Portchullin Tatty

Stephen, How do you do your slotted posts? I would be concerned that a slot in an etched post would reveal that it is merely a skim and not solid? Mark

One of my pet hates on model railways are buildings that float a fraction above the ground because they have been plonked in situ, not bedded in. For me, it completely destroys the illusion and I can get quite wound up about it when I see it (…..and it is pretty common, so this is fairly often!). Occasionally, I actually do attach the building to the baseboard and “scenic in” the ground around them but more normally I construct a base into which the building sits. This gets embedded permanently and then the building sits into a slot that is formed into it. I have also seen the building being built in two parts, with the base being affixed to the ground and the building slotted onto them. Peter Bond did this for me with the signal cabins for Portchullin. This is the base for the larger water tank: The large water tank is more prominent as it is located closer to the baseboard edge and is to the rear of the main focus of the MPD area, the trackwork between the shed and the turntable. It is also adjacent to the coaling bank and as a result I decided to make this now and as part of the base for the water tank. The smaller of the water tanks is designed to mask a baseboard joint in a rockface/embankment. The base (below) will thus be split into two halves when it is fitted, each sitting on adjacent boards – a neat way of not having the San Andreas fault line running through a rock face! The rather prominent hole in the coal bank will be the subject of a future post, as there is something a bit different planned for this! I have also started the painting of these, which had a fairly characteristic design with the border in a red/brown and a cream central panel. It is important to recreate this and as it is fairly eye catching, errors will be instantly visible. The straight edges weren’t too difficult to achieve with masking tape; initially the horizontals and then the verticals a day later. Peeling back the masking tape was a thrill to see if it worked! The scrolls at the corner was a concern throughout the construction of the water tanks but I did hit on an idea I think is rather nifty. I sprayed the same red/brown on some transfer paper (thanks Chris!) and once it was dry, used a domestic hole punch to create disks of transfer. I then cut them into segments that were a bit bigger than a quarter of the disk. They were then applied as a transfer to each corner. Actually, it was pretty easy once I got going – I definitely spent longer thinking about it than I did doing it! I am pretty pleased with the outcome, much neater than my hand could manage!

Here, here! Plus, I am enjoying your thread as always Gordon!

Dave, as a veteran of a few Falcon Brass/Jidenco kits now (none of which were easy but they were easier than scratchbuilding), there are two other cautions i will offer you. The kits did not ever think about the thickness of the metal when it came to corners, thus you need to decide whether the front goes on the sides or the sides on the front (etc) and size things from there. Given that you are obviously checking things carefully against the drawing you will work through this. Typically, the boilers are made of material that is too thin once it has been half etched to form the boiler bands and is hence too flimsy. Just drilling the holes for the handrail knobs distorted it and therefore I now automatically throw the boiler away. I am also a person that relies on the thickness of transfers to give the relief of the boiler band, rather than solders on a shim. It will fight you all the way but they can be built and the Claughton is a beautiful loco (especially in lined red!). Here is an image of a large boiler version with creative commons licence to prove the point!

Running away from the oncoming train on the sleeper end level with the cover over the point lock. Achieved £27,500 at Christies in 2018.

Tim, On the J36, it sounds as if you kept the Hornby chassis, without modifications? And regarding the gouging, how did you gouge and is there any risk of coming through? I have one in the box, which I must get to! Mark

Thane of Fife, The etch I do allows the following variants: - outside W irons - anti friction wheels - end brakes - side brakes (improved from the Slaters kit) The antifriction gear was not a success, so might not have made it to the LNER era and the outside W irons were also eliminated from use relatively early. There was certainly some mixing of stock and as you say, a whole rake of the same will be abit boring. These are the blog posts I have done on the ones I have built. https://highlandmiscellany.com/2014/12/29/ner-hoppers/ https://highlandmiscellany.com/2015/01/02/ner-hoppers-part-2-liveries/

On my external blog; I have just placed a post on the prototype water tank at Altnabreac; this includes photos and a drawing for anyone so inclined.

Still readily available from Amazon. I bought a multi-pack, so could probably do you a deal if you want!! Mark

Thank you for both of those points; corrections on the way! I know I owe you a response on the other matter; working on that too (quite some months I know!). Mark

I am at 50/50 Arthur...………….. Well, perhaps 60/40 would be more accurate! You can see the current state of play here!

Crecy are in the process of reprinting it. Not too sure of the timing for the reprint as there will be a few updates. Mark

Very much one of my favourite locos; rather more handsome than the Clan strangely (although I do like the River) Mark

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/A-History-of-Highland-Locomotives-by-P-Tatlow-Hardback-1989/123901765961?epid=90709924&hash=item1cd91ee949:g:Z-kAAOSwptJab08W

