Dunalastair

Sounds like one of the fairground ride 'tunnel railway' locos - see for instance halfway down this link for a Fowler example - other builders also sold into this market http://www.leedsengine.info/leeds/histjf.asp A somewhat unconvincing 'pizza' layout?

Looking good. When will we get to see the overhead wires? The corner(s) in George Square should have some interesting strain wires.

Working for me now

More grossly simplified 1:300 rolling stock for Scotland Street. A modified version of the 1:148 brake wagons may stretch the limits of printability - some experiments may be needed. This in turn spawned a simple open wagon. The brake wagon showed that the carriages were sitting too low (no wheels!) so this has now been corrected, and the platforms raised a mm - always accepting that platform heights were lower in the early days. I also tweaked the chimneys on the station building - now narrower and with mouldings. But perhaps they should be taller. It must soon be time for some trial prints ... My main interest is narrow gauge, but the qualities of very early standard gauge before rolling stock and stations got bigger have much the same appeal.

Nearly there with the NG ferry barge. The handrails have been painted and fitted, and the 'rock barriers' added to the river banks. Barge, wagons, loco, ramp and ramp carriage have all been weathered to reflect the quarry operation. One or two 'white showthroughs' have been painted brown. I used a white panel to block out the background in one direction, but photography really needs another parallel to the longer axis of the board. Otherwise, this is shaping up as a reasonable representation of the scene in the original photograph, about which I have learned a lot more during this project.

A very light edit of the smaller scale representation of a 'Planet' designed for my Edge Hill diorama (another rope worked incline) has produced a very crude 2-2-2 hopefully printable at 1:300 for Scotland Street. The chimney will need to be reduced in height to compensate for me having raised the boiler / smokebox assembly. Even then, the loco looks tall compared to the carriages, but at this period carriage heights were often much lower than the modern loading gauge. The interesting and useful website Threadedinburgh which proved useful for my Canal Street model has just (25th October) produced a page on the Granton railway accident in 1860 which illustrates an early EL&GR loco in a familiar but useful print. A second image of a train at Granton dates from twenty years later, though the equipment looks earlier: https://threadinburgh.scot/2023/10/25/the-thread-about-the-granton-railway-disaster-of-1860-which-left-four-dead-and-a-family-bereft/ Digging into the accident report, the author provides the useful information that fly shunting was used to release the train engine at Granton. Despite the double crossovers, it seems likely that the same approach might have been taken at Scotland Street.

Still ducking the 'partition' question, I have scaled down the 1:148 carriages from Canal Street to suit the 1:300 Scotland Street scale. This has meant simplification and coarsening features and adding an underframe, but I'm still not sure if these will resolve. This is the point at which the renders start to look more like a simulation than the basis of a 3D print.

A little more development of the 3D model, with a perspective render this time. The steps at the ends of the platforms represent early era practice - the BoT would not have been happy in later years. Another siding has been added, and the levels / perimeter developed a little further. Trinity was the model for the mysterious station building, albeit with one gable rather than two. I will need to start thinking about how I will partition this for printing, and indeed how much will be printed and how much will be modelled more conventionally,

Yes, thankyou, I have come across references to that fine model, set a century later than I am thinking of. This photograph (not embeddable) shows the layout, which I gather was a combination of elements from Scotland Street (in the far centre of the image) and St Leonards on the south side of the city. http://www.edinphoto.org.uk/0_edin_t/0_edinburgh_transport_railways_scotland_streetmodel_railway_layout_1400.jpg at http://www.edinphoto.org.uk/0_edin_t/0_edinburgh_transport_railways_dy_scotland_street_coal_yard.htm which also has another photograph of the coal yard. On David's version, the passenger platform has a shelter on the east side. I am looking at a time when there was apparently a station building on the opposite (west) side. But he does represent those stairs down from the road.

