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The Ballycrochan LIne


colmflanagan
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  • 3 weeks later...

Just a bit of fun - I do like to see a fast heavy passenger train with that "rail joint" noise, which now we miss on today's railways. The signal box is for  the "Fenaghy Junction" layout which has it's own page in this group.

For anyone who's interested the "Flyng Scotsman" is a DJH kit beautifully built by some unknown person, it's heavy which helps the sound!

the "Clayton" Class 17  was made by a firm called Techcad years ago, I did the painting myself, it has never gained an actual number.

In the background a Lima repaint in National Express / Scotrail livery.

i know, just "playing trains" and why not?

Enjoy

 

 

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Some of you may subscribe to "New Irish Lines", a bi-annual magazine produced by Alan O Rourke. It is a "must" for anyone interested in Irish railway modelling no matter what era or scale, or even semi freelance! With the latter in mind I am reproducing here a picture which appeared in the most recent edition.  In colour, with some more explanation about the stock depicted.

  The engine with the number plate (it's no 6) is essentially the closest i can get to  the attractive little NCC narrow gauge compound 2-4-2 tanks with using an r-t-r chassis, and plasticard top. I rather liked the S1 class with slightly extended bunker, i think this made them more "balanced" looking.  Now, of course it's got lots of compromises; because it runs on 9mm track I have narrowed it and slightly shortened it so it doesn't appear to be too "big". The actual motion etc came from the Graham Farish 2-6-4 BR 4MT tank, so it runs well.- I studied quite a few N gauge locos for a donor and it was the best i could find.  Actually in this picture the front set of wheels are obscured by the cylinder so it almost appears like a 2-4-2! the livery is fictional, a school friend of mine devised it many years ago for his 009 railway which i inherited many years later, and I like it. It's actually BR southern region green which is a very attractive shade; lining is yellow. The two coaches were both made from Mainline LMS panelled stock suitably cut down - I wanted originally to get as close to the size of the ones built by the LMS for the Ballymena-Larne boat trains but at 50' scale length they were too long and wide for my tracks, so they also were "shrunk"!  Even as it is they run on small 009 Peco bogies and are a bit fussy on some of the points - slow and smooth driving is necessary and they are  pigs to re-rail. The MPD lurking in the background is No 46, one of the non corridor UTA MPDs which i found myself on on Sunday evenings returning  to boarding school ,from Belfast to Coleraine. Dimly lit, without corridors and with sad green upholstery, they did not improve my mood in those days, but i  let bygones be bygones and built a two car set. Anyway, that's the story behind the picture!

 

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Looks superb as always, Colm.

 

The loco is a delight, but I was also interested in your account of cutting down 00 gauge coaches to make the NCC bogies. Those look remarkably convincing. The real thing was indeed much the same; scaled down standard gauge bodies.

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The bridges are mostly Wills  - the nearer narrow gauge one is the occupation bridge  with  stonework,(heightened), two of the others are  the "Varigirder" with stone/brick  abutments, and the far right one (on the standard gauge line) is a Peco "N" gauge girder with Slaters brick plasticard. I just wanted them to be all a bit different!!

I expect a real engineer would be very worried about the lack of supporting depth on the underside of some of these bridges but clearances are very tight in this area and I "gauged" them to the minimum clearance possible. (Some of you will know I have one or two "non Irish" large locomotives and I was determined to be able to run them with reasonable freedom.   None will fall down anyway!

 

Colm

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  • 3 weeks later...

Another "fun" video witha beyer garratt and Flying Scotsman pulling really long trains. Try counting the wagons and coaches if you suffer from insomnia.

 

There's a few Irish wagons in the freight train.

 

 

My next post (coming soon) will return to the UTA theme., with UTA railcar No 5.

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THE  GANZ”   ULSTER TRANSPORT AUTHORITY No5

 

The story of an experiment.

 

The subtitle above could refer to either the real thing or my model.   Nearly  twenty years ago, when I was researching  “Diesel Dawn” I was fortunate to acquire some drawings of UTA railcars..  My interest at the time was in the MPD cars, and I generally paid little heed to the rest.  Sadly all these drawings got lost in my recent house move.

However, I recalled  a railcar drawing with the intriguing name of “ Ganz”, UTA No 5. It was a single unit with double cab anda definitely unusual look.

