Tullygrainey

Thanks everyone for all the positive feedback. I have a fondness for modelling rusty metal (You guessed!) especially corrugated iron, so building this layout let me to do plenty of that. There’s endless variety to be had, from pristine - not a lot of that hereabouts - through peeling paint to heavy corrosion. Halfords grey primer makes a good base coat, sometimes overcoated with Humbrol Metal Cote 27004 and polished a bit. I then use matt enamels, mostly Humbrol 70, 98, 100 & 110 with a bit of artist’s acrylic Raw Umber here and there and Humbrol weathering powder, Rust and Dk Brown. A stiff brush is useful for blending the colours on the surfaces and dusting weathering powder onto the wet paint adds texture as well as colour. The mill building was my first experiment with using hairspray to produce a peeling paint effect. You may be familiar with the technique but if not... First the base colour is applied (Halfords primer), then the rust colours are brushed on where needed, left to dry and then the whole thing coated with 3 or four generous layers of hair spray. Next spray the top colour, in this case Humbrol acrylic Brunswick Green from a rattle can. Finally, some warm water, an old toothbrush, a toothpick and some judicious scrubbing causes the hairspray to dissolve and lift the top coat. I have a tendency towards making things too large in the first instance and the mill building eventually lost its top storey, like the station at Donaghadee Alan

Sorry JB, I think I misunderstood your question. The rusty mobile compressor is a white metal kit from S&D Models' Phoenix 43 range. Alan

Ted is really making that sandwich last.. Mr & Mrs McQuillan wait for the 3.15 into town. He'll slip off to the bookies while she's at her mother's. That timetable is for the mainline, not this branch. And it's 5 years out of date.. Seen better days. Doubt if it'll start.. The toilet is hard to find around here.. and a disappointment when you do. Is that Titanic's anchor chain?

I love the light in these photos. I can feel the heat of that sun on my back.

Many thanks Mayner. The Welsh slate quarry workings were certainly one of the influences for this. The passenger line is indeed self-contained. The shunting part of the layout is DCC but the passenger line is DC, controlled by a simple shuttle from BLOCKsignalling. It looks after itself at the back there, appearing and disappearing at regular intervals. Your ironstone layout sounds interesting. I imagine real stone could be difficult to control Cheers, Alan

Thanks JB, Most of the buildings are mounting card with embossed plastic cladding - brick, corrugated iron and stone from Slaters, Wills etc. Window frames are mostly card or paper stuck to clear plastic sheet. I use OHP laser print film for this. The engine shed is the one exception, being a balsa frame clad with coffee stirrers. For me, weathering the buildings is the most enjoyable bit of the build but also the bit that often goes wrong! I never feel I'm quite in control of it . Still, most things are retrievable and with paint you can often just start again and there's a great sense of satisfaction when a building starts to 'live'. To get the weathered whitewashed brick effect, I brush on a rough all-over coat of Titanium white artist's acrylic and then before it's quite hardened, use a fibreglass pencil to abrade the surface back to the the original colour in the relevant places. If you overdo it, you can always put more paint on and go again. The damp stains and rust marks are dry brushed on, again using artist's acrylics in suitably mixed shades of grot. I usually finish with a bit of weathering powder then a light dusting of acrylic matt varnish to seal everything. This also has the bonus of making the windows look in need of cleaning. The yellow mill diesel is a Hornby 0-4-0 chassis with all the extraneous bits cut off and mounted underneath a scratch-built plastic card body. I'll post some pictures of the build for this and of some of the other oddities. Regards, Alan

Thank you David. Costa coffee stirrers

This thread concerns my small O-16.5 narrow gauge industrial yard, 4ft x 2ft and part of a mineral line. Among the things that sparked my interest in NG was a forum thread showing that, by applying some surgery and a change of scale to the humble Hornby 0-4-0 Pug, a 4mm saddletank engine could morph into a 7mm quarry loco. Then there was the stay in the Londonderry Arms Hotel in Carnlough with a chance to walk the old mineral railway line up from the harbour towards the quarries. More recently, rummaging around in the remnants of the iron ore workings above Cargan added to the mix. Eventually I had a number of butchered modified ‘Smokey Joes’ in a drawer, all seeking a layout to run on. I imagined a quarry to quay scenario but extending the house out into the garden to accommodate it wasn’t an option. A smaller bit of the whole, with both quarry and quay off-scene, seemed more realistic - a yard where raw material arrives, is processed and despatched. And maybe a little NG passenger line slinking back and forward in the background? What would the raw material be? Limestone? ( Carnlough). Iron Ore? (Cargan). Granite? (the Mournes though no railways involved there). Barley Sugar? (maybe not). At this point, conceptualising gave way to woodworking under the pressure to DO SOMETHING. Suffice to say that the question remains unresolved. On this layout, large chunks of grey stuff arrive, are processed in a mill and depart as smaller chunks of grey stuff. And the layout still doesn’t have a name. I’m starting this thread a bit late in the day since the layout is already fairly complete (I think we can all agree that no layout is ever truly ‘finished’). So, the pictures below show the state of play at the moment. I can talk further about how we got here if it’s of interest. Despite the influences, any resemblance to local prototypes is tenuous at best. Cheers, Alan Meelmore brings stone from the quarries

