Dunedin

I've been doing some further research and found another material to simulate snow which I really like on http://www.009.cd2.c...ow_to/snow.htm. Microballoon is an amazing material: it's 600 micron glass balloons which are used by the lightweight aircraft industry to make very lightweight filler. That means it's much finer than the Geoscenics or Woodland Scenics "snow" products which I found were too coarse when it came to giving the cleaning platforms and roofs just a light dusting. I don't want to bury the layout under feet of the stuff because that would ruin it. Instead, I just want to suggest a dusting and a hard frost. I've used the Geoscenics snow mixed with baby powder on the ballast and foliage, then the microballoon on the platforms and then fixed the whole lot with hairspray. I was beginning to wonder if I was doing the right thing when all I had was the Geoscenics and the talc, but now I'm much happier with the result. So much for my words; the pictures will give a better idea: Only the one board has had the treatment so far, but once I'm happy with it, I'll start on the others.

I took Mike's comments to heart, went back and took another look, brushed away the excess powder and gave it all another good vacuum and it now looks like this: The powder is much finer, so I think it actually gives a better frost-effect, but of course you also won't be looking quite as closely when you see it for real. I think the first attempt would actually be quite good for getting an effect like the one in that photo of the Mark 1 in Dec '82, where it's just blown around the chairs etc. And yes, for those of you who noticed, the station is actually Wick, not Thurso!

There comes a time with any layout when those little niggly things just have to have something done about them. I've always felt the roads and paths could be better: We used GreenScene tarmac and concrete paint for quickness when we were running out of time with so many things in our bid to build Kirkhill in slightly under 12 months. To me, the surfaces are just too rough, so today, in amongst the other things, I decided to do something about it. We had covered each board with cork floor tiles before starting to lay the track etc. and apart from an overall coat of grey undercoat, the GreenScene tarmac had just been painted straight on top. It occurred to me that a road would, in any case be slightly lower than the footpaths and also the ballast in the sidings, so this was the scene of roadworks this morning: The cork has been cut away leaving the top of the baseboard, but this would have given a curb that was too high, so next I raised the height again slightly using some thick, black card. This should give a curb height of about 4 to 6 inches which is what I measured across the road from my house this morning. The neighbours must have thought I was mad, measuring curbstones, but they already think I'm too old for model railways! This is the scene with the card in place: The next stage is to add the new road surface. My plan is to use ceramic floor tile grout - I think it's a far better grain size. Not sure yet whether to dust it over a surface pre-painted with PVA, or whether to mist the pva on later, or do both! I think the latter is probably best and I may do a test piece first, but any suggestions again, gratefully received.

Continuing the snow theme for a few moments, as regular readers will know, Kirkhill is set in winter 1988 and there is supposed to be a dusting of snow and a hard frost. Judging from some of the comments I've heard at exhibitions though, this can't be that obvious - especially when the snow ploughs appear: "Not much point having snow ploughs when there isn't any snow!" was one such comment that someone made during the last year. Obviously, my attempts at creating a winter scene were just that little bit too subtle.... Time to do something about it then, particularly as we have a few months before our next exhibition at Wigan in June. That means that when it all goes wrong, I still have some time to recover the situation - hopefully! Well anyway, today I've been experimenting and would be interested in any feeedback any of you would care to give: I still want the snow/frost to be reasonably subtle, but a little more obvious than it is now. In particular, I want to get a frost effect on the sleepers - usually, even oily wooden sleepers turn white, so I've tried two experiments this afternoon: 1. Using Geoscenics "Snow" on sleepers which had been painted with slightly dilute PVA: 2. Using Johnson's Baby Powder, with the sleepers prepared as above: This second method certainly makes the layout (and the house!) smell nice, but it does smell a bit like a tart's boudoir at the moment! Hopefully it will fade. I did wonder about using flour, but thought that might go mouldy. I've also tried adding a little more to the scenery in the area of the experiment on the sleepers - again I don't want to bury everything, but suggest a light, fresh fall: As always, any feedback gratefully received.

