young37215

Hi Ben Thank you for the kind words. Weathering track with an airbrush is very straightforward and, based upon my experience, a useful way to learn about an airbrush. Ordinarily I weather track before I ballast, with Mallaig I wanted a different feel to the area hence weathering after ballasting. I am still relatively inexperienced at using an airbrush, I only bought mine 3 years ago. I have weathered several sections on WHL4 using thinned Railmatch enamel paints. Mostly it is sleeper grime, occassionally frame dirt and weathered black. I thin the paint to about 60/40 paint to thinners and stir vigorously to mix it up. The 60/40 split is an imprecise measurement, all the books I have read tell you that the consistency of the paint after thinning is how you judge it ready for spraying. If the paint runs of the stirring tool easily then I find it is ready. There are plenty of tales on RMWeb from others who use different paints such as Humbrol, it is a case of personal choice as to which paint you use. The one thing in common is that to be effective with an airbrush you need to thin your paint. Your comment about thinning suggests you are not clear on this, I suggest that you make up some thinned paint and trial it on some old offcuts of track to see the results you get. Do'nt worry about tonal variations, you actually need these because the real railway is not all the same colour. Worst case if you do'nt like an outcome is to overspray the area with a different colour. Give it a try, it is very straightforward. In the time it has taken me to type this I could have sprayed a panel or two of track. Good luck

A brighter start to the day in every sense of the word. Armed with an unused resistor I connected a single light, turned on the power and it illuminated. Flushed with success I followed the same approach, one at a time and now have 5 working lights. I can can only guess that there was an issue with some of the supplied resistors. The white lights are quite bright, if I understand comments correctly, if I used a 2k resistor I should get a dimmer light? If so is it as simple as returning to Ebay where they seem plentiful and buying a supply? again thank you to those who have contributed to this thread

One of the biggest weaknesses of the modern railway is the inflexibility to respond effectively to seasonal changes in demand. The WHL is a classic example, two 6 coach loco hauled sets for summer use would likely meet with an increase in passenger numbers and get a number of vehicles off of the roads but, it seems, there is no appetite for this sort of flexibiility. It will be interesting to see if one of the charter operators builds on the apparent success of the S&C trains that ran earlier this year. Like others I would dearly love to spend a day or two being loco hauled on the WHL once again. Although I moved forward a little yesterday, I am still struggling with the platform lights where it appears I am reaping the dividend for buying cheap Chinese LED's. The problem has been narrowed down to one of the lights or, more likely, the resistors. Until I get these working as I want it will not be sensible to glue the platform to the platform walls although I did cut the plasticard to rough shape in anticipation of sorting the lights. Once glued down I will file the edges of the platform to enable rolling stock to pass without fouling and paint a line of coping stones. The airbrush got another outing and a coat of frame dirt was applied to the newly ballasted areas and oversprayed elsewhere in an effort to create some tonal differences. Personally my colour sight is so poor I cannot see any difference but my wife who acts as a colour consultant, tells me that there are subtle differences. The track was then cleaned up and vacumed clear to enable the running of trains again.

Thanks gents, I really appreciate your counsel. I don’t possess a multi meter but I have checked that a different 12v light works when connected at various points all along the copper strip. I will try again tomorrow with previously unused resistor and LED and see what happens. The reason I bought the LEDs was because they are a good representation of what I am modelling. My eyes were wide open to the downside of buying cheap Chinese

Thanks for your input. I do not have any working lights at present. The first light worked when initially connected but when I connected the second, neither light worked. I reversed what I had done with the second light but the first one still would not illuminate. There are no obvious signs of damage to lights or resistors.

I would love to run a Royal Scotsman but the consist in the picture is not the correct one for my era. Your picture shows the second consist that first ran in 1989, the first consist started running in 1985 comprising some wonderful old rolling stock as seen in the picture below. Unfortunately there are no obvious proprietary models available to model them and the work that scratch building or converting is beyond my budget or competence. An issue with the Mallaig platform lights slowed progress yesterday, having thought I had found the answer to making the LEDs work I attempted to create a BUS to power them. The first light was connected to the BUS and worked, connecting the second LED caused everything to stop and I am still trying to find out what I have done wrong.

Having managed to get one led to illuminate, I foolishly thought I could wire the 5 for platform without further problems. I was wrong! in an effort to reduce wiring I created a bus out of copper tape. I connected power and a single led with resistor in series. It worked, hooray. I added a second led with resistor in series exactly the same way but nothing worked! I disconnected the power , removed the second led but still nothing. At that point I decided to seek advice. Picture shows the first led connected which originally worked. The second led was connected exactly the same way about 100 mm along from the first. Can anyone tell me what I did wrong?

I created 4 storage tanks from pipe off cuts, 2 vertical at 120 x 68mm and 2 horizontal at 100 x 40. Placed in situ to get a feel, they look somewhere close to the reality. I will add plasticard to create the top and spray them light grey. With some pipework and ladders they should do the job. I intend adding 1 further tank in the gap, this was slightly smaller requiring something in the region of 80 x 30. Still searching for a solution on this.

I stand corrected, it makes sense to enable the double deck buses. I hope they have made adequate provision for drainage of the lowered road bed.

Less progress than I hoped for yesterday, a combination of too much sport on the TV and uncertainty over the sizes of the oil tanks to fit into to my available space. I did complete the platform walls and add a plywood backscene to the rear of the section. The backscene crystallises the space into which the 6 storage tanks of varying sizes have to fit and what additional scenery can be incorporated. Having spent the day testing various options I anticipate my version of Mallaig only having 5 storage tanks made up of the 2 main vertical tanks and 3 smaller horizontal tanks. I have yet to decide precisely how to model the tanks, I hope that I can use some off cuts of different diameter plumbers pipe scrounged from a builder friend and the remnants of an existing oil terminal pipe work as a low cost option. My fall back is a combination of the Knightwing range of tanks although without seeing these in the flesh it is difficult to judge which kits to choose. Provided the glue used to secure the platform walls has fully hardened over night, I will amke a start on getting the platform laid today.

I doubt that there will be any lowering of the road because it was primarily the limited width of the old bridge that created the bottlenecks; anything tall had to stradle the white lines and go through the centre of the bridge thus blocking off oncoming traffic. Whilst I would not rule out Network Rails ability to get this wrong, I would be surprised if there were height issues!

I think a picture provides a better answer than words to answer Ian 's (ISW) question. The short bit of track by the oil terminal platform was connected to the adjoining siding but I do not have sufficient space to include the point hence just my token piece of track. I deviated from the usual approach of weathering track prior to ballasting in an effort to achieve the dilapidated and dirty appearance that typified a secondary BR station in the early 1980's. A fiddly day yesterday spent constructing the platform walls and the taller wall to the seaward side of the platform that attempted to protect passengers from the Atlantic breeze!. By the end of the day I was nearly finished and hope that today I can complete the platform walls and start on the platform itself.

Yesterday was all about painting. A bottle of Railmatch sleeper grime was airbrushed over the track and surrounds. My intention is to add some colour variation once everything is dry and the platform walls are built up.

The glue did not fully dry overnight and as I spent the day fine tuning the ballasted area which involved more glue, it was still damp last night. I managed to add the base of the oil terminal, a simple affair made of an off cut of baseboard and Wills coarse stone as a wall. I am still pondering oil tanks, as David identified yesterday, the glue bottles are acting as a proxy in between use. Not a lot to show for several hours work but hopefully the fine tuning will pay a dividend with the finished station.

Hi Andy What are you using as the fuel tanks? I have ruled out Bachmann's 44016 fuel storage tanks which would have been a simple solution for the two main tanks and am now pondering my options. I am guessing that the smaller tanks include Ratio's kit 530? Thanks Rob

At last Mallaig finally test run and ballasted. I even found what I was doing wrong with the lights and now these are working. Depending on how dry the ballast is this morning, I may be able to get a first coat of paint on the track. I celebrated by by running an engineers train!

Hi Ian Weights are from Road and Rails, the attached link takes you to what I bought https://www.roads-and-rails.co.uk/collections/accessories/products/five-strips-of-model-railway-weights I agree that it is easier than cutting lead although I have a supply of scrap lead being the offcuts of a recent job I had done on my roof. I used the lead to weight the OWV's and found it easy enough to cut to get to the 10g I wanted. The Roads and Rails weights have the benefit of a sticky pad which makes them perfect for the underside of a wagon.

Thanks to everyone for their speedy and helpful input. I am embarrased to say it was as simple as me not appreciating that LED's and polarity matter. At least I am now familiar with what anodes and cathodes are!

I recently purchased 10 LED lamps on Ebay for use as lamps on a station platform. They are cheap Chinese imports but look like they will do what I want. I started by reading the limited instructions which state: Operating Voltage: 12V~18v (must connect a resistor in series), AC or DC Compatible. Operating Current: 20mA. 10 complete lamps & 10 compatible resistors (for being used on 12v~18v). As there 10 of each it appears that a resistor is required for each lamp. In an effort to test the theory I connected one of the supplied resistors to an LED positive cable and attached power to the resistor and negative cable. Nothing. I tried a second light, again nothing. The power source is a 12v DC regulated power supply which powers my Megapoints network which has plenty of spare amps to power the LED's. Can anyone put me right and explain what I am doing wrong?

