Ben Alder

Great stuff in that collection- thanks for the link.He was an inspiration to me as a youth, and it is a treat to see his work "in the flesh" as it were.

That sounds like a practical idea- keeping the upper proportions more or less right.I think you can get away with discrepancies in wheelbase and diameters to an extent, as in most situations the eye is drawn to the superstructure.

Looking great!- V. impressed with the spaciousness and finish. It really shows the benefits of 2mm modelling( and an interesting area to model as well!)

Certainly does- it's one piece of soldering I've never tackled before- thanks for the tips - to make a dreadful pun!

Very interesting, as altering a set of Hornby rods is a job on my lengthy agenda- what solder did you use for this?

Cheers, Coach- it passes at a distance, I think! I have recently modified the sandboxes and edited the blog to show the work done.

Very interesting- nothing wrong with a bit of bodging- my modelling career has been based around it and without a blending of R-T-R chassis and kit bodies wouldn't be where I am today, and for a period where it is most unlikely for there even to be that option, then scratchbuilding is the only way forward. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with much of the old Triang range as a basis for this, and improving the wheel profile will sort out most of the problems arising from coarser standards. And it is "proper" modelling to boot- no waiting for the latest release here!; Look forward to more in this thread.

Looks very good- lots of space!

Oh, he certainly will- I'll look forward to seeing this develop- just wish I had had a bit more room for my version.....

Thought I'd add their contact details- Art Printer- as he is very helpful and can customise to your requirements- I can recommend him - details here-

Thanks- the backscene is Art Printer's Hills and Dales- the 15 " version with the bottom 3" of greenery cut off. I am very pleased with the way it ties the whole picture together. International Models, amongst others, supply this range.

Mikkel- thanks for the comments- I must be getting something right then! I do like the blog format- it keeps things compact and easily found, unlike a thread that can stretch and ramble- and I have some catching up to do on the blog.

As a companion piece to the other station on the layout, I will lay out the background to Helmsdale, about half way between Wick and Inverness, and an important staging post in steam days. It has the usual two platforms, typical HR goods shed with minimal goods facilities, but most interestingly for modellers, an engine shed where the Dornoch locos were maintained and some elderly pre-group engines were used for banking and PW duties. Until the end of steam, some services started/terminated here, so there was often a Black Five around, and the mail coach and restaurant car were removed from northbound trains, so spells of activity did occur.It was latterly a crew change-over point, but until the Black Fives arrived, with the capacity for a full run to and from the end of the line, engines were changed here on nearly all trains, so with some modellers licence, some extra interest can be added to the workings. The railway was the employer in Helmsdale- I have seen the figure of seventy quoted, shared between motive power staff, PW, and the usual station requirements. This local site has some interesting photos showing the station in its heyday- http://www.helmsdale.org/station.html - the second one shows a dozen enginemen; the title stating that these are only some of the men from there. Certainly the shed was better equipped than most wayside depots- it had a fitter and boilersmith to attend to the branch engines, washouts and running repairs were looked after, with apparently little need for visits to Inverness. A couple of photos to set the scene. I have omitted the main station building and half the platform length to fit the space available, and also to get some openness at the north end, rather than have the whole area filled with platforms- the shed site is as it was but different! Due to the room, I have had to move the turntable further up into the shed area and reposition the sidings somewhat, but it does retain something of the real thing.The shed building was a real one-off - the Highland tended to have "house" styles for their buildings, but this shed conformed to nothing- it was a hotchpot of horizontal weatherboarding and corrugated iron, with seemingly random apertures placed in no order. The roof and vents are often seen in a tattered state and doors appeared and vanished over the years. As a result of this, I decided to not bother with a scale model of the shed as such, but based the model round the Ratio curved roof as used on their coal shelter and carriage shed, and used board and batten as the woodwork, in common with every other HR timber building. This sin apart, all the other buildings are copied from photographs and,apart from some corrected mistakes along the way,are passable replicas of the originals. The turntable at Helmsdale was replaced in 1948 with a 60' model- mine is a Roco model, Anglicized as far as practical due to a lack of a decent UK version. From my studies of this station it seems that the shed facilities underwent an upgrade in 1948, with brick messsheds and huts being built, along with the new turntable. The mess shed is similar to those erected by the LMS in 1943 at Aviemore, Tain and Wick to improve conditions for loco crew on lodging turns, and must have been appreciated by the engine crews, but by the time they were built here the need for them had largely vanished, with the increased traffic workings gone, and the long decline of the railways beginning.Post war allocations saw the last of the Small Ben's and latterly one or two of the Pickersgill 4-4-0's here, along with a Caley 0-6-0, and I am broadly going along with this- there is not a lot of scope for what-if's here, although I suppose I could imagine a distillery trip working - Brora has a distillery, and perhaps the brickworks and coal mine might generate some traffic as well.Helmsdale had a fishing fleet at this time- nothing on the scale of Wick or the east coast ports, but there was a loading bank at the south end of the station for fish vans- these would have been attached to through freights, I imagine, but perhaps sometimes a special working might have been needed...... Edit The layout thread was so compromised by the forum image loss that I closed it and might do something about it if I find the time, but a parallel thread was posted on Your Model Railway, with the same details as here, so the whole story can be found there, if in an attenuated form. Also on Western Thunder from about seven years past, again from now and again. with the same titles.

I thought I would give a background to the terminus of my new build, which is based on, and called,Thurso- furthest north station in the UK. Using an actual name is of course a hostage to fortune, and some alterations to the layout have been made, but I have endeavoured to retain a degree of fidelity, albeit in the usual,for me, cramped site. The track layout is as it was in steam days, with the exception of the engine shed, which has been placed 180o to the original,and is a two road shed, as opposed to the single prototype. A photo of the model will show the general set up- the goods sidings have been reduced in length to try and keep a sense of proportion and to make shunting more practical. Some of the historical reasons for the station- a mix of actual and 4mm I'm afraid..... I have supposed that the construction of the line north of Helmsdale took a different route from reality, and carried on up the coast to Wick, providing a service to the scattered coastal communities- the interior of Caithness and Sutherland being either farmland or empty, to all practical purposes. From there it proceeded to Thurso along the actual route, with a station at Georgemas or nearby- Hoy maybe, to serve Halkirk, the only village along the way apart from Watten, also a mile or so from the railway. Once at Thurso, and over the years, a branch was put in, as was planned, to Scrabster, a port two miles from the town, and very important during the wars. This is still, on the model, rail served and a daily shunt is carried out there. There were also proposals for a line to Gills Bay, an historical crossing point to Orkney, which would have probably struggled to justify its existence, but an airfield was built at Castletown, a village that had large flagstone works, during the war, and it is interesting to imagine that this was retained as a civil aerodrome post-war, for Thurso, giving an excuse for a passenger service and scope for freight as well. The other option is to look west, to Melvich, some dozen miles away and head of the Strath that has Forsinard half way down-where large sheep sales take place each August, and once an important traffic for the railways, and the subject of a planned branch from Forsinard .As, in my world, the railway didn't venture through the emptiness of Sutherland, it would have been logical to put a line from Thurso along the north coast, where there are some small settlements, to Melvich, which could have become the mart site and a railhead for transportation of sale beasts. The building of Dounreay in the fifties along side a Fleet Air Arm airfield could also be a source of rail traffic, so with a stretch of the imagination, there is a lot of operating potential here. I have roughly sketched out where these lines would have gone here. As Thurso outgrew Wick, and generated far more traffic, I am planning having main line trains departing the station with Black Fives and a half train of coaches- to join up at Wick, along the lines of what happened at Georgemas Junction,rather than have the branch engine do the connection as actually happened, with the "proposed" branch passenger work in the hands of older engines, such as a Caley 0-4-4T or a Stanier 2-6-2T, both of which were in service at Thurso over the years. In this part of the world some Highland stock lingered on later than reality, so Small Ben's and Barney 0-6-0's can be seen, alongside some of their Caley replacements such as Pickersgill 4-4-0's and 812 class 0-6-0's. The shed at Thurso would look after their engines on a day to day basis, but Wick would remain as, historically, the larger shed with more facilities and attend to coaling and most engine servicing.The sparse main line passenger services will be added to with some local Thurso/Wick workings, with some of the 4-4-0's as motive power.Rather more intensive workings than the real thing, but IMMR after all! (and I have far too much stock....) Edit The layout thread was so compromised by the forum image loss that I closed it and might do something about it if I find the time, but a parallel thread was posted on Your Model Railway, with the same details as here, so the whole story can be found there, if in an attenuated form. Also on Western Thunder from about seven years past, again from now and again. with the same titles.

