young37215

A few more pictures of Ardlui, the more I look at these the happier I am about the shape and feel of the new scenery. A rather careworn 37011 is pictured heading south with an afternoon freight from Corpach to Mossend where it crosses 37022 heading north with a freight bound for Corpach. As well as having fun playing trains, I am deliberating how to dress the new scenery. Traditionally I have used Woodland Scenics turfs, usually a mix of coarse and fine which has worked well. At Ardlui I am attempting to create the impression of the mountains towering over the station and the way the sunlight picks out the various levels and angles requires different colours and textures to achieve this which is one of the reasons for the light green paint. My current thinking is to use lighter and fine turf for the higher levels with coarser turf lower down and underneath the trees and bushes.

I will attempt to integrate the two sections as best I can although they are very different settings. Blending the urban and mountainside settings will be a challenge but it is something I will live with. I face similar challenges elsewhere on the layout, what I want is to be able to look at each section and feel that they represent the area they are based on; if I achieve that I will be happy. Spent some time running trains with Doug today, the summer slowdown has caused one or two minor operational irritations but overall things went well. The Ardlui section might be only partially completed but it does make a significant difference to the appearance of WHL4. 37011 heads a Oban service through Ardlui 37085 arrives at Garelochead heading for Glasgow with a service from Oban where it passed 37051 with a Mossend to Corpach freight

The light green paint is a first coat to seal the plaster cloth and, I hope, form the base for the lighter green colour I want to see on the higher areas of the mountainside. As with all things colour related, I will be taking instructions from my colour consultant wife, what I want to create will hopefully resemble the 1986 picture below showing Ardlui post the RETB introduction. The picture also shows the 2 items I am currently short of namely the station sign and the platform lamps. The sign should be easy enough to buy, I need signs for other stations as well, with several sellers on Ebay but the platform lamps continue to challenge me. Given that the platform lamps are generic to nearly all WHL stations for the 1970's through to the 1990's, I hope to find a small business that can see the potential for other sales and will create a suitable product. For the area I am currently working on I completed the polystyrene, added plaster cloth and got a first coat of paint down by the end of yesterday. At the southern end of Ardlui station I need to find a way to create the dense bush and tree undergrowth without obscuring Fort William station. I think this will be a job for Woodland Scenics fine leaf foliage rather than their trees. I started to add ground cover at the northern end using the remains of basket liner left over from previous stations.

Some more plaster cloth applied to the hillside at the southern end of Ardlui and a first coat of paint over the northern end of the mountainside. I placed a few trees to see how it feels, clearly lots to do but beginning to get the feel that I am looking for.

Like the video, setting up your own Youtube channel is very easy. Sound is very much a personal choice. For speakers my current preference is the Zimo double dumbo sold by Youchoose which aside from the much more expensive earth mover, has the best base sound to suit a class 37. It is an easy fit requiring just 2 solder joints, others must think the same because it is currently out of stock at Youchoose!

Generally all of the scenery is fixed in place. There is a small section of the Ardlui section that will be removable, the top 100mm next to Fort William will not be secured to lower level so that I can access and remove the Fort William section station if the need arises. Hopefully I can get the pictures that show this to appear the right way up today.

Hi Andy Signals are MSE kits, I sub contract their construction as I don’t have a clue how to solder them together! Once I have finished the scenery they will be automated using servos and my Megapoints control system. Plaster cloth was added to about 60 percent of the Ardlui mountainside yesterday. It’s a messy business but one that shows how the finished area should look. Fortunately I managed to buy a large supply of plaster cloth a year or two back at a good price. So far I have hardly made a dent in my stock and I hope that I have sufficient for the remaining scenic areas I intend building. I suspect that I will want to add some filler to a few areas but I'll wait until the plaster is painted and fully dry before I make any decisons.

Lots of work but little to show for yesterday’s effort. The day was largely made up of wood work with 3 small sections added to the Ardlui area. Hopefully I will feel sufficiently confident to start laying plaster cloth later today. The track on the approach from the south was tight to the baseboard edge. I grafted an additional 30 mm piece of baseboard onto which I will create an embankment. The lower level baseboard around the station entrance leading to the A82 was rebuilt. The original was a temporary affair, the new section is much more robust. A small triangular corner was added to the baseboard at the northern end, again this was to create a larger space between the track and the baseboard edge.

A few hours spent cutting polystyrene and gluing it in place using PVA broke the back of the job of creating the mountains to the west of Ardlui. So long as the glue has dried I should be able to finish cutting and start covering the polystyrene with plaster cloth today.

