Ben Alder

He is working on a resin signal box ATM, and I have a Mk11 sitting on my bench for appraisal - the first had too much in the way of striations to be workable but the second looks better. Stations are on his list - he has ideas, and quite a few requests for several; there are drawings for some and others will need site visits so depend on saner times....I can't help him at all with GNS stuff, but he has a chap with a great interest in that company feeding him gen, so I am sure he will have a wish list for those as well. I know he has done a resin GNS kit for someone and I'll drop him a line to see if he has plans in this direction. A lot depends on managing to get a smooth surface finish as thanks to the nature of their build it is nigh impossible to sand wooden board claddings, esp the HR board and batten one.

Will do - he's open to ideas and modellers feedback. Any suggestions or wants passed on.

Looks good- part of Iain Ross's output - he does a lot of his stuff in a 3D option but he hasn't got that side of things fully settled yet thanks to current restrictions slowing up his liaisons with Pop Up's son who is handling them through his Open Factory etsy outlet.

I have somewhere a picture clearly showing the abutments on a similar bridge and spent about an hour and a half last night looking for it, with the only result being the already obvious realisation that my collection of HR photos needs some serious collation....

With regard to the backscene, here are a couple of warts and all shots of how I arranged mine - ID Hills and Dales spray mounted on to artists mounting board and held in place with a wooden channel. All very crude but it remains upright and is easily removeable for access behind the scenes, and has been in place for eight years now with no problems. The boards are 44" long and butt together helped by a clip at the top that is never photographed... and due to the curves involved are of a standard quality rather than a chalk buffered board that gives a white core but is considerably more stiff. I have a wrinkle or two in places due to my haste in forming the backscene after spraying, and replacement self adhesive polypropylene ones are waiting for me to get round to it. I now use a cold laminator to fix backscenes rather than the heart in mouth Photomount option, but using mount board makes getting behind the scenes a simple job. I have 1/2" square uprights at each end of a board and channels every 18" or so and tis has proved sufficient for the job.

Yes most were whitewashed inside.

Aaaah, dear old Kenton, miss his somewhat individualistic input to the forum......

AS you might imagine, details of such controls are sadly lacking and reliant on background detail from photos. Altnabreac, being still extant has been thoroughly photographed and I have plenty of images of its mechanism, but it wasn't a standard HR one - if there ever was. Several tanks had simple levers worked by a chain or rope and that would be simpler to model. Thurso was worked by such a method and my tank model has a representation of that. The two holes on the tank kit are for the supplied water hose but it is too crude and heavy to be fit for much purpose although I carved into something canvas shaped for the Pop Up tank. Here are some details taken from images, including a real rarity - an interior tank view. I have others, mostly not very clear, but these will give an idea of some arrangements. Can't remember off hand what images Mark showed about Altnabreac but I can send you some if you wish to copy that one.

Unfortunately not - poor student and expensive film meant I couldn't record nearly as much as I wanted to and never thought about the architecture of the place. Interesting article - you should start a thread on it here - that might flush out some info.

Not sure what part of the outlet you are referring to - anything on the floor of the tank will be invisible - is it the water control on the outside of the tank that regulated the supply? If so there was no set arrangement - with contro;s varying between turn wheels on levers. I can post up pics of one or two of these if that is what you are referring. And if the water supply was via a stand alone column then the tank may well have had no such fittings.

Article here that has a good view of the rear of the tender cab....

Here is the other half of the scene - Pop Up water tank and the rest scratchbuilt, with the shed using Pop Up bits for the shell.

Tidying up the leftovers form the two road shed build, I had a spare arched door sheet so rather than waste it I decided to do a single road version. I asked Andy at Pop Up to do a full size roof slate sheet, which was very useful and no doubt can be available to anyone who asks. It started out as a freelance to trial another covering but as I already had the Thurso water tower done it seemed sensible to base it on Thurso. Here it is in part - the overall scene didn't come out well so will be rephotographed tomorrow. As per usual, it is shorter than the prototype and the main windows are not exact copies but the nearest York Modelmaking had to offer - I wasn't going to commission a set for an aside project. As it was to match the tank I kept the same paper as before and set it as a stand alone set piece. This form of modelling is getting addictive! And a shot of it on the bench showing the arrangement - I'll post a finished one soon.

Looking forward to this one developing... good to see another FNL layout ... I get a bit lonely here sometimes....

Nothing like that has cropped up for me, in fact it is Firefox that produces wobblies, but between the two I manage fine. I do have Opera as a back up but very rarely go to it. Guess we must be looking at different things! No problem getting RMweb on either, thank goodness......

I'm using Waterfox - which is based on an earlier version of Firefox as my main browser, alongside FF and Opera and it seems to avoid the various niggles that plague Firefox these days. It has nearly all the functionality of its step parent and may be worth trying out if you are used to FF. I use the classic version on my desktop.

Why not use the embossed paper? I haven't seen a resin version - can you post a pic? It should be a replica of the wood one in which case the windows I got done by York will fit. I will measure them up if you want but I got them made to fit the wooden aperture after I removed the astragals and YM made them that size with a frame surround as part of it.

My rolled up ones are tissue paper painted a grubby grey - easy enough to do.

I have done a couple in wine cork foils that can cope with a bit of manhandling and can be reshaped if necessary..You can see one in the rear of this pic. The strange outline is as was on the prototype - it had a cab extension plate to provide a seating for a sheet for snowplough duties.

Very nice. This layout is going to be one to watch!

True, but enough to give a what if modeller things to plan and do...

IIR, the GSWR fleet could not be fitted with Caley boilers -as were several of the Highland ones, which gave them decades more life, and the LMS standardisation plan for the Northern Division was firmly concentrated on CR locos. The HR banking tank was an exception, hence its early withdrawal, and I would imagine that Drummond's GSWR clone had the same problem. As for boiler fittings, these seemed to be selected at random during overhauls, going by pictures of often the same engine over the years.

I put mine in a Saxa salt cardboard tube with the plastic top with two openings, the larger of them accepts blades, and put it in the recycling bin when full.

You should be able to get the non sterile packed ones from model shops and plenty on eBay.

You've got me thinking now......