Whilst the breakdown riding van languishes unfinished in a box along with an equally incomplete CR tool van, it’s place has been taken by a couple of long term residents of the Shelf of Doom.
57375 was the first DJH kit I ever built, sometime around 1985. It was stuck together with epoxy (including the chassis!) and quite remarkably it actually ran, albeit with something of a limp.
Behind it is 57340, started in 1992, soldered this time, and with some additional details inspired by Iain Rice’s “Whitemetal Locos” book. It has a rivetted smoke box wrapper for example, an actual floor in the cab instead of a hole for the Romford worm, a full complement of dog clips around the smoke box door, pipes in all the right places, an ashpan and an LRM (I think) turned brass dome. It got as far as shown in the photo and was then left in a box for 30 years. I was starting a short lived EM period when I started it and it had been left pending rebuilding in OO after I realised that Hornby and Bachmann could build chassis which ran better than mine. On fishing it out to finish it I discovered I had actually built it in OO in the first place, which must count as the longest senior moment ever !
It now serves as the pattern for both locos, which are being rebuilt with Mashima 1224 motors and Comet GB5 gearboxes in place of their original D11s. 57340’s tender currently has a Comet chassis replacing the rigid DJH one, it may end up compensated or sprung yet. Once 57340 has been sorted 57375 will follow. I suspect that stripping 57375’s paint will result in it disassembling itself so that will end up soldered too. Both will retain Romford wheels for now until I find some self-quartering ones which look more like CR wheels.
In 2020 ‘The True Line’, the journal of the Caledonian Railway Association, published a short article by George Russell on the 6 wheeled tool vans and riding vans built by the CR in the 1920s. This is not one of those (but watch this space…). One of the photos shows a CR tool van at Dumfries in the 1960s coupled to a rather un-Caledonian looking 6 wheeled coach. The CRA Forum identified it as a Midland Railway D516 luggage compo, it appears to have survived until the shed closed in 1966, and close inspection of photos and the drawing on the LMS Society website suggested it could be bashed from the Ratio brake third. This should be visible without needing to log in – http://www.crassoc.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1546
This is the kit side marked out for cutting …
.. and glued back together in a different order:
However, it was 7mm short, the deficiency being between the inner first class and outer third class compartments. The panelling is of course wider to accommodate the wider first class compartment and I’d hoped I could get away with it. No matter, more sawing and a couple of slivers of scrap side were inserted. Most of the saw cuts were up the middle of panels, the damage being made good by filling then scraping back with a curved X-Acto blade before sanding with a slice cut from a fingernail sanding stick. Fortunately the real coach had acquired a lot of extra beading by the 1960s, none of it particularly symmetrical or even straight, so the worst of the remaining scars will be hidden.
All the moulded door furniture except the hinges was removed and will be replaced on those doors which survived conversion. The lower panelling was also scribed to represent the tongue and grooved boarding repairs. It sits on Bill Bedford sprung W irons (a first for me), blu-tacked on for now !
… which is probably what I would have done if I’d known Slaters had reintroduced them or even introduced them in the first place! Fifty quid is a lot for a plastic coach against about 18 for the Ratio kit, but by the time the chassis bits and buffers have been sourced there’ll only be about a tenner in it.
Portwilliam has been even more neglected than Newton Stewart recently, but for different reasons. For the last two years the six foot square room which houses the 9′ x 2′ layout (!), 50+ linear feet of shelving, piles of box files, Really Useful Boxes and a dehumidifier has also doubled as my office. There was a desk in there but it was only really big enough to store things on/under, not to work on, but that all changed overnight. Enough junk had to be moved into No. 1 son’s room to make the desk useable as an actual desk but it is still very cramped even after a lot of rearrangement and tidying up. After spending all day in there during the week I had no desire at all to spend any more time at the weekend working on the layout. I did, however, manage to avoid the temptation to play trains instead of working, although it joined in a couple of Teams calls when people asked “Er … what’s that behind you?”.
It is looking a little more complete than when I last posted though. Rather than a lot of waffle, have some photos. These were taken on a phone so the depth of field is all to pot, with whatever stock happened to be easily accessible. I’ll take some proper ones when I’ve had a proper tidy up.
More on 55125 soon …
Weeds and point levers, but the shed doors have been put in a Very Safe Place along with most of the the telegraph poles.
The Bedford lorry was bashed years ago from bits of an Airfix K2 and K6 (RAF Emergency Set) after seeing one on Iain Rice’s ‘Woolverstone’.
Stranraer’s new toy trips some fish vans up from the harbour. Not often I can buy something RTR and not even have to renumber it !
When I signed off last time I hadn’t actually intended to be gone a year ! I haven’t gone anywhere if course, I’d actually pulled a couple of aircraft kits out of the loft for a bit of a change and got distracted by Vulcans, Victors, Nimrods and the like. However, my interest in the Cold War is purely an historical one and waking up one morning to find we were back in the wretched thing has somewhat dampened the enthusiasm for 1/72 scale WMDs.
Then there was a trip to the AMRSS show in Glasgow the other weekend and, duly re-inspired, Newton Stewart is back on. As usual, access to the garage is slightly compromised by all the junk which appears to have sneaked back in while I wasn’t looking, and as it has doubled as my spray booth over the winter there is also a fine mist of dark green, dark sea grey and light aircraft grey overspray on most horizontal surfaces. But a new clear out / tidy up / redecoration is ongoing and with a dehumidifier now in there the humidity levels are now much more acceptable (until the leccy bill arrives anyway).
I’ve also made a start on the buildings. Mr Swan’s magnum opus has drawings of the original station building and the later extended version, but not the wooden tea room on the Dumfries end so some educated guesswork was in order to arrive at a working drawing. This will be right at the front of the layout on top of the main control position so worth getting right
By the time I started this I had already acquired several photos of the building from all sides including a couple of very clear portraits by Norris Forrest. Further photos from a local history site on Facebook provided elusive details of the very neat gardens, which, although they appear in plenty of photos of the station, always appear to have (understandably) been photographed looking towards the track. FB turned up couple looking from the platform rather than towards it revealing small potting shed which doesn’t appear on any of the previously available photos, maps or plans, and what looks like a cold frame or compost bin in one corner. As a result I have enough to make a reasonable accurate model rather than an approximation. Another unexpected delight was that FB also turned up the names of a lot of the station staff, many of the group members having childhood memories of the station and being allowed to help out in the booking office and delivering parcels. A reminder that whilst we strive to get the technical and physical details correct, the folk memories and personal stories are much harder to capture, and very very transient.
Construction is reasonably conventional, Slaters plasticard stonework on a backing of 40 thou, reinforced behind with strips of 60 or 80 thou to keep it rigid. The ‘cellar’ to plant it in the platform will be added later once the walls have been mounted on a flat floor – there is a cill of either concrete or stone below the main rubble stonework and mortar flaunching below the timber bits which means the footprint is not exactly that of the walls, and it seemed easier that way.
The plan in Swan shows the layout of internal walls but not the function of the rooms; some are easy to work out but others less so. The booking office is fairly obvious from the plan and the tea room extension was in use as a parcels office at the very end but for the others I might have to go back to FB. “While you were all helping to collect tickets and nick buns from the tea room, can you remember what was going on in the other rooms ?”. I doubt anyone is going to turn up photos of the interior any time soon so it will be based on typical arrangements and some of the stations I’ve worked in over the years.
The engine shed is also under construction. The real one is English garden wall bond (row of headers, several rows of stretchers, row of headers etc) but that proved quite hard to find in embossed styrene, so it’s good old fashioned English bond- alternating rows of headers and stretchers – which was available in both my local model shops.
I had a drawing, drawn following my first ever visit in 1984 by counting bricks. It was transferred by simply counting bricks directly on the Slaters sheet and ended up 430mm long instead of the scale 460mm which the LMS ratings plan suggests it should be. A Jumbo is 200mm over buffers or thereabouts so two still fit end to end. As mentioned in an earlier post, an exact scale length model would have over-powered the scene. The windows are 6′ x 4′ – 24mm x 16mm and I’m really hoping I can turn up an etch or laser cut version at some point otherwise 21 of them from microstrip is going to get very tedious very quickly.