It's a filthy day today so I am off to the loft to start work on the scenery at Ardlui. For some strange reason cutting and glueing polystyrene to create hills and mountains always makes me nervous, I don't know why but it does. Hopefully I can get the bulk of the work done today so as to limit my anxiety to just one day. Whilst looking on Ebay this morning I noticed the complete set of 6 Jane's Railway Year books covering 1981 to 1986. Reading my copies of these is a great way to relive my bashing days and I also find them a great reference source. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/165135890316?hash=item2672ddb78c:g:JpoAAOSwbN9g60nk

As others have said, you could spend a lot of time and effort on painting track and sleepers and many do to great effect. You say that you are new to modelling, I suggest that you will have plenty of other challenges ahead and will not get far if all you do is spend time on weathering your track. I would go for a simple, cheap and cheerful solution which will improve the appearance of your track in a short space of time. Firstly I personally I find enamel paint adheres to the rails better than acyrilic meaning it lasts for longer. I recommend that you buy a cheap can of a matt enamel brown paint and spray a single section of track covering the rails and sleepers. Allow the paint to dry and clean the paint from the railhead. I use a Peco track rubber for this and vacum the residue the abrasive rubber creates to leave a shiny surface on the railhead (essential if you want you trains to pick up electricity!). Compare this to the untreated track; I expect you will see a significant improvment in appearance. If you are happy with the appearance go ahead and treat as much of your track as you want. In the event that you want to add tonal variation to the track at a later date you can, it is easy to do so at any stage. I am not suggesting this will be the perfect solution but for modest effort and outlay you will have significantly improved the appearance of your track.

I reckon the first air cons to appear on the NE/SW route were on the Edinburgh Plymouth diagram in the late 70's followed by the Newcastle Bristol diagram. Everything else remained steam/dual heat Mk1's and early Mk2's until the 80's, in some cases this was the case until they were replaced by HST's.

I think you will find tht most modellers have spells where their motivation and focus drops for no obvious or apparent reason. I am very conscious of this which is one of a number of reasons I enjoy my summer sabaticals when I am largely away from my layout. Once the nights start to draw in and the days cool down, I usually find that I am drawn back to the layout with batteries recharged as it were. Everyone is different but I think we can all allow ourselves some time off from modelling without any concern. I suspect that something will click and you will find yourself consumed once more by Burton. For what it is worth my room 101 is building up scenery using polystyrene; I worry constantly about getting it perfect which is so unnecessary. I know this to be the case but it does'nt stop me gettting agitated about it. Perhaps my colour blindness helps but I spray sleeper grime onto track without a second thought for how it looks.

A little pottering and some planning have occupied the last few days, the planning relates to deciding what to do next and the pottering saw 27105 shuffle it’s empty rail train into Crianlarich.

The first post on page 14 of the thread explains how and why the coaching stock fleet is formed as it is including the sources of information that underpinned my selections. If I was starting over I would have one or two less SK's with TSO's in their place but otherwise I think I have a fair reflection of the coaches seen on the WHL in the early 80's.

Legoman's WH sound project can be quite feisty if driven aggressively in the style of so many Scottish region drivers. With judicious use of the Drivelock function you can get entertaining departures with wheels slipping and engine cutouts at low speeds. I must get around to a video of an Earth Mover fitted loco departing Crianlarich heading south to imitate the wheel slip I have seen in several videos on the rising gradient

Hi Andy Thanks for the positive comments. WHL4 is something of a journey which I am enjoying even though most activities seem to take much longer than I had expected. The layout proved to be something of a lifesaver during the various lockdowns where working on the layout and recording developments on RMWeb gave me contact with the outside world as well as creating a diary of the layouts evolution. In terms of the sound in the class 37 fleet I have most producers represented as the summary in the picture below shows. I have no allegiance to ESU as such despite the proliferation of their chips and the Cab Control system. CC was the best controller option I could find for what I wanted and overall I have been pleased with it despite the irritations relating to starting power. I simply have never got around to buying a Zimo chip although I have several of their speakers where in my opinion, upgrading the speaker is the best enhancement that can be made to a sound chipped loco. The Earth Mover 2’s are excellent but expensive because of the need to mill 00 gauge loco chassis to fit the speaker. My current speaker of choice based upon a personal comparative cost/benefit is the Zimo double dumbo, LS 40x22x09 which at £18 delivers perhaps 75% the EM2 at 20% of the cost and fits a Bachmann class 37 without any modification. I have not used any DCC Concepts products although I have been tempted. Their voltage meter would be high on my list of potential purchases although I don’t intend doing anything on this front at present. This is largely because Cab Control has been less of a problem following the power BUS extension in the fiddle yard since when CC starts power on the first or second attempt. With autumn appearing well under way, my days on the golf course are receding and thoughts are returning to the next steps in the development of WHL4. Hopefully I will have something to report on this front in the coming weeks.

