Northroader

Recently I posted a few pictures of some of my models on the layout design thread to illustrate a point, and it struck me I really ought to get a thread started for them. I’m more of a branch line person than a main liner by inclination, and I’m very drawn to the era around 1900. The trains were nice and compact, with smart colourful paint jobs. For around the last thirty years I’ve settled on modelling in 0 scale, having previously dabbled in most of the other scales, and I find this scale is really suited to what I want. It also gives a satisfying feeling to the bulk of individual models when you pick them up, which I like. You should be able to recognise this as an Alphagraphix kit, with a chassis tacked on from brass strip and plastikard bits, and Slaters wheels, so quite cheap. No links with the firm, but they are a good starting point for this sort of thing. https://www.alphagraphixkits.co.uk The printed card is just glued on to backing card, cut out with a sharp craft knife, and the cut edges tinted. It’s also gained a “corrugated iron” roof using a Salters plastikard sheet, the GS&WR being very fond of this stuff as a building material. Where my layout falls down is in the track gauge, as it’s done using 32mm width, rather than the Irish 36 and a bit mm. gauge. These days the latter is quite easy to do, with copper clad sleepering and f/b rail, and it does give a far more realistic appearance, referring to “Arigna Town /Belmullet” and “Rosses Point” on this website. It’s just that I also use my line to run British outline models as well, changing the backscene, buildings, and rolling stock as required.

All very well, I’m just looking at the date on the calendar.

There are still some popups appearing, but not so many as before, thank goodness. There’s still a lot of weeding out needed, so it could be some time before it settles, I fancy.

Well, RMweb is back up and running on a new migration (!?) although it seems a Vale of tears before it got there. Still some things needing to be tweaked, and a whole wodge of everyone’s pictures from the last twelve months sunk with all hands.

With an “I shot JR” tee shirt.

Just room enough for a tidy layout in that second bedroom upstairs.

Track, VG...buildings,VG... but that backscene really lifts the layout up and gives you a real feeling of place. Great work.

Looking at the photo, I think the lever is working a locking bolt in the turntable, so that when the t/t is lined up with the main line and bolted, the signal ground disc attached is cleared. Once I did a model ending with a sector table, but I found with shunting, it was always best to line the table up with whichever road you’d set to at the other end of the loop, or you’d end up with something down in the pit.

Migrated to Photobucket?

If I’m honest, the service has been terrible since the last software change a couple of weeks before Christmas. I fancy it must have been a deal with free software but flooded out with adverts. Anyhow, never mind about that, here we are with a reliable, quick, uncluttered site. Take a bow, Mr. Boskanay. Now, where’s me little enjins?

Well, I did show them on my thread on RMweb, and...er, what’s that? Oh yeah, right.... So... I mustn’t clutter up a track planning thread, so watch this space, I’ll try and get something going here.

Run rounds, who needs them? (Discuss) With a layout purporting to be a micro, you get a fiddle yard feeding the main board with, say, two or three roads, which may, or may not, merge into points before exiting into the fiddle yard. All very well for wagon shunting where you keep the loco at the fiddle yard end. But, if you want to have an actual station with trains running in, there’s the problem that the arriving train ends up with its loco trapped at the dead end, and an allowance to runround the loco needs adding. Plain track with point, sector table, turntable, extra road to be added?? All taking up space, as John has shown. How about extending the line into a “pocket”? Here the main line on the station board keeps on going through a hole in the backscene and on to a loco size cassette. (14” long in 0 scale, which takes in three-axle tender engines, 4-4-0s need not apply) This can turn the loco, with much less space than a turntable, and provide accommodation. The pocket is 12” wide, so you can have odd items of rolling stock or locos lurking on cassettes as well. When the train arrives, you just detach the loco and run it into the pocket, then a second loco comes off the fiddle yard, takes over the shunting and leaves with the train. When the main line is clear, you just do a light engine movement out of the pocket and into the fiddle yard.

“Less is more” (text for today) I’ve got this thing about what I call the “Lilliput Lane” approach. They were a firm producing collectors pieces of small moulded models of picturesque buildings. Generally the architecture was boiled right down, and the detailing went to a “roses round the door” approach, to the extent that you could regard them as “twee”. They’ve gone out of business, but you can still find them. They did a few of railway stations, the main building plus a loco, which I enjoyed seeing, as to me they capture the spirit of the place very well. Translating this to an Irish setting, you can have: There’s a building, (sort of “Ballaghaderreen” in half relief) a loco, (Leinster Models kit) and the other essential, for me, a back scene. What you can see is 0 scale on an acreage of one square foot. I’m more of a builder than an operator, and I like doing 7mm modelling because of the bulk of the individual models. Now, I agree that a bit more should be added out of necessity, a couple of six wheeler coaches for the loco to pull, and a few, very few, wagons to shunt in a siding. You have a microlayout, where you can test out what you’ve built, and potter with some shunting for the odd half an hour. Just a small personal thing.

