Glencoe Model Railway

Just spent an enjoyable morning looking through your thread. Really like how the layout has developed so far. There can never be enough WHL layouts! Cheers

I realise this is quite late but Ken passed away in May this year. Having known him for over 20 years, he was a fantastic modeller and extremely knowledgeable on all matters DCC. He leaves a large hole in his family’s life.

Is the lovely green box for the exclusive D6703? Looks rather smart but what’s in the box is even better. I’m really looking forward to getting mine to run on Glencoe in green mode.

Kind of you to say that. What I’ve come to accept is that there were some parts of the scenery which I could have done better. For example, the area in the foreground was done after the previous version of the back hill and it showed. I used better materials and the colours are more subtle. Hopefully this new section will take on what I’ve learned so far. There is also a severe lack of trees on the layout, but not huge amount of space to fit them. This expansion should address that going forward Cheers

Thanks. Yeah, it’s probably the balance between track and scenery that wasn’t quite right in my mind. This extra space will give me more scope to create that feeling of spaciousness…… hopefully

Also on the go for Glencoe is 37027. I’ve decided to remove the white stripe to make it suitable for late 84/early 85. A bit of patience and some Humbrol enamel thinners has made short work of it. I’ve got a second one to renumber as 37022 which will require the same treatment, although it needs round buffers and black headcode boxes.

Rather than clutter up the layout topics with the stock projects, I’ve decided to have a separate workbench thread. I’ve got far too many individual projects started but not finished! So to start this topic, I’ll go easy with my first post. An Accurascale 37043 being converted to 37111. First job was to take the roof ribs off. The design of the loco makes this very easy, as the magnetic section was lifted off. A fresh scalpel blade and some P400 wet and dry got it cleaned off, before a dusting of primer to check for imperfections. Another quick tidy up with a sanding stick got it pretty close. Another coat of primer and left to dry before painting with Rail Grey- had to order a fresh tin. The transfers and nameplates are now on their way too. To remove the cab side data panels was easily achieved with a small bit of Brasso on a cotton bud. Next job will be to reinstate the 4 bolts on the roof using some very fine plastic rod and then remove the old numbers. Won’t bother with the removal of the old plates as the new ones will easily cover them.

Both my factory fitted ones had the same issue of shutting down almost immediately after pressing f1. Turned the volume down to 145 and they are much better. I’m actually much happier with the volume at that level.

Some more of the technical stuff - Glencoe measures 9ft by 2’ 6” on the main bit (the quarry siding is about 3ft by 4 inches) and has a 4ft sector plate at the end. It’s all powered by a Digitrax Super Chief set and point control is with Tortoise point machines (operated with DPDT switches). I have a couple of Dapol semaphore signals worked from a TrainTech controller but the plan is to fit something a bit better in the long term. It does give a bit of play value though. Stock is the usual mix of stuff but I have recently started building approx 20 wagon kits for both layouts.

Whilst all this is going on, the fleet has been deployed to the far side of the forest moon…….oops, wrong film! It’s actually all been abandoned on my other WiP layout (Leysbourne- more of that at a later date!)

So, about a month ago, I really struggled with mental block on the layout. It was not going as I had hoped and I was losing interest rapidly. Not sure what happened but I realised that if I changed the backscene, I could gain quite a bit of extra scenic space. Well, it was out with the multi tool, chisel and handsaw and what you see below is a work in progress to rebuild the back area of the layout into a more spacious area. Long way to go, but I finally have some direction again.

Just over 2 years ago I finally got serious about a layout that would test my skills. An interest in all things West Highland (inc C&O) meant that the region was straightforward, but what to do? The space I had didn’t allow for a massive effort but I did have 3 Tim Horn baseboard kits already built. What follows is a roller coaster of build, rebuild, extend, rebuild, extend etc, right up to current day! The back story is that the Ballachulish branch was extended to Glencoe village in an attempt to capture some of the Aluminium traffic from Kinlochleven plus a grand but ill fated attempt to run a line through the glen towards Bridge of Orchy. At the same time, the NB extended the line down past Corran, over Loch Leven and joined on with the C&O at site of the current road bridge, thus creating a triangle. Trains operate to both Oban and Fort William in both eras (1965-70 and 1983-86) with enough suitable traction now available. Below is a selection of progress shots up till about a month ago, when the latest rebuild started! I’ll deal with that in subsequent posts. Please be kind, it’s still a massive work in progress and I do suffer from large blocks of inactivity due to my work and motivation levels!