Pre-Grouping West Highland?

[Dunalastair]

I will be doing other things from tomorrow over the weekend so here is a snapshot of the West Highland Extension train, pre WW1, with an NB Intermediate heading two WH bogie saloons (3rd and 1st class), a four wheel brake and an (as yet unpainted) fish wagon. This time the signalman has kept the out-of-period UQ home protecting the swing bridge 'off' until the brake has passed. Is the guard watching from his ducket? Other time issues include the red tractor, the MacBraynes bus and the yellow-ended Sulzer. But I would like to think that this is coming together as a static scene, within the constraints of filament printing.

 

 

The goods brake has been painted (dark grey sides, red ends, light grey roof, mucky running gear) and is now drying, while a version of the West Highland brake compo is currently on the printer in three components - a three hour print at 'fine' resolution. I have included the coupe compartment, but realised too late that the coupe should probably have been at the first class end, not the third (different lengths of compartment). 

Edited February 22 by Dunalastair

[Dunalastair]

So, after a weekend away in the Black Mountains (dry on Saturday, damp on Sunday, early tramway remains in the valleys), the West Highland brake compo approximation printed on Friday is now in the paint shop. My rather simplistic 'C' class 0-6-0 has now been completed in a similar mucky green (before the brown shade took over) and awaits a photograph. And, as if I did not now have enough static simplified early NBR locos, I spent yesterday and this morning roughing out a design for a Holmes cab West Highland Bogie (D35 I think - though NBR loco variations still confuse me), which is noticeably smaller than the 'Intermediate'. I suspect that a similar cab version of the 0-6-0 might follow ... 3D printing makes it easy (and quick) to turn the design handle, even if the results do not remotely match the standards of the real 2mm scale experts. 

 

Another thread here on the forum this morning (thankyou @justin1985) pointed me towards 'The Story Of The West Highland', by George Dow. There has been a modern reprint, but that apparently did not include the drawings. But, lo and behold, there is a scanned version available on the web at http://www.dow.scot/railway/

 

The file is a pdf, available at http://dow.scot/railway/TSOTWHv1point8.pdf This includes detailed drawings of the West Highland saloons (but not the brake version). Murphy's Law says that I only find these drawings AFTER producing the 3D designs for them ... It also includes the drawing of 'a typical island platform station'. Highly recommended to any WHR aficionados who have not read it already. 

 

Edited February 27 by Dunalastair

[Dunalastair]

An original 'West Highland bogie' pilots an 'Intermediate' with a rake of West Highland saloons (now including the brake compo) out of Banavie across the swing bridge headed for Mallaig in the early years of the twentieth century. Again a much simplified design, rather crudely printed on a filament printer.

 

[Dunalastair]

In the last post, the new West Highland saloon brake compo was out of focus. Here it is again, with red ends, in a rather clearer view together with the Holmes 'C' class 0-6-0 on a boat train in a mockup of a new diorama. Banavie station was in the 'extension' style, but the original Banavie, later Banavie Pier was in the original West Highland style. Here my printed version is part-painted, using silver paint to represent the glazing. The paddle steamer print is a much-shortened version of 'Gondolier', a vessel which plied the Caledonian Canal from Banavie to Inverness until 1939, whereupon it was commandeered as a blockship for Scapa Flow, where the hull apparently still sits on the seabed. 

 

 

The branch terminus by a harbour pier is a popular subject, with boats bobbing below the trains. Banavie was a little different in that the canal was significantly above the station, with an inclined path to link the two. An inclined kickback siding provided access to the quayside for goods traffic and perhaps passenger baggage.

 

There is an image (not immediately embeddable) of what looks like a West Highland bogie with what might be a baggage van alongside SS Gondolier at Banavie at http://disused-stations.org.uk/b/banavie_pier/index.shtml, while the clearer image below (follow the link to enlarge / zoom in) has what might be a coal wagon alongside, possibly to bunker the steamer. 

 

https://collections.st-andrews.ac.uk/item/gondolier-at-banavie-pier/86127

 

 

[Dunalastair]

The arrangement at Banavie Pier as it was in 1899 can be seen at https://maps.nls.uk/view/82887594. I have not been able to find a reference to a previous model of this unusual station, which is perhaps surprising considering that there are relatively few branch termini in the West Highlands - and hence a good few fictional and might-have-been versions on this forum. Killin / Loch Tay, Ballachulish and Fort Augustus spring to mind - it is not a long list compared to, say, the GWR. But even compared to those quiet backwaters, Banavie Pier did not see much traffic - such as there was linked to the steamer, arriving one day and leaving the next. Latterly the service was essentially a summer operation for the tourists. 

 

Search images for 'Banavie pier station' and you should find a series on Getty showing boy scouts on the LNER Northern Belle tour train at the station in the 1930s, where they stayed for two days on successive tours while climbing The Ben. The story of those Scout tour trains is told at http://scoutguidehistoricalsociety.com/traincruises.htm, but sadly the image links are broken. There is more on the Northern Belle at https://www.steve-banks.org/prototype-and-traffic/357-the-northern-belle#close. 