When I started to look into it, I discovered that it had been bought by the UTA in 1951.The railcar was a prototype based on a Hungarian design known as “Arpad”, and had been used for trials on the LMS, then  stored in England since 1938. The name “Ganz” is explained by the fact that  the diesel engine which powered it,  was made under licence from  Ganz, the manufacturers.

The UTA regauged  the railcar and gave it the number 5 following on from the NCC cars.  No 5 ran on and off until about 1961. It then  lay out of service and decaying in a shed at Adelaide, being scrapped about 1965.  Mostly, it has been forgotten.

Now, my approach to these projects is based on a simple question. Can I chop something out of plastic which will be a reasonable representation? I can cope with tiny bits of plasticard, but I don’t  like doing chassis, and metal work isn’t on my agenda, apart from using etched sides if there are any available. To the best of my knowledge, no-one has as yet done a model of the Ganz” railcar in any scale.  I was fortunate in getting another copy of the drawing I’d had, from Ian Sinclair, though it was a pretty poor reproduction; still it confirmed what I’d originally thought – the Ganz wasn’t really like anything else that ran in Ireland (or even the UK!)  – it even had a very long power bogie of 13’ (52mm in 00). A one off indeed.

PLAN PICTURE

Forget it, I thought. Then, I was browsing one of my railcar books and had an idea. One of the batches of GWR railcars looked interesting  - about the a same length as the Ganz, and Lima made a model W22, on a chassis which was a bit noisy but reliable. Maybe…..just maybe it might be possible if one allowed a good bit of leeway..at least it would look “different”.

I decided the only thing to do was to buy a Lima one and inspect it to see what could and could not be done. I duly acquired a W22 at a reasonable price. And

Spent quite a while looking at it. Yes, the bogies were (both) wrong – being 9’ ish.  But who peers closely at bogies?  I’d try and make them look different someway.  It was cla ear that the windows were too big and set too high for the Ganz, but I could rearrange them to be roughly the correct number with doors at the appropriate places.  I’d need to chop two cars up to get the number I’d need.  The cabs would need to be built from strip and filler, and the roof  had an odd profile. But I reckoned some coarse sandpaper and elbow work might deal with the latter. Should I go ahead?

LIMA MODEL

I went for it, bought another Lima railcar, and set to work. I decided to accept that the inaccuracies above would have to be lived with, otherwise the project was a dead duck for me. Anyway,  I thought, even if it’s not 100% right , how many other people alive even remember the thing, or know of it’s existence?  In the end, it was my time and should it be a disaster then I had a couple of  spare Lima motors and bogie which might come in useful.

So I began by counting windows and cutting up sides – straight away compromise was the order of the day. I ended up with the toilet nearer the engine than it actually was, and the opaque windows help disguise the big motor behind!  One cab was a half cab, and there were little triangular windows at each end. I had to build the thing and still be able to access the chassis in case of motor problems. This meant I had to retain parts of the Lima one untouched and I know from bitter experience that a flimsy cab end construction is a very bad idea…so I accepted that the Lima underframe, cab interiors, and buffers would need to stay. And it’s hard to see into the cabs anyway.

1042690049_GWrwindowsdrawing.JPG.8ee736dd531e236a6dc664fa495e7bea.JPG

 

The drawing is my "working" one, with the windows as they will be,  rather than the original; it was cut off at one end, and i inked in the left hand cab.

 

Gradually No 5 took shape.  I fixed the sides to the Lima underframe to give them some strength – there were five “panels” on each side and they are a bit flimsy when hacked into smallish panels.  This meant I had to keep the roof removable, it’s held by two screws which come up from beneath.  I had a lot of trouble with the little windows at the ends but finally got somewhere near – by the way the two cabs have different numbers of glass panes in them  and they were more curved than mine.  That just would have been a step too far!

 

IMG_7629.JPG.3ac36719a374099d2954cf24e1f0c6ab.JPG

 

Using my two interiors, I did the seating, I have 16 first and 20 second as opposed to 18 first and 22 second in the real thing which isn’t bad! 

 

 The roof was usable after some heavy sanding. I have no information about what type of ventilators were used, so went with a type used on a number of early BR and UTA trains.

 

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The Ganz was powered by a single diesel situated behind a full width driver’s cab; it was apparently quite big and stood tall inside a wooden “box” with narrow access corridor down one side. Naturally this was the end to keep the Lima pancake motor in. I disguised it as best I could by blacking up inside windows, which looks perfectly fine from a couple of feet way.

As for the bogies, I happened to stumble on a set of Bulleid pattern “Commonwealth” bogie sides- they look quite chunky and different so I filed down  the Lima bogie sides and glued these on!

1942750925_Ganzbogiesides.JPG.ee71dbf519994ccaa5228ecb811b8666.JPG

 

Information on what went  underneath is sketchy so I did “improvise” a bit.The Lima model has deep “skirts” but these had to be removed, and replaced by the items any diesel railcar needs - a fuel tank, radiators, battery, and at least one electrical panel. The Ganz had air brakes so I added a compressor and cylinders (which show in the drawing and photos.)

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i omitted the fuel tank at first!  It replaced the battery at top right corner.

 

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Nearly there!

 

 I used the livery the Ganz carried from about 1960, with yellow ends and black stripes. The railcar never carried the UTA “crest” but retained its “red hand” until the end.

 

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The railcar runs well – the Ganz did on occasions pull a trailer which the UTA built for it, but for now my model has no working couplings. I obviously removed the huge Lima hook and bar ones to get the ends looking something like the real thing. – the piping was added for the trailer but of course No 5 had to “run round” when it was in use as the trailer had no cab.

Finally,  “Before” and “After” pictures. If nothing else, my Ganz  looks very different from the original model. And it was fun building it –most of the time

1567950955_LimaW22.jpg.dc7a6c9256f3e6cee0d63bb36a5972ca.jpg

 

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I am hoping soon to make a model of Nos 6 & 7 (using Allen doherty's etches which will give me 1, 4, 5, 6 &7, MED 12, and a number of MPDs - samples of the way railcars developed in N. Ireland between 1930 and 1961.

 

Colm

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  • 3 weeks later...

i've been doing some scenic work on the last significant bit of bare board on the layout, the lifting section beyond Coleraine  The main lines run behind my ferry at one end of the room), as below.

 

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After a good bit of humming and hawing I decided to re-use the "Eden Cottage" Mk1 which had been displaced from our "Bleach Green" layout as it was basically a tweaked Metcalfe farm house.

 

294681951_EdenCottagecomplete21June.jpg.ac0408f962c3edc9f536db113f3c8849.jpg

 

I decided to give it some nice  grounds around, with a terrace, gardens  and lawn at the front, garage etc behind, and a drive curving up from the road. A very enjoyable project- he's got a bit of money this guy, hence the golden Jaguar Mk2 at the front door! His wife has the blue mini. (the sky behind is thanks to photoshop, in reality the harbour area and ship can be seen!) The semi toppled flower point to left of front door has been sorted, it got hit by a visitor!! The lawn mower is scratch built and based one one my dad had in the late 1950's. It took about an hour and a half to build. The washing is on the line to the right, the greenhouse by Bachmann. The Ratio spear fencing adds a bit of class with it's golden tips....(just like a large house I saw recently!) I find most scatters too coarse from things like driveways so have used some genuine Ballywalter silver sand sprinkled on thinly.

 

146822703_EdenCottageback.jpg.b750c56922e918e4d928c4af9f9ecec3.jpg

 

The back garden, the hedgerow disguises the gap between the lifting section and main board behind.  The potting shed came as a free kit with a magazine, the corrugated iron garage is built from plastic card.

 

There's some more work to do, I'll post some more details when it happens!.

 

 

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Love the house and all the scene around it, a lot of thought and detail

which makes it look top class.

I think a dark grey sky is more normal for N. Ireland most of the time. :D

But it is your land.

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On 05/07/2020 at 16:49, pat141 said:

Love the house and all the scene around it, a lot of thought and detail

which makes it look top class.

I think a dark grey sky is more normal for N. Ireland most of the time. :D

But it is your land.

 

Indeed, my wife sometimes refers to it as the "summer house"..!  Pure escapism ...

 

A short video of a UTA "neverwazz" formation - Railcar No4 with a luggage/generator van in tow, on a test run from Stranraer to Coleraine. The GV (Hornby respray) is for another modelling friend.

 

 

 

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  • 3 months later...