Things have been a little quiet on here recently, but that doesn't mean we haven't done anything at all... I've now weathered the majority of the stock that we run on Kirkhill - most of it was looking just that little bit too clean, but now that's been taken care of. Here are a couple of views of the Mark 2Z TSOs that I repainted in autumn 2010: Graham's 26014 has also had the treatment: Once Graham had 37046 ready, it was time to add it to the snowplough train, which meant that, apart from the obvious weathering (anyone seen a clean 37/0?) it also needed a dose of snow. This is the finished result: The basis of the snowploughs is that they have been used to keep the route between Aberdeen and Inverness open, so it follows that our Inverness set would have run though some snow. The rear coach would have caught the worst of it, so I had a go: The effect I was trying to achieve was as seen on this Mark 1 which had been at the rear of an Inverness - Thurso service in Dec 1982. It hadn't run through deep snow, but the slipstream of the train had thrown a good dusting of powder over the rear end: I'll add another post later regarding the layout improvements that are in progress at the moment.

Hi, sorry for the delay! It is horse hair that I used for the bramble effect that you see in the photo. It was obtained from Green Scene and it was covered in a light green paint as-supplied which gives it some body and makes it less hair-like. Once it's been teased out it starts to look more like the brambles I was after, but the colour was wrong for winter. I had taken the opportunity during the course of the last two winters to have a good look at foliage etc. when they lose their leaves and the frost has a chance to get at them: they weather to a dark brown or even black, so I airbrushed the horse hair to give that effect and then applied GeoScenics snow and sprayed with dilute PVA / washing-up liquid to give it the frosty / light snow effect you see in the photos. Hope this helps. Glenn

Today the window in the gangway door was "added" to the 150. Graham had come over for an operating session to test out the new schedule, but the wiring looms needed maintenance first. I was busy refitting cable mounts which had come loose on the underside of the baseboards and trying to avoid hot-gluing myself. Graham was sat in my kitchen doing something with my PC and printer - I thought he was printing out the schedule, but he had gone very quiet which is always worrying........ After a while there was a chuckle followed by "Eat your heart out RM Web!" and he appeared with my 150 with a window and perspex screen fitted in each of the gangways: Not the best quality photo - the rectangle above the window is the shadow cast by the gangway which of course now reflects in the acetate. It still needs weathering and I think this will improve the effect with a dirty screen. The "window" is copied from a photo of the front of a 150/2, scaled and then printed onto a sticky label which is stuck on the door. Some acetate sheet then makes up the perspex screen. It may sound a bit "Hornby Dublo-ish" but it works and was much quicker than cutting the window out, especially as we don't have time for that at this point. Thanks Graham!

Exactly, well done Wilson! Must admit, I didn't think it looked quite right when I typed it last night, but then it was getting late - that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

As Captain Mannering used to say in Dad's Army: I was wondering how quickly someone would notice that - well spotted! We noticed that ourselves on Saturday evening after Graham had been scouring Fotopic for more Class 150 photos - and I also had a photo I took of 257 at Dundee in 1987 which shows the window as well. We've been wondering how best to go about "putting" it in. One thought I've had - which Graham seems to think might work - is to paint it on and then fit the perspex screen in front. If that doesn't work, we'll just have to do it properly and cut it out - can't say I relish that idea though!