Hi Patrick, I have 2 Oxford Rail Adams Radials and they both seem to run ok but I don't know how they compare with the Hornby model. The first one survived a BCDRisation, encouraging me to buy the second one for more of the same. I have the chassis here in front of me as I write. The crankpins simply unscrew from the wheels and there's plenty of length on them to accommodate both connecting and coupling rods on either driving wheel. Moving the connecting rod onto the rear axle should be easy enough - keep Galteemore's advice about distances in mind though. On the Oxford rail version, you may be able to remount the cylinder block on the chassis. The motor on the Oxford Rail chassis projects quite far forward, about 27mm ahead of the front driving axle but, looking at the photos of the NCC S Class, it should just about fit inside the smokebox on your body. Good luck with this. I've always really liked these engines. Alan

Thank you very much gentlemen. I will certainly give that serious thought. Yes, the N Antrim mineral lines were one of the inspirations. I'm pleased that that shows through a bit

Thank you jhb, At the risk of hijacking this thread... a few pics. It's a fictitious yard somewhere between a quarry and a quay. No name so far, beyond "the narrow gauge one" Alan

Patrick, If it helps with the decision, here are some pics of Peco's dedicated O-16.5 track, firstly alongside the standard Peco OO stuff and then in situ on my O-16.5 micro layout. Alan

Thank you. Yes, give it a go. And let us see it if you do. Best Alan

I'm pleased you like it. Thank you J-Mo. As I said in the original post, the starting point was a Hornby 0-4-0 Caledonian Pug though there wasn't much left of the superstructure by the time I'd finished with the razor saw. The body mods are mostly plastic card, brass wire and bits from the spares box. The tank needed a lot filed off each side to get the profile I wanted. it was then skinned with 0.25mm plastic card so as to extend the tank forward over the smokebox without having an obvious join. The rivets are Archer 3D resin transfers. I used a Hornby spares pack for the crossheads and sliders - Part No. X8834, Class 28xx 2-8-0 valve gear set. They're a bit large and there might be better alternatives. The cylinders are sections cut from the barrel of a disposable propelling pencil, the sort you buy in 10 packs at the supermarket. They're just glued to the chassis. It's DCC chipped which tames it a bit and it runs reasonably well. It's probably a bit over-scale but that's what you get for starting with a Hornby Pug Alan

I saw this layout in Donaghadee* yesterday. Really inspiring stuff! The accuracy and attention to detail are brilliant. Thanks for the chat and the chance to see it Gordon * Andrews Hall, opposite Shore Street Presbyterian Church, until Saturday

Thanks Eoin, those look a bit more refined than what I've been using! Alan

Apologies if this is a question with an obvious answer but can anyone recommend the best tool or technique for stripping the insulation from fine wire, such as decoder wire? My present wire stripper is too clumsy for the job and I'm forever cutting the wire along with the insulation.

I used bits from an MJT wagon compensating fret Alan

I'm enjoying this thread. Using the Slaters 4mm kit for a MR 8 ton 3 plank dropside and working from a photo in Des Coakham's BCDR book (Colourpoint, 2010, pg 207), I had a go at a BCDR 8 ton open BCDR 8 ton.HEIC Whoops, not sure what happened to the pic there

In the railway station in Venice back in November 2008, I saw only one piece of graffiti. Sadly, this was it...

Hi Colm I've only just discovered this thread. I really like your BCDR fleet. Having played on the abandoned trackbed out of East Belfast as a kiddie in the 1960s, I also have a soft spot for the BCDR. You've done a great job with No 26. I had a go at that one using a London Road Models L&Y Barton Wright 2F 0-6-0 kit as a starting point. I'm reasonably pleased with it but I think the proportions are wrong. Two foot rule applies! It also runs like a dog at the moment so some more work needed there. Can I ask how you handled the BCDR number plates on the cab side? Best, Alan

Thanks for this Leslie. Hope by the time you read this you're back on the grid . Best wishes, Alan

Sorry to hear that Leslie. You will be missed. By the way, have you abandoned your website or has it just moved somewhere else? Apologies if I've missed something along the way. Alan

Thanks everyone for the encouragement and the kind comments. I have a love/hate relationship with kit building. I love it today Yes Leslie, I'm very pleased with the rolling stock. Maybe see you at Bangor in April? The layout is a small fictitious dock scene vaguely inspired by Dundrum. Called Loughan Quay (say it out loud) Alan