Dunalastair

So here are the somewhat ghostly 'as printed' representations of the NBR Intermediate and the third class West Highland saloon, still minus buffer beams. The latter has shorter compartments and a different number of windows in the saloon. The prints have since been cleaned up a little (mainly removing remnants of the printing 'brim') and have seen a paintbrush. Tamiya Olive Green is standing in for the earlier version of NBR (Stroudly-inspired) green. Talking of ghosts, the Ghost of Christmas Future seems to be making an appearance in the distance in the form of a 'Birmingham Sulzer'. But this is supposed to be pre-grouping and indeed before the calamity of WW1 killed so many from Highland regiments and half a century before dieselisation. Though that signal really should be of lattice construction ... and the signalman has been a little quick in dropping it to 'danger'. I just hope that he does not start to open the swing bridge before the van has crossed.

A little bit of colour on the simplified and static West Highland saloon prints. It has taken several coats of Precision Paints maroon to get to this stage. All very crude, but for 1:148 I would like to think that it gives an impression of how it might have been 120 years ago at Banavie, which I think was the original intention of this thread. Is @justin1985 still around to comment? The roof was a separate part on the saloon, but not on the brake van. Putting the two vehicles together makes it apparent that the 'roof colour' needs to come further down on the brake to match the saloon. The lighting does not really pick out the red end on the brake, but I know that it is there. In good news (I hope), after three days of trouble shooting on the 3D printer, it is now working again, albeit having lost its auto-levelling function. By disconnecting the sensor block, the controller is now happy enough to move and print. So much for all the angst about limit switches. The less good news is that the spare part is apparently not available. Since I cannot shift the screws which locate it, this might be less of an issue than it appears. I will have to see if I can live without the levelling ... If so, then there is another saloon design file ready to print, probably tomorrow afternoon.

Thankyou - useful feedback. It sounds as if more than one Scottish company seems to have been following that convention. I have duly painted my brake ends red. My printer investigations continue, and sadly the initial diagnosis of a failed end limit switch (which would have been relatively easy to fix) does not seem to fit the symptoms. Swapping switches does not seem to help. So my playing with a MUCH simplified version of a NBR Intermediate suitable for running with the West Highland saloons and matching brake is for now a purely screen exercise. Remember that this is intended for printing a simple static model at 1:148. Even the single representative coal rail on the tender might be rather optimistic from a print resolution perspective. Here is the current position, looking more like a train simulation screenshot than a model, and still work-in-progress. I have been learning about the different generations of the NBR K Class. The NB tended to group locos where the LNER later had separate classes. The Glens were a later development of the Intermediates, and of course we still have one of those.

At a time when much of the country is losing its bus services (our village now has one a week) then for the well-provisioned capital to be spending £6m on rebranding rail services seems a little hard to swallow.

At least the loco-hauled trains might have warmed up on a cold winter day back then. If anything, I remember Mk1s in steam-heat days sometimes being rather too warm, though the 101s between Dunblane and Edinburgh could get a little chilly. The BBC is currently carrying a story about the 156s on the Oban run never getting much above freezing. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-68241768

Do we know what colour NBR coach ends were? I initially interpreted the painting on the PAN edition cover as showing grey-blue ends, but https://igg.org.uk/rail/00-app2/lner/nbr.htm suggests black ends - which on reflection would be another possible interpretation of the painting. It also says "maroon very similar to the Midland Railway colour", which is useful considering the paint I have to hand. https://www.lner.info/co/NBR/livery.php#:~:text=Coaching Stock,crimson over a brown undercoat. suggests crimson lake for coaches, but with vermilion (red?) for brake ends (presumably both ends of my four wheel brake). This comes from the North British Study Group, a prototype from the 1870s, so rather before the West Highland saloons. https://www.nbrstudygroup.co.uk/nbr/carriages.php An image at https://www.mediastorehouse.co.uk/mary-evans-prints-online/north-british-carriage-603711.html of a carriage from 1910 also seems to have black ends. So, black on the saloon and red on the brake?

And of course many so-called Light Railway companies were actually tramways. The NG Burton & Ashby perhaps blurred the distinction, being part street tramway and part US-style interurban, but using double deck tramcars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burton_and_Ashby_Light_Railway https://www.travellingartgallery.com/landscape/historic/detail/H022/1915-electric-tram-on-burton-and-ashby-light-railway-by-cuthbert-hamilton-ellis.html I don't think of the MR as a narrow gauge operator, but Statfold offers a re-creation of the experience with a repatriated car. It is a pity that there was not a goods service on the line (like the Camborne and Redruth) to make it a more interesting Light Railway model, albeit electric not tender steam.