The new order arrives at Aberdeen Kirkhill: Don't worry, we aren't going in for mass Sprinterisation like BR in the 1980s; we need the 150 to take over the diagram currently worked by the Stonehaven Mark 1 set so we can release some shunting capacity to enable us to deal with the charter rake on the days that we run it. By winter 1988, there were a number of 150s on ScotRail (the first 3 having arrived in July 1987) and a few did occasionally make forays to Aberdeen - at least that's our story and we're sticking to it! 150 257 was one of the first 150s allocated to Haymarket, so that was chosen as the subject for this model. It started out as a Regional Railways unit that I picked up from the returned and repaired section of the Bachmann stand at Warley last year. It's been renumbered and the livery adjusted somewhat from Regional Railways to the original Sprinter design: Silver grey extended to the bodyends and around the cantrail, replacing the dark blue and the white cantrail stripe on the original model and also the branding has been changed. Another change was to add an extension to the exhaust stacks on both cars so they now look like they actually come from somewhere, rather than it being left hanging in space. We've also been lucky enough to have a sneak preview of our article which will be in the April edition of Railway Modeller. We can't say too much, obviously, but suffice to say the photography is stunning - can't believe it's actually our layout in the pictures! Should be in the shops on 10th March. Next weekend will be spent setting the layout up again so we can clean it and check that it all still works prior to the Nottingham Exhibition and test out the new sequence, followed by about a week of wheel-cleaning on the locos and a heavy general overhaul on the two 08s to get them back in A1 condition. They probably work the hardest of all our locos at exhibitions, so they must deserve a bit of TLC by now.

Things have been a little quiet on this thread on the rolling stock front recently, so I thought I'd give you an update of progress so far: The InterCity Charter Rake is now complete - I posted some photos of the Mark 1s not so long ago, but hadn't finished the sleepers at the time. Well now I have and the whole rake was seen passing through Duffield earlier this week on-route back to Aberdeen (although why it appears to be heading south is still something of a mystery!). Fortunately Ramrig was there with his camera and managed to snap a few shots as it passed by: The whole train as it approaches: Class 37 and ETHEL (hmmmm, I think Ramrig has been busy here - anyone notice anything?) SLEP 10503 SLEP 10514 SLE 10726 SLEP 10520 I know you've seen the rest before, but Ramrig's camera is better than mine and these are more picturesque surroundings than my dining room! FO 3131 FO 3132 RBR 1666 FO 3107 FO IC3120C BG 92130 Thanks very much to Ramrig for taking the shots. This rake will be running at the Nottingham East Midlands Model Railway Exhibition on 19th - 20th March, so why not come along and see it, together with the rest of Kirkhill?

Many of the Holyhead services started from Euston which would suggest that they were West Coast - InterCity Cross Country was defined as the InterCity network which centred on Birmingham as opposed to London. I once saw a Mark 3 set on a Holyhead working at Chester, which again suggests it was West Coast. I travelled to Holyhead on quite a number of occasions in the early '80s and all the sets I travelled on were Mark 2f - apart from one summer Holyhead - Euston working which was Mark 1s with a Class 40 as far as Crewe!

Thanks! I am rather pleased with the result myself, but the real test is what other people think, so your comments are very much appreciated. The red/white stripes are by Fox Transfers - a bit fiddley to get them on straight, but I reckon they are easier than trying to mask and spray the stripes and certainly much quicker. I put the transfers on so that the white partially obscured the lower part of the bodyside windows and varnished them to fix them. I then cut the window apertures back out out with a craft knife with a new blade. Even then the stripes are very fragile and they tend to tear, so I touched them back in with matt white paint, re-varnished and the result is as you see. Very time consuming and more challenging than I first thought, but worth it in the end.

Well, as Graham said, we've been concentrating on coaching stock and you may remember that I've been working on a few recently. I've just about finished the day coaches for the InterCity Charter rake now - only the air brake additions for the underframe to add now, but as they are, they're pretty much done and certainly useable. As of this evening the rakes looks like this (remember, they started off in blue/grey): FO 3120: FO 3107: RBR 1666: FO 3132 (this will get its B4 bogies swapped out for Commonwealths this week): FO 3131: The BG that you can just see part of in the overall view is a Bachmann and as far as the livery is concerned, it's straight out of the box, although I've modified the bogies so that it sits at the correct height. Bachmann Mark 1s on B4s always look like they're standing on tip-toe and from a practical point of view, the coupling heights end up being too high as well. This one has also been fitted with Kadee No.5s in common with the rest of the rake. I've just got those four Lima sleepers to repaint now and the Charter rake will be complete.....

Thanks - I'm pleased with them! They were complete repaints from blue/grey, apart from the RBR which was a complete repaint from exec because it looked scabby and also it didn't match the Railmatch colours that were going onto the FOs. This was part way through the process - FOs masked with the dark grey applied and the RBR still in primer (two ScotRail Mark 2s in primer also):

Thanks! The stand is made by Tamiya - you actually get two in the same box - the body stand you see in the photos above and also a larger turntable stand. I find them really useful for spraying - far better than pieces of wood or trying to hold the work in my hand! They retail around the £20 mark for the two, although you may find them cheaper at exhibitions etc.

Things must have looked a little quiet recently on the rolling stock front, but just to prove that I haven't lost interest, I thought I'd post a few photos of current progress on the InterCity Charter rake. The five Mark 1s are now almost complete; all they need to finish them is numbering and some detail labels applying - end detail and coach letters - and a final coat of varnish. Then reassembling and the Kadee couplers fitting. Then I'll be able to get on with sorting out the sleepers......and the other ScotRail Mark 2d vehicles........and a 150/2 that I bought at Warley............... etc etc... Anyway, the photos: FO 3120 in InterCity exec livery: FO 3131 in INTERCITY swallow livery: There are a further two FOs in this livery: 3132 and 3107. RBR 1666 in exec livery: Graham got some Replica flush glazing at Warley and is going to experiment on the remaining blue/grey FO. If it works out ok, we may retrofit the charter rake to further improve its appearance, but I'm starting to feel quite pleased with the results as they are.....flush glazing would be an added bonus!

Thanks! Much appreciated, but still not used to it! Regarding sanding facilities, I'm not too sure what you're referring to here, but I'm assuming it's the facility for refilling the locomotive sandboxes for improved adhesion? If so, then the answer is quite simple: Nothing! There weren't that many diesel locos on BR that had sanding equipment fitted - and still fewer on which it actually worked!! Class 47s were never fitted with sanding in BR days and were ony fitted post-privatisation by Freightliner. HSTs have never been fitted. Smaller locos of Classes 26 & 37 (in our case) were fitted, but to fill them, BR resorted to a high tech solution: a watering can! Sand was stored as it was delivered in polythene bags and then the cans were filled from these as required; that way the sand stayed reasonably dry - so long as the cans were only used to carry sand, not oil or coolant etc...... More modern tram/light rail vehicle depots do now have automated sand-filling systems, but you never saw any such sophistication under BR. But their system, crude though it was, worked. You wouldn't have seen much, if any evidence of it at a depot such as Kirkhill though. As a foot-note, more modern locos do now make extensive use of sand and also many DMUs/EMUs are fitted with sanders too now, but in the latter case it is there to provide adhesion during braking for disc-braked stock. Lots of sand gets used at this time of year, during leaf-fall. Hope this helps.

A big thank you to everyone who came along to see us this weekend at the LYDCC exhibition in Rawtenstall - it was great to meet you/chat to you etc. The exhibition was superbly organised by 37023, DavidM, Sovoyard etc. and we were all made to feel very welcome - we all had a great time. As Mike Bellamy has already reported, we won Best Layout as voted by the LYDCC members, so thank you to all who voted........... Two awards in one month........hmmmmm! We aren't used to this sort of attention, so it's all ever so slightly embarrassing but in a nice sort of way! Anyway, I'm sure it can't continue; after all, let's not forget that coaching stock depot layouts are boring to watch, boring to operate and as my next door neighbour tells me, I'm far too old for model railways anyway and should try Scalextric!!!! Maybe the next layout should be DCC Scalextric? Then again, maybe not; in fact, DEFINITELY NOT!