Hi All,

 

It's quite a while since I posted any report of progress on the railway.  I haven't been idle, as shown on the Fenaghy Junction topic.

 

However, it's been little projects of one kind and another, and some stuff you can't actually see; on my previous layout most of the buildings were fitted with lights, but I had snipped off the cables (leaving a decent "tail").  I have now had a rolling  programme of re-connecting the have now almost completed this task, along with the extra switches and power units to operate them. Pics are difficult of this sort of thing, but the signal boxes for both standard and narrow gauge are now illuminated as in the pic below, which also shows the transhipment loading bay and the "boat train" leaving for Stranraer in charge of No6, which recently featured here and in New irish Lines. The narrow gauge is essentially complete now., apart from suitable station facilities at Stranraer and two of the halts en route.

 

429141027_Ardglasssclitandboattraindeparts301020.JPG.92e7dd7b0b729397aa3ff26620eb2a75.JPG

 

There's been development in the "Coleraine" area as well; I have re-instated the colour light signals used before and although they don't quite correspond to the new track plan, they still look well. Lights have been installed under the canopies and in the main station building, the platform ones remain to sort out.

 

2047849890_Colerainesignalsbox.JPG.9055c6d40e731c5f83a7ea3bc7e98910.JPG

 

There's a TPO here now, a "scale version" of the old Hornby Dublo apparatus.  Works a charm -great for "playing trains"!  Were there any in Ireland? As far as I know, there wasn't. though there were TPO coaches on the GSR/CIE line to Cork. Non working lampost will be replaced for night operations!  And there's still lots to do round this area, which is all a bit bare still.

 

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This signal box was originally built for "Fenaghy Junction" but has been superseded by a platform based one, after we decided it looked better. I had a larger box which just looked wrong on this site , so it was swapped for this one from ken';s layout. the original tall chimney was cut back and it's now "Eden Lane"; I refer earlier to "Eden Cottage" which is just out of shot on the left.

 

340149942_EdenLanearea3010.JPG.611d51b365590a5ff468a93c490e61ca.JPG

 

 

And some more work on the same lifting board area, a row of Superquick terraces, and the Up line TPO, a Hornby Dublo one disguised a bit; works great too!  The signal at the tunnel mouth is an automatic one, controlled by a very old track circuit I had in a box for about 15 years before exhuming it; with a little help from Ian Sinclair who knows more about electronics than i do, it now works perfectly . As trains pass it goes to red when the loco or power car (as in the video) passes,  and only clears when they have left the other side of the tunnel.  It isn't on a timer but adjusts to the speed  of train which is a very good feature.  

 

 

 

 

And finally, what do you do with small bits of land  too small for a building _I'd planned alittle workman's cottage but it was too big.

 

Well, this is a little site of scientific interest with a standing stone on it; this stone starterd life as part of a kit called "Make your own Stonehenge" - we used a lot of it on "Bleach Green" to build a circle, but a few "stones" were left over. Just the job

 

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That's all for now, folks.

 

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

  THE ARDGLASS RETARDER

Maybe a word not commonly used by railway enthusiasts today, but (in this country at least) associated with “hump” marshalling yards of the 1950s on British railways.

A retarder is a device for slowing/stopping moving wagons.  They are still in use in many shunting yards worldwide, but I have found a use for one at my Ardglass station.

 

 

I was working some trains through the station and recently useda rake of 3 of my “UTA” coaches, which happen to be pretty free running. Anyway, on stopping the train, then reversing it for the loco to uncouple and run round, I found I had to physically stop the carriages from running down and recoupling on the loco. How come?

After a few minutes I had my answer – sometime over the last three years the board had developed a sag in the middle. Not enough to be obvious to look at, and not a problem with slightly stiffer rolling stock, but…definitely one for some of my more recent coaches with free running wheels – important on a railway with intended gradients. What to do?

A few minutes looking at the construction of the board banished any ideas of lifting the centre. MY friend ken had built and mounted the board with shelving underneath…heavy duty stuff. That was not going to move.

 I decided to try and build a device which would stop the carriages running down on the loco. A retarder, in short.

After quite a bit of thinking I devised something I thought might work. You could almost regard it as a vertical version of the uncoupling ramps many folk used for Hornby couplings, a strip of clear plastic with a “hump” .  I was going to use a separate Gaugemaster remote uncoupling ramp anyway, and a quick trial of one of the original design showed they had little or no effect at holding coaches.