 

Railway Wonders of the World also had a feature on the cruise train, when not carrying Scouts, including this nice image of the train stopped on Glenfinnan viaduct. But this is deviating a long way from 'pre-grouping', locomotives apart.

 

https://www.railwaywondersoftheworld.com/cruising-by-train.html

 

The station building survives as a private house, but the Scout images are as good as I have found of Banavie - there do not seem to be many photographs of the station, though the steamer was well recorded.

Edited March 5 by Dunalastair

[Dunalastair]

A little more progress with the pre-grouping diorama of the pier at Banavie on the West Highland Railway, as it might have been before the Mallaig Extension stole its thunder and forced a renaming. 

 

My shortened version of SS Gondolier has now been painted and mostly assembled. White paint is currently drying on a batch of lifebuoys for the railings. Photographs suggest that these were white in the early days, only later changing to red and white. I have not been able to find out when the regulations of lifebuoy colours might have changed. There is now a pier for the paddle-steamer to moor to and track for the upper and lower levels, with a crossing for passengers arriving from the inclined walkway. It appears from the one photograph I have that the platform edges were concrete, so that has also been represented. Oh, and the rest of the station building windows have now been silvered.

 

Parts have been rougly blocked to the appropriate heights while I work out how to arrange the contours. Slopes would have been more straightforward if it had not been for that angled walkway. As it is, I have cut some formers from foamboard (just visible to the right), but I'm not sure how well that might work. The grass will probably be hanging basket liner, which should cover up most sins if I can cut it to size. 

 

 

I'd like to think that this little scene is beginning to come together, but there is still scope for me to make a pig's ear of the landform. 

 

Gondolier ran between Inverness and Banavie for the last time in 1939, before being towed up to Scapa Flow, so this is the first time in 85 years that anything like this scene could be visited at 1:1 scale. Just as with Fort Augustus, one cannot help thinking that the station building was overkill, especially as most passengers would have transferred directly between train and boat, probably with through tickets. 

Edited March 10 by Dunalastair

[Dunalastair]

This is a crop of that one early photograph of Banavie / Banavie Pier station, taken from the pdf I referenced earlier, with thanks. Note the platform edge profile. The chimney pots in the distance probably belong to the station master's house. That must have been an easy job by the standards of the day, and even compared to other WHR outposts.

 

 

 

Not exactly thronged with waiting passengers ...

Edited March 10 by Dunalastair

[Dunalastair]

When it comes to supposedly historic images, there is a postcard series which comes up on WHR image searches which are supposedly vintage but which have a modern look about them - for example the 'Fish train at Mallaig' scene below. Even the fonts look modern.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/274859931852

 

Does anybody know the provenance of the artwork? I'm not sure whether it is deliberately kitsch, but it will not win any prizes for great art. The phrase 'tourist tat' comes to mind, but I may be being unfair.

Edited March 10 by Dunalastair

[Tom Burnham]

16 hours ago, Dunalastair said:

This is a crop of that one early photograph of Banavie / Banavie Pier station, taken from the pdf I referenced earlier, with thanks. Note the platform edge profile.

Presumably complied with the latest and most approved Board of Trade requirements, unlike practically every other platform in the country.  There are still platforms at very much busier stations with grandfather rights from their mid-Victorian origins.

[Dunalastair]

1 hour ago, Tom Burnham said:

Presumably complied with the latest and most approved Board of Trade requirements, unlike practically every other platform in the country.  There are still platforms at very much busier stations with grandfather rights from their mid-Victorian origins.

 

Indeed - the West Highland was late on the scene compared to most of the network. Early enough images of the terminus at The Fort also show what seem to be concrete platform edges. 

https://westhighlandline.org.uk/fort-william/2/

 

However, looking at photographs of the iconic island platforms further south (or indeed the likes of Spean Bridge or Roy Bridge) from later eras seems to show a patchwork of changes over the years on some of them. 

 

The process continues to this day - "Rannoch Station Platforms 1 and 2 required their heights to be re-gauged to a lower level in order to accommodate new Class 153 rolling stock; a Caledonian sleeper that brings increased capacity to the West Highland Line." A statement which does not altogether make sense to me, but was apparently the justification for the works and the hi-vis brigade shown below.

 

https://www.cpr-resurfacing.co.uk/value-engineering-at-rannoch-station/

[Dunalastair]

When the West Highland Railway was built, machines such as that in the previous post were undreamt of. Though the steam shovel had been developed, it was better suited to softer soils than the rocky hillsides of Lochaber. In the UK the contemporary Manchester Ship Canal was a notable early user in of mechanical excavation, but when the Corpach end of the Caledonian Canal was built in the 1810s, construction was by brawn not steam - though a Boulton and Watt steam pump was used to drain the coffer dam at Loch Linnhe.

 

My diorama of the Canal embankment has now reached the stage in the photograph below, with the diagonal walkway cut into notches in the foamboard ribs. The glue is setting on this assembly while I work out how I am going to 'cover' this framework without leaving any gaps. Ideally it might be as simple as cutting some hanging basket liner oversize then trimming it down to fit. We will see ...