Just to keep you up to date with developments: The Layout: Following our experience at the Mickleover exhibition a few weeks ago, we decided that some additional protection was needed in various places in order to limit the amount of damage that both the public and we () could do to the layout during the course of a show and indeed getting it there and back as well! As a result we have: Added a perspex screen along the front of the layout to protect the static grass that I spent ever so many hours (and electric shocks) getting to stand up and appear realistic and which a few small children (and even some adults who should have known better ) spent ever so few seconds flattening! Made but not yet fitted an "endscene" - i.e. a continuation of the backscene to fit at the left-hand (south end) of the layout. This is to provide additional protection from spacially unaware women with large handbags and unruly children. I know these people claim to be able to multi-task, but the bags seemed to be capable of attracting an ever decreasing amount of their attention and developed minds of their own, apparently intent on demolishing our south-end fuel points and lighting tower. They didn't actually succeed, but it was a close run thing and enough to convince me that something had to be done. Fitted additional side protection in the shape of a plywood panel to Boards 3 & 4 for transportation. These were quite open when they were stacked and vulnerable to damage. Following the failure of the bags to demolish one of our lighting towers, I have to confess that I made a pretty good effort to do so whilst we were loading the van on the Sunday evening following the show. Once back home, emergency surgery by Graham and I using tweesers and pliers managed to get it straight again, but lesson learned! The Stock: Well my original plans to get another ScotRail Express set and an InterCity Charter rake completed for the Lancashire and Yorkshire DCC Exhibition this coming weekend have suffered various setbacks over the last few weeks. Graham reported the paint problems on one of the Mark 2Zs in an earlier post, so I'm now pleased to be able to report that this is now resolved, only to be replaced by further challenges elsewhere! Currently, the situation is: Both Mark 2Zs - complete (except for weathering) as per the photos below: IC Charter Mark 1s - painting now complete, but hit problems last weekend with the InterCity red and white stripe transfers. These just broke up whilst I was positioning them! They behaved totally differently to the equivalent ScotRail stripes which I have used over a dozen times now without any problem. I'm hoping this is just a batch problem and I'm returning them this week. IC Charter Sleepers - problems removing the "Inter-City Sleeper" printing from the bodyside without taking the paint off too - even using SafeCut which usually does the job without any trouble. Lima paint must be very thin. These probably now need at least the light grey respraying, but found when masking up with Tamiya tape that it started to lift the IC red/white stripes off........aaaaaargh!!!! So until I can resolve the IC transfers issue, the Charter rake is on hold. Pity, because I'm pleased with the paint job on the Mark 1s! The rest of the ScotRail Express rake: just ran out of time and energy following all the things above! More on this to follow... To finish on a positive note, here are the two Mark 2Zs: 5197 - TSO with original aluminium window frames: 5152 - TSO with window frames painted dark grey (I think this depended on whether they had been previously painted light rail grey): That about as much as we'll get done now before Rawtenstall this weekend, so looking forward to seeing those of you who make it there!

Thanks for the comments about the rakes. We get the same issue with the Prodigy Advance 2 reverting to 128 speed steps. It may be that there is a way to programme it out, but I haven't found it yet! Having said that, it isn't too much inconvenience to press the button again when you call up a new loco - it does remember 128 for a loco once you've called it up in an operating session - that is until somebody runs through a set of points the wrong way, causes a short and stops the job.... Regarding stalling on points, there are a number of ways that we got around that: I followed Allan Gartner's brilliant DCC website advice so every piece of rail is soldered to something which is connected to the power bus (you can find it by Googling Allan Gartner or go to www.wiringfordcc.com) so we don't rely on rail joiners to carry current. (He also has good advice on how to avoid shorts stopping the job by using brake light bulbs in series with the supply to isolate the short and dissipate the energy therby avoiding the controller shutting down - I'll let you read it on his website! We have the parts; just haven't implemented the solution yet. ) As Graham said, make sure the pointwork is level Lastly, for short wheelbase locos which are likely to get gapped on points, I used Lenz Gold decoders and Lenz Power One modules. These maintain power to the decoder in the event of the loco becoming gapped so it keeps going. It transformed the 08s which were problematic on points or track which wasn't 100% clean. Power 1s and Gold chips are expensive, but performance is fantastic!

