young37215

Hi Ian Good idea but it is not the answer. Geoscenics ballast is supplied in a plastic bag which I simply pour directly into the spreader. I only used about half the bag meaning I doubt that I have got the dregs. I have not experienced this with the brown ballast, I think it is just a feature of this colour. If I use anymore of it I will rinse it before application in the hope that water cleans the dust away. I was planning to paint the 4' darker to reflect the grot and rubbish from trains standing in the station, this will just have to be a more extensive painting session than I planned.

Fort William has seen the track weathered and then ballasted. I am disappointed with the outcome of the ballasting because a combination of the PVA glue and dust on the ballast has left a residue on the rails and sleepers which I think will need a further covering of paint to resolve. The ballast is from Geoscenics whose brown colour has been used across the rest of the layout. I used their dirty grey n guage which looks much like that I have seen in pictures and reflects the fact that Fort William Station was less than 10 years old in my early 1980’s era. Hopefully all will be well with a little more painting.

The change in certain freight timings reflected that with RETB the WHL became usable 24 hours a day whereas whilst it remained semaphore controlled, operations were contingent upon signal boxes being open. There is a 1990 WTT currently being sold on Ebay for those who are interested. Of course passenger services were Sprinter by then. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ScotRail-Working-Timetable-of-Passenger-Parcels-Freight-Train-Services-1990/254614158831?hash=item3b482fbdef:g:2ZoAAOSwRtBe1OAG

I knew you had commented on the ballasting, can you expand on this please

Hi Dave You clearly paint/weather your track bed area post ballasting as can be seen in the above picture. I am struggling to get something like this, please be so good as to tell us what it is you do. Thanks Rob

Oh what fun it is aligning and wiring point motors. Using the now defunct Alurailtech brackets has proven straightforward and reliable most of the time on WHL4. With the point in situ I mark the centre point of the tie bar hole, the point is then removed and a 2mm hole drilled. The actuating wire is threaded through the baseboard from underneath and the bracket is screwed in place and then removed to allow for a larger 6mm hole to be drilled. The bracket is reattached using the same screw holes which should align the actuating wire in the correct place to pass through the tie bar. There is a little flexibility from the 0.6mm piano wire used as an actuator for less than perfect alignment and normally the job takes less time than it has for me to type out this explanation. On this occasion the problem was simply down to a poor installation. After a quick resolution to the alignment problem it then took me more time than it should have to finish off the frog polarity wiring. I finally got to the stage where the 5 point motors at Fort William were all doing what they should and the directional lights were indicating the correct direction of the point on the control panel. Once again though I could have made a programme, possibly even a series, on school boy errors and how to make them. I managed to run a loco around the station to test and was pleased when everything was finally up and running as I wanted. I will weather the track before returning the station to the layout and ballasting it in situ. I am still undecided about what the platform facing should be made of, Peco’s standard concrete offering is perfectly acceptable visually when weathered but it needs about 3mm of height removing to reduce it to the prototypical level. That translates to about 3 metres of cutting with a sharp craft knife which is laborious and fraught with danger both to my fingers and cutting off too much of the facing. I can’t think of an alternative and am not looking forward to the activity. After dog walking duties this morning, it’s a golf day today meaning little likelihood of any serious modelling time which makes sense given how pleasant the weather continues to be. Hopefully by tomorrow I will have got a clearer picture on my head of how I will finish off the remainder of Fort William. An Alurailtech bracket in situ, it is a shame that these are no longer being produced as they provide a secure base for servos

Thanks Ian Good idea, I have an old pair of side cutters with damaged blades that take the steps of much quicker and more easily than the scalpel. The curvature of the coach end prevents a completly flush cut so some sanding is still required but the net effect is a much quicker process per step. Multiplied by the 72 steps that remain to be removed and it will be quite an overall time saving. Yesterday I managed to connect all of the remaining wiring at Fort William and by the time I finished, 4 of 5 point motors had been set up and were working. The 5th was being a pain in the rear, I think I misaligned the installation and so after swearing and cursing for far too long I gave up. Hopefully today I wil be able to sort this out before testing it all works prior to reinstalling the section on the layout. There are now groups of coaches dotted around in various stages of refurbishment. First the slowly shrinking pile of coaches awaiting cleaning, renumbering and step removal Coaches cleaned, renumbered and waiting for a coat of matt varnish

Thanks Paul, My searching of RMWeb for TTA references yesterday did not find anything. When I searched Google this morning it brought up the threads below which go some way to answering my questions. I know the Bachmann TTA is not necessarily a perfect replica of the TTA for my 1980's era but it is good enough for me. Was the change from 4 to 5 digit numbering due to TOPS?

My reference guide for stock numbering is my 1982 Platform 5 Coaching Stock book. I use Railtech transfers where, in addition to their BR Blue Scotrail passenger code 3094 product, I had a custom set of numbers of Cowlairs allocated stock made up based on my P5. There are plenty of transfers left to allow me to clean and renumber a further 5 poorly weathered coaches. I usually manage to find a left field summer project which allows me a little modelling time as and when I feel the need. This year and in addition to the ongoing weathering removal programme, I have started removing the top 3 of the 5 steps on each of the mark 1 coach ends. I am not certain when these got removed but they were history by the time of my early 1980's era. It is a simple enough task but in total it is a bit of a faff as I have 24 Mk1's which at 6 per coach totals 144 steps. These are removed using a sharp scapel balde which is then sanded flat using my cheap utility tool. A blast of paint either by airbrush or by hand to cover the work and weathering as required completes the job. So far I have removed the steps from half of the fleet so there is plenty of work left for Doug and his Dremel. The bog standard Bachmnann Mk1 coach end Steps removed by scalpel leaves a rough finish Steps area sanded flat Finished coach end A cheap utility tool is perfect for this job (the sweet tin full of drill bits, not chocolate)

I am trying to get an understanding of the variety of liveries found on Bachmann’s standard TTA wagon. Basically I am trying to work out which ones are appropriate for my early 1980’s era. I have read what I can in Larkin’s Working Wagons but don’t feel any closer to an answer. I am also particularly interested in numbers and when they changed from 4 to 5 digits which I guess is TOPS related. can anyone shed some light or point me to a reference source? Thanks

Ian The Humbrol tin was well stirred before gravity added to my stirring! I agree that the tins are cumbersome and the collection of paint in the rim has always been an inconvenience. Dropping the tin only adds to amount of paint in the rim, I shall dispose of it and the few other Humbrol tins once I am satisfied that the hoppers are complete. What irritates me more than anything is that I invariably place newspaper under the work bench when I am painting despite having never had an accident before. The one day I did'nt put the paper down is the day I drop the paint. My airbrush is an Iwata Neo bought at Warley a couple of years ago after speaking for a few seconds with George Dent . His words of wisdom were do'nt expect a cheap airbrush to perform well, if you are going to buy one make it a decent one. I paid £200 for the brush, a compressor and some cleaning items from Eileens who had a show offer on. It took me several months to build up the confidence to use it and only after I had read Dent's book Airbrushing for Railway Modellers. I recommend that you spray some track with sleeper grime or similar to get familiar because, in my experience it is virtually impossible to get this wrong and you will quickly get the feel of how the brush delivers paint. My only advice is to make sure your paint is well thinned before you start, like many others I find a 50/50 paint thinner mix works well. I managed to get some focus yesterday and started on Fort William where I connected all remaining track and 4 of the 6 points to the power BUS. I soldered about 20 joints in total, it never fails to surprise me how many joints are required. I also managed to connect a couple of point motors albeit without doing the frog wiring. I was also able to review Wednesday nights airbrusing where I matt varnished the blue area on the sides of several of the recently cleaned coaches. There is room for improvment but overall I am quite pleased, the new coach number transfers are clearly sealed and the scratches are much less visible than before. It's a golf day today so limited modelling time and little likelihood of progress. BCK before cleaning and varnishing, scratching is clearly visible BCK after work, the varnish reduces the visibility of the scratching beneath the toilet window SK cleaned, renumbered and varnished

In terms of snowploughs I would much prefer to hang them from the chassis rather than the bogie as Bachmann's normal ploughs work. It is not just the radius of curves but also the likelihood of damaging any detailing with a plough swinging around on a chassis. The same can be said for tension lock couplings hence my desire to find a better solution. Whilst I have seen some people modify the Bachmann ploughs and hang them from the bufferbeam, I have found that there is limited space to do this. PH Designs do a folded aluminium set of ploughs designed to hang from the bufferbeam but I have not summond up the courage to try these yet. Yesterday I did a little airbrush work. I had intended to do more but in a clumsy moment I managed to drop a full tin of Humbrol enamel paint on to the carpet which meant I spent more time cleaning the carpet than I did airbrushing. Having looked this morning I seem to have done an OK job on the cleaning although the loft stinks of white spirit. The Humbrol paint was for two aluminium hoppers which needed a darker grey. Fortunately there was enough paint left over to complete a coat on them and they are now a good match for the rest of the hopper fleet. Hoppers waiting paint, I shall stick to the larger Railmatch bottles in future as they are easier to work with! Duly painted, there is a small imperfection on one of the wagons which I am not concerned about Reunited with their chassis Old and the new, the hopper to the left is in the original colour applied 20 years ago and weathered, the one to the right is newly painted and unweathered.

If the precision of the finished layout is anything like that used in planning for the framework and baseboards, it will be very special.

There will be lots of time for driving once you have finished 'Dremelling' smooth the coach ends where about 120 or so steps have been removed but the coach end panels have not been smoothed off yet! The picture below shows a wider wire style loop and I will be trialling something similar. I would love to find a solution for replacing the tension locks that works as it makes detailing so much easier and I can add snow ploughs which were such a common feature of locos on the WHL.

More procrastination and delays to Fort William's development. Partly due to my awaiting some deliveries but mostly down to a loss of focus and my attention drifting to a recently conceived re-numbering programme. As it stands to day 37022 will become 37085, 37085 will become 37111 and 37192 will become 37175 once Steve at Railtech sends me the new transfers. There will be nose end swaps for all 3 locos and new oval buffers for 37175. Fortunately I have a few sets of the Hornby Class 50 buffers which will fit 37175's chassis a treat. On WHL3 I had begun to remove loco tension lock couplings and replace them with wire hoops. This freed up space for Bachmann snowploughs whch utilise the tension lock mounting and created space to allow detailing of the bufferbeams. Derailments were infrequent and those that ocurred did not seem to be caused by the wire loops. This changed when I began WHL 4 and I found that the wire loop fitted locos had a much higher rate of derailment. It was invariably the first coach or wagon behind the loco that was derailing and when I reverted to tension locks the derailments reduced significantly which seemd to confirm it was a problem with the wire hoop couplings. I have no idea why the change arose, the tightest curvature is Peco 2nd radius which was the same as WHL3 and there is a lot less of it on WHL4! Only 37039 (pictured below) retains the wire hoops because they are heavily glued in place and I do'nt fancy trying to cut them out. Unfortunately this means that 37039 remains more prone to causing derailments than other locos which is frustrating. I want to find an alternative to the tension locks and have seen one or two options where the width of the wire hoop is much wider thus allowing greater side to side movement on the tension lock of whatever is being pulled. I have not got my head around the wider loops and where they slot into the bufferbeams as yet and would appreciate any photographs showing examples of this that I might try out. In summary, the revised programme of works at present has grown to: Fort William station. Completion of electrics, point motor fitting, track weathering and ballasting Ongoing coach refurbishment of poorly weathered coaches Renumbering of 3 class 37's So much for more golf and less modelling!

I had a look earlier to today at the various sand options at glasspebbles.co.uk where they have a couple of colours that look close to that I seek. My concern is that the available sizes are 0.2mm and 0.5mm which are described as like icing sugar and granular sugar respectively. Based upon these descriptions I estimate that these are much the same as the Geoscenics n guage ballast and dust which I already have. On the basis that 1KG only costs a few £, I will order a bag of 0.5mm sand and see how it looks in reality. Whilst the finer material is probably more accurate for scale, it looks wrong and is difficult to work with. My expectation is that the larger material will be similar to the Geoscenics n guage ballast but, hopefully, I will be proved wrong. I also managed a little time working earlier. I have become distracted from the planned work on Fort William by the effectiveness of the LA Totally Awesome for cleaning up badly weathered rolling stock and am currently sorting out various minor issues with a number of coaches. Whilst watching an Everard Junction video I learnt that Bachmann Mk2 BFK's are under size compared against the Mk1and when I looked closer this was quite noticeable. A gasket made by a hole punch through 1mm plasticard and cut to shape is placed on top of the bogie raising the height of the BFK to nearer that of the Mk1. A simple enough task that takes just a few minutes and is very effective. I must get my focus back on Fort William! Bachmann Mk1 comapred against a Mk2 gasket made in a few minutes out of 1mm plasticard The gasket sits on top of the bogie which simply screws back into place

I think it highly likely that sand would be good from a size perspective but I doubt that it would be available in the pinky brown colour found on the WHL and I do'nt fnacy the task of colouring whatever I use as gravel.

In similar vein, I have renumbered a dozen or so coaches and am considering matt varnishing the sides to seal the (Railtech) transfers and, I hope, cover up a few scratches made in the original varnish when foolishly removing old numbers with a fibreglass pencil. The coaches have mostly clean sides with dirty chassis and roofs and I am minded to mask the window area before varnishing and simply varnish the lower area of the coach. Does anyone have any advice or guidance with this approach.

Well none of you reading this thread were paying attention to my school boy error in the previous post. Look at the pictures again and you will note that the split headcode loco has air horns on the roof and on its nose end whilst the centre headcode loco has no horns at all! This has blown my plans to model one of the old South Wales, RSH built steam heat locos that migrated north in the early 80's using the split headcode body shell and centre headcode nose end. Irrittatingly there is no model available with both cantrail dividers and roof mounted air horns so I will have to fabricate my own cantrail dividers if I am to do one of 37184, 188, 190,191 or 192. I know others have done this but I am not keen on the thought. I now need to find suitable locos that I can renumber the two locos. 37085 is currently favourite for the split headcode with cantrail dividers (it is the only choice given I already have 37081) and 37175 for the centre headcode. I already have a version of 37085 but the loco does not have cantrail grills dividers so I am thinking this gets renumbered as well, probably as 37022. On the basis that the class 37 fleet totals 16 and given all of my current faffing, I have made a commitment to myself that it should not grow further! 16 is enough locos to run the WTT and that's before I think about the 2 x 20 and 3 x 27's at my disposal. I have however bought a bodyshell for a centre headcode 37 and a non motorised chassis to create a dummy loco to run as a double header. I have not decided on a renumber for this as yet, I fancy one of the Eastfield NB ones to provide some excitement when it gets a passenger train outing. A little more research is required to determine which one I go for.

they were only ever steam heat fitted from new until being withdrawn late 70's, early 80's.

A quiet day with just a little bit of activity with my renumbering project. What was 37022 has been cleaned and the nose ends swapped to a centre head code style to become 37192. The existing 37192 has been cleaned and swapped its centre head code nose with 37022’s old one to become 37111. Now I have the correct RSH and Vulcan bodyshell's on each loco. Detailing is still incomplete and new Railtech numbers are awaited prior to a light weathering to finish. Despite the missing bits, the new locos are beginning to take shape. I do like the effects of not totally removing the old weathering which gives the effect I recall of a loco that has been through the wash but is not totally clean. This creates a useful starting point for a little more dirt to complete them but nowhere near the previous amounts.