I’m glad to see Castle Rackrent is being mentioned, to my mind it is an outstanding model, very Irish in application, and yet built as an operating model railway without copying any particular place. It must have been among the first to use the now common branch line terminus to fiddle yard configuration?, as well as the kickback siding to mask the fiddle yard. Then at the time it was done, it used the correct 5’3” gauge, which would have caused real problems back then, these days you can get the right wheelsets and axles commercially, making it much simpler. Two pointers in the design, see how the backscene follows a flowing reverse curve to cross the tracks at the overbridge, the tracks taking an opposite handed curve, all too often now you see the bridge placed square across the tracks. Then there’s the turntable, good to save pointwork space, and necessary on a lot of Irish lines, but problematical in getting out of proportion to the rest of the layout with a small line and a table for tender locos.

It might be worth remembering that the Armagh disaster brought about the Regulation of Railways Act in 1889 requiring continuous brakes, block signalling, and interlocking. It would seem that such things were in minimal use before then, certainly the GNRI were found lacking, so it could be that the MGWR didn’t make much use of McK & H gear in any case, say away from main junctions. The creation of the RSCo was good timing for supply of gear, and study of old photos show their signals are preponderant, and it looks the same for the GS&WR. Then there’s the somewhat delicate issue of signal cabins. I made what I thought was a MGWR cabin, with a low pitched roof and the levers to the back of the cabin, but later I gathered this pattern was a replacement for an earlier cabin, a RSCo type with steeper pitch roof and levers to the front. During the Civil War, remote country signal boxes were a prime target for arson attacks.

A trip way back in the past, to the Jan/Feb 1950 “Railway Modeller”, which set quite a lot of modellers off. It was a 6x4 giving a branch line with a continuous run. I’ve drawn it from memory, not having the original to hand, and you’ve got a small terminus, with a nice length of run through a halt and a siding, then disappearing behind a scenic break where it splits, one line which could be used for stabling going on to join in front of the station to form the oval, and the other into a dead end siding to form a fiddle yard, although since then cassettes have been introduced. Then it’s just a question of tailoring it to where you want, and you might need to consider your waistline with the access hole. I did try it, making a softwood frame and insulation board top, but I did it as a one piece, and not having the dedicated space, it had to store under my bed, not the best place, and I was in my late teens, away from home to college and so on, so it never really stood a chance.

I like Iain Rices book, but some of his designs towards the back of this tend to squeeze a siding too many, Clun, f’instance. The Bishops Castle plan you show could happily lose the middle crossover, and get shorter in the process.

I know I’m a total Philistine, but I’m afraid I never worry about searching for a “back story”, if I fancy what I’m looking at, in it goes. It would be nice to get up that way and look round, though.

Cahirciveen was the first bit of Ireland I “knew” as it was featured as Prototype Layout No.3 in the early “Railway Modeller”, placing it in the early 1950s (sorry I cant be more specific) It was the terminus for some time before the line was finally finished to Valentia Harbour, so kept the engine shed and turntable. Recently Ernie has put an album of pictures of the branch on Flickr, some of them breathtakingly beautiful, and doing it in N should give you the chance of some plain line running through this. i think it could form a setting for any of the old Irish firms without embarrassment, including the SLNC? Me, I’ll miss the Blimp.

The most recent wagon sheets I’ve done use cooking foil, which should work for the roof sheets just as well. Fold the edges over flat to get a strong neat finish, and enclose battens at each side, as well as a length of thread for tie downs. Then I paint with Humbrol no. 1 primer, and a top coat of charcoal grey. You can letter them with a springbow pen, but don’t bear down too hard, or the point will cut through the foil.

All you need now is to fit rail wheels under the bus?

The NER/LNER J72 0-6-0T “Joem “ are very close dimensionally to the MGWR E / GSR J26 “Bat”, which lasted long, and got out into odd corners. If you cut a foot off the back of a GWR 2251 0-6-0, the chassis is a good match for the MGWR L / GSR J18/19, although the superstructure will need a lot of work.

Interesting question, with those old Victorian 2-4-0s I’d never be to a tater about slight differences in wheelbase and so on. However, the LNWR Precursors were built as express passenger engines with 6’6” diameter drivers, and these are very noticeable in size. Now if they’d have done a Precedent with 5’6” drivers, the field would have been wide open. The only Irish ones near this were the GSWR 56-59 class, and the 64-65 class, both with 6’6” drivers, McConnell coming from Crewe, and his locos looking quite close in details, the main problem being the raised fireboxes. Then there’s the MGWR Mail engines 7-12 class with 6’3” drivers and flyaway cabs. As a pregroup Modeller I would enjoy titivating either job up, but the Inchicore engines went in the 1890s, and the Broadstone jobs around 1910. Now if they were in the 6’0” - 5’6” blockhole, you’d find some interesting ones lasting right up to the 1950s, which I fancy would have a much wider appeal for a lot of modellers. The other thing is how much notice you take of the tenders, things like narrow bodies and springs above the frames.

Shame to hear that, but you have gained a wealth of experience to make a success of the next one.

Do you reckon there should have been a DWWR branch to Glendalough?