Dunalastair

A little more progress with the pre-grouping diorama of the pier at Banavie on the West Highland Railway, as it might have been before the Mallaig Extension stole its thunder and forced a renaming. My shortened version of SS Gondolier has now been painted and mostly assembled. White paint is currently drying on a batch of lifebuoys for the railings. Photographs suggest that these were white in the early days, only later changing to red and white. I have not been able to find out when the regulations of lifebuoy colours might have changed. There is now a pier for the paddle-steamer to moor to and track for the upper and lower levels, with a crossing for passengers arriving from the inclined walkway. It appears from the one photograph I have that the platform edges were concrete, so that has also been represented. Oh, and the rest of the station building windows have now been silvered. Parts have been rougly blocked to the appropriate heights while I work out how to arrange the contours. Slopes would have been more straightforward if it had not been for that angled walkway. As it is, I have cut some formers from foamboard (just visible to the right), but I'm not sure how well that might work. The grass will probably be hanging basket liner, which should cover up most sins if I can cut it to size. I'd like to think that this little scene is beginning to come together, but there is still scope for me to make a pig's ear of the landform. Gondolier ran between Inverness and Banavie for the last time in 1939, before being towed up to Scapa Flow, so this is the first time in 85 years that anything like this scene could be visited at 1:1 scale. Just as with Fort Augustus, one cannot help thinking that the station building was overkill, especially as most passengers would have transferred directly between train and boat, probably with through tickets.

I'm surprised there was enough space. I'm guessing it might be on the right in this somewhat murky image? http://www.eastbank.org.uk/images/Glasgow/BW01.jpg

Looking good. How did the signalmen get up there? A ladder up from track level or a ladder down from street level? Or even a stair?

My family on my mother's side worked for the railway in NE England. I think that my grandfather worked in the back office rather than on the operations side, but he was moved from York to Hull. My Great Uncle Tom, a true Dalesman who I could barely understand, finished his career as stationmaster at Bedale and bought the stationhouse for his retirement. So, yes, being moved was part of working for the LNER, though I thought it was generally part of career progression unless you were employed in a relief role. There are stories of relief men having to look after the livestock as well as train operation in some of the more remote outposts. Looking forward to seeing how the elusive signal box comes together. I seem to remember the gantry, but the cabin was before my time.

Given a choice between a posting there and e.g. Corrour, I think I know which I'd choose. Even if the wages were better in Glasgow, there would be nothing to spend money on living on the Moor.

Must have been a challenging posting for the signallers' lungs, even allowing that everybody smoked in those days. Diesel fumes were perhaps not necessarily an improvement. But considering how late the low-level platforms were steam-worked before the blue trains settled down, probably nobody thought anything of it at the time (except for the signallers' wives, working overtime on washday).

I am enjoying the vertical relief, and it is good to see an appropriate fence appearing around the flask gantry. It was not altogether flat around Wylfa when that facility was operating, although perhaps not as rocky as around Trawsfynydd. Cooling water was the must-have for reactors, whether salt or fresh - who knows what might be over that hill?

The arrangement at Banavie Pier as it was in 1899 can be seen at https://maps.nls.uk/view/82887594. I have not been able to find a reference to a previous model of this unusual station, which is perhaps surprising considering that there are relatively few branch termini in the West Highlands - and hence a good few fictional and might-have-been versions on this forum. Killin / Loch Tay, Ballachulish and Fort Augustus spring to mind - it is not a long list compared to, say, the GWR. But even compared to those quiet backwaters, Banavie Pier did not see much traffic - such as there was linked to the steamer, arriving one day and leaving the next. Latterly the service was essentially a summer operation for the tourists. Search images for 'Banavie pier station' and you should find a series on Getty showing boy scouts on the LNER Northern Belle tour train at the station in the 1930s, where they stayed for two days on successive tours while climbing The Ben. The story of those Scout tour trains is told at http://scoutguidehistoricalsociety.com/traincruises.htm, but sadly the image links are broken. There is more on the Northern Belle at https://www.steve-banks.org/prototype-and-traffic/357-the-northern-belle#close. Railway Wonders of the World also had a feature on the cruise train, when not carrying Scouts, including this nice image of the train stopped on Glenfinnan viaduct. But this is deviating a long way from 'pre-grouping', locomotives apart. https://www.railwaywondersoftheworld.com/cruising-by-train.html The station building survives as a private house, but the Scout images are as good as I have found of Banavie - there do not seem to be many photographs of the station, though the steamer was well recorded.

In the last post, the new West Highland saloon brake compo was out of focus. Here it is again, with red ends, in a rather clearer view together with the Holmes 'C' class 0-6-0 on a boat train in a mockup of a new diorama. Banavie station was in the 'extension' style, but the original Banavie, later Banavie Pier was in the original West Highland style. Here my printed version is part-painted, using silver paint to represent the glazing. The paddle steamer print is a much-shortened version of 'Gondolier', a vessel which plied the Caledonian Canal from Banavie to Inverness until 1939, whereupon it was commandeered as a blockship for Scapa Flow, where the hull apparently still sits on the seabed. The branch terminus by a harbour pier is a popular subject, with boats bobbing below the trains. Banavie was a little different in that the canal was significantly above the station, with an inclined path to link the two. An inclined kickback siding provided access to the quayside for goods traffic and perhaps passenger baggage. There is an image (not immediately embeddable) of what looks like a West Highland bogie with what might be a baggage van alongside SS Gondolier at Banavie at http://disused-stations.org.uk/b/banavie_pier/index.shtml, while the clearer image below (follow the link to enlarge / zoom in) has what might be a coal wagon alongside, possibly to bunker the steamer. https://collections.st-andrews.ac.uk/item/gondolier-at-banavie-pier/86127

An original 'West Highland bogie' pilots an 'Intermediate' with a rake of West Highland saloons (now including the brake compo) out of Banavie across the swing bridge headed for Mallaig in the early years of the twentieth century. Again a much simplified design, rather crudely printed on a filament printer.

Good to see the progress. Did you ever contemplate modelling pre-1908 incline operation when the rope was still being used? https://www.facebook.com/DavidTurnerrailway/posts/the-cowlairs-incline-glasgow-1907-as-demonstrated-in-the-pictures-this-steep-inc/10159029534725631/

So, after a weekend away in the Black Mountains (dry on Saturday, damp on Sunday, early tramway remains in the valleys), the West Highland brake compo approximation printed on Friday is now in the paint shop. My rather simplistic 'C' class 0-6-0 has now been completed in a similar mucky green (before the brown shade took over) and awaits a photograph. And, as if I did not now have enough static simplified early NBR locos, I spent yesterday and this morning roughing out a design for a Holmes cab West Highland Bogie (D35 I think - though NBR loco variations still confuse me), which is noticeably smaller than the 'Intermediate'. I suspect that a similar cab version of the 0-6-0 might follow ... 3D printing makes it easy (and quick) to turn the design handle, even if the results do not remotely match the standards of the real 2mm scale experts. Another thread here on the forum this morning (thankyou @justin1985) pointed me towards 'The Story Of The West Highland', by George Dow. There has been a modern reprint, but that apparently did not include the drawings. But, lo and behold, there is a scanned version available on the web at http://www.dow.scot/railway/ The file is a pdf, available at http://dow.scot/railway/TSOTWHv1point8.pdf This includes detailed drawings of the West Highland saloons (but not the brake version). Murphy's Law says that I only find these drawings AFTER producing the 3D designs for them ... It also includes the drawing of 'a typical island platform station'. Highly recommended to any WHR aficionados who have not read it already.

I will be doing other things from tomorrow over the weekend so here is a snapshot of the West Highland Extension train, pre WW1, with an NB Intermediate heading two WH bogie saloons (3rd and 1st class), a four wheel brake and an (as yet unpainted) fish wagon. This time the signalman has kept the out-of-period UQ home protecting the swing bridge 'off' until the brake has passed. Is the guard watching from his ducket? Other time issues include the red tractor, the MacBraynes bus and the yellow-ended Sulzer. But I would like to think that this is coming together as a static scene, within the constraints of filament printing. The goods brake has been painted (dark grey sides, red ends, light grey roof, mucky running gear) and is now drying, while a version of the West Highland brake compo is currently on the printer in three components - a three hour print at 'fine' resolution. I have included the coupe compartment, but realised too late that the coupe should probably have been at the first class end, not the third (different lengths of compartment).

and that in turn references another thread : There seems to be a consensus that wet fish would be in ice in wooden boxes, but not on whether they would have been sheeted. Discussion included cured herring in barrels. My great grandfather used to regularly have a barrel of Orkney herring sent down to Galashiels, presumably at least part of the way by rail. Much of the early fishing at Mallaig was I think for seasonal herring. so barrels might also have featured on the Extension.

The generic NBR 0-6-0 has now been printed and is in the paint shop. It has been joined by a simple NBR goods brake for the fish train, if that materialises. A render follows. A design for the WH brake compo is almost ready for the printer. Meanwhile, thoughts continue on those fish wagons, sheeted or otherwise. I have found a long thread, which I have only just started reading :

I ground down the wheel points on some 3D printed NG quarry wagons I bought a while ago. I was rather dreading the job, but it proved easier than I was expecting - though that might depend on how hard the axle metal is. It improved the look of the inside axle box wagons no end, but has left me sensitive to photographs of wagons with visible shiny points. Blackening them would probably be almost as effective. Of course, it might be that the quarry owner has taken a leaf out of Boudicca's chariot design pattern book and is using the pointy axles to intimidate striking quarry workers ...

Hearking back to the OP, I have just realised that the Hamilton Ellis book originally referred to has a dustjacket cover which seems to show one of the WH Saloon brake coaches, the first time I have seen any kind of an image of this design. Always accepting the errors which arise in interpreting a painting, and if this is not just another NBR carriage, this has several interesting features: The guards ducket is in the middle of the coach, not the end There is a coupe compartment at at least one end The end is indeed painted red I can feel another model design coming on ... https://www.stellabooks.com/books/c-hamilton-ellis/the-north-british-railway-908371/2133022 I had read of another Hamilton Ellis painting of a double headed NBR train at Banavie. This is clearly not Banavie - is it a real place? I might guess Spean Bridge, given the high mountains in the background. And can anybody point to a Hamilton Ellis Banavie painting?

Do we know whether such wagons would have been sheeted in traffic? I cannot immediately see hooks for this. If they were not sheeted, then would the empty boxes have been shipped back on the return trains? Presumably the boxes had a value and the trains were otherwise running empty. If so, then that would suggest that trains would look similar both ways, though the Billingsgate-bound wagons would presumably be iced. I think that I remember stories of the difficulty passenger trains found following fish trains which had coated the rails in slippery icy fish scales. I'm playing with a very crude 3D design and wondering whether to represent fish boxes ... Edit : https://www.steve-banks.org/prototype-and-traffic/416-fish-traffic talks about different generations of fish wagon / van and suggests that fish might have been carried in tanks of water rather than in iced boxes. Photographs are of similar NER wagons.

Nice setting - it might look even better if those wagon wheel pinpoints were dremmeled down the wheels blackened. Curly spoke wheels are another approach to give that quarry look.

Now this is not going to stand up to close scrutiny, and is something of a Frankenstein's monster of a C Class, but given the limited resolution of the filament printer at 1:148, it will hopefully do the job. The proof of the pudding will come in the printing ... I remember when still in short trousers wanting a GEM NBR kit, but I moved on to N gauge before that was a realistic possibility. Those early Ian Futers layouts made an impression at the time. At least 3D printing consumes less pocket money.

If concern is about accuracy, then there does not look to be much room for pedestrians behind that shelter, never mind prams. If the pavement were that narrow, would the shelter not perhaps have been one of the designs with no end walls and a cantilevered roof? But I note that the glazing has been knocked out by the locals, so that is probably authentic.

Yes, I found it odd to find LQ signals in England when I first went south. My experience in Scotland till then had classified LQ as belonging in museums. The link still works for me - but it might be retrieving from cache. The second link should include the image if you can connect to that. I have been playing with adapting the 4-4-0 design to represent an 0-6-0, in the course of which I realise they were more different than I thought - for instance the tender wheelbase seems to have been shorter. The characteristic train on the WHR / Extension was the fish train. I have tended to think of these as van trains, and indeed the NBR apparently had some characteristic passenger rated six wheel perishable good vans. However, in the early days, the Scottish railways seemed to have used passenger rated (often dual fitted) open wagons for fish boxes packed in ice. In 4mm scale, NBR 4mm Developments make a kit (https://www.nbr4mm.co.uk/wagonkits/9100.php) in the larger scale. This includes a useful history of the wagons and this drawing. I do have a rake of old Farish NE fish vans dating back to the seventies (almost as old as the wagons were when modelled) but if I want to go back pre-WW1 then it looks as if I will need to print some 2mm scale open fish wagons. I'll also have to think about an appropriate NBR goods brake if I am to run a fish train, as opposed to adding fish wagons to a passenger train.

Are you modelling the characteristic smell?

And after a little searching, a photo of the signal as it was in 1914. Does indeed look lower quadrant then. https://signalbox.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/banavieswbdgeJPR.jpg from https://signalbox.org/photo-gallery/north-british-railway/banavie-swing-bridge/ Nice image - I don't remember seeing this one when I was first planning the station model, so worth the search.

Well, yes it should, but as well as not being lattice that particular post is, I think, upper quadrant. It is a mainly white metal signal dating back to the 1970s, and my N gauge model of Dunblane station, the junction for the C&OR. I was a teenager living in the town (actually a City and Royal Burgh according to the signs at the time, due to the cathedral) at the time. Possibly an early Langley product? Many of the signals at the Fort were changed to upper quadrant I think in the fifties, which is the period for the layout but not for this train. I have printed some much simplified lattice posts for elsewhere on the layout, especially the distinctive two 'tridents'. https://www.ambaile.org.uk/asset/32176/ Edit : the Am Baile postcard caption suggests 1930s, but that looks more like NBR livery on the loco and carriages.