Dunalastair

So I did include the kiosks, and now also the four rail track sat on the corrugated steel surface which made LOR track so distinctive. Still no end screens on the canopies, but mostly there now. Adding in the other side of the tracks and thereby doubling the size of this essentially symmetric station has taken the 3D model to its limits and it is now slow to respond on my basic laptop. A rather more comprehensive 3D model, presumably on a rather more powerful computer, can be found at https://stevenpw.artstation.com/projects/JQZA0. That design was intended for a film rather than a model.

Canopy models tend to come in bays, which can encourage the placement of single bays, but I would have expected either no canopies or more canopies. I'm not familiar with the approach of 'canopies for first class', who in any case would seem likely to get wet walking to the down platform. Platform widths do seem to restrict your footbridge placement, but thinking how passengers might use the station should help. This might not be a specific prototype, but looking for some examples can help justify the approach you take, even if they would probably have wider platforms.

All useful background, thankyou. I should have remembered the original Euston suburban electrification, though clearly that is another complicated story. All rather different to today's 25kV or SR third rail. Countries which mandated a single electrification standard avoided some of these issues, but also much of the interest. LBSCR overhead perhaps? I have made a little more progress with the Pier Head design. I'm still dubious about how much of this might resolve at a small scale. NOw, do I represent the kiosks under the stair landings? That would probably make printing easier, but might belong to a different period to the four rail, which has also yet to be represented.

Useful information, thankyou. Not always obvious that a fourth rail is not used for pickup. And the changeover polarity change reminds me of the modelling a return loop - at least the prototype does not so often have that issue. I have been playing with ideas in 3D for a simplified version of LOR Pier Head station. Early days yet, but putting 3D shapes together does help show how the structure fits together - not always obvious under later accretions. I have since added more of the supporting pillars, having (I think) worked out how they were arranged before the scrap man got to them in the fifties. I'm still not sure whether to make this a simple 1mm = 1 foot diorama (most likely scenario, though some detail may not resolve) or a larger 2mm = 1 foot model (though still static). The trains might look better in the larger scale.

Well spotted, thankyou. I had missed that sequence. Here is a zoomed in screengrab, hopefully out of any copyright. I would imagine a scenario whereby the system initially had three rails (very Hornby Dublo), then ran with the central rail while the outer rail conductor rails were added and outer conductor shoes fitted to the motor cars, and a big changeover day / weekend / week when the connections were changed to track and shoes. When the central rail return was abandoned, then the central rails could have been. removed piecemeal during overnight occupations. Possibly a job for Lively Polly when not engaged in ice scraping. https://www.rmweb.co.uk/forums/topic/98514-livley-polly-the-elusive-tank/ By the time the Ruston came along, the central rails would have long gone.

Thankyou. That pins it down nicely. Three-rail electrification has been and is familiar, but I cannot think of many other examples in the UK outside London of four-rail. I might try to represent that if the model ideas come to fruition, but at 1:148 it might not be very visible! Apparently the LYR electric units were originally four-rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LYR_electric_units and https://lyrs.org.uk/electrification/ Photographs of four rail LOR trains still seem elusive, but four rails on the L&YR seems easier to find http://www.lyrs.org.uk/images/uploads/LYRS_1925_-_Liverpool-Southport_4-car_Electric_Train_near_Waterloo_-_leading_traction_car_No_3007.jpg also at The history of electric traction in Liverpool seems less than straightforward, with the Mersey Railway also being four rail to an American design. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mersey_Railway I must read more!

Thankyou. I have been watching (and enjoying) the various video compilations, but (not surprisingly) they generally seem to date from the later era with only outside conductor rails. Is there a shot of four rail buried in any of those? If so, then I have not been watching carefully enough. And I usually watch with the sound turned off, so if the commentary mentioned the change, then I would have missed that.

Standards are another matter, but thinking back to what I bought as a teenager in the (?late) seventies after selling my mix-and-match Tri-ang 00, the Farish pseudo 'Jazz' Enfield Town sets (GER/LNER 0-6-0T plus four wheelers) at least aimed at the intensive service operated by most modellers. And for those of us in Scotland, the Minitrix green Type 2 / maroon Mk1 combination ran very nicely in a West Highland setting, even if the '27' showed its German antecedents.

