Magstheviking

Thanks so much for the alternative plan, I really like the fiddle yard to the North instead of the South. It definitely frees up more space. I've looked a few different options for turntables, but as you say there's not really one smaller than the Dapol or Heljan options. I think the original turntable, having looked at photos was only really large enough to turn NBR 0-6-0s so would be quite diminutive in comparison. I was thinking about launching a layout thread and may well do so as all feedback is good feedback!

I spent the dreary morning working on some basic track plans for the layout. I rely heavily on the National libary of Scotland's map catalogue and the OS map from 1918 gives a really good idea of what the area around Stirling Shore Road would've looked like. I've attached a pdf of the map below. The Railscot libary is quite scarce on Stirling North Shore but there are a couple of photos for inspiration. The amount of track around Stirling is quite boggling and quite beyond what I'd reasonably be able to achieve in my spare room. Therefore, I've come up with two simplified designs which are based on but not a replica of the track layout directly North of Stirling. PLAN A. Plan A is the smaller of the two designs, utilising one fiddle yard at the South side of the yard and would be focused primarily on the shed with some shunting possibilities around a few sidings in the background. The goods sidings would hold a small distillery with peckett shunter resident. PLAN B. Plan B is the more expansive design which includes the double track line which extends towards Alloa in the foreground. This would allow greater operating interest with coal, mixed goods and passenger trains running in front of the shed and the yard. This plan would have two cassette fiddle yards at either end but is rather limited by the space available which prevents a continuous run fiddle yard which would make continuous running possible. The intention is that this layout would be mobile however, so perhaps this is a lesser issue if it would be possible to erect in a larger space. Plan B would also include Stirling North Signal box and provide signalling interest on the mainline. I've also been thinking about rolling stock on shed and decided I'd take liberty of some of the locomotives which would also have been seen at Stirling (main) shed. As Shore Road did become a sub shed of 63B from nationalisation. Obviously LMS and standard 5MT's would be plentiful, alongside J36's and other NBR and CR designs. Visiting locomotives would include K3's from St Margarets, K1's and WD's from Thornton, the occasional crab from Ayr as well as a 4mt 2-6-0, Patriots, jubilees and A4/stanier Pacifics used for expresses North to Aberdeen and South to Crewe and London. I'm beginning to formulate ideas in more detail and am excited about where this project is going to go. All and any feedback is much appreciated! map.pdf

Since neglecting model railways at the start of spring I have since moved twice and therefore had to dismantle the fledgling micro layout. I am back in Stirling now however and buoyed somewhat by recently attending the Falkirk Model Railway exhibition as an operator on the wonderful layout Kinlochewe. This got the cogs turning once more and I am now beginning to piece together a plan for a shed layout based on North Shore Shed in the centre of Stirling likely set in the mid to late 1950s. This would allow a large variety of different locomotive classes to be present as well as enabling some passing traffic on the Stirling to Dunfermline line. I am currently working on the premise of a roughly 10ft long scenic area with two 3ft~ cassete fiddle yards at either end, in order to fit in the spare room in my flat, but this is very much subject to change. Hopefully I'll get a couple of different plans knocked together over the coming days to see what works and what doesn't. Fingers crossed this will get a little further than Duntelchaig! Cheers, Mags

Ah yes, apologies, it was a club member who warned me about coreless motors and I misremembered. Thanks

I think it's really a mixed bag in my experience. Most DCC fitted locos, with Hornby and ESU decoders are generally fine on analogue. Bachmann decoders, especially the older ones can be a bit less consistent and have witnessed some not working at all, to juddery running at lower speeds. I do believe however, that some decoders have a propensity to burn out if left on analogue too long, but haven't ever seen this personally. If you do find a dcc fitted model which you want to run on dc however it might just be best to buy the blanking plates for the socket, if its a dcc ready model. These can be picked up for a few quid for a pack of 4 or so. Hope this helps!

I think a Class 180 would sell pretty well in my view. The market is crying out for more modern DMU's/EMU's. There's so many gaps in the modern image market. As long as it compared favourable with recent Bachmann 158 or realtrack 156 offerings then I'd certainly be in. There's plenty of options out there for sure.

Slochd would be superb mate! A wonderful piece of railway. Always great to see locos working hard up the hill too! It gets absolutely battered by the weather up there, so there's real scope for recreating some pretty desolate scenes. You'll have to get the famous sign in the scene too. I think having that much viewing would be more than sufficient, especially if you could get full length trains in the scene. As others have mentioned, the scope of traffic is varied and as you say, modelling a spot like Slochd, which has never really changed, would enable recreation of almost any era.

