MatP

Thanks once again for all your replies to my initial request. I've started a thread on my N gauge Scottish layout (1980's large logo era) in the layouts area of the Forum. It's called "Jardine Junction." This features my little oil depot, which combines elements of the ones at Fort William and (thanks to your replies above) Lochavullin. Best Wishes, Mat

Hi All, I thought I might start a thread on my Scottish terminus layout, in case anyone is interested and after receiving some very useful help on a Scottish prototype location in another area of this Forum. Briefly, my layout is a terminus serving an imaginary town on the proposed but never-built line from Tulloch (West Highland) to Kingussie (Highland main line to Inverness). Because it was supposedly built with the North British working from the West and the Highland Railway working from the East, and those companies more or less hated each other, the two companies ran into opposite sides of a joint-owned terminus: there never was a through route. The line was justified and kept open mainly by the construction in the 1920's of a huge, hydro-electrically powered Pretext Factory near the town. The town itself is called Jardine Junction (named after my wife's Scottish, admittedly lowland, clan) but because of damage sustained to the original town station in the Cyberman invasion of 1968, a new station was built in the early 70's on part of the Junction yard. Anyway, here are a couple of pictures to see if people are interested. The oil depot on the right is a mixture of some parts of a Kibri German N gauge kit, a scratch-built hut and a lot of 1mm rod. The railings round the top of the tank are Kestrel fencing, trimmed and bent after softening in very hot water. The piping is based mainly on Google Street View images of the oil sidings at Fort William. I painted the pipes red because it seemed like a good idea at the time - I now know it wasn't, but there's no way to do a repaint because the model is too delicate. The red railings are, however, prototypical (as in the oil depot at Lochavullin in Oban - thanks to members of this Forum for directing me to photos of this mysterious location). The depot still needs a chain-link fence, I am waiting for them to come back into stock at Scale Model Scenery, who in my very humble opinion do the best kits for these. I used Woodland Scenics iron ore ballast. In retrospect it's far too red as well - I'm still trying to find low-tech ways to tone it down. I wanted the station building to be modern and pre-fab in appearance but didn't want to do a direct model of Fort William. This building is bashed out of a pair of Outland Models 1:160 scale convenience store kits (so as to have big windows front and back) and has a fully-detailed interior, including cash registers in the ticket office. Outland Models are a Chinese firm that sells direct via eBay. As you might be able to see in the general view, I'm currently working on the right-hand end of the layout. My main project at the moment is to produce another array of pipework to attach to a pair of Hornby cement hoppers. You see plenty of cement unloading depots on model layouts but (if I may be so bold) very rarely do you see the pipework that takes the cement from the wagons to the hoppers. I'd also like to add that the collection of models on the layout was built up slowly over more than 30 years - a lot of the rolling stock was bought second hand. Even the expensive-looking 37418 in the background is a spare bodyshell from BR Lines / Farish Spares on a ten-year old chassis. Regards, Mat

Yep, good point - I think that was at the same time as they isolated its TDM system, meaning it could no longer work with the cab-end-like-an-89 driving van trailers (designated Mk3-BS). Slightly more seriously speaking, the Class 89 appeals to me (a) as an underdog and (b) because it was the basis of an idea to make WCML trains longer and (hopefully) cheaper rather than any faster. Mat

Brilliant news - I remember seeing this loco at Crewe and Stafford in the 80's, though never at my 'home' station, Lichfield TV. I've expressed an interest in the 'original' liveried version. I hope somebody with deep pockets (i.e. not me) and sufficient courage to renumber a RevolutioN 89 builds a layout set on the WCML (or ECML) c.1990 or later, set in an alternative universe where the Class 89 had been approved and a whole fleet of them built. 89022 with a 12-coach Up train would pass 89017 in the loop at LTV with the morning direct service to London (picking up a mutinous-looking party from Lichfield Cathedral School), and then, shortly afterwards, 89031 would be seen heading north with a Speedlink trunk freight... Time to take out a second mortgage on the cat? Mat P

Brilliant, thanks! Every one of those photos deserves to have a model made of it. Mat

Dear All, Could any of you kindly please point me towards some photographs of the above location? I found a few on that very interesting website, railscot.co.uk, but would like to know more. It's the yard at the end of the line from Oban Goods Jn, completely separate from the main station. It's still marked on the track diagrams on the Railcam website but I was under the impression that it has now been built over? My apologies if there's already a discussion on this topic, I couldn't find one. I am very interested in small oil terminals, such as this yard towards the end of the last century. I am currently building an N gauge layout set in c.1987, based around a highly fictional location on the never-built Tulloch-Kingussie line. I'm currently converting a siding into an oil depot, using some parts from the Kibri oil tanks kit and a lot of 1mm rod... Best Wishes, Mat