 

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I decided to mount a narrow (6mm) strip of 020thou clear plasticard glued to two track pins, on one side of the track, and bowed it towards where the coach axlebox would run. It had to be far enough not to foul things like battery boxes, but close enough to press in on the axlebox and slow/stop the coach, over the ramp where it could be uncoupled. It would be travelling slowly upwards, as the loco reversed the coach towards the ramp,  so it might just work.

 

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Operator's view!

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After painting of retarder - ramp still in whitemetal grey!

 

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Track View

 

To my great pleasure (and a bit to my surprise) it has worked very well, as demonstrated by the video below. And rather satisfying to solve a knotty problem. I’ve painted it, which I found actually makes it less obtrusive; the ramp too has had a coat of track grime since I took the photos.

 

 

retarder #1.JPG

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I did consider that but in the end decided not to, you need to be incredibly flexible to actually see the platform face, there's no access from the rear or side, so if it needed fiddling with or tweaking it would be very hard to see what you're doing.  It doesn't really bother me anyway.

 

Colm

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  • 2 weeks later...

LIGHTS IN THE DARKNESS on the Ballycrochan Line

 

Back at the beginning of the month I'd mentioned that I was re-connecting lights on some of the buildings. I got a bit of a bug about it and, among other routine servicing and planning some loco adaptations, re-connected nearly all the lights I had on the previous railway, and added some more. I’ve now got more lighting on this layout than in any other I’ve had.

 

The Ballycrochan line night time illumination : Coleraine station in foreground. Ardglass is on the right but pictured separately -the lens can't give that wide a picture!

 

The "blue" lights are LED lamps at the storage siding points - my LightDetecting Resistor train detectors don't work in the dark!!

 

1545126333_ColeraineandStranraernight.jpg.3dfc5c55eff48f0a74d53af34db90bb1.jpg

 

Ardglass Station

 

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Control panels have their own little lights - 4mm) station lamps! Shielded a bit so as not to spill too much light on to the layout itself.

581960150_stranraerandstoragesidingspanels.jpg.24a6b72475a30238e1861ba01a8a2dc1.jpg

.

I still won’t be doing any complex shunting in the dark, but now at least I’ve fair chance of being able to see the trains as they go round, and do some switching of routes without needing the main lights

 

The Coleraine station entry

707884244_Colerainestnentrancenight.jpg.1582a0f6552036852ff4e961bce794b8.jpg

 

Then I got to thinking about coaches with lights. I have a few already, a Hornby Dublo rake with LEDs fitted by me long before the various kits now available appeared, and powered by 2 xAA cells in a full brake coach, with little jumper wires between the coaches! It looked well but the jumper cables have never been 100% satisfactory as the wire I had was either too stiff and had a tendency to push bogies off on curves and points, or too flimsy and broke from the flexing involved. One of these days I will try and fit it with "decoder wire" which might prove better. There's a Blue Pullman and some Hornby Pullmans with lights, and some of my diesels have them. But I wanted a rake of maybe 5 Mk1s and some "vintage" coaches to add to these, so began to research lighting units. For DC, remember.   After a look I decided not to go for wheel pickup,  The light is invariably altering as voltage changes, and flickering if wheels are contaminated or on a dead frog, is an ongoing issue (even, I believe , in DCC).  Also, it definitely adds drag, and with my gradients and a five coach train, that might prove a bit tricky.

So I was left with on board battery based lighting. Eventually I settled on two i liked the look of  one from Train Tech and also a firm called Layouts4U.  (Usual disclaimers here). I ordered samples of both and decided to illuminate my 1980s 5 coach Stranraer-Glasgow "Sealink" Lima  Mk1  coaches; I'd already fitted them with flushglaze sides and before installing the lights I decided to do some repainting of the interiors (everything was dark brown), and so, very important I think, to add people. Personally I use HO figures, as they seem to “ fit” better; for some reason actual 4mm ones seem too big. Maybe it is because rthe actual space on our compartments etc is smaller than the real thin, due to thicker sides and suchlike. PrEiser make very nice, but expensive figures, various other firms do cheap ones which come from the Far East; these do need considerable plaiting up to look right – the clothes colours seem very “bright” to me!