 

 

This arrangement is necessarily very compressed, and the station building is closer to the platform edge than I would like, though the depth of the platform edging will hopefully help with how it looks. In reality, the walkway started from the other side of the building, and as shown on the map the layout was much more stretched out.

[Dunalastair]

I decided to use the masking tape approach to bridge between the 'ribs', and this has now been done, not without a few tangles on the way. The hanging basket liner material was then trimmed to size and fixed after pasting the masking tape surface with PVA white glue. This mostly worked as intended, needing only one patching piece at the bottom of the ramp, but placing the station building afterwards showed that it was now too close to the platform edge. So it was out with the knife to trim back the slope to allow the building to sit more snugly into the slope. The resulting gap is still less than I might have preferred, but this is a much compressed arrangement, and with the platform edging now glued in place and setting, I hope that I can live with the result. 

 

I have now printed and painted a set of lifebuoys in white, so the next task will be to trim those off the 'sprue' and fit them to the paddle-steamer railings. I wonder if it might have been simpler to print them as integral features - hopefully this way they will be more circular. 

[Dunalastair]

A couple of weeks since the last post, during which there has been progress but for various reasons not always to plan. Imgur seem to have been b*****ing about with their user interface again and making it harder to generate a 'direct link' but I seem to have got there.

 

The canal bank has now been surfaced and 'grassed' using hanging basket liner - perhaps a little coarse, but vegetation grows well in the wet West Highland climate in season. Though photographs do not show lamps on the canalside, possibly because the steamers ran mainly in the long bright days of summer, simple printed lamps have been provided to avoid any accidents between trains and boats. 

 

 

I got into some height calibration issues with my 3D printer when trying to make some fencing, and need to resolve that issue - I have been rather putting it off. The archway surround has come adrift and needs to be re-attached, along with the lifebuoys on the steamer. 

 

This diorama was intended as a way to photograph the pre-grouping WHR stock which I described earlier in this thread in more of an original context than my 1960s layout can provided. It may have ended up more compressed than I had envisaged and necessarily rather crude, given the build approach, but will hopefully be ready for those photographs in the not-too distant future, at which point I ought to post a 'diorama' thread to complement this hijacked theme. 

[MarcD]

My wagon range now contains 7 NBR wagons with another 2 in the design stage. They are available as kits in 4mm and 7mm and bodies in HO, S, G1, G2 and G3.

Available wagons

1) 1plk 

2) 3plk fixed side

3) 3plk drop-side

4) 3plk centre door

5) 4plk Drop-side

6) 4plk fixed side

7) 4plk centre door

 

Under development

Cattle van

8t box van

 

Marc

Pre-Grouping Railways 

[richbrummitt]

5 hours ago, MarcD said:

My wagon range now contains 7 NBR wagons with another 2 in the design stage. They are available as kits in 4mm and 7mm and bodies in HO, S, G1, G2 and G3.

Available wagons

1) 1plk 

2) 3plk fixed side

3) 3plk drop-side

4) 3plk centre door

5) 4plk Drop-side

6) 4plk fixed side

7) 4plk centre door

 

Under development

Cattle van

8t box van

 

Marc

Pre-Grouping Railways 

Can you do your kits at 2mm scale?

[MarcD]

Never tried but I can't see why some can't be done in 2mm.

Marc

[Caley Jim]

I'm almost finished the build of a second test etch for a NBR 'Jubilee' mineral wagon if anyone is interested.  Designed to take 2FS wheels, so no guarantee it will suit N.

 

Jim

[Argos]

Another taker here for some 2mm scale NBR wagons if available. 

[MarcD]

I will have a go at printing a NBR wagon this evening. You can only try and see what happens.

[richbrummitt]

On 01/04/2024 at 15:56, MarcD said:

Never tried but I can't see why some can't be done in 2mm.

Marc

There’s some interesting items on your site but I was struggling to work out what was printed and what was not. Clearly only the printed ones might be straightforward to shrink to 2mm without new tooling costs. 
 

 

14 minutes ago, MarcD said:

I will have a go at printing a NBR wagon this evening. You can only try and see what happens.

Watching this space. 

[MarcD]

Everything that is available in 4mm is printed. Some should be ok to reduce in scale but others might end up a bit thin.

I have scaled a NBR 3plk centre door.

Marc

[richbrummitt]

18 hours ago, MarcD said:

Everything that is available in 4mm is printed. Some should be ok to reduce in scale but others might end up a bit thin.

I have scaled a NBR 3plk centre door.

Marc

What about Fruit Van PGR-87? Thickness hopefully not an issue on something enclosed. 

[brossard]

Just caught this thread.  My primary interest in not pre grouping but my fried has a strong interest in NBR.  I like building kits so we have some carriages:

 

 

These are 0 gauge from 62C models.  Carriage sides are indeed crimson lake.  Brake end is vermillion.  Other carriage ends are CL.  I am building a second 4 wheeled brake, but gas lit this time.

 

 

Another shot showing the brake end.

 

John

[Dunalastair]

Look good in the larger scale.

[brossard]

45 minutes ago, Dunalastair said:

Look good in the larger scale.

I think we can learn from other scales.

 

John