Paisley Canal No.2 Signal box

[IC126]

 

My entry to the 2010 Challenge began life as an experiment in O Gauge on my return to railway modelling a few years ago. My collection of 00 models had been put to one side in the 80’s due to preservation commitments and a career working abroad. Much to my surprise I found that times had moved on and my early 80’s models just didn’t cut it anymore, so I decided to give the Senior Scale a whirl.

 

The layout was started before the 2010 Challenge, but was stalled at the point of being operational, but completely non-scenic. The layout was within the size limitations of the Challenge so I decided to enter – primarily to provide the motivation to finally complete it. The initial condition of the layout was detailed in Post #1 of my Layout Topic in the 2010 Challenge area.

 

Work, a baby girl, a house move, and life in general got in the way of completion, and with 1 month left to go before the deadline, I was on the verge of withdrawing the layout but I decided to press on to see how far I could get in the remaining weeks.

 

The Layout

 

The odd baseboard shape was dictated by the available space in my old apartment. I wanted to avoid straight lines and eventually came up with the idea of a plan based upon a sweeping S-bend. This also suggested to me a possible prototype.

 

The Paisley Canal Line was opened by the Glasgow & South Western Railway in 1885 and followed the course of the former Glasgow and Ardrossan Canal. The canal was purchased by the G&SWR, unceremoniously filled in and used as the trackbed for the railway. The line is very level but the fact that it was once a canal is evidenced by the many curves and earthworks to maintain the level.

 

Paisley Canal station was situated in a cutting, overlooked by the booking office (which I have modelled) with the platforms being to the right of the modelled area (these and the rest of the railway network being represented by the 3 road traverser).

 

Although my track plan is fictitious (designed purely for amusement in operation), I have tried to fit the layout as far as possible within the actual topography of the area. The retaining walls and the booking office on the road overbridge being the distinctive features.

 

The timescale was chosen as 1968 as I wanted to model the “Golden Age of Trainsâ€, which to me was the period of transition from green to blue liveries which I remembered so fondly from my childhood.

 

Dimensions

 

The main Scenic section is on a board 2.3m long x 0.5m wide, but during development of the scenic sections, I realised that I could extend the road overbridge with booking office some way over the traverser, as long as I still had access to the couplings. Adjusting for the irregular shape gives a total scenic area of 1732 sq. inches

 

The layout is built in 0 Gauge finescale, so the 1.2m long traverser is excluded from the size calculation (apart from the section with the booking office above).

 

Prototype

 

Station Building

 

I drew up the booking office based on photographs of the real thing, confirmed by dimensions taken by a G&SWR Association member shortly before demolition. RMWeb member Pollyoko also provided an excellent collection of detail shots, one of which is reproduced here with his kind permission.

 

Research for this building took some time – as I spent more and more time on the research it seemed worthwhile to make the model as close to the original as possible. There is still some work to be completed - notably the windows and roof.

 

I drew the building in the condition shown in the 1957 WAC Smith photo on P58 of "An Illustrated History of Glasgow's Railways". This photo shows two window panels on the side wall, which are missing from later views. I don't know when the change took place, but I've included them as they're nice... The colour scheme is the old Scottish Region colours (basically LMS colours).

 

I also decided to model Causeyside street as shown in the 1957 photograph, with cobblestones and the tram lines still in place. Probably a historical anachronism, but I can live with it.

Road Bridge

 

I didn't have any photos of the bridge parapets so this is modelled on the typical style for bridges on the Canal Line with cast iron parapets.

Bridge 1

Bridge 2

Bridge 3

[/url]

 

Signal Box

 

I used the Signal Box to develop the constructional methods for the larger building. The construction is of small pine sections and thin plywood and was covered in Post #33

The box is a mirror image of Hawkhead, also on the Canal Line. I found a couple of excellent shots showing the front and rear of the box on the Railscot Website.

Rather unusually for G&SWR boxes, the Hawkhead box has vertical planking - the same as the booking office building.

 

Trackwork

 

Trackwork is all hand built using Exactoscale chairs. The track seems to have aroused most interest during the build.

 

I started off using commercial tiebars for the points, but changed to a home brewed design of flexible tiebars which I think represent the type used on track circuited lines quite well.

 

 

The cess and the siding were ballasted using finer grade ballast to represent ash. The siding on the “down†side has been laid using 4 bolt chairs to represent older pre-grouping track reused in the siding.

 

MSE point rodding stools have been installed, but regrettably I didn’t have time to finish off the rodding itself or the cranks or signal wires before the Challenge date. A nice job for the winter.

 

Operation

 

Although I only had space for a small layout, I was keen to model a main line railway. The track layout represents a section of double track undergoing an engineers’ possession. Trains from the Ayrshire end of the layout are reversed at the station and a lot of interesting moves can be performed. Although the loop is very short, the traverser can be usefully employed during shunting.

 

To aid the illusion of the engineers’ possession, I modelled the down line with a section of track undergoing replacement. I cut the keys from the chairs where the rails were removed. Here a class 29 waits to reverse over the crossover to the down line.

 

I did the original planning of the layout by making a 4/7ths scale cardboard template of the baseboards and had a play about with some 00 gauge track and models to optimise the clearances. I don’t have space for long trains and DMUs will normally be limited to 2 car sets, but the run round can accommodate all the diesel classes and presents some interesting shunting problems.

 

Some of my locomotives are fitted with ESU Loksound decoders, but the layout is wired with a number of separate (switchable) track feeds – this allows every section to be fed by either the DCC controller or conventional DC control – useful when I run my (so far) unconverted locomotives.

 

2010 Challenge

 

I was having some difficulty working in the number 5 to celebrate the 5^th Birthday of RMWeb, so instead I decided to run a special train.

 

Although far from complete, the layout is now in a much better state than it was 1 year ago, so I am happy that I have achieved my main aim of entering the Challenge.

 

Feedback from RMWeb members on the Layout Topic has been very encouraging and I am particularly grateful to those members who have helped me with prototype research during the development of the layout.

 

The remaining detailing work and building up my stock shall keep me occupied for some time in the future.