And in the unlikely event that anybody interested in the West Highland has not got a copy on their bookshelves, here is an enlargement of the image on the dustcover of the hardback edition of the John Thomas book, taken from the Amazon site (other booksellers are available). Holmes West Highland bogie and West Highland saloons. Though pretty, the Bogies were not regarded as a success on the WHR, and were transferred away to more mundane duties elsewhere when the Holmes / Reid Intermediates (with side-window cabs) became available. But apparently even the earlier larger-wheel Drummond 4-4-0s (ancestors of the better known CR 4-4-0s) were drafted to the line in the summer, and made a reasonable showing. I have started to put some paint on the two vehicles which I have managed to print.

This is the c1900 image of the train at Fort William I was thinking of and used to base my four wheel brake on. Note the flat roof profile of early NBR carriage stock. Note also the crossover in the bay platforms, removed in the mid 20th century (though apparently seldom used in practice in later days as station pilots generally released locos). https://westhighlandline.org.uk/fort-william/2/

Our local 'modern standards' road is the A14, with a 12 mile new section being completed just a few years ago with a £1B price-tag. While the cutting sides are not obviously slipping much (helped by wide verges making the cuttings 400 feet wide - much more land take than historic railways) the embankments for the over-bridges seem to be slumping significantly, with remedial works requiring road closures. And going back to mid-20th century motorways, I seem to remember seeing a good few cutting side repairs over the last few years. So the standards in terms of gradients may be better, but geology and poor materials still seem to be causing issues.

Reviving another old WHR thread, I have been playing with pushing my long-in-the-tooth 1966 WHR N gauge layout back into the early days with some static models. Inspired by those 'West Highland saloons' on the cover of the John Thomas book (I have a well-thumbed PAN edition), I did a little more reading. The NBR Study group has some details on the three diagrams (first, third and brake-compo). They only lasted on the WHR until about 1912, long enough to see the NBR Intermediates, but not the Glens. NBR vol 2 has a good official photo of the first class saloon. So I hacked together a very simplified 1:148 design in 123D, both 1st and 3rd class variants, together with a four-wheel van which appears in an early photograph - I have not found a clear photograph of the brake compo, never mind a drawing. So here are a couple of initial print assemblies from my filament printer - at this scale resin would be much better. They are sitting at my version of Banavie station, which normally sees BRMW and NBL type 2s with maroon Mk1s and a few Gresley and Thomson coach prints. It looks as if the NBR coach colour was not so very different. I was trying to print the third class variant when my Monoprice MP10 printer failed, apparently with an end-of-travel switch issue. Getting this sorted is not proving easy, sadly. I had got as far as roughing out a design for a much simplified static NBR 'Intermediate', but that will have to stay in screen-only form for now. Which will help postpone the question of loco colour ... The layout is not about to go 100% pre-grouping, but it would be nice to be able to pose a 'ghost train' from the early days if / as I make progress tidying up the rather crude modelling.

And not to forget the steamers on the loch, here shown at Kenmore pier. https://www.dalmadan.com/?p=3621 The service ended with WW2, but 'Queen of the Lake' apparently lasted at Kenmore (here in 1949) until being broken up in 1950. If the railway had made it to Kenmore pier, then perhaps the steamers might have lasted a little longer? You can perhaps tell that your chosen subject is one of interest! While at college, I paid several visits to the outdoor centre at Firbush on the south side of the loch, latterly driving the university minibus on the narrow roads.

That was what prematurely closed the Callander - Crianlarich section of the Oban line in the sixties. Comments were apparently made locally about how little material was visible on the line, but it was the rocks still on the slope above which made it unviable to reopen, given the short time left to the railway before scheduled closure.

Aberfeldy always appears in my mind with the slab sided HR four wheelers, which would allow even shorter cassettes. However, transition era sounds good - there was still pre-grouping equipment in use, albeit not from the original company. If you do use cassettes Just take care not to replicate the 1959 Balnaguard incident with those two coaches. https://breadalbane-heritage.org.uk/aberfeldy-weem-heritage-walk/20-aberfeldy-branch-line/

So I took the microswitch off and checked the operation with a DVM. It seems to make and break contact according to the position of the lever. Put it back together again and get same result. I did wonder if the machine has simply set a new z zero, but driving it most of the way up does not seem to help - it still goes up but not down there. But when I ask it to print I can see it going down as well as up, so I don't think it is the stepper motor.

Thankyou for the useful feedback. It looked as if the stepper motor mount and hence the microswitch mount had been twisted (must have taken some force as the screws were tight) so I straightened those back up and took the chance to unmake then remake the microswitch connector. But no improvement, though I can see that the motor will move a little down when it tried to home. I tried to check the microswitch in situ but could not get the DVM probes in - perhaps I need to remove the microswitch altogether and verify its operation. If I have killed the switch then that might explain the issue - and a switch would not cost much to replace. Any further advice gratefully received!

Nice prototype, I remember going to a school music camp at Aberfeldy in the mid seventies. But I'm not altogether clear what your problem is. If simply space, then could you go down a scale? 8' would be generous in N gauge, though if you are looking for HR period rolling stock then there would be more choice in OO. If space for a fiddle yard, then cassettes or a traverser might help. Curved corners do look better on a backscene but could be smaller radius.

I had a filament print fail on an MP10 printer, with filament all over the place. After clearing up, the printer head will now only go up - not down - through I can lower it by turning the leadscrew. From what I have read, it seems as if the travel has triggered the 'gone too far' microswitch at the bottom, and I need to work out how to reset this (assuming it is not a hardware issue). I have seen some snippets of G-code suggested, but any suggestions would be gratefully received.

Nice viewpoint under that bridge - very believable.

Thankyou for the kind words. Three more, probably final, images of the Manor Powis drift, with the ground colour reworked and one or two other changes. There are limitations to this style of using filament 3D printing for 1:148 NG dioramas, but hopefully these images might evoke something of this short-lived narrow gauge railway by the banks of the Forth. It is both invidious and interesting to compare this static diorama approach with the finer scale and artistic approach to micro-layouts epitomised by @James Hilton. I could perhaps have used prettier Oxford N gauge diecast vehicles, but that might have jarred with the more impressionistic approach to the NG rolling stock. My rapid-turnaround small scale dioramas do help me to learn what does - and crucially what does not - work, but it does leave me with the issue of where do I put them all. Even if I don't seem to be learning to keep trains upright for photocalls. Unlike James, I do not have the option of selling or gifting them on.

After some painting, but rather untidily put together.

One thing I forgot to mention is that the tubs (often known as hutches in Scotland) under the loader would probably have been moved not by the loco but by a creeper. These were chain drives between the rails more often used either underground to load tubs into cages at the pit bottom for winding or at the colliery screens, as below. https://co-curate.ncl.ac.uk/seaham-colliery/ The photograph at Manor Powis does not show the creeper as the tubs / hutches obscure the view. If I fully load the model loading road with tubs / hutches then I can save myself the issue of modelling a creeper (even if static) in 5mm gauge.

I have been guilty of drifting other people's threads with mentions of my ideas for a diorama of the little known 2' 6" gauge surface railway connecting the drift mine with the main pit at Manor Powis colliery near Stirling in Central Scotland, near where I grew up. So it is about time that the topic was given a thread of its own. The NG line was used to haul power station coal for Longannet to the screens at the deep mine and onwards by the SG railway. There were also NG manriding trains as the mine was in a remote location by the banks of the Forth. The prototype looked like this, but there are very few other photographs I have found, though there is an image taken by Norman Cadge of the manriding train in the IRS Handbook, together with details of the Ruston locos used on the system. https://canmore.org.uk/site/132571/manor-powis-colliery The geometry of the site was strange, with the NG lines apparently running diagonally under the loading hopper. The signal-box-like building was apparently a control room - I did have some advice from an ex-NCB engineer who knew / knew of the site. The few old OS maps available at NLS seem to show a very different earlier arrangement, possibly before production started. To try to have some confidence that I could fit a diorama at 1:148 onto my usual A4 footprint, I worked up a 3D design for the whole site, before breaking it up for individual prints. After several days of printing on my filament machine, I had a lot of grey plastic waiting for the paint brush. The yellow manrider was the only print to have seen paint at this stage. Since the photograph was taken, the drift entrance has been sunk into the surface and the contents of some of those acrylic paint pots applied to prints. 5mm gauge track (2mmx2.5') also now leads out from the drift incline. This has been a slow-burn project, due to the paucity of information on this railway. I understand that Eric Tonks book on Rustons may have another photograph of RH 476133 and RH 398118 by Norman Cadge, but I have not seen that. I bought a copy of Guthrie Hutton's "Mining from Kirkintilloch to Clackmannan and Stirling to Slamannan", which has a photograph from an elevated perspective of the terminus facilities at the pit end of the NG line. Although now possibly too late for the model, I would welcome any further information on this little-known narrow gauge railway system.

Brake van parked 'off stage' during shunting?

Ouch - that does seem pricey - but the 'frosted glass' patterned windows look well. Overall, it seems to have more 'presence' than card kits, which I guess it what you were after. I wonder why Bachmann chose to use an 'Inn Business' branding rather than a more traditional brewery? I guess it makes it less geographically specific, but does seem to set the establishment in a specific time frame, perhaps a little later than your layout. Were there alternative signs provided?