You have one up on me as 27051, formerly 27107 was one of 2 ex 27/1 push pull locos I didn’t manage to have for haulage. I recently bought a Flangeway Salmon wagon. I decided that I would go for the incorrect short version on the basis that I was not certain of how the longer length would perform on 3rd radius curves. I paid the full rrp which includes Flangeway sending me the revised body once available so I can make a choice at a later date. I now need to create and paint some rail panels to create a load for the Salmon. 27105 is seen with a short engineers train heading south on the approach to Crianlarich.

Hi Andy Clearly I was wrong, it is pretty evident that 051 lost her skirts and glass domino headcode earlier than 1984. I suspect that my comment reflected the Class 37 Loco Group page for 051 where there is a picture ostensibly dated April 1984 showing her in original condition. Typically I use Flickr and the Class 37 Loco Group records for reference but Flickr shows 051 with plated headcode from as early as Spring 1982. Interestingly a picture on the Class 37 website dated May 1982 shows 051 with plated headcode, a freshly painted front, worn bodyside paint and bufferbeam skirts indicating to me that the headcode change had been done on the cheap somewhere, presumably Eastfield. By October 1982 Flickr shows that the skirts had gone. If you have more pictures of your WHL trip I am sure that we would love to see them, whether you post them seperately or on this thread is down to you. Limited operations on WHL4 at present, a few hours of running earlier today had 37085 with the lunchtime Oban to Glasgow service pictured arriving at Crianlarich.

Not quite sure what you mean by 'boards on the side' but Railtec do a range of grain wagon transfers covering numbers, data panels and the BRT signs on the ends of the wagon.

The Dawson Hall partnership is history. Ed Hall is one half of the former partnership and was still doing commission work when I last spoke to him in early 2021. Ed is a great character but a little bit old fashioned with little on line presence; I'll send you his phone number if you want to contact him.

An unexpected running day spent trialling the 1983 WTT and revised Mallaig Junction fiddle Yard arrangements all worked well. So far the revised Mallaig Junction Yard loops are delivering what I had hoped for. We only managed about 25% of the days operations but everything worked as planned; fingers crossed that this continues. 37022 heads 8D10 at Crianlarich where is passes northbound 37026 on 1B10 Mallaig Junction Yard seen with various trains passing through.

Hi Ian I decided a long time ago that fiddle yards work most effectively where there are run round loops so that shunting is kept to a minimum. The loops at Mallaig Junction Yard had already proved they deliver what I need to run a timetable, the increase in their length is purely about capacity. If what you plan doing is more like Fort William or Glasgow Queen Street stations where a different loco can simply drop on the back of rolling stock then the requirement for a loop is much reduced. On WHL 3 the main fiddle yard was underneath a scenic section. I had no major problems with this arrangement but much prefer my current set up where the fiddle yards are open and easily accessible even though this has meant I have lost space that could have scenic stuff on it. If you have a hidden fiddle yard then I recommend you install lighting; I did and it made life a lot easier.

Revised track layout completed and full length freight trains now fit comfortably in all 3 extended loops. On paper this should make running the WTT easier but I need to try it in practice before I can be sure. Once I am comfortable this works I will connect the new track to the BUS and motorise the points but for now I rely on the fishplates to deliver power.

Compared to some WHL modellers (you know who you are!) I am doing very little at present. We did have a day of running trains last week which reinforced an operational concern that has been occupying my thoughts for some time with Mallaig Junction Yard fiddle yard not working as it needs to when running to timetable. The problem is that the run round loops are not long enough to hold typical length freight trains of 8 or so wagons resulting in trains fouling points and blocking off access to other loops. The 5 road fiddle yard needs changing to function more effectively; the before and after plan below shows visually what I intend doing. 3 shortish sidings will be removed and replaced by extending the existing run round loops. The net effect should be a 100% increase in the length of the 3 extended loops creating greater flexibility and comfortably allowing 10 wagon trains plus loco into each loop. A further bonus will be the removal of 2 sets of points and less shunting both of which should reduce derailment potential. A 3 way point has been purchased and will be installed over the next few days. Sidings lifted and revised track placed in position prior to cutting it to fit and wiring up