Newton Stewart 1955-65 - the PP&WJR in OO

[Wheatley]

The Port Road from Dumfries to Stranraer has long been my personal obsession but not that long ago the mention of Newton Stewart would, I suspect, have had most modellers asking “Where?”. Now, in a large part thanks to Andrew Swan’s excellent book “The Port Road” (Lightmoor Press, 2017), a lot more people have noticed this rather attractive (in a suitably dour Presbyterian way) Scottish junction and the long, largely single track secondary route which served it.  Bochi has already started a thread on here about his ongoing project to build Newton Stewart in the 1930s

 

My version of Newton Stewart is set firmly in the 1955-65 period. I’ve been dithering about doodling layout plans for this for years, then faffed about for 10 years getting the shed fit to build in, have so far spent a further 4 years building the occasional board without a single train running yet and only now am I actually laying track. Even then it’s mostly held down with drawing pins while I work out whether my Absolutely Last Final Track Plan actually fits. So 14 years into a ten year plan I’m still sawing up wood for baseboards.

 

Part of the problem is that, to model the whole station, junction with the Whithorn branch and loco shed requires a space at least 28 feet long and my shed is 13’ x 8’ internally. A bigger shed was not an option for several reasons, most of them involving our garden not being 28 feet in any direction, so it was either squeeze Newton Stewart into the space available or build something else. “Something else” would have to be somewhere else on the Port Road of course but few other locations were operationally interesting enough to hold attention for long. The fallback would probably have been Dunragit.

 

The ‘rules’ such as they were, were that the branch platform had to hold five Mk1 coaches otherwise the Easter Tours wouldn’t fit, the Whithorn branch and loco shed had to be included, there should be no curves tighter than 3rd radius (19” or thereabouts) visible, and even then only where they were largely hidden or not obvious. Stock has to negotiate a Peco Streamline small crossover as that is what the fiddle yard uses.  In practice the only visible bit of 3rd radius is tucked away in one corner although the Whithorn branch uses a short length of 4th radius (~21”) rather than the planned 30”.

 

This is what it looked like drawn out at ¼ scale:

The fiddle yard isn’t shown, largely because at that stage I had absolutely no idea what it was going to look like. The first idea was for a grand double tracked multi-level vertical fiddle yard sliding majestically up and down the back wall, but to accommodate the Stranraer boat trains this was going to need to be about 8 feet long and my carpentry isn’t up to that level of finesse. Some experimenting with a Hornby Clan, some Bachmann Mk1s and a set of DCC Concepts Powerbase magnets and bases showed that 1 in 60 gradients were feasible so a double spiral looping around to a lower fiddle yard was designed. It’s even harder to describe than it is to draw and needed a model of the model to check that it actually fits !

 

The fiddle yard is effectively the whole lower level, a mixture of long sidings (the longest accommodates two full length boat trains) and a traverser. One of the spirals was mocked up full size in foam board, some track pinned down and it all actually worked ! The scenic boards sit on top of this and much head scratching and trial and error has been involved in trying to ensure that access is available to them if needed.

 

So at the moment the station looks like this. Some of the supports are very temporary, and yes I know the distant signal arm is upside down:

More later.

 

Edited September 1, 2022 by Wheatley

[31A]

This sounds like a cunning plan; looking forward to watching your progress with this!

 

[Bochi]

Excellent! Now I'm really going to have to work hard to keep up!

Your plan looks good: you've got all the main features and I admire the way you've fought to get the overflow siding into the engine shed area. At 30" ruling radius (and a larger area) I couldn't manage it and keep the platform length I wanted, although if I can shave a few inches off there, I still might squeeze it in.

I briefly considered a train stacker and felt similarly about my carpentry, although I was tempted to lash out on one of those digital jobs which require a second mortgage. Common sense reeled me in and I went for two side by side yards with end turntables and a linking road for a continuous run.

 

It looks as if you too will need the arms of a gorilla to reach the loading banks on the far side of the goods shed. Are you going for automatic couplings?

 

[Wheatley]

I don't think you'll have to work too hard, Dan built most of Stranraer while I was thinking about how to do the bit across the door ! 

