made up some horns by flaring out the top of some copper tube with a centre punch. A small "V" was taken out of the base to allow wire to be connected to represent the air tubing. Soldered up it doesn't look too bad - a bit clumsy, but I'll paint them black to make them less conspicuous It took a lot trial and (mostly) error before I got the horns to be parallel and at a height that looked right. The cover plate on the bonnet was held off with cardboard and masking tape as before whilst the "fixing bolts" were soldered on. These were cut off and filed to a consistent height by using a piece of scrap etch with a hole drilled in to keep the top proud whilst i filed. Current state of play.

Really like your painting of the interior, Brian. The tables and chairs look superb.

Paisley Canal No2 Signal Box Paisley Canal is my 0 Gauge micro layout and my entry to the 2010 layout challenge The Summary Topic gives an overview of the state of completion of the layout by the closing date of the competition and the Layout Building Thread shows the construction methods I used. I also have an RMweb Blog where I detail my sporadic efforts at populating the layout with appropriate rolling stock and a number of Galleries with some Scottish Region interest. Last but by no means least I maintain the website for the restored Scottish Region Class 126 DMU, preserved by the SRPS at Bo'ness.

Excellent - thanks for posting.

That's an excellent comparison David - thanks for posting. Certainly from that angle I can see very little difference in the body shapes. The main thing that I noticed was that the horizontal handrail below the windows should follow the nose line, rather than being straight across. Also the handrail is slightly too long, and the lower vertical grab rails are also correspondingly too far out. Does these contribute to the difference that everybody sees but can't quite define? Should be very easy to fix if so.

After our Winter Work Week on the Class 126, I managed to get some good photos of the inside and outside of DMU headcode blinds - to avoid hijacking TimC's thread any more, I've put the info in the Prototype section for anyone interested.

Well done to Dave for pretty much a clean sweep with Waton. The variety of different ideas for the same maximum space was very good. Thanks to Andy Y for arranging the voting to make the voters consider the different aspects of each layout in a fairly reasoned way. It isn't easy comparing such widely different layouts, but again Waton rightly scored highly in all categories. I was quite pleased with my showing and happy that I entered. There is nothing quite like a deadline to focus the mind.

At least some of the blinds we have in the preserved class 126 have the wide front /narrow back fonts that Ozzyo describes. It's most obvious if you look at the blinds from the back side - I'll try to dig out some under-restoration photos in case they show this. There are at least two generations of blinds in use - older printed cloth blinds and newer blinds on a white plastic type material. I think the plastic ones are the ones with the wide front /narrow back fonts. I presume the reason is to make the wide characters best visible under (refected) daylight, but to avoid that (at night) that the light shining through blurs too much due to a flare-type effect?

I had just posted a tip for marking out roof detail on Easybuild coaches on Jamies "Coaches for Culreoch" thread when I saw your Cravens thread. The tip might be of use to you too. I agree with the comments about Easybuild coaches - they really are very nice to build and make an excellent basis for further detailing.

I used to love the original E&G class 27 push pull sets. Whenever I travelled to Edinburgh I always preferred to get a nice quiet door window - either the first or last passenger window for maximum Sulzer thrash through Cowlairs tunnel. I would always cross to the right hand side of the train as they passed Eastfield depot. For years 24 006 was a more or less permanent fixture there, part of the scenery beside the mainlines until it was replaced by a 27. Quite brought a lump to my throat to see your photo of it waiting to be cut.