That would fit - though it was only about 08h30, there was a large machine tearing down a concrete-framed building which would once have fronted onto Dundas Street, I think. With that car park, it looked like a sizeable site - given Edinburgh property prices there must be a tidy profit there for the developer. The well-heeled residents of Royal Crescent and Fettes Row must be wondering whether the new development will be an improvement on what was there before. I have started a diorama thread at https://www.rmweb.co.uk/topic/182326-scotland-street-diorama/#comment-5322742 - but there will be no room for Sea Serpents ...

No, not a play on McCall Smith's 44 Scotland Street book series, but rather the start of a build project building on the 'Prototype Questions' thread at https://www.rmweb.co.uk/topic/182230-scotland-street-passenger-station-building-edinburgh-c1850/#comment-5318527 After my 'Canal Street' diorama, Scotland Street is at the other end of the rope worked tunnel, on the railway which linked Central Edinburgh with the Forth ferry port, until the NBR built a more circuitous but easier-to-work locomotive line and closed the station to passenger traffic in 1868. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotland_Street_railway_station This is how the station was laid out in 1853, as recorded by the Ordnance Survey in an early town plan. By the time of the next edition in the 1870s, the site was recorded as an NBR goods station. The goods yard layout looks rather strange, so here is my much simplified version as a 3D design render at 1:300 scale to fit on an A4 size footprint - the original is about 300' from tunnel to tunnel. Early days yet, but I hope the render shows that the idea is feasible as a static diorama. It was the station building which I was looking for more information on, sadly without success. But at this scale, and knowing the footprint and that it would likely have a hipped roof, the main question is whether it would have been one storey or two. I am currently betting on one storey, like Trinity, but by contrast to the Canal Street terminal. If it had been two storeys, it might have made more sense to have had a first floor exit to street level, as at Canal Street.

I remember the Records being in Shire Hall when I worked there and had professional reasons to look at Enclosure Maps. However, Shire Hall has been sold off. The council is now at Alconbury Weald (on the old USAF base) but the Records (other than those for Hunts) are now in Ely. I was sent a copy of the LRO which describes the route sufficiently to plot it on a map, so I have not looked at the maps.

Yes, McCall Smith's fictional Berty and Co would have had a good view of the station site had the even side numbering not stopped in reality at 28. I was able to visit what remains at the site on Wednesday morning, in the course of a damp run around the New Town, so no camera. There was a large demolition site at the end of Eyre Terrace so it looks like the view from Royal Terrace is about to change again. As well as a modern stairway from Summerbank on the east side down to what is now the playground, careful inspection of the bank above the retaining wall showed surviving vestiges of the original street level access staircase adjacent to the tunnel portal, and less obviously, possible evidence of supports in the stonework where the footbridge linked the two platforms back in the 1850s. Before my trip north, I had been roughing out ideas in my preferred 3D design tool for a 1:300 simplified diorama to fit in an A4 footprint, and realised that at that scale, a simple rectangular building with hipped roof and a Canal Street style platform awning is about as much as I need in any case. But it would still be good to see some evidence!

Thankyou for looking in NBRSG. I have found various engravings of the original railway, Edinburgh being a well-illustrated city (as befits its publishing tradition), but the earliest incarnation of Scotland Street Station (aka Canonmills) is frustratingly elusive! There have been so many articles on the tunnel, usually quoting RLS, that I suspect that if there had been an image of a train coming out of the bottom end of the tunnel then it would have been used by now. For instance, just a little after the period of interest, there was evidently a misadventure on the way to Granton: http://www.edinphoto.org.uk/0_ENG/0_engraving_-_iln_granton_railway_accident_1860_1024.jpg

Thankyou for looking. I had seen the strata diagram and the Subbrit material. Generally, the tunnel is well covered, but the passenger days of the station (originally 'Canonmills' in some accounts) much less so.

So, after painting the printed models, it was time to add a finish to represent the river water. The news has been showing the flood waters from Storm Babet, and I well remember the sight and sound of rivers 'in spate' from my Scottish boyhood, so this is an angry Rhine today. The shoreline grass is still work-in-progress.

There have been several models of Scotland Street station in its goods station guise, as per this image. Having built a diorama of Canal Street station at the other end of Scotland Street Tunnel, I am now interested in the possibility of a simplified diorama of Scotland Street before the NBR built the diversionary route to Waverley for passenger trains. Scotland Street is where trains swapped between locos and the rope heading for Canal Street - the freewheeled back down controlled by the brake wagons I modelled in 1:148 for Canal St. There is an early map on NLS or at http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/e/edinburgh_scotland_street/1853town_plan.gif As well as a footbridge spanning the surviving tunnel mouth, this shows a long-gone station building with a platform awning which might have been similar to that at Canal St, but on a smaller scale. The ELG/ENR/EPD apparently built stations from material recovered from the demolition of Belleview House, and the (I think relocated) Trinity station building also gives a clue. Probably a shallow hipped roof with classical features. A very long shot this, but can anybody point me to an illustration (photo or engraving) of the station building?

The Ratio gates look the part, but to state the obvious, those steep ramps on either side, suited to a 'flat world' layout, would probably look out of place on a diorama. Indeed, longer road vehicles might well ground on a change of level like that. Blending the road surface levels should look much more convincing. As previously suggested, finding an appropriate prototype image and starting from that should help, in conjunction perhaps with a large scale map from NLS. This example from Brigg might serve as an example - note the home signal on the opposite side of the crossing from the station. https://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/news/nostalgia/railway-worker-who-saved-brigg-1780698

Now if you had been modelling the sixties era, you would have had to put the maroon observation saloon on the turntable to give the passengers a view on the return journey. Using a double-ended saloon makes life rather simpler, and you don't have to decide which incarnation of the LNER car to choose. or

A view up the rope-worked incline from Scotland Street as an EL&GR train approaches Canal Street Station in Edinburgh on a dreich day in the late 1840s.

I visited the Wisbech museum this morning. They had a small display of photographs of the tramway, and also of buildings in some of the neighbouring villages. Your version captures the atmosphere nicely.

This is one of the rare images (I have only found two) of the first generation 'cage', from before the cableway suffered a fire. Not https so will probably not embed. http://www.trainweb.org/foothill/images/postcard2.jpg from http://www.trainweb.org/foothill/micalmp.html

Can you call this a diorama? My model of the first of the two generations of the Pino Grande aerial transporter for a US logging railroad. The gauge is 9mm to represent 3' gauge, so about 1:100 scale. The bogies are Kato, the axles wire, and the other components 3D printed. At this size, printing the 'cage' as a single piece seemed to be the best approach. In a larger scale, it would probably have been better to assemble individual parts, which might have better represented the spindly original. There is at least one book on the Pino Grande logging line, and I think that the logging cars may be available commercially in a larger scale. The cover of the book shows the original 'cage' which I have modelled, but which does not appear in as many photographs as the later version. https://www.biblio.com/book/pino-grande-logging-railroads-michigan-california/d/1436960659 This is the second generation aerial transporter, which uses four cables (plus a haulage line) rather than two. https://salmonfishingqueen.wordpress.com/tag/pino-grande/ There is also a video of the second generation aerial tram cage operating at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S4YqjtQUic&t=1s When I was a lad, I would have enjoyed rigging this up with a powered winch, and running wagons on and off at the terminals. Perhaps thankfully, I do not have the space to do that now. But never say never ... Given the elegance of the solution to crossing a deep valley, it is surprising that there do not seem to have been more like this. Are there any other examples which were photographed, either in the US or elsewhere? Transporter bridges are similar, and just a little more common, albeit without very many rail examples.

I have not seen any such images either, but it would be good to get a better insight. I suspect that working in the alleyways would have been man or donkey powered rather than locos. The Ashington system seems to have been the most extensive, but 'rails in alleys' were not unknown elsewhere - I modelled a smaller Welsh version at Abergynolwyn in static form as one of my recent series of dioramas, described as you may remember in the relevant section.

Good to see progress with the OLE. How do the points work - presumably there are Sommerfeldt parts for that?