The Train Tech is the more expensive of the two units, more than double the price of the layouts for you; it is much more sophisticated, with a motion sensor which lights up when the coach mores and has a delay switch circuit so when the coach stops, it takes some minutes to turn the lights off. This allows “station stops” without all the lights going out. The LED board is a sturdy one, and options are available to fit taillights as well. Power for both units comes from a coin cell (provided in both) and holder which can fit in a Mk1 toilet. the two pictures below are of this train. The tail light is available on the Train Tech unit for extra coast. (The storage siding lights are more blue in the pictures than they are in reality.)

 

1757893600_Mk1lightingstr19112020.jpg.a9868018aa86b2b09898365262091568.jpg

 

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The layouts4u has a more flimsy LED strip, which is self adhesive - quite strong too, so position it carefully before finally pressing it down!” Both systems allow strips to be shortened and power can be applied from various positons as convenient. Layouts4u use a latching reed switch positioned near the LED strip, which can be activated by passing a  small magnet over it to switch on, then a second pass will switch off. Both come with instructions.  I’ve decided to use the cheaper of the two as I want to do about 10 coaches, but either works well and it’s up to you. One thing is; as it comes the layouts4u is much brighter than the Train tech. In daylight you have to look very closely indeed to see the lights (very prototypical I suppose, carriage lighting even today isn’t all that bright on a  lot of trains, and the old battery/generator  powered ones tended to be on the dim  side. I found that the Layouts4U unit with a 470okhms resistor in line with the reed switch, dimmed the LEDs to the same light output as the Train tech, and that’s what I want. You will need some soldering skills with both these units and also be prepared to do a little surgery on the partition walls of some toilets on older coaches, if the compartment area is small. The Hornby midland clerestory coach shown was a tight fit. And remember, leave a little slack to the battery as you’ll need to get it out completely to change the battery.

 

Hornby midland Clerestory coach at Ardglass

 

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The "Caledonian Princess" berthed at Stranraer

 

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Hope folk enjoy this little diversion - but one of the things I love about railway modelling is it variety! I'll get back to the UTA in due course.... Apologies if the pics are a bit murky - it's the best i can do.

 

Colm

Edited by colmflanagan
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I’ve used the Layouts4U lights too.  At first I stuck the LED strips on the inside of the coach roof, but if anything goes wrong eg one of the wires breaks, you’ll be soldering against the plastic coach roof. So what I now do is mount the LED strips on a thin strip of wood (coffee stirrers work well) and glue those to the top of the coach bulkheads.

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On 17/06/2020 at 22:32, colmflanagan said:

Another "fun" video witha beyer garratt and Flying Scotsman pulling really long trains. Try counting the wagons and coaches if you suffer from insomnia.

 

There's a few Irish wagons in the freight train.

 

 

My next post (coming soon) will return to the UTA theme., with UTA railcar No 5.

Fabulous. Only a Hornby dublo with its powerful linear ring field motor could haul that many Hornby dublo wagons. Their axles had a lot more friction than modern models. Great to see a long Good’s train. Some of those wagons evoke great memories. 

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I've been a bit busy recently, though not with teh railway!  Still, I've  been doing little jobs around the line.  Some semaphore signals have arrived (from the boxes of stuff from the old layout, and what's great is that they still work. Of course, t here's some scenic work to finish off.

This Dapol upper quadrant is the "distant" for the Stranraer branch. In the background are some others!

 

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Stranraer outer home, on the "direct lien" from Ardglass; the finial makes quite a difference amd gives it quite an "NCC" look, even if it's not a somersault. However, this type was used in earlier eras of the BNCR.

 

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Also,a piece of "waste ground behind Platform 2  has been changed into a small bus depot in a generally UTA style, it's really a garage but with a couple of "stands" outside; I've a nice little collection of UTA and other irish buses - it's good to see them emerge from their boxes!

Eagled eyes people will notice a very diverse lot of destinations not normally served from Coleraine depot. I plead guilty!  the No 18 and 36 both came from my Newcastle junction layout c 2004, and the No. 9 happens to be the service from Belfast, which passes through Ballywalter via Carrowdore so it's not too far from home in Bangor.  Some folk may recognize the poster from it's days hanging in the old Stranraer ferry terminal.  The ship model is to the left of the picture. The Royal Mail van is a vintage Dublo Dinky.

 

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