The plan is to keep two buildings on the go at once, that way any tedious bits on one can be diluted by working on the other for a bit. The larger ones are actually the easiest – the goods shed and St Couans Road Bridge are very simple structures and the loco shed is repetitive rather than complicated. The fiddly ones will be the station buildings with their multiple fine details and that extraordinary canopy on the island platform, and the signal boxes. I have no idea how I’m going go do the long lattice footbridge yet, but I do have a drawing …
While the station boards were inside for wiring up (of which more later) I took the opportunity to play trains … er … I mean check that some prototypical formations looked the part. It’s all very makeshift and the lighting is terrible but with the garage full of stuff waiting for a new shed to arrive this is the longest bit of track I have at the moment ! This is the west end of the station, the point motors visible in some of the pics will be hidden under the St Couans Rd bridge.
Most of these are still works in progress in terms of weathering, couplings, fitting passengers etc. All are prototypical for the Port Road.
2P 40623 of Stranraer (Hornby) with an LMS articulated Inter-District set, an epic kit bash from 4 Airfix non-corridors. Most of these sets seem to have ended up on the ScR but this one probably has rather too many door ventilator hoods still intact for the late 50s.
‘Kashmir’ (Bachmann) with the 1963 Easter Tour. Mostly Hornby Railroad but with a Bachmann RMB.
Generic 1950s 3 coach set. Bachmann’s gorgeous Compound with two Bachmann portholes and a Hornby horsebox and BTK.
Half a boat train (is better than …), Hornby Clan on the Euston – Stranraer sleeper with Bachmann Mk1s. The full rake includes another two coaches plus (on the up service) two parcels vans. It doesn’t fit in the platform but neither did the real one !
Two Newcastle -Stranraer boat trains – one in crimson and cream entirely RTR from Bachmann Thompsons and Hornby Gresleys, and one which will eventually be maroon from a mixture of Hornby, Comet sides on Lima bodies on Coopercraft chassis and Comet sides on old Bachman Thompsons. This will eventually get another Thompson if I ever get round to scratchbuilding one of the round cornered window ones.
Classic late Port Road – 80023 of Dumfries with a Mk1 CK and a porthole BSK. All Bachmann with a couple of Parkside and Ratio vans bringing up the rear.
More classic late Port Road – two coaches and two Black Fives, the pilot added to get a foreign engine and crew off an unbalanced working back home. Comet coaches, Hornby and DJH (on Hornby chassis) locos.
The road bridge at the Dumfries end of the layout was one of two features which dictated where everything else would go, the other being the relationship between the West Junction and any baseboard joints needed to get past the door. The bridge sits at the very end of the single line and had to be as far into the corner of the room as possible whilst still leaving room for the line to curve away on a 3rd radius (19″) curve, which itself sat inside the equally sharp descending curve of the west spiral.
The real bridge was a 35 foot span or thereabouts, with about 12′ headroom. The model is nearer 20 feet which squeezes in a couple of extra inches before the station throat pointwork starts and also just happens to be the span of a Peco N gauge bridge girder. The Peco girders are bow topped whereas the real ones are straight, but that’s hidden once the L girders supporting the handrails are added. I toyed briefly with the idea of sawing four of them in half lengthways and re-gluing to make parallel web girders but thought better of it.
I don’t have a drawing of this bridge but I do have one of the very similar Portpatrick harbour branch “Bridge over Turnpike Road near Peg 8“, a grainy oblique view from Britain From Above and some screen grabs from Dan MacLachlan’s wonderful cine film of the route (https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/3696) shot from the rear brake van window of a Stranraer – Dumfries train. The western abutment was also there to be photographed but was heavily altered and overgrown. Conventional wisdom with a waybeamed bridge like this is that the waybeams are supported underneath by a girder or sit within a trough girder, and the bridge ‘deck’ is merely a lightweight structure to stop permanent way men falling down the gaps. However, the Portpatrick bridge was different with a substantial timber deck supported from the bottom flanges of the girders and the chairs screwed directly to the deck. I made an assumption that this was because of lighter loads on the harbour branch, and that even if Bridge 162 had started out like this it would be unlikely to be in the same condition 100 years later with Stanier 4-6-0s pounding over it.
The model therefore has conventional waybeams (not easy to see on the photo because it’s all still white styrene). These are based on the cine film still and might acquire some girder detail later. I’m still not entirely sure whether what I’ve built is correct but it looks the part. The rest of the drawing came in quite useful for setting out the curved retaining walls. The rails are carried in 4 bolt chairs but only because I couldn’t find any 3 bolt ones.
The track over the real bridge was slightly curved, the model more so giving a very short transition curve between the 19″ radius curve and the 60″ radius points of the station throat. It’s all a bit tight but there is just enough room to get a 40′ locking bar and the down home signal in with enough room for a loco to stand at it before it all disappears into the back scene !
The bridge deck is permanently fixed to the ply track bed either side but the abutments and wing walls were built as a separate structure to be slotted in afterwards. The substructure is mostly 80 thou styrene with Slaters stone overlaid, the curved wing walls are laminated from thinner sheet and the embossed pattern is close enough for me to the greywacke and sandstone of the real one.
The abutment walls only go halfway back at which point the road is blocked off. The west spiral down to the fiddleyard is just beyond the bridge so the idea is to put a mirror there to reflect the other half of the bridge and the continuation of the road. The wing walls and embankment on the other side will be visible if looking over the top of the embankment so they will have to be modelled too, but that can wait until the backscene is in place and I can see exactly how much room I’ve got to work with. No point creating unnecessary work !
Not a fan of wiring, it’s right up there with carpentry and wheel quartering in the ‘evil but necessary’ jobs list.
Portwilliam is all code 100 Insulfrog so powering it up was easy, most of the wiring is simply taking power and point motors across baseboard joints. But Newton Stewart is code 75 Electrofrog so I’ve had to re-learn how to do how to do proper wiring. There will normally only be one operator (me) so there only need be one controller, but I’ll probaby have one for the scenic level and one for the fiddle dungeon if only to have a spare. The fiddle yard is code 100 and the half a dozen points fitted so far in it are insulfrog, but I’ll probably switch that over to electrofrog too (there is only a double loop down there so far).
Apart from 200 yards of red and black wire from Peter’s Spares most of the switches, connectors and tag strips used so far were recovered from the ill-fated Kentigerns and stored until now. The mahogany frame for the section switches control box was also recovered from a display case, it hinges up out of the way to avoid damage when not in use. The graph paper diagram is temporary.
All the pointwork in the main circuit is laid, although most will be replaced as Peco expands its bullhead range. The passing loop is also laid but the rest of the layout will have to wait until Peco’s supply returns to normal.
Most of the feeds for the tracks laid so far are in and being soldered up, it might even be working by Christmas although a shortage of accessory switches for frogs is going to be a problem. Some jury rigging may be required.
Meanwhile, the ‘country board’ on the fourth side of the circuit has acquired something of a north eastern appearance…
Portwilliam has a new fiddle yard too, although not on quite the same scale as Newton Stewart. Portwilliam lives in my study, which is the box room above the stairs in your standard 2.4 bedroomed 1960s semi, and readers with long memories may remember an earlier foam board and card confection which balanced precariously on top of the banister before common sense prevailed. It was replaced with a bog standard ‘two legs/fan of sidings’ affair which stood on the landing, whilst this was much safer for the stock it did restrict access to the adjacent bedrooms. It was later cut down to a sector plate so that it was only blocking one door, and it hinged down quite neatly when not in use meaning that it could be left attached if not actually up in the operating position most of the time. The blocked door wasn’t an issue when the occupant of that room was 6 years old and not much taller than the layout, but he’s nearly 12 now and not quite so careful at ducking under it.
So it’s back on the bannister, but this time in a more secure fashion. The sector plate is bolted to a framework which in turn is clamped firmly to the bannister. The design was a bit organic but now that the final position has been fixed, the clamps will be replaced with a couple of bolts screwing into the banister rail itself just as soon as I can find some discreet threaded inserts to screw them into. There are some 6mm ones in the garage but they’re a bit agricultural for this application.
At the front of the sector plate a ply tongue keeps it engaged with the support. The bridge between the sector plate and the edge of the layout is a sandwich of thin ply and foamboard, with some stout walls made from laminations of mounting board. 4mm bolts at both end act both to fix it in position and keep it aligned. The scenery extended partway onto the old fiddle yard, this bit has been separated and forms the new end of the layout.
The harbour branch had been altered some time ago to drop down at 1 in 35 behind the signalbox in preparation for its eventual move into the garage as part of the Greater Portwilliam scheme (check back in about 2030 for a progress report on that), and had its own single track shelf on the edge of the old fiddleyard. Of course it now has to climb back up to meet the sector plate but the total drop and climb back up is only about 10mm. One rail on each sector plate road is connected to a common return via the pivot, the other is connected via a sliding bolt so the road is only live when aligned. Basic stuff but it’s a long drop off one side ! There is just enough room to get into the gap between the bridging section and the bookshelves to get at the bolt. The sector plate will take a loco and two coaches or 8 wagons or so, which is plenty for now.
The various lifting bits across the door are more complicated than they otherwise might be because, apart from having to take three tracks across the door on three different levels (two of which aren’t actually level), they also need to accommodate the floozie cupboard. This is a tall cupboard in what would otherwise be the field behind the West signalbox, just big enough to take the stepladder and various tools too long to fit in the gardening shed or under the layout. And of course the floozie, which Jane says I must be keeping in there otherwise why would I spend so much time in the garage ? So instead of one lifting section on each line there are actually two. Imagine three Tower Bridges all superimposed on each other.
Door to the right, floozie cupboard in the centre. Upper scenic boards folded out of the way.
There were no suitable hinges available commercially as far as I could see, so I made my own from aluminium angle. It’s a bit chunky, 10x10mm would have done, but this was lockdown and it was in stock. So a production line was set up and several sets of 4mm bolts and wing nuts later, I had six sets of hinges.
What passes for engineering round here
A pad of 1.6mm copperclad is screwed down either side to provide firm anchorage for the track and somewhere to solder power feeds to.
I’m not sure using the hinges to transmit power is quite the done thing but it works!
Whilst the hinges manage track alignment at their end of each lifting section, where they meet in the middle things are a little more prone to misalignment. Latches made from the last few inches of the aluminium hold the ends together, and rail alignment is via 2mm OD / 1mm ID brass tube soldered to the outside of each rail with a 1mm brass pin through each one. So far the only issue has been finding the inevitable dropped pins !
Screw and washer track fixings are temporary.
The hidden lifting sections stack neatly against each other, held up by magnetic cupboard door catches and a stronger latch on the bottom one to hold it all securely.
Brushes etc hanging on the back of the the door, upper scenic boards folded and stored (propped up for this photo).
The east (Dumfries) end of the yard is a straightforward ladder starting immediately past the shed door. This leaves a wedge-shaped bit of board which will accommodate some kickback sidings and the main electrical distribution board for the layout. Because all the scenic boards hinge or lift up, rather than carrying power between boards using jumpers like any sensible set up, each board will have a single umbilical plugged in somewhere at the back. For now I’ve only laid two loops through the fiddle yard but each of these will take two full length trains with crossovers halfway round. Just the bits across the door to do now !
East end throat with the station boards lifted and folded back. Only the road with the 40 on it and the one adjacent are pinned down, the rest are just laid out to see what fits.
Heading clockwise from the last pic, the structure gauging 40 and its not quite 12 wheeled diner sit on the halfway crossovers. Station boards in their lowered position in the foreground, with supports for the next boards spanning the whole fiddle yard.
A bit further clockwise, 8 Mk 1s look lost in the west end of the loops, scenic boards hinged out of the way (and propped with the spirit level !). Tool storage on the left is the well for the sector plate. The west throat (seen in part 1) is behind us.
Portwilliam and Newton Stewart 