Hi Ian Excellent research, thank you for providing more clarity on the china clay subject. I stand corrected on the UCV point although they unsurprisingly appear a minority performer on the WHL. I am content that for WHL4 the 4 OWV's and 4 PRA's that I run provide representation of the Corpach destined china clay. Whilst I could justify more OWV/UCV's this comes down to space and I do not really have the space for more wagons. Yesterday was another frustrating one, I soldered all of the polarity wiring quite quickly only to find that I had the 2 power supply wires the wrong way round on each bracket because of my misreading the micro switch settings. Late in the day I briefly managed to get a loco running around the station but unidentified issues meant I gave up. I am getting irritated by the problems I keep creating and might take a rest from Mallaig today to calm down. In an effort to get away from the Mallaig frustrations I spent a little time adding weight to 3 TTA's. The few derailments that I encounter usually ocur with the lightest wagons and the TTA's at 40grams are amongst the lightest that I run. I prefer to add weight where it cannot be seen but in the case of the TTA, I have glued two 5g weights on the underside of the chassis directly above the wheels. I will monitor performance and if the 25% increase in weight delivers a reduction in derailments, I will do the same to the remaining TTA's and paint the weights black to reduce their visibility.

Yesterday was a bit of a shocker, if it could go wrong it did go wrong. I managed to install the remaining 4 Dingo servos but these proved more challenging than the first one which only served to emphasise how much I miss the so simple but effective Alurailtech brackets. To finish the day off I was outbid on an Ebay auction that I really wanted to win. My experience of servos is that you get a wide variance of installation even when attempting to follow a standardised process. Some just slot in to place and work first time, others require repeated tweaks to the alignment before they work as required. The crowning glory yesterday was a fault which I could not resolve, the installation worked fine when under test using the servo controller but when the network was connected up, the servo refused to work. I checked and double checked the wiring was all correct which it was, I then started looking at the connections on the control panel only to find I had not connected the switch to the network! Even more annoyingly I did not have any more cables which meant I had to remove one of the as yet unused signals and use this. Problem solved, the servo responded to the control panel and finally all was well. The net result was all 6 points are now motorised but the frog polarity switching is still outstanding. Hopefully I will get this resolved today and be able to test Mallaig fully before ballasting this afternoon. After yesterday though I am not holding my breath... A couple more shots of 37085 departing Crianlarich for Fort William.

Whilst delivering supplies to my parents I passed by the work site at Gypsy Patch Lane. The old bridge has gone and a large gap is evident, the new bridge was visible some 20 or 30 metres away on the Rolls Royce side. When I told my mother where I had been she advised me that the impending replacment of the bridge had been notified to them by their solicitor when they bought their house 61 years ago!

I dont think you are far off. I suggest that you paint the rocks with a base rock colour and I think you will be surprised at the transformation in the appearance. Overall I think you have captured the essence of the area very well, in my opinion if you get to bogged down in micro detail you will struggle to move forward. After all everything we do when modelling incorporates a compromise to some degree. Sometimes it is easy to lose sight of this and get hung up on a point that in the bigger scheme of things is relatively minor.

Although I spent several hours soldering and wiring yesterday, I did not get as far as I had hoped. I am having to use a new type of servo bracket which is taking time to get used to, fortunately there is a review of the Dingo brackets in a recent ModelRail which helped build my confidence. I also hit an obstacle with wiring up some cheap Chinese LED lamps bought which I think I can make them look reasonably like those found on the platform at Mallaig. Try as I might I could not make the lights work; I hope it is my electrical incompetence and not a problem with the LED's! By the end of the day all BUS wiring was complete and secured to the underside of the baseboard. 2 of 6 servos were installed albeit without the frog polarity microswitch wiring being checked. Today I aim to finish the servo installation so that I can test run a loco around the station to prove it all works. If all goes well then I can ballast. I can still run trains although it is all a little congested with the temporary loss of 4 long storage sidings. 37085 followed the sleeper north with 7B02. Note the lady collapsed on the platform in the 3rd picture, it must have been the excitement at hearing 085 arrive!

Electrical stuff is not a strong point for me, I am seeking guidance on wiring 12v lights which the instructions tell me require a resistor wired in series. The picture shows what I think is required but when I attach my 12v source to the two wires the light doesn’t! Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong?