Caley Jim

I use fine sewing thread. My wife has quite a selection of colours. I think that one (which is a Graham Hughes GNoS open kit) was straw coloured thread, treated with some dilute brown acrylic colour to make it more 'rope' coloured. This also helped to take the hairy look off the thread. The thread is wrapped round the buffers and then secured with a spot of cyano. On my CR wagons the tarps are tied down with pale blue thread as Caley ropes had a blue strand through them.

I see you're even putting the stonework under the arch! I was severely criticised by the Forth and Clyde group's resident engineer because I hadn't put in the cross girders under mine! Jim

The bridge and surrounding walls etc. have now been painted and fixed in position, ready for bedding in. The kerbs on the road have been painted, but the road and pavement have still to receive their surface coating. 686 approaching the bridge with a freight, while 173 departs with a local. The leading 6w brake/third is one of my original layered plasticard coaches, now with a Cleminson underframe. A view over the goods yard. The track at the bottom is the site for the goods shed. There will be no more progress for more than a month now as we are going off on holiday. Jim

I thought the big tubular bit between the fire box and the smoke box was the 'steam generator', but what do I know? Jim

Phil has beaten me to it, but another tool to use is a strip of hardboard about an inch wide and 6-9 inches long. Taper one end to 1/2 inch wide and use the end to rub the track. This will polish the rail without causing any abrasion. Of course the track has to be free of any gross contamination first. To remove paint from the rail head after painting new track I made a scraper which I described in the magazine. Jim

As promised, some more up to date photos. The long retaining wall and roadway are now ready for painting. A view looking towards the bridge And one from above the goods yard. A couple of 'foreign' wagons in the coal siding! The blue line indicates the approximate line of the backscene in front of which will be a row of low relief buildings. Also an overall shot from the down end of the layout. The scenic base around the interchange sidings has been given a coat of green emulsion, but no scenic dressing have been added yet. A shot of the sidings themselves. The banking between the sidings and the colliery branch behind will be heavily wooded.

Richard, I've had a closer look at your build of the wagon and I notice a few other things you've missed as a result of not having the instructions. 1) The tops of the corner plates should be trimmed flush with the tops of the wagon sides. Essentially, you've left part of the tags still attached. This one had me worried at first as i thought the corner plates were located too high and i couldn't figure out how that could have happened! 2) You haven't folded down the axlebox lids before you removed their 'handles'. They should slope down from the back at 45°. Should be easy to fix provided you haven't soldered them to the W-hangers! 3) Once you've folded down the lids, you can then bend the top of the spring buckle back over the top of the spring. This photo of a finished example should give you the idea. Usual apologies for the crap lettering! HTH. Jim

It's an early, pre-diagram book, wagon, based on a Ken Werrett drawing. Outside W-hangers were common until around the early 1880's.Jim

No, Richard, the brake hanger is on one side only. A simple direct connection between the lever and the brake block hanger. Nothing at all on the other side. Do you feel that I should have made that clearer in the instructions?Jim

I'll send you a list when I get home Mark, if you are interested. Gratifying to see that someone else has been able to build it! Jim

Glad folk are finding it of interest. I'm away from home most of this week, but will try and take some more up to date pictures next week end. Jim

The scenic aspect of the layout was started by building the bridges carrying a minor road across the colliery end. These span the main line and and the down headshunt, the colliery branch (forming the scenic break for both of these) and the throat of the interchange sidings. I didn't want anything to grand for these and found this prototype, of which there are two examples still extant, over the trackbed of the former Symington, Biggar and Broughton Railway (latterly the Peebles branch of the CR). The only way I could see of producing the girders and fenced parapets in anything like a neat and regular manner was to have them etched, so they went on a sheet along with the turntable sides. The abutments are built with a shell of 40thou styrene clad in stone embossed sheet. I tried several ways of producing 'bull faced' quoins, but none of them satisfied me, so I ended up making them plain using 20thou styrene and fitting the stonework around them. The nearest abutment was built first and painted to check that I was going to be happy with the result. The second pair of abutments have had the stone cladding added, while the two far ones are just the basic shell. The decks are 60thou and slot into the top of the abutments so that they will be fairly easy to remove if access to any of the turnouts underneath is required. Here the stonework has been completed, the sides have been attached to the decks and some basic scenic work has been started. All the parts of the bridges are just sitting in place. A rather cruel close up of the bridge over the colliery branch taken from the colliery side. The finished bridges and associated retaining walls painted and fixed in place. The roadway has a covering of card, with strips of paper across the joints with the decks. A slurry of thinned down DAS has since been spread over this to form the road surface. Should a deck need to be removed, it will be a simple matter to slit through the paper with a scalpel and then repair the DAS afterwards. The scenic groundwork has been built up ready for texturing in this area, along with the area in front of the turntable. At the back the road has been laid and the docks for the cattle landing and agricultural merchants warehouse are in place. The structure in the right background is a rough mock-up of the warehouse building. That was as far as things had got to when a move of house became imminent and the layout was boxed away for some 18 months. Now that we have moved it has only recently restarted. In the meantime I made inroads into my gloat box and spent time designing some more etched wagon kits.