 

Yes it's a bit of a stretch but it's unavoidable; trials of automatic couplings have been going on almost as long as the layout planning ! I've settled on the Lincs having tried most of the others. There's no delayed action but they are more robust and less fiddly than the alternatives. I need an awful lot though !

[Wheatley]

This is the mock up of the scenic upper part of the layout, the station is bottom left, trains leave clockwise for Dumfries and anti-clockwise for Stranraer and Whithorn. The Whithorn branch rejoins the Stranraer line behind the backscene, there is no separate fiddle yard for the branch. The lifting section across the door is bottom right.

 

 

Downstairs the lines from the surfsce drop 170mm at about 1 in 60, the gradient being set by a 600mm spirit level with a 10mm block under one end.

 

The clockwise spiral is mostly hidden behind cutting sides until it drops below baseboard level, there is just enough headroom as it ducks below the goods yard (bottom left) where it crosses the other spiral.

 

The anti-clockwise spiral is slightly complicated by the Dumfries end of the station not only being on an embankment but also crossing Station Road on a girder bridge - no cuttings to hide behind ! The spiral actually crossed the road almost on the level immediately behind the bridge so some sleight of hand is going to be needed to manage sight lines.

The Crab is heading towards Dumfries on the scenic bit, the coaches are spiralling down towards Stranraer. Between them is the clockwise spiral, well out of sight at this point. 

 

The 'country' board will be scenic but exactly what to put on there is yet to be decided. At the moment the mock up has a representation of Goathland on it (don't ask) but other options include Carty siding or one of the smaller viaducts. 

Edited June 6, 2020 by Wheatley

[26power]

Colour picture of the west end of Newton Stewart, including signalbox, on ebay at present:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/363017280519?ul_noapp=true

 

Hope of some interest.

 

Have also posted this on the other Newton Stewart layout thread (I assume there are only two!)

[Wheatley]

Thanks 26 :-) Only two so far ...

[Wheatley]

Until now the lower fiddle yard level has mostly been used as a dump for tools, materials, random garage junk and gardening stuff (!). It also doubles as a workbench. About time it gained some track then. The plan is to lay the two throats first but with only two lines through the yard itself for now, then fill in the other roads as and when. That way the fiddleyard will have at least minimal functionality for track laying and testing of the scenic level, without sapping funds and enthusiasm. All track on the lower level is code 100 (because it’s bomb-proof) with small radius Streamline points and minimum 3rd radius curves. There are some very tight clearances in places so gauging is being tested as I go along using a Bachmann Class 40 and a Dapol 12 wheel dining car body on temporary bogies (it will eventually become a sleeping car). If that fits anything will fit.

 

This is the west (Stranraer) end of the yard, normally hidden below Newton Stewart’s engine shed. The throat itself is on a slight gradient (bad planning !), the three lines on the left of shot in the top pic fan out to form the four primary loops, the four on the right will fan out into six slightly shorter secondary loops. On this side of the layout these six loops will be on a long (7 foot) sector plate which can be slid out to load trains onto the layout but will be locked in place during normal running. It will be removed altogether when not in use to leave me with a narrow work bench under this side of the layout (the grey work surface in the second pic).

 

The scenic boards on this side are hinged off the garage wall or off some beefy 3/4″ vertical risers (old bookshelves – this layout is not portable!) to allow access to the fiddle yard boards underneath. On the other side the station boards over the east (Dumfries end) throat needed a different approach, the station boards are too wide (and too complex a shape) and the eastbound spiral is still too shallow as it passes behind the station to allow hinging off the wall or off risers.

Many alternatives were considered and abandoned, eventually it dawned on me that rather than hinging, it would be better if the whole station just lifted up vertically 18″ or so. But how ? A bit of Googling suggested that gas struts might be an answer, but they were quite expensive and I didn’t want to accidentally finish up with something strong enough to hold the dining room table up and need to bus in a few mates every time I needed to push it back down. 

 

To cut a very long story short, after a lot of messing about with bits of stripwood, 6mm bolts and wing nuts I eventually finished up with this clothes airer / deckchair / nutcracker hybrid. 

