young37215

Nice work Ian, the Flangeway Mermaid's weather up nicely with a bit of effort. In addition to a similar technique to what you have done, I added ballast dust secured in place with varnish on mine which I think enhances the appearance. Mermaids at Ardlui, mid 1980's. With their side tipping capability only they seems a strange choice for the single track WHL!

This is a new picture for me, the photographer has spelt the viaduct name slightly differently meaning my searches didn’t pick it up. I can get close with a similar view although it’s clear that I need more trees.

The second of Ernie's pictures also shows a modified engineers coach. I can't work out what it is or what the number might be, I am guessing that it might be ADB 975077, a BCK converted as a staff mess coach by the Scottish Region in the early 1980's. Does anyone else know better?

The Rivarossi catelogue indicates that there will be DCC and DCC sound versions of the KLV 53 available during 2023. Personally I can live with HO for these track maintenance vehicles and I shall be tempted, especially given how poorly my OWB performs.

Excellent work Ian, the building really looks the part.

In addition to Arrochar I also want to finish the rocky cutting to the north of the viaduct. This is largely complete but a few small pieces of detail need finalising where in my haste to get the layout operational, I left a few loose ends. Immediately next to the viaduct the removable section still requires infilling with one or two more rock castings and in both cases the floors of the plywood bases need more paint to deepen their colour. Once this is complete I can fill in the ballast shoulders which are currently inadequate and do not hide/disguise the plywood bases. Easier to explain with some pictures, none of the work is complicated and should be completed with another few hours of attention.

My productivity has been reduced because I keep sitting and watching trains move between Arrochar and Adlui. Trains transit the scenic section appearing and dissappearing into the landscape in true West Highland fashion. Sat at the far end of the loft this is the view from Ardlui looking towards Arrochar which can just be made out in the far left of the picture. It's not quite the scale 8 miles it should be but it does take well over a minute for the journey at low speed. To move further forwards I have decided to do some of the work required to create the scenery aound the platform at Arrochar. This is despite having originally been of the view that this should wait until the upper section scenery gets sorted. However I am still pondering on the upper level and am hoping that the work at Arrochar will inspire a decision about how to do the upper level. The embankment at the front of the station will not prevent me accessing the upper level and the same can be said of installing the mountainside up to the heght of the upper level. I will not fix anything breakable down at this time and risk damaging it when I get around to creating the scenery on the upper level baseboards. To start it was out with the polystyrene and cutter to shape an embankment to the front of the station. A few more pieces of insulation were chopped about to create the mountainside and because it is hard to see how I can do any damage to the mountains which can be fixed in place albeit at lower height than they will ultimately become. Once glued in place I will cover in plaster cloth and use Sculptamold to create and fine tune the landscape in the hope that this will make it clearer how the upper level should look.

My Background on my PC is this one, an equally spectacular view and a heavily foliage covered rock face to boot. I don't think I'll go for quite that heavy a covering on my rocks, I am not sure I could afford all of the materials required! Finishing off the running day yesterday, 37112 is pictured heading south with the 15.30 from Corpach to Mossend on departure from Ardlui. I have added a lot more foliage to the mountain side above Ardlui and Arrochar but it is not obvious to see until I compare an up to date picture against some taken a few days ago. It is also a pleasant surprise that 3 boxes of fine leaf foliage are only half empty after this activity.

I have been experimenting with Woodland Scenics Polyfibre and some aincient Noch ground cover material as I attempt to make the cuttings appear greener. A small piece pulled away from the large ball of fibre sits quite nicely on top of the rocks when glued in place with superglue. It is a fiddly process that takes a little time to get right but the outcome is rewarding. An example of an overgrown cutting rockface on the WHL My efforts so far

No evidence to support the dog, it is an error on my part. My version was created 10 years ago when I paid less attention to this sort of detail. Having discovered Flickr it is now easier to get a reference photograph and avoid inaccuracies like this. I want to change the nose end appearance on 264, mine has the pair of old WR name board brackets which are also incorrect; it should have a single and slightly larger bracket from its Stratford days. When I do this I will remove the dogs at the same time. Several hours of running yesterday was enjoyable, even so I only managed to complete about a third of the days activity. I have probably commented on this before but I estimate that to complete a single days operations must take between 6 and 8 hours. An issue with a servo at Crianlarich had me crawling around underneath the baseboard for a few minutes which created an interesting angle to view the new scenic areas. The panoramas below give a good view of recent work.

Several inches of snow appears to have put paid to volunteering today, a 100 mile round trip in these conditions is not a good idea. Looks like more modelling then! In between the trains more bushes were added to the new scenic section which although still incomplete, is beginning to look the part. 37014 heads north with 7B13, 1250 Mossend to Corpach.

After several days of building and development activity I need some R&R to recharge the batteries. A little running helps, a new day from the 1983 WTT gave me several hours of enjoyment yesterday. I was pleasantly surprised by how much the new scenic section has changed the feel of the line between Arrochar and Ardlui which has caused me to think I should press on with the scenery that surrounds Arrochar. 37264 had charge of 8D19 and is seen arriving at Crianlarich.

I have had a search on Flickr and managed to find a 1986 picture of an Oban bound freight at Crianlarich with what appears a ferrywagon. That will do for me, I will be adding one or two to my shopping list.

I probably should have bought shares in them given my outlay on their products! At least I bought much of what I am using 10 years ago in the Modelzone firesale when prices were somewhat lower. Tree and bush planting has commenced, as ever it is a balancing act to get the tallest trees for impact and still allow access to the upper level. I have a few larger trees left, it is smaller ones around 75mm in height that I am short of. It just so happens that every box of Woodland Scenics fine leaf foliage comes with a 75mm armature onto which I should be able to glue foliage to make my own trees. That said I have not had much success with making my own trees to date, clearly more practice is required. Whilst I am keen to get planting, my experience is that when it is done in a controlled fashion it usually delivers better results. This is the view I am trying to recreate, there is a lot of foliage required. Planting so far Bigger trees look the part but can restrict access to the upper level hence the need for smaller trees higher up the landscape

PVA glue applied to the landscape and scatter scattered with the usual transformative impact. The scatter is a mixture of Woodland Scenics coarse turf with a small amount of fine turf added. I try to lighten the colour the higher I go up the mountainside because, to be prototypical, it is wetter lower down and underneath the trees and bushes. Talking of trees and bushes, these will get added next once the glue has set and the scatter is held in place although some of the scatter and glue has already found its way onto the rocks by accident which has created a small impression of what I want to create. I am planning on adding Woodland Scenics polyfibre at the top of the rock faces to create a green over hang because most of the rock that I have seen is covered in greenery of various description. 37108 and its short rake of Grampus is seen making its way through the new landscape.

The rock faces are painted with Woodland Scenics earth colour paints suitably diluted so that they run through the cracks and crevices to cover everywhere. Essentially I follow the leopard spotting technique from one of the their Youtube videos, it seems to work well and is easy to undertake. In this instance the rock molds were created and painted several months ago, once they were fixed into the landscape and the Sculptamold infill mostly dried, more paint was added in an effort to create the appearance. It takes several coats of the dilute paint because it dries lighter than when applied but overall is a very simple process. It took a while to brush the new ballast into its desired position before gluing it in place. There are a few shoulders where additional ballast is required but overall it looks fine. Having spent Wednesday as part of a Permanent Way gang moving a large part of 400 tonnes of full sized ballast on the GWSR (it should have been moved mechanically but the booked tamper failed hence the manual effort), an hour or two with a paint brush was considerably easier. Hopefully I will ache less today than I did on Thursday. It should be transformation day today as I intend dressing the landscape with scenic material.

Nice work Ian, the weathering softens the 'out of the box' appearance. You mention a picture of a Ferrywagon on the WHL, can you share it wherabouts please?, I would love to see it and better still find out what it was doing, where it was going.

Having got clearer in my head about what I want in respect of Arrochar I returned to the 2M scenic section to the north of Arrochar which needs finishing. The 1 in 60 drop away from the station required infill on ether side of a ramp leading down to the baseboard at viaduct height. A rather messy and frantic 20 minutes trying to fill the gaps with Sculptamold before it started to set worked well and after a day or so, the Sculptamold was dry enough to paint. After viewing a number of video clips of the WHL and trains passing through cuttings, I wanted to create a 'floor' that looked similar. Where cuttings were blasted out and as one might expect, the floor remains clearly as rock. Therefore I used the same mix of Woodland Scenics paint as applied to the rock molds to colour the Sculptamold; the results look fine to me. Sculptamolded infill First coat of paint is applied on the far side of the track, the match and effect is pretty good although one or two areas will need a second coat. All Sculptamold has had a coat of paint. Ballasting can start once it is all dry. There was a fair amount of contamination of the track which will need cleaning off or painting over. Note to self; cover the track next time! With track and sleepers cleaned, ballast was finally dropped. It needs tidying up before glueing.

Peco's news from Glasgow looks a positive development for Scottish modellers. I considered an intermediate extension station such as Glenfinnan when planning WHL4 but did'nt have the space to fit it in and settled for my version of Mallaig instead. On with the landscape development at Arrochar. Here I am uncertain how to mix the upper and lower levels and so am experimenting with offcuts of insulation to get a feel for what looks best. It is essential that I blend the two levels as seemlessly as I can, I will not start gluing everything together until I have got clarity in my mind as to what works best. Cutting insulation is easy enough but messy, the vacum gets a good workout picking up all of the rubbish created. First task was extending the siding that I effectively use as the Alcan smelter because it is where the hoppers get stabled on arrival at Fort William. The siding will be hidden away but needed to be 300mm longer so as to accomodate the longest hopper consist and locomotive. An easy win, an additional piece of track was cut to size and added. Job done. The next job was to cut some of the insulation at a 50' angle to mimic the actual landscape above Arrochar. I am not sure how high this will go, whatever I decide looks best will have to peak and then fall back down towards the upper level. I tried several variations but could not get a clear picture in my mind; one to sleep on. The Alcan siding before and after extending. 180mm high insulation above Arrochar feels to high. I removed the top pieces of some of the insulation leaving 90mm of height which feels closer to what I want compared with 180mm but probably a little low. Baring in mind that the landscape will get dressed and covered with trees and bushes it is not easy to picture but I fancy that another 40/50 mm of height should be about right. More mess to create as I fashion the insulation to the required size.

The Rapido website states Feb 2023 for delivery; clearly that is going to be missed. Anyone heard anything more about when these might be arriving?

I dont have a particular fixation with class 37's even though there are currently 19 on WHL4 with Accurascale's 37027 on order. The WTT requires 14 locos to operate and I have thought it would be fun to move back a few years to the last days of the class 27's but the cost would be prohibitive. Eastfield had a class 37 steam heat allocation in the mid 20's during my time window so plenty of opportunity for more in the event that somebody produces a model with the right features, preferably an RSH centre headcode ex South Wales one. 37108 sits in the yard at Ardlui awaiting morning when the signal boxes open on the line so that it can proceed south. 37108 was originally 37049 and was one of my first sound fitted locos way back when sound was just beginning to take hold. I renumbered the loco and swapped the round buffers to oval ones soon after buying it to create one of the first 37's that worked the West Highland. Irritatingly I was unaware of the fact that with a welded roof the loco has the wrong roof arrangement for 37108 and its plated roof. Not a problem, I have a renumbering programme planned for 4 of the class 37 fleet which includes 37108 becoming something suitable for its roof and buffer style.

The fitted chip is an ESU one, I am pretty sure the Lokpilot Nano (it has LPN printed on it). I'll get the settings checked with my pals Lokprogrammer to see if these can be improved, on my 28 speed step controller I find it needs to run around speed step 18 to minimise stalling. The actual speed at 18 is still modest, I was never that impressed by the chap who installed it and wonder if the settings have ever been optimised. I'll also have a look at the BEMF arrangements and have downloaded the LokPilot manual to help. All in all I still suspect that the base problem is the lightweight nature of the model and the most effective way of improving the running will be a stay alive. Whether one can be made to fit into the space available is another matter, I'll sub-contract this job out because I am not good with things electrical. Please can you weigh your model and advise? I doubt that there will be much difference between our respective models but it will be interesting to compare the two OWB versions.

A little progress with the scenery at the northern end of Arrochar. It is not complete because I have not yet decided how high the mountain needs to be and to determine this I want to do some work on the upper level to get a better understanding of its interaction with the Arrochar area. The woodwork for the extended baseboard below the platform has been completed. Having done this much I'll add polystyrene to create the landscape which should not cause any issues with working on the upper level and will help me get the picture of the finished station clearer in my mind. I need to press on, a full fiddle yard awaits the start of a new day.

It seems pretty clear that there are 2 versions of the model available, Bachmann references 36-150 and 36-151. The original 36-150 which I have has no DCC harness and requires a chip hard wiring. The second and presumably latter version 36-151 comes 8 pin DCC ready with a revised motor and subtle design changes to the chassis as owned and photographed by PaulRhB. I watched a couple of Youtube videos where the engine sounded horrible much like mine suggesting that it was an original version. The revised motor suggests that Bachmann realised the original was poor and have changed it. I'll see if I can find someone who is sufficiently knowledgeable and competent to add a stay alive, without this my version is pretty much unusable and sits in a siding all day long.

Resurrecting this old thread to record my ongoing challenges with an OWB. Despite repeated wheel cleaning and general servicing, the hard wired DCC fitted vehicle runs like a pig. The engine is noisy and performance erratic with frequent stalls. My suspicion is that at 92g the lightweight vehicle fails to maintain good contact with the rail and needs a stay alive capacitor. The trouble with this is the limited space available to fit a stay alive. I would be interested to hear from anyone with similar experiences and, better still, how they resolved their problems. There has been discussion over the last few days relating to another persons OWB in the thread below.