It was either home made or nothing in those days! ;-/ It was also a case of loose (disc) wagon wheels and cut and pin-point your own axles from hardened steel rod - not easy to do and get concentric when all I had was a Black and Decker drill! It did take a bit of fine adjusting to get them to run freely without them dropping out. I still have all of these wagons, except what Sir Eric Hutchinson's drawing called a '6-wheeled carriage truck', which in fact the Caley called a 'scenery truck' (Dia. 92 I now know thanks to the CR wagon book). Its rather fragile styrene sides disintegrated eventually. (Memo: must do the etch artwork for one of these). They now all have etched W-hangers and some are compensated, though I've become convinced that that is not needed on 4 wheeled vehicles. The little swivel wagon you mention currently does service as a runner for an open with an overhanging load of planks, but I intend to do an etch for a similar one and have a rake of them carrying a load of tree trunks or the like.. Thanks to Gareth and Don for their kind comments on 391. She's rather a favourite of mine and is a type pretty much unique to the Caley. They had several classes of them and found them useful for work in colliery etc. lines which had tight curves. Jim

Hi Tim, With a bit of 'practice'*, one of these days I might be nearly as good as you! * Tim knows what I mean. Jim

Yes, they are and I make it my practice to return the turnouts to normal as soon as the movement is complete provided the turnout will not require to be reversed again for the next move. Next installment: The turntable is modelled on the 50ft Cowans-Sheldon 'table at Carstairs and is driven by a Clearbox motor from Rapid, mounted on a sub-base fixed under the baseboard so that it can be removed easily for maintenance if necessary. The sub-base also has the well modelled on it. As the table only has one track leading to it and so will always make 180° turns, it is worked from a dpdt switch in the Interchange sidings bank so that it rotates alternately clockwise and anticlockwise. An arm on the shaft engages with a long-arm microswitch at each end of the throw which switches in a diode, cutting off the power, but setting it up ready to rotate in the opposite direction when the switch is reversed. The radius of the arm is 100mm (the diameter of the 'table) and the micro switches are on adjustable bases. this has resulted in very fine adjustment of the stopping positions being achieved such that it now stops reliably and accurately every time. A couple of views of the arrangement under the baseboard. Power is fed from the same supply as the turnout actuators, the speed being governed through a circuit on the Rapid website to which i was kindly directed by my consulting electronic engineer, the late Paul Martin. It takes about 40 seconds to do a ½ revolution, which is a reasonable compromise between prototype and operating convenience! Above decks, a perspex block is fixed to the shaft which has three holes in it. the deck of the table is mounted on a further perspex block which fits over this and has three pins to engage in the holes. The weight of the table is taken on two brass skids which ride on the rail in the well. Not only do they control the height of the table, they also carry current from two sections of the well rail to the rails on the table, such that the latter are only energised when the table is aligned with the track and are the same polarity as the approach track. The two perspex blocks, the pins and the skids can be seen in this view with the deck removed. The 'table before painting. The girders are etches of my own design. Sorry about the track rubber in the well at the back. It was propping up the deck for the last photo and I forgot to remove it. ;-( After painting and the addition of the walkway around the well. 391 on the table with the buffer stop in place and scenic base beginning to encroach on the left. Finally, a shot from the operator's side with the, as yet unpainted, retaining wall sitting in its place. Since these shots were taken the scenic base along the front of this middle board has been built up, but that is as far as this area hes got.

Hi Ian, As you can tell, my actuators are on the crude side of stone age compared with yours! As far as the electronics are concerned i am an ignoramus in that department - volts, amps and ohms I can cope with, after that I'm out of my depth! ;-( Jim

I built an interlocking table for the lever frame I have on Connerburn, using transverse bars activated by each lever. These have notches in them which engage with pins on horizontal bars, one bar for each interlock. The pins and the notches are tapered so that moving the lever slides the transverse bar and pushes across the associated horizontal bar(s). This either pushes the pins on this bar into the notches in the bars for the lever(s) to be locked, or moves them out of the notches for the ones to be released. Much the same as the tappet system on the prototype. As I said, I have the design of the interlocking for this frame drawn up, but haven't got round to building it yet. the table carrying it will be bolted onto the underside of the lever frame. You may well be right about the use of interlaced sleepering, but it's correct for the period i'm modelling Jim

Now started at http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/95081-kirkallanmuir/ Jim

Second installment. A couple of photos of the layout with tracklaying almost completed, One from the goods yard (up) end and the other from the interchange sidings. Those turnouts on the centre board which would be under control of the signal box are operated by wire in tube from a home made lever frame, while those on the outer boards are activated by memory wire activators via micro switches operated by the respective levers. One end of the lever frame before painting. The open hole carries the rod on which the micro switches are mounted. The pins on the lower ends of some levers are to engage in the locking frame, which has been designed, but not yet built. The lever frame in situ with its track diagram behind it. the broken lines are tracks not controlled by the frame. Turnouts relating to movements in the interchange sidings and goods yard are activated again by memory wire activators and worked by banks of switches on their respective end boards. The goods yard bank of switches with its diagram. Black switches are spst operating the turnouts and grey switches are spdt c/o operating uncoupling magnets. A couple of the memory wire turnout actuators. Crude and rather Heath-Robinson, but they work and have so far proved reliable. The power resistors are to limit the current from the 12v supply so as not to overheat the wire, which would destroy its properties. The spring returns the wire to its original length as it cools when the power is turned off and so returns the turnout. Next up will be details of the turntable. Jim

Forgot to add above that I believe there are still a few turnouts on interlaced sleepers to be found covered in vegetation in abandoned sidings! Jim

A report on a trip to America in the early 1900's by Donald Mathieson, General Manager at the time, commented on the use there of through timbers, but stated that the Caley preferred interlaced timbers as they held the gauge better. The timbers were not 9'0" long, but 8'11" as there was a tax on imported timber 9'0" long and over! Jim W

Kirkallanmuir is a fictional mining and market town situated to the south of Allanton on the eastern edge of the Lanarkshire coalfield. The scenario is that a line was built to it to take out the coal from Allanmuir pit, leaving the Glasgow - Edinburgh via Shotts line at Murdiston. Later the line was continued south to link up with the Climpy extension of the Wilsonton branch from the Edinburgh branch of the CR main line. I have since learned that such a line was once proposed! The layout was several years in the planning, the final form being somewhat different to what was originally envisaged. The photo below shows a model of the layout made during the planning stage. To the left are the colliery interchange sidings with the colliery branch disappearing behind them and behind that the main line running along the back of the layout, double track as far as Kirkallanmuir and single beyond. Behind these are a couple of sidings serving the local agricultural merchant and the livestock mart. In the foreground is Allanmuir Kirk and to the right of that the goods yard (on the site of the original terminus). The main line disappears off scene to the island platform station beyond the bridge. Construction was started in November 2009, this photo showing the baseboards with the Templot track plan glued down. The overall length is 3 metres on 3 1 metre boards. the slots are to accomodate the train cassettes. Plain track is all Easitrac , while turnouts are all modeled with interlaced sleepers (as the Caley used in the late 19th century), using pcb sleepers at the crossings and switches with Easitrac sleepers in between. A plain turnout under construction One of the four pairs of tandem turnouts, this one at the throat of the interchange sidings. An interesting turnout incorporating two single switch trap points, dividing the two up sidings. More to follow later. Jim

Hi Ian, Thanks to you and Steve for enlightening me about the icons. I understand now! The styrene In using is Slaters. The little yellow sticker had '0435' on it if that helps. The stone courses are about 1.5mm with the odd larger, squarer stone covering two courses. I also have some finer stuff with around 1mm courses which is what i have used for the parapet walls. Jim

Thought I'd post an update on the bridge project for Kirkallanmuir. I found that it was easiest to build the long retaining wall 'off site' as the garage is a bit cold to work in for any length of time these days. I printed out a template and used this to get things roughly in the correct relationship and then did a lot of 'trying in' and adjusting to get the alignments right. The photo shows the bridge abutments finished along with the roadway on the far side, while in the foreground you can see the first bit of the long retaining wall (it is 860mm long in total). Since taking the photo I've improved the joint between the lengths of embossed styrene stonework and added the parapet wall and the copings. The platform ramp can be seen poking out from under the bridge. Everything is taped to the printed template here. I will try and start a separate thread for Kirkallanmuir soon. One wee question. I notice everyone else's posts have a string of icons in the bottom right hand corner, but not mine. Am I missing something in my posting? Jim

Cat litter is also easily crushed and, if then suitably sieved, it could be useful, especially as it will readily absorb dilute pva to bind it together. Just one of my random 'lateral' thoughts! Jim