I said I'd give you an update on progress of the various coaches in the paint shop (AKA my garage), so here goes: The Mark 2Zs are now complete as far as paint is concerned - they've just had a coat of gloss varnish to prepare them for the decals to be added (ScotRail logos, numbers and the blue/white stripes): The Mark 2Ds need the roofs painting, body-ends and the FO needs its 1st class yellow band completing - these were the two TSOs last night: The Mark 1 FOs for the IC Charter rake need the 1st class bands and body-ends to complete, then they will be ready for varnishing and decals as with the Mark 2s above - again state of play last night: The 4th FO had to have a small amount of re-work on the bodyside so that still needs its roof painting white; the RBR (not shown) is in a similar state - red banding, roof and body-ends still to paint. I've also sprayed the roofs of three of the four sleepers white (the 4th will remain black as not all IC Charter sleepers had white roofs in '88): The sleepers need new "INTERCITY" and "Sleeper" decals adding before the roofs go back on - these arrived today from Fox Transfers. Given the amount still to do before our Mickleover open day, I've had to revise my intentions to getting as many of the ScotRail Mark 2s finished as I can and the remainder to follow in October. We still have to clean and test the layout yet! Further photos to follow as the coaches move towards completion.

Hi Jamie, I use a fairly basic "Aztek" airbrush - I bought it in Hobbycraft about 6 years ago now, but they are still available and you can get spares for them. If you Google Aztek, you'll find plenty of suppliers for them. It gives great results as you say - and it has all the features of much more expensive types at a fraction of the cost: gravity feed for the paint, internal mixing and you can adjust both the flow of paint and air. The one I bought only came with one nozzle which I later discovered was intended for enamel paints, but there is a range of nozzles available for both enamels and acrylics and for covering large areas or small detail jobs, so plenty of flexibility with the 'brush too. My compressor is a "Revel Starter Class" - again one of the most basic you can buy but an awful lot easier than using aerosols or spare tyres! Glad you like the photos - more coming up. Glenn

I have a little production line going at the moment: I'm in the process of repainting vehicles to form another two rakes to add further variety to Kirkhill (that way I can give Graham some work to do reshaping the schedule): Four Replica Mark 1 FOs plus Replica Mark 1 RBR. These are being repainted into InterCity livery to form a Bounds Green InterCity Charter rake together with four Mark 3 sleepers and a BG. When finished with their white roofs, these should look quite smart, not to mention different. Five Mark 2s - 2 x Bachmann Mark 2Z TSOs, 2 x Airfix Mark 2D TSOs (one of which will be a TSOT) and an Airfix Mark 2D FO - all into ScotRail Express livery to form an additional push-pull set. (Alex Carpenter of ABC Models is painting up a DC Kits DBSO as I write this (well, maybe not right at this moment, but you know what I mean). These vehicles wont actually all end up in the same set, but will allow others to be reformed, giving us a set closely resembling that which worked EC241 diagram. This was formed of various left-overs and varied considerably from one month to the next in its formation, but usually had at least 2 x Mark 2Z TSO + Mark 2A BSO + Mark 2D TSOT + Mark 2A FK (either 13456 or 13461) + DBSO. Well all vehicles have been primed, the FOs have had the exec dark grey applied and have tonight had the first coat of exec light grey. The Mark 2s have all had the first coat of exec light grey - I'm doing those in the opposite order to the Mark 1s because the roof and window detail influences the way they need to be masked. The RBR was already in InterCity livery and we thought it might not need a repaint, but predictably, the shades didn't match those going on the FOs, so it got added to the line late and hence it's lagging behind a little. As of last night, the state of play was: Mark 1 FO: Mark 2Z TSOs (the wine is disappearing quickly!): Full line up: The plan (or maybe it's more of a hope) is to have them ready in time for the Mickleover Model Railway Group Open Day on 2nd - 3rd October when Kirkhill will be exhibited next - only three weeks to go!! I'll keep you updated with progress.

I just tried to test the link and to use it you seem to need a Windows Live i.d. - that's fine if you have one like I do, but if you don't, this link should not require you to sign in: https://cid-f8465c75...=umM8cNsSwPY%24 It looks best if you click on "Full Screen". The comments sometimes take a while to load, but they give an explanation of the photos and draw your attention to some of the details in the shots. Hope it works! There's also a flyer for anyone who wants to read a condensed, potted version of what this layout is all about: Aberdeen Kirkhill Flyer 3.pdf