Awesome, Dave Greenfield in his element.

It is an unatural dislike on my part which I can indulge in on the basis it is my railway! Alternatively it can be attributed to the canny Scots and their reluctance to spend unnecessarily. Just for the record of course I never knowingly travelled in the wrong class of travel or without an appropriate ticket. On a slightly more serious note, running trains will now take a back seat for a few days as I have lifted Fort William station onto my work bench. This will see point motors fitted, the track weathered and ballasted with the station platform height reduced by 3 or 4 mm to a more prototypical level before embedding it into the ballast. The last train to run for the immediate future was 37012 on an Oban to Glasgow service seen arriving from differing angles at Crianlarich.

Having gained the confidence that the weathering stripping process works with the SK yesterday, today I stripped two more of the weathered coaches that need a tidy up. Once dry, BCK 21269 got replacement numbers, some passengers in second class only (I refuse to have any first class passengers) and a Springside tail lamp. CK 16201 was also stripped and when dry, renumbered as 16200 because I did not have any 16201 transfers left, second class passengers and a tail lamp was also added. BCK 21269 before cleaning with a messy renumbering job. After, clean body sides and fresh number. Hopefully a little matt varnish will secure the transfers and hide the old scratches. Rear of the BCK, I have taken to removing the top 3 steps on the left as these had largely been eradicated by the early 1980's. A bit of work sanding these down and then covering with a light weathering is still required. 16201 before and after Feeling brave after the progress with the coaches I decided to try cleaning 37022 which had been heavily weathered several years ago. Originally The Class 37 Loco Group's 37003 which has the cantrail dividing bars, I had incorrectly renumbered this as a Vulcan built loco which I want to correct and renumber as an RSH centre headcode, ex South Wales loco although I have not decided which of 190,191 or 192 it will be. Currently I have a heavily weathered version of 192 which does not have the cantrail bars which will also get a cleaning bath and a swap of nose ends with ex 022 creating a split headcode Vulcan and a RSH centre head code loco. I would prefer nose ends without bufferbeam skirts but you can't have everything. 37022 went into the LA fluid and cleaned up very well. A couple of very small bits of weathering remain but I am happy to leave as it will get re-weathered once renumbered. Otherwise the loco is virtually back to its factory finish. There was minor collateral damage in that one of the windscreen wipers went down the plughole when being rinsed off and was quickly followed by one of the handrails off of a drivers door. Several handrails came loose but only one found freedom, hopefully making a replacement should not be too difficult. If anyone has a spare windscreen wiper for a class 37 please let me know.

Several years ago I had a number of coaches weathered professionally and for variety I chose 3 different levels of weathering. The light and medium still look fine but the heavy weathering is over done. I compounded this on some of the coaches when the weathering was disturbed whilst renumbering a year or two back and I have not been able to find a solution that works. I recently picked up a potential way to deal with the problem on Everard Junction's Youtube site. He had found a way to remove weathering usually without damaging the original paint using a cleaning fluid. I duly bought some of the LA Totally Awesome and plonked the two sides of one of the worst coaches in the neat solution. 20 minutes later, a light brushing under cold water with an old toothbrush and wow, what a fantastic outcome. The sides look virtually new again. I will need to re-number the coach again but otherwise it is restored to how I want. Once re-assembled it will have a dirty chassis and roof with clean, carriage washed sides just as it should look for my 1980's era. Before, the mess and my embarrassing efforts at covering them up. Yuch Might as well add some passengers whilst the coach is dissassembled The 'after' view, even one of the Railtech numbers survived. A couple of windows need re-glueing The cleaner, costs around £10 on Ebay