It does actually work (to no-ones’ surprise more than my own) but it needs some sort of latch adding as at the moment it’s easy to lift up but quite hazardous to lower, and not particularly safe to work under. 5mm more headroom under the horizontal rails would have been an idea too…

Edited July 14, 2020 by Wheatley

[Wheatley]

The east (Dumfries) end of the yard is a straightforward(ish) ladder starting immediately past the shed door. This leaves a wedge-shaped bit of board which will accommodate some kickback sidings and the main electrical distribution board for the layout. Because all the scenic boards hinge or lift up, rather than carrying power between boards using jumpers like any sensible set up, each board will have a single umbilical plugged in somewhere at the back. For now I’ve only laid two loops through the fiddle yard but each of these will take two full length trains with crossovers halfway along. 

 

East end throat with the station boards lifted and folded back. Only the road with the 40 on it and the one adjacent are pinned down, the rest are just laid out to see what fits.

Heading clockwise from the last pic, the structure gauging 40 and its not quite 12 wheeled diner sit on the halfway crossovers. Station boards in their lowered position in the foreground, with supports for the next boards spanning the whole fiddle yard.

A bit further clockwise, 8 Mk 1s look lost in the west end of the loops, scenic boards hinged out of the way (and propped with the spirit level !). Tool storage on the left is the well for the sector plate. The west throat (seen in the last post) is behind us.

Just the bits across the doors to sort now !

[Wheatley]

The various lifting bits across the door are more complicated than they otherwise might be because, apart from having to take three tracks across the door on three different levels (two of which aren’t actually level), they also need to accommodate a tall cupboard in the corner which takes the stepladder and various tools too long to fit in the gardening shed or under the layout. So instead of one lifting section on each line there are actually two. Imagine three Tower Bridges all superimposed on each other.

 

There were no suitable hinges available commercially as far as I could see, so I made my own from aluminium angle. It’s a bit chunky, 10x10mm would have done, but this was lockdown and it was in stock. So a production line was set up and several sets of 4mm bolts and wing nuts later, I had six sets of hinges.

 

A pad of 1.6mm copperclad is screwed down either side to provide firm anchorage for the track and somewhere to solder power feeds to.

 

Whilst the hinges manage track alignment at their end of each lifting section, where they meet in the middle things are a little more prone to misalignment. Latches made from the last few inches of the aluminium hold the ends together, and rail alignment is via 2mm OD / 1mm ID brass tube soldered to the outside of each rail with a 1mm brass pin through each one. So far the only issue has been finding the inevitable dropped pins !

 

The hidden lifting sections stack neatly against each other, held up by magnetic cupboard door catches and a stronger latch on the bottom one to hold it all securely.

 

 

 

Edited August 21, 2020 by Wheatley

[Wheatley]

Not a fan of wiring, it’s right up there with carpentry and wheel quartering in the ‘evil but necessary’ jobs list. Newton Stewart is code 75 Electrofrog so I’ve had to re-learn how to do how to do proper wiring. There will normally only be one operator (me) so there only need be one controller, but I’ll probaby have one for the scenic level and one for the fiddle dungeon if only to have a spare. The fiddle yard is code 100 and the half a dozen points fitted so far in it are insulfrog, but I’ll probably switch that over to electrofrog too (there is only the double loop down there so far).

 

Apart from 200 yards of red and black wire from Peter’s Spares most of the switches, connectors and tag strips used so far were recovered from a couple of EM layouts half built in the 1990s and stored until now. The mahogany frame for the section switches control box was also recovered from a display case, it hinges up out of the way to avoid damage when not in use. The graph paper diagram is temporary.

 

All the pointwork in the main circuit is laid, although most will be replaced as Peco expands its bullhead range. The passing loop is also laid but the rest of the layout will have to wait until Peco’s supply returns to normal.

Most of the feeds for the tracks laid so far are in and being soldered up, it might even be working by Christmas although a shortage of accessory switches for frogs means some jury rigging may be required.

[Wheatley]

Meanwhile the fourth side of the circuit has taken on a distinctly NER appearance...

[Wheatley]

Bridge 162  at the Dumfries end of the layout was one of two features which dictated where everything else would go, the other being the relationship between the West Junction and any baseboard joints needed to get past the door. The bridge sits at the very end of the single line and had to be as far into the corner of the room as possible whilst still leaving room for the line to curve away on a 3rd radius (19″) curve, which itself sat inside the equally sharp descending curve of the west spiral.

 

The real bridge was a 35 foot span or thereabouts, with about 12′ headroom. The model is nearer 20 feet which squeezes in a couple of extra inches before the station throat pointwork starts and also just happens to be the span of a Peco N gauge bridge girder. The Peco girders are bow topped whereas the real ones are straight, but that’s hidden once the L girders supporting the handrails are added. I toyed briefly with the idea of sawing four of them in half lengthways and re-gluing to make parallel web girders but thought better of it.

 

I don’t have a drawing of this bridge but I do have one of the very similar Portpatrick harbour branch “Bridge over Turnpike Road near Peg 8“, a grainy oblique view from Britain From Above and some screen grabs from Dan MacLachlan’s wonderful cine film of the route (https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/3696) shot from the rear brake van window of a Stranraer – Dumfries train. The western abutment was also there to be photographed but was heavily altered and overgrown. Conventional wisdom with a waybeamed bridge like this is that the waybeams are supported underneath by a girder or sit within a trough girder, and the bridge ‘deck’ is merely a lightweight structure to stop permanent way men falling down the gaps. However, the Portpatrick bridge was different with a substantial timber deck supported from the bottom flanges of the girders and the chairs screwed directly to the deck. I made an assumption that this was because of lighter loads on the harbour branch, and that even if Bridge 162 had started out like this it would be unlikely to be in the same condition 100 years later with Stanier 4-6-0s pounding over it.

The model therefore has conventional waybeams (not easy to see on the photo because it’s all still white styrene). These are based on the cine film still and might acquire some girder detail later. I’m still not entirely sure whether what I’ve built is correct but it looks the part. The rest of the drawing came in quite useful for setting out the curved retaining walls. The rails are carried in 4 bolt chairs but only because I couldn’t find any 3 bolt ones.

 

The track over the real bridge was slightly curved, the model more so giving a very short transition curve between the 19″ radius curve and the 60″ radius points of the station throat. It’s all a bit tight but there is just enough room to get a 40′ locking bar and the down home signal in with enough room for a loco to stand at it before it all disappears into the back scene !

The bridge deck is permanently fixed to the ply track bed either side but the abutments and wing walls were built as a separate structure to be slotted in afterwards. The substructure is mostly 80 thou styrene with Slaters stone overlaid, the curved wing walls are laminated from thinner sheet and the embossed pattern is close enough for me to the greywacke and sandstone of the real one.

 

The abutment walls only go halfway back at which point the road is blocked off. The west spiral down to the fiddleyard is just beyond the bridge so the idea is to put a mirror there to reflect the other half of the bridge and the continuation of the road. The wing walls and embankment on the other side will be visible if looking over the top of the embankment so they will have to be modelled too, but that can wait until the backscene is in place and I can see exactly how much room I’ve got to work with. No point creating unnecessary work !

 

Meanwhile the wiring up continues one board at a time ...

[Wheatley]

While the station boards were inside for wiring up (of which more later) I took the opportunity to play trains … er … I mean check that some prototypical formations looked the part. It’s all very makeshift and the lighting is terrible but with the garage full of stuff waiting for a new shed to arrive this is the longest bit of track I have at the moment ! This is the west end of the station, the point motors visible in some of the pics will be hidden under the St Couans Rd bridge.

Most of these are still works in progress in terms of weathering, couplings, fitting passengers etc. All are prototypical for the Port Road.

 

2P 40623 of Stranraer (Hornby) with an LMS articulated Inter-District set, an epic kit bash from 4 Airfix non-corridors. Most of these sets seem to have ended up on the ScR but this one probably has rather too many door ventilator hoods still intact for the late 50s.

‘Kashmir’ (Bachmann) with the 1963 Easter Tour. Mostly Hornby Railroad but with a Bachmann RMB.

Generic 1950s 3 coach set. Bachmann’s gorgeous Compound with two Bachmann portholes and a Hornby horsebox and BTK.

Half a boat train (is better than …), Hornby Clan on the Euston – Stranraer sleeper with Bachmann Mk1s. The full rake includes another two coaches plus (on the up service) two parcels vans. It doesn’t fit in the platform but neither did the real one !

[Wheatley]

Two Newcastle -Stranraer boat trains – one in crimson and cream entirely RTR from Bachmann Thompsons and Hornby Gresleys, and one which will eventually be maroon from a mixture of Hornby, Comet sides on Lima bodies on Coopercraft chassis and Comet sides on old Bachman Thompsons. This will eventually get another Thompson if I ever get round to scratchbuilding one of the round cornered window ones.

Classic late Port Road – 80023 of Dumfries with a Mk1 CK and a porthole BSK. All Bachmann with a couple of Parkside and Ratio vans bringing up the rear.

More classic late Port Road – two coaches and two Black Fives, the pilot added to get a foreign engine and crew off an unbalanced working back home. Comet coaches, Hornby and DJH (on Hornby chassis) locos.

[lmsforever]

Good to see the layout coming together have read about this route and some of the drivers who seemed complete nutcases.Like the formations you have modeled The freight is worth taking a good look at doubtless thats next on the list  ,look forward to reading updates.

[Wheatley]

Thank you. Oh yes, there's lots of freight too, and parcels stock. I'll probably wait until the boards are back in the garage to photograph those though. 

[Wheatley]

Still wiring up, this is so much more civilised than trudging out to the shed in two coats and three pairs of gloves. It does rather limit use if the living room by the rest of the household though.

 

This (above) is the west junction, the three boards forming the lifting flap in front of the door and floozy cupboard on the left, and the first couple of station boards on the right.

 

The ply and mahogany box sticking out houses all the track section switches, the mahogany plank next to it (on part of the lifting flap) will be the lever frame for the West box. All connections are via 15 or 25 way serial connectors. 

 

These core boards are all plugged into each other, the plan is for the rest to plug into a ring main around the outside of the layout, separate from all the boards rather than running a lot of through cables from board to board to board. Thanks to John Isherwood (CCtransuk) for that idea. 

[Wheatley]

After a year off doing other stuff, progress ! Admittedly not a lot of progress but at least we're not going backwards:

 

 

Working drawing for the station building was cobbled together from Swan and the LMS ratings plan, neither of which show the building at the same stage of development, so there is a bit of guesswork in there as well. The engine shed was based on drawings I did in the 1980s on site, tweaked slightly to reduce it to about 90% of scale to get it all in without overpowering the heavily compressed shed yard. 

 

I'll  put the other photos back at some point. 

Edited April 4, 2022 by Wheatley

[Wheatley]

Well I put some photos back and they've gone again. If I can remember my Flickr password I might link them from there instead. 

 

The opposite side of the garage is the 'country' board. I have long term plans for this involving viaducts or Carty Siding, but I promised Mrs W I'd build her Goathland first. It seems to have grown a loco shed and lost a few lines on the process but it fits. Sort of:

[Wheatley]

Some inappropriate motive power appears to have turned left at Dumfries.

 

 

The boards hinge up but their combined length is just over 7 feet, so all point motors are on the top. I used the Hattons ones, purely because of the inbuilt crank, and Gem wire in tube. The one all by itself on the wrong side of the board was a result of over-optimism on my part as to how long and bendy the tube could be, it will be covered with a PW hut in due course. 

 

 

Buildings are by Hornby Skaledale, except the loco shed which is a Metcalfe kit built by herself, and a few bits out of the 'layouts I never quite started' box. 

 

 

 

This side is unashamedly a train set rather than an attempt at prototype fidelity. Expect boy scouts with trek carts, Heartbeat characters, buses on bridges, Shaun the Sheep's farm (maybe), all the usual clichés. 

Edited August 23, 2022 by Wheatley

[Wheatley]

Meanwhile, back in plywood Galloway, another problem of my own making is being resolved. The down platform overhangs the fiddleyard and intrudes into the central operating well, leaving the layout potentially vulnerable to damage when the layout is not in use. The solution to this was to put most of the down platform and the whole of the island platform on a separate board (board H) which could be removed and stored separately. Unfortunately it also had to be removed to raise and lower the station boards for access to the fiddleyard, otherwise its weight made them topple forward on the deckchair/clothes driver/knuckle cruncher arrangement described earlier. It also had track crossing the breaks at both ends which were proving very difficult to keep aligned, and which were vulnerable to damage when board H was being lifted out. 

