David Holman

With the left hand baseboard going fairly well, it made sense to try and finish it, so that meant addressing the quayside and ground cover. First though, I finished off the above ground parts of the signal, by adding the ladder and finial, before touching up more of the paintwork. The idea for the ground work was that there would be substantial stone blocks making up the harbour wall itself, with various sized stone setts filling in between the tracks. In practice, that has meant a lot of scribed DAS clay. Began with a foundation of mounting card, to bring the ground level up to about 1.5mm below the rail tops. This was fixed down with contact adhesive, which was then lightly painted with PVA, before smearing/thumbing on the DAS to about 1mm thick. I smoothed the surface and rubbed it down once dry, but the surface is far from even. Ok, the variations are probably only +/- 0.25mm, but that is enough to create a bit of texture. After that, came the laborious process of scribing in all the setts and stones. The tools for this are very basic - a square and a scriber, plus a rat tailed file for making some of the scribed lines a bit wider/deeper. An old toothbrush is also important for clearing away the dust. Half an hour in, it occurred to me that some of you out there would be contemplating laser printing various sections, but once you get in the zone, it is a pleasantly mindless operation - although best done in chunks of no more than half an hour or so. I used a straight edge for the long lines, but everything else was done by hand in a deliberately random fashion. Smaller setts go parallel to the rails, with larger ones at right angles in between. For the harbour wall, the large stone blocks have much smaller gaps between them, while I have added some 5mm square strip wood to act as a barrier to any craft moored against it. The not insignificant task of painting everything comes next, but thus far, it seems to look the part.

There was also the Mullaghmore harbour tramway (1820-1840) and Barium Consolidated's 2' gauge line (late 1920s) en route. By the by, I may have to start and a thread on the bizarre interpretations of an Amazon Tablet. This morning, it replaced tramway with 'grandpa'! Not sure what planet it comes from, but if ever strange words come out in my posts, it is not me!

Ordinance Survey - the organisation behind all map making in these islands.

Well done Mark and we'll done, Ken!

I've got LEDs in the trainshed and locoshed on Fintonagh, which give a nice low level light. Unfortunately, no idea what type they are and pretty much impossible to access now...

The line at Clifden was a two foot gauge, isolated affair, serving the Marconi radio transmitter station. Not much to it, though a couple of well known photos exist showing Alcock and Brown after their historic flight across the Atlantic, having crash landed nearby. They were transported down to Clifden in a rail mounted motor car, which could make a nice diