West Highland Line V4, a 1980's West Highland Line layout

[young37215]

13 hours ago, 03060 said:

Hello Rob, has there been any progress to report regarding the Lochan, please, did you manage to achieve a satisfactory result with the resin ?

 

Regards,

Ian.

 

Hi Ian

 

Nothing done with the Lochan yet. I ran out of momentum and decided that because the resin has a 6 month sell by date once opened, it could wait until the autumn. That way I can learn from the small Lochan and still have plenty of time to use the residual resin on the adjoining and larger Lochan. The recent winter modelling season has seen me complete:

• 95% of the landscape surrounding Arrochar and the mountaineous region
• 5 BSOT conversions
• 5 signal box detailing work
• respraying 37111 project
• several weathering projects

 

When written down I feel that it has been a reasonably productive period. For the next few months I may potter on the layout from time to time but will mainly look to take advantage of the warmer weather and enjoy being outside. There are still a few BSOT's to be viewed and photographed!  Hopefully come the autumn my motivational batteries will be recharged and I can kick on with finishing the remaining scenery.

 

 

[03060]

13 hours ago, young37215 said:

 

Hi Ian

 

Nothing done with the Lochan yet. I ran out of momentum and decided that because the resin has a 6 month sell by date once opened, it could wait until the autumn. That way I can learn from the small Lochan and still have plenty of time to use the residual resin on the adjoining and larger Lochan. The recent winter modelling season has seen me complete:

• 95% of the landscape surrounding Arrochar and the mountaineous region
• 5 BSOT conversions
• 5 signal box detailing work
• respraying 37111 project
• several weathering projects

 

When written down I feel that it has been a reasonably productive period. For the next few months I may potter on the layout from time to time but will mainly look to take advantage of the warmer weather and enjoy being outside. There are still a few BSOT's to be viewed and photographed!  Hopefully come the autumn my motivational batteries will be recharged and I can kick on with finishing the remaining scenery.

 

 

Thanks for the update Rob ... I can assure you that your list of winter achievements puts mine to shame !! LoL.

 

Love seeing the photos of the layout as you have your little running sessions so please keep posting them and give us all our 1980s WHL fix to keep us going !

 

Kind regards,

Ian.

[young37215]

During the summer months I do'nt tend to do much modelling but this does'nt mean that I stop thinking about modelling. 03060 recently pointed out to me that the July edition of MLIPlus has an article on weedkilling trains and so it was off to WH Smith to buy a copy. Previously I have relied largely on an article written by Peter Hall of Platform 5 fame for the RCTS on the subject. The MLI Plus article fleshes out the detail a little more to the extent I feel confident in what I want by way of the WHL4 Fisons weedkilling train. Here I am short a class 100 DMU driving car, a DTCL which to the best of my knowledge is not available currently in model form. The weedkilling train was an annual visitor to the WHL although I anticipate it getting more frequent usage on WHL4 using the engineering path in the WTT. At present the WHL4 formation comprises a CCT, 3 water carrying TTV's, 2 ex LMS staff coaches and a Triang inspection coach as a spray coach.

 

 

 

I have already accepted that the livery of the ex-passenger coaches will be the later Scherings Agrochemicals colour they were painted in 1987 as this is the colour factory painted in creating the various limited editions from Invicta Models.  One day I might attempt a respray in to the previous red and yellow Fisons colours but for now my efforts are focused on the DTCL to replace the old Triang inspection vehicle. The 1988 picture below shows the weedkilling train in action at Tulloch where the consist matches the WHL4 one almost exactly.

 

 

 

Edited July 16 by young37215

[Dunalastair]

One approach to a class 100, but parts may be hard to find

http://www.stephenjohnsonrailways.co.uk/Class 100.htm

There was always Shapeways ... but 3D printed cabs should be easy enough to design and print if sides and a chassis are available.

[young37215]

14 hours ago, Dunalastair said:

One approach to a class 100, but parts may be hard to find

http://www.stephenjohnsonrailways.co.uk/Class 100.htm

There was always Shapeways ... but 3D printed cabs should be easy enough to design and print if sides and a chassis are available.

 

I did read the summary of how the class 100 could be built but I would not feel confident it building my own even if the parts could be sourced. Hopefully a manufacturer will get around to the class 100 at some stage, an increasing number of first generation DMU variants seem to get produced these days. I am happy to wait and if I get around to respraying the coaches, I will attempt the creation of one of the other spray coaches Fisons used which are more easily done using existing models. 

 

Having got the weedkilling train out of the sidings it seemed sensible to give it a run.

 

 

 

 

[young37215]

Following a discussion on @thegreenhowards Glenfinnan thread and guidance from @Darius43, I recently acquired 2 reasonably priced cranes from Ebay for the Flangeway Salmon wagon. These appear to be resin 3D prints which are a fair, if not perfect, representation of the real thing but more than good enough for what I want. I struggled for decent colour reference pictures, this is as good as I could find which shows the cranes.

 

 

 

 

Out of the packet the 3D prints are a grey colour and need a little tidying up with abrasives. They are not quite wide enough for the Flangeway Salmon which meant I  had to trim the end fixing bolts away.

 

 

A coat of paint and the 2 cranes plus generator look pretty good to me. Before glueing them down I want to get a second coat of yellow and pick out a couple of mechanical bits in a steel or similar colour.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Darius43]

Nice work.  

 

It may be worth giving feedback to the 3D printer about the width of the Flangeway Salmon wagons as he may be able to adjust the print to fit for future “prints”.

 

I also find that an initial coat of white primer on the print before applying the yellow gives more depth to the yellow finish.

 

 

Cheers

 

Darius

 

 

 

[03060]

1 hour ago, young37215 said:

 I struggled for decent colour reference pictures, this is as good as I could find which shows the cranes.

 

Morning Rob,

 

Are there no good photos in the Key Publishing 'Engineers Wagons' bookazine? I thought that there was a good feature including 4mm wagon mods in either the first or second of these titles.

 

I'm afraid that I'm away on holiday so don't have access to any of my books, etc.

 

I'm mightily impressed with the weathering on your Flangeway Salmon, I had to have a double take that it wasn't a real photo with the new 3D prints superimposed onto it !

 

I need to source some of these in N gauge for myself although I think that they've been available from the N Gauge Society before.

 

Following with interest.

 

Regards,

Ian.

Edited July 8 by 03060
Punctuation.

[PaulCheffus]

2 hours ago, 03060 said:

I need to source some of these in N gauge for myself although I think that they've been available from the N Gauge Society before.

Hi

 

They are but unfortunately oos at the moment

https://www.ngsjoin.com/crane-detailing-kit-for-kits-27a--b-salmon-wagons-ngsk0272-702-p.asp

 

Cheers

 

Paul

[young37215]

7 hours ago, 03060 said:

Morning Rob,

 

Are there no good photos in the Key Publishing 'Engineers Wagons' bookazine? I thought that there was a good feature including 4mm wagon mods in either the first or second of these titles.

 

I'm afraid that I'm away on holiday so don't have access to any of my books, etc.

 

I'm mightily impressed with the weathering on your Flangeway Salmon, I had to have a double take that it wasn't a real photo with the new 3D prints superimposed onto it !

 

I need to source some of these in N gauge for myself although I think that they've been available from the N Gauge Society before.

 

Following with interest.

 

Regards,

Ian.

 

Yes, there is a single picture of a Salmon with crane in the Key Publishing bookazine volume 1 but it's not the best as a reference picture. There are also several pictures of model Salmon built from Cambian kits with cranes from other producers. 

 

The weathering on the Salmon chassis is a little monotone for my liking, it is just a coat of Railmatch frame dirt and much the same can be said about the Queen Mary brake van and several other wagons. I have jars of Railmatch oily steel and brake dust which should add some variation when I get around to doing some more airbrush work.

 

 

 

9 hours ago, Darius43 said:

Nice work.  

 

It may be worth giving feedback to the 3D printer about the width of the Flangeway Salmon wagons as he may be able to adjust the print to fit for future “prints”.

 

I also find that an initial coat of white primer on the print before applying the yellow gives more depth to the yellow finish.

 

 

Cheers

 

Darius

 

 

 

 

Thanks for your input on this, it has been most helpful. The instructions with the cranes suggested using primer as well, I chose not to because I wanted a careworn appearance which I aim to achieve by painting the cranes solely in yellow using my aincient faded yellow enamel paint. I have fed back to the seller of the cranes, they are 13.2mm wide compared against the 14.7mm width of the Salmon. I will probably fabricate some end posts for my cranes out of plasticard which when painted I hope will blend in.

 

[young37215]

Having woken up the layout I spent a short time moving some of the engineering trains around. The tribometer train also did a lap despite, to the best of my knowledge, the trib never appeared on the WHL but I like the colours. The train is pictured at Crianlarich heading south.  

 

 

 

 

 

[03060]

1 hour ago, young37215 said:The tribometer train also did a lap despite, to the best of my knowledge, the trib never appeared on the WHL but I like the colours.

 

 

 

 

I'm sure that there were a lot of train movements on the WHL that we will never know about, I see a lot of photos with things that I've only ever seen 'appear' once in them ... and as you say  ... it does look good. 👍

 

Regards,

Ian.