 

 

 

So board H has been chopped up and incorporated into the two adjacent boards F and G, with the down platform and down side scenery (eventually) forming a lightweight lift-off module with no track on it and therefore no vulnerable track ends and no electrical connections. 

 

 

The new board edges are shown in purple, the former board H is hatched green. 

 

Edited August 31, 2022 by Wheatley

[Wheatley]

The board edges were originally determined by setting out the track plan full size and sawing round it, so it was a jigsaw to start with and is even more so now. A lot of offcuts of 6mm ply have been used to reinforce the joints. The framing has been replaced where necessary rather than spliced together, which involved a certain amount of excavation to find screw heads to remove the old frames. The Stranraer end of board F, with its forest of wiring, was left untouched. 

 

 

 

I was originally going to try to do this without lifting the track (!) but that proved impossible. The down main had buckled anyway during the couple of days of 40 degree heat so the expensive and delicate Peco bullhead was carefully removed by sliding a pallet knife between it and the cork. Unfortunately the Copydex could not be peeled off without damaging the cork, so the latter was stripped off and the boards sanded flat. New track will be laid and  recovered track cleaned up and used in the sidings. 

 

 

Boards F and G will be bolted together semi-permanently and will lift as a single unit for access to the fiddle yard. 

Edited August 31, 2022 by Wheatley

[Wheatley]

Apart from a yard or so at the Stranraer end (of which more shortly) there is now an electrically complete full circuit of permanently fixed track. Because the final design was a bit organic and a few baseboard joints were (or became) temporary, work is now underway to fettle these and make them permanent. 

This is the crossover at the Stranrear end where the passing loop in the station becomes single track again; the right hand line held down by screws in this view is the 'stores siding' which formed the goods yard headshunt.  Helpfully the baseboard joint for part of the lifting flap across the shed door goes right through the middle. The track on the far side in front of the chairs is the Whithorn branch, the engine shed sidings will be in the middle. 

A pair of curved Streamline points were slightly tweaked to form the curved crossover, held down with screws and washers and a couple of copperclads to hold the alignment at the joint itself. These have been removed and replaced with full length copperclads. It would have been nice if the timbers could have been aligned parallel with the actual joint but that would have meant effectively rebuilding the boards and that isn't going to happen. The brass screws will be countersunk into the sleepers and filled, they aren't quite there yet. 

The mating edges of the trackbed are wooden venetian blind slats, used for no other reason than they were exactly the same depth as the cork. 

The missing bit of permanent track is the single line towards Stranraer. This was flat-bottomed rail on BR 1 baseplates on the real thing, and no-one does that now that the Colin Craig etches are unavailable. A bit of code 75 Streamline is standing in for now. 

 

I'm using Copydex to fix the plain track, but points are pinned to allow them to be swapped out more easily if they need replacing. If Peco expand the bullhead range to include the curved points I'll swap these, otherwise they might be replaced in bullhead one day with a bespoke pair on either C&L or copperclads with Masokits fold up chairs. The 'wings' either side of the joint support the hinges for the lifting flap, the track is in cutting at this point and the hinges are on the cutting top. They're too high though (more temporary jury rigging), they need cutting down to roughly the black line halfway up. The odd diagonal design on the right hand one is because the cutting side and the field above it oversail the Dumfries-bound track from the other end of the layout as it dives down under thd scenery towards the fiddle yard. 

[Wheatley]

I thought I might as well bring the other loco shed board in from the cold and mark it out properly in comfort, just to make sure it all still fits ! The main purpose of the exercise was actually  to mark out the electrical sections to finalise how many connections each board needs. 

The Whithorn branch in the foreground is on a 19" (3rd radius) curve which is the ruling radius, the shed yard is based on Streamline small radius geometry (about 24").  This is the only part of the layout where curves this tight are visible out in the open. It all just about fits, although it's considerably foreshortened compared to the real thing - the sidings should all extend past the left hand end of the shed by another 18" but needs must. There's still enough room for two Jumbos to stand outside the shed without fouling anything, and that was probably as busy as it got in real life by the late 50s.