Lovely stuff! -thanks for posting.

An exercise in housekeeping here- a gathering of various topics I've posted, to help track them down as required. Thurso rail traffic in the 1970's- http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/61664-thurso-rail-traffic-in-the-early-70s/- Fort William rail traffic in 1972- http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/61633-fort-william-in-1972/ A wagon miscellany at Ferryhill in the early 70's- http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/61890-a-wagon-miscellany-at-aberdeen-ferryhill-in-1975/

I have butchered a M7- the new one- into a representation of a Caley tank. It was done before I signed up on here, and before a digital camera, so no WIP shots,I'm afraid. I worked from a mixture of the RM drawing, a Crownline conversion kit and a DJH kit to get dimensions, so have no real idea what is right or not, but it does me. There was a lot of hacking away at the Hornby chassis,IIR, and the rear bogie should be slightly elsewhere, but I left it as it was. The whole thing runs beautifully, once I had worked out the amount of springing needed on the bogie to keep the nose down. The T9 is a drop in chassis for the Pickersgill 4-4-0- all you need is the body, if you can get one. Autocom was doing them until his retirement- is this permanent this time?-, but this is my current runner, from a kit bought c1973- there is another planned for sometime this year.

Looks very promising- you will have a sense of space that I cannot manage in 4mm, unfortunately ageing eyesight precludes a downward shift for me- that and a lack of suitable motive power ,but I will follow this with interest.

I would add Keith Pirt's B/W album covering 60 and 61 shed areas- full of useful modelling details. Scottish Lines 1 In a series titled Steam Memories 1950's & 1960's by Book Law Publications. ISBN 978-1901-945-669

Much to my suprise, while tidying out some of the modelling debris from my layout build, I came across an A4 pad with notes taken from the Ferryhill visits. I haven't read them properly yet, but there is a ref. to 40184 HA on 13/10/74. Would that possibly be the green one?

Yes, and lasted for some time in green- can't recall dates though- more's the pity.

For completeness, I will include those few diesel pics I took at the time. They are scans of slides, and getting a good overall colour balance from these is a skill beyond the scanner, and operator,used, but I concentrated on the subject at the expense of background, hence somewhat iffy skies, but the engines are as close to the original as I could get. Once again, it's a mixed bunch, quality wise, but they are all I saw fit to take. Sorry.... 47521 24116 08817 25026 26008 47208 unknown Class 40- green ones were thin on the ground by this time- no doubt someone will recognise it.

Forgot these two-

There was another attraction to larger sheds at this time- steam cranes and their associated antique coaching stock. Here are a couple of shots of Ferryhill's resident. Unfortunately, I never managed to catch it in steam, unlike Haymarket's one, which always seemed to be simmering away, and if you were lucky, your train would either have a signal check or be running slowly past the depot, and that unique aroma of malting and steam would fill the air, almost as if the ghost of 64B's past was around- all gone now, I'm afraid.... Two sides of the riding van- an ex NB example,IIR I have included this shot, but I think it was taken at an Inverness open day- please confirm/correct as necessary- but it is certainly from the area.