[young37215]

With an hour or two to kill I decided to check over the layout as a precursor to the forthcoming modelling season. Nothing complicated I thought, just run some trains as I had left things half way through a running day of the 1981 WTT. Stopping half way through a day is not a problem but you do need start off from the same point in time so that the diagrammed movements all work out as they were designed. 37037 was in charge of 7D12, 13.24 Mallaig Junction Yard to Mossend and is seen on the approach to Crianlarich.

 

 

 

Edited August 28 by young37215

[Module00]

Very please to see these new pictures of your awesome layout. I am happy to read this thread again. 👍😃

[young37215]

Soon after I started running I encountered a problem with one of the servos on the Glenfinnan loop which would not work. The loop is set back above Garelochead and not easily accessed although I did build it in such a way that it can be removed should any work be required. There are several screws to undo and wires to detach but I managed to lift the  2400 x 100 mm baseboard so that it could be worked on. The other servos operated by the Megapoints Servo Controller were all still working so my focus was on the individual servo. I replaced the servo with a new one which worked as it should under test. Annoyingly I found that when I replaced the baseboard and reconnected to the Megapoints network, none of the servos linked to the controller would work.  After a further hour of abortive fault finding I gave up and retired for the day. 

 

Whilst seeking the replacement servo I found that I only had 2 Hobbyking HK15178 servos left in stock. I decided to order some more because I need another 6 to complete the automation of the signals but was disappointed to learn that the servo has gone out of production meaning I need to find an alternative. With over 70 servos on WHL4 and this being the first failure in 7 years, I am not unduly concerned but as a creature of habit I am not looking forward to working out what I can use as a substitute.  

 

 

I also found where the spiders had been hanging out during the summer!

 

 

 

Edited August 30 by young37215

[franciswilliamwebb]

3 hours ago, young37215 said:

I also found where the spiders had been hanging out during the summer!

 

 

 

A 37/8! 😉

[Dunalastair]

I have had spiders string filament between N gauge telegraph poles. I was unable to train them to equip the whole layout ...

[37081LochLong]

Poor 37112... Captured!

[03060]

6 hours ago, 37081LochLong said:

Poor 37112... Captured!

You'll have to name it "Loch Eerie" now !

[young37215]

Generally speaking the Megapoints network that I use to control points and signals is pretty robust which is just as well because the layout is unuseable without point changing capability. I worked my way through the problem and narrowed it down to a network issue before finally realising that the servo controller ID had been corrupted which meant that it was not receiving instructions from the network. After a read of the instructions to refresh my memory of how to change the ID, a quick reset was completed and everything was back to normal. So much for a quick running session, it took a total of about 3 hours to replace the servo and restore the network to full working order. After that I felt I deserved an hour of running...

 

 37264 departs Garelochead with the empty Alcan hoppers en route back to Blythe.

 

 

 

 

[young37215]

With all of the controls now functioning as they should, I managed a couple of hours of trouble free running. 37037 was captured arriving at Ardlui with 7D12.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 1 by young37215

[young37215]

37178 departs Arrochar and threads its way north with 8B20, 14.15 Sighthill to Corpach. The trees and bushes around Arrochar and to the southern end of the station need adding which will be the first task of the autumn work.

 

 

 

 

[young37215]

37104 heads north with 8B13 seen departing Crianlarich and heading out across the Glenbruar viaduct. 

 

 

 

 

[young37215]

Having moved the weedkilling train around I noticed that FA99905 had been fitted with windows to the front of the coach. From what I had been able to find about the coach FA99905, it was a staff and dormitory coach and not equipped for use as a spray coach. From available pictures found the coach is incorrectly fitted with front windows. However the picture below shows a shortened weedkilling train where the spray coach is probably FA99903 where, using this consist as my template, I have decided to shorten the WHL4 weed killing train by removing the non-prototypical inspection salon. The front of FA99905 should be painted yellow with the steps and gangway removed to bring it more into line with the front coach in the picture below but nothing looks too difficult should I choose to go down this route. 

 

 

 Having tweaked the weedkilling consist it seemed appropriate to give it another run. 37085 was tasked with hauling the train pictured on the approach to Garelochead.

 

 

 

 

[young37215]

A filthy day yesterday meant no golf resulting in me having time to do some work on the layout. I made a start on installing the trees and foliage at Arrochar and by the end of the day had made good progress. In between the tree planting I continued to run the days timetable which saw 37043 on 1T45, 12.45 Mallaig to Glasgow seen on departure from Ardlui. The more I look at Ardlui, the more I am thinking that I need to add greater height to the mountainside above the station; just another task on the 'to do' list!