Part of the concept of the back-story for Glenmutchkin is that it is at the end of a long line so that locos need to be serviced and it was also at the foot of a steep gradient, so trains need to be banked out of the station. All this is creates a lot of thirsty locomotives that would have needed servicing and attention – so it will have a busy motive power depot. The Highland Railway’s water tanks tended to be of a similar style with a tank made of sectional components and rounded head, base and corners. There is nothing available from any of the manufacturers so it was obvious these need to be scratchbuilt. There remains one tank of this type still in situ, at Altnabreac and in addition to this, there are drawings from Eddie Bellis of the Kyle’s water tower plus that at Garve by Henry Orbach. I have elected to build a pair – one of Kyle and one of Altnabreac (the latter being the smaller). Kyle’s water tank from the early post steam era. Photograph with permission from Armstrong Railway Photographic Trust, JM Boyes collection. Starting with the tanks, I laminated a series of strips of plasticard to the right height and then used a belt sander to put the chamfer on these before then making them up into a box. As with most of my stone buildings, I use Wills random stone plastic sheets; now available from Peco. On far too many occasions I see this used with panels butted against each other; either on corners or even worse on the flat. Unless the stones are toothed into each other, this screams as being incorrect even to a layman. Therefore, it is best to form corners either from a sheet cut vertically and then chamfer the inside faces so that the coursing is retained for its full length even on the cut face. This means that courses line up from side to front without any silly jumps, as can be seen below. This technique can not be used in all examples and sometimes it is necessary to actually tooth panels into each other by cutting corresponding dog teeth into adjacent panels. I find that the mortar courses on Wills sheets are a bit too deep and because lots of others use it its pattern is a little too obvious; so it looses its realism (or maybe I am just so sad that I can tell a material by its stone coursing!!). I get over this by part filling the mortar courses with a plastic filler – which is basically dissolved plastic in a solvent carrier (lovely and smely!). This tends to distort the sheets as it is only applied to one side so I first laminate the sheet to some thick (1.5 or 2mm plasticard). Due to the volumes of solvent to be sloshed around in constructing buildings in this manner, it is important to allow for the solvent to escape – regretfully I have a number of coach roofs which many years later have mushy sections where the solvent has been trapped and has distorted the plastic in its efforts to cut through it and escape! I thus drill regular holes or slots in the backing plasticard, which you can see here: Whilst the desire to mask the coursing pattern on the Wills sheet might seem a fair amount of bother given the need to reinforce the walls with an inner laimanate, I think the effect is worth the effort. A blast of grey primer shows that the coursing and texture of the stone is retained but equaly it does not look like everyone else’s! The use of the laminations does give the advantage that slots for window frames and doors can be created. These allow an etching to be slid in, either from below or behind. They can be slid out again for painting and make this aspect a breeze to do. And this is where they have got to; the guts of both done but with a chunk of detailing and some basework still to be done. But lets sign this post off with a fine HC Casserley picture of a Superheated Goods using the MPD as a headshunt in the 1952. This photograph is used with permission and is now part of Colin Brack’s collection. He has a substantial on line collection of photographs (including the JM Boyes collection) with a good proportion of them being of the Highland’s system – you can loose many an hour in his flickr site – this being a link to his Dingwall & Skye album. https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishswis ... 2664/page1

I can't speak for how they are going for Leeds City, but I have had problems in using these for DCC. They have quite a low current rating and most DCC systems are too powerful for them. If you scroll down this post a bit, you will see the effect that it had!! Mark

Looks good Tim.

Sorry, not sure what happened with my brain there as that would be a little bit of reordering of the physical world for that to work! About to be corrected! Mark

My father and I have spent a bit of time pouring over the new Bachmann model and have concluded you have to scrape a fair amount to find any errors. I have writing a blog post on it which you can find by clicking here. If anyone wishes to know which book covers this era of prototypes then you need volume 2 of Railway Breakdown Cranes. It is presently out of print but it is hoped that the likely interest from the Bachmann model will be enough to encourage the publishers, Crecy, to reprint it.

They did typically have stoves and chimneys were therefore visible through the roof or more commonly out the back of the first floor and then rising up the rear to above the gutter height. Whilst you need to look a little hard; you can see how they have been modelled on my cabins here .https://highlandmiscellany.com/portchullin-photocall/ I suspect it is because Peco have modelled the cabin as it now is at Helmsdale. As such, it won't have been in use since the 1980s (when radio signalling was introduced on the Far North lines) and thus the stove is likely to have been removed. Mark

That looks very fine. Remember, most through stations on the Highland had two cabins (remember they are not boxes on the Highland) but only one signalman/woman and one bicycle to get between the two boxes!

It is isn't it! The flip side is that designing artwork is realistic for most (or all if they put some effort in) modellers and this is creating wider options and quality for lots of people. It is ironic that in these days where you need less skill to make truly good models, with a bit of effort and application of knowledge, rather fewer are actually doing so.,,,,,, Mark

Another vote for nanocad here. It is very similar to AutoCAD; especially an AutoCAD of a few years ago. Mark

I have, however, been spending some time on the Midland full brake. It is now largely lined (using Fox Transfers) and needs the black strengthening to the top and bottom of the sides and some picking out of the metal work. I think it looks rather fine! A few more pictures can be found on my blog here, Mark

Sorry, I missed this posting. It is still on the to do list. I need to finish the last bits of the test build and then update the artwork. It will definitely happen as I have twenty sets of castings in a box! Mark