I'm also in OO but this seems like a really interesting brief. I looked myself at potentially building something from the 60s based at Kincraig, just south of Aviemore. it was simply too big to be achievable however. In N however, this seems much more feasible, the old station at Kincraig is still double track I believe, operational as a passing loop. Furthermore, it grants superb scenic prospects with the cairngorms and Loch Inch as the backdrop. For operational interest, I'm sure a few sidings could be easily incorporated for the lumber trade or as storage for maintenance stock. (network Rail often does this at Dunkeld). Dunkeld itself would also prove interesting, but maybe rather more ambitious, there are still a few sidings in operation there. I look forward to seeing how things pan out. I use track planning software intermittently, but think nothing compares to grabbing some track and messing around on the board until things look right. Something in your head can end up being all wrong when replicated in reality.

Thanks so much! I think I'll try get it subbed out for a Class 26 when I can get hold of one to be honest. It would certainly be a rare visitor.

During one of the numerous lockdown's which were encountered in the last 18 months I found myself traditional climbing on the banks of the beautiful Loch Duntelchaig. The climbing was excellent, the midges were not. I know Scotland very well having spent my whole life in the North East but I must confess I did not have much knowledge at all of the desolate landscape that lay directly south of the Capital of the Highlands, Inverness. I was quite taken with the dense pine forest and wide open spaces which the Oh so familar Cairngorms do not permit. Fast forward roughly 6 months and I'm sitting in my small room in my student flat in Stirling, not daring to look too deeply into the reading which I was required to start for my Dissertation. I look down at my pretty tired looking layout, a single track continuous run affair which no matter how much I tweaked never seemed to be as interesting as I wanted it to be. There simply wasn't the space. It was to this backdrop that the idea of Duntelchaig was born. I had always wanted to try and model a distillery as a point of interest in a layout and basing this new concept only 20 miles or so from the rich whiskey country of speyside was all the justification I needed. I wanted to try and design a track plan which would have good operation interest without taking up the entire of my room and I wanted the Loch itself to be the central attraction. Furthermore, it had to be cheap, simple and achievable. It was also deliberately ambiguous, I've spent enough time in some of the most barren settlements in Scotia to understand that things generally don't change much in these rural outposts. Therefore, I wanted to be able to present the layout as if it could be frozen in any time, allowing me to run stock from pre-nationalisation all the way up to modern image. I think I'll switch out a few cars and busses on the layout as the only clue of time changing with the rolling stock. As well as a double siding for the distillery the layout also has two rather unusual head-shunts, in order to allow marginally longer grain and general freight trains, furthermore, these head-shunts are separated from the halt and distillery by a small portion of the Loch itself. This was the end result: I have laid the track and I'm currently roughly half way through wiring, (I'm waiting patiently on point motors). I decided early on to use set track, purely because I had a heap lying around from previous projects and I don't generally get too hung up on the intricacies of track realism. The brown section which is lower than the main section will all be allocated as Loch space and there will be a few boats and fishermen floating around. A very generous member of my local model Railway club, Falkirk MRC, has very kindly donated to me a Faller Brewery building, which is simply lovely. This will serve as the main distillery building with a few small changes potentially. Power will be through a digitrax DCS51. Roughly 2/3rd's of my stock is chipped and most of the rest require hard wiring so there might be some frustrated updates about that from time to time. General locomotive roster is semi-prototypical with a few oddballs thrown in: LNER 1930s: J50, J72, J36 BR 1950s: ex-LMS Black 5 5MT, STD 4MT 2-6-0, ex-LNER K1, ex-LMS 2MT 2-6-0, ex-LNER J39, ex-LNER pug, Class 105, Class 31,(Maybe an ex-LNER L1... Really not justifiable though, but I do love her). BR 1970s: Class 24, Class 31, Class 06 BR 1990s: Class 37, Class 47, Class 60 2000s: Class 56, Class 66, Class 156 Trains will be short passenger trains, short grain trains and the occasional mixed goods train for the village. So that's the general jist, please feel free to comment/criticise. There's obviously still a massive amount of work to do, but its a start. Just a heads up that updates here are likely to be dictated by procrastination of university work and are therefore likely to be somewhat sporadic.