Most images of the LOR show either the original condition, with a central conductor rail, or the later design, with a side conductor rail, to facilitate through working with the L&YR. Conversion must have been a disruptive business. However, Wikipedia suggests that there was an intermediate approach with four rails. "Originally the conductor rail was placed between the rails, energised at 500–525 volts DC" "To allow the through-running of L&YR trains, the conductor rail was moved to outside the running rails and the centre rail became the earth return until the 1920s" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_Overhead_Railway I have been trying to resist buying Mr Box's book, due to overstrained bookshelves and floor joists, but I have not found a photograph of this London Underground style track. Can our resident experts (e.g. @Stephenwolsten or @rue_d_etropal) suggest whether this is correct (there is a reference, but Wiki is hardly a reliable source), and if so then what dates might have seen four-rail running? I am contemplating designing a simple 3D-printed diorama of Pier Head station at about 1:148 to represent this historic line, pioneering elevated tracks over streets, intensive electric operation and multiple unit working.

A quick count from the handbook table suggests 48 Pecketts in Scotland. There is also the issue of distinguishing the products of Andrew Barclay and of Barclays & Co - the designs were very similar. Neilson & Co were probably the next biggest after Andrew Barclay, but it is a complicated story, and English builders were by no means unrepresented north of the border.

Barclay was not the only industrial loco builder in Kilmarnock, never mind Scotland. The Industrial Railway Society handbook N is the essential reference, though it is itself now nearly a half century old.

Elevated railways provide one example of railways and (sometimes) stations built above and parallel to roads. More common in the US (and beloved of Hollywood - think about the car chase in the French Connection), the 'Docker's Umbrella' is the obvious example, often with dock railway lines inset into the roadways. https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/remembering-dockers-umbrella-used-stretch-21635783 Might we still have it if the structural steelwork had bene patched up back in the fifties - or would it have bene swept away in the 'modernism' of the sixties?

A couple of weeks since the last post, during which there has been progress but for various reasons not always to plan. Imgur seem to have been b*****ing about with their user interface again and making it harder to generate a 'direct link' but I seem to have got there. The canal bank has now been surfaced and 'grassed' using hanging basket liner - perhaps a little coarse, but vegetation grows well in the wet West Highland climate in season. Though photographs do not show lamps on the canalside, possibly because the steamers ran mainly in the long bright days of summer, simple printed lamps have been provided to avoid any accidents between trains and boats. I got into some height calibration issues with my 3D printer when trying to make some fencing, and need to resolve that issue - I have been rather putting it off. The archway surround has come adrift and needs to be re-attached, along with the lifebuoys on the steamer. This diorama was intended as a way to photograph the pre-grouping WHR stock which I described earlier in this thread in more of an original context than my 1960s layout can provided. It may have ended up more compressed than I had envisaged and necessarily rather crude, given the build approach, but will hopefully be ready for those photographs in the not-too distant future, at which point I ought to post a 'diorama' thread to complement this hijacked theme.

The sea on the West Coast and between the islands famously can look tropical in the right light - something to do with the white sand, perhaps.

Or indeed the CR's Alloa Swing Bridge - damaged more than once. https://www.facebook.com/groups/oldstirling/posts/4814687251929377/

When you consider the girder count at Central Station, both in the roof and between High Level and Low Level, then Irn Bru seems somehow appropriate. Though Central is still there - perhaps it was the erstwhile St Enoch roof which was used by Barr's? https://showmethejourney.com/train-travel-info/countries/great-britain/cities/glasgow/rail-stations/glasgow-central/ The 1878 Queen Street roof somehow appears less brash, though I have not seen the latest redevelopment.

I decided to use the masking tape approach to bridge between the 'ribs', and this has now been done, not without a few tangles on the way. The hanging basket liner material was then trimmed to size and fixed after pasting the masking tape surface with PVA white glue. This mostly worked as intended, needing only one patching piece at the bottom of the ramp, but placing the station building afterwards showed that it was now too close to the platform edge. So it was out with the knife to trim back the slope to allow the building to sit more snugly into the slope. The resulting gap is still less than I might have preferred, but this is a much compressed arrangement, and with the platform edging now glued in place and setting, I hope that I can live with the result. I have now printed and painted a set of lifebuoys in white, so the next task will be to trim those off the 'sprue' and fit them to the paddle-steamer railings. I wonder if it might have been simpler to print them as integral features - hopefully this way they will be more circular.

Looks good, and I appreciate the constraints of compression, but has the signal cabin ended up just too close to the platform edges? I am possibly sensitised to this issue by my current Banavie PIer station diorama project. Shuffling the cabin just a little back towards the station building, if that is still possible, might help the credibility. https://westhighlandline.org.uk/arrochar-and-tarbet/ Of course, it might simply have been 'plonked' for the image and since been moved up the platform.

If the rails are not welded, then does the rail bonding not make a significant contribution to the overall resistance?

Yes, that was my thought - very close. It was all very different in the 1850s : https://maps.nls.uk/view/74416226 And even in 1864 : https://universityofglasgowlibrary.wordpress.com/2015/12/02/1864-birds-eye-view-of-glasgow-railway-stations/ It must have been interesting shunting using all those four wheel carriage turntables.

That is the stage my bike used to get to before I invested in disc brakes when riding in Trailquest events on clay Midland field bridleways. Hub brakes did make a difference, but I tired of the time it took to clean up after an event. Swapping to a smaller car also did not help - I could wrap a muddy bike and throw it into the back of the Vectra without taking wheels off. South Coast chalk sounds like an easier option, but I never got that far unless you count a London-to-Brighton charity ride on the roads over the Beacon. The bike has not been touched since before COVID and the shed it lives in is now buried in ivy.

When the West Highland Railway was built, machines such as that in the previous post were undreamt of. Though the steam shovel had been developed, it was better suited to softer soils than the rocky hillsides of Lochaber. In the UK the contemporary Manchester Ship Canal was a notable early user in of mechanical excavation, but when the Corpach end of the Caledonian Canal was built in the 1810s, construction was by brawn not steam - though a Boulton and Watt steam pump was used to drain the coffer dam at Loch Linnhe. My diorama of the Canal embankment has now reached the stage in the photograph below, with the diagonal walkway cut into notches in the foamboard ribs. The glue is setting on this assembly while I work out how I am going to 'cover' this framework without leaving any gaps. Ideally it might be as simple as cutting some hanging basket liner oversize then trimming it down to fit. We will see ... This arrangement is necessarily very compressed, and the station building is closer to the platform edge than I would like, though the depth of the platform edging will hopefully help with how it looks. In reality, the walkway started from the other side of the building, and as shown on the map the layout was much more stretched out.

Indeed - the West Highland was late on the scene compared to most of the network. Early enough images of the terminus at The Fort also show what seem to be concrete platform edges. https://westhighlandline.org.uk/fort-william/2/ However, looking at photographs of the iconic island platforms further south (or indeed the likes of Spean Bridge or Roy Bridge) from later eras seems to show a patchwork of changes over the years on some of them. The process continues to this day - "Rannoch Station Platforms 1 and 2 required their heights to be re-gauged to a lower level in order to accommodate new Class 153 rolling stock; a Caledonian sleeper that brings increased capacity to the West Highland Line." A statement which does not altogether make sense to me, but was apparently the justification for the works and the hi-vis brigade shown below. https://www.cpr-resurfacing.co.uk/value-engineering-at-rannoch-station/

Looking good. What are your thoughts on subtly 'flattening' tyres to make models 'sit' on the road more credibly?

When it comes to supposedly historic images, there is a postcard series which comes up on WHR image searches which are supposedly vintage but which have a modern look about them - for example the 'Fish train at Mallaig' scene below. Even the fonts look modern. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/274859931852 Does anybody know the provenance of the artwork? I'm not sure whether it is deliberately kitsch, but it will not win any prizes for great art. The phrase 'tourist tat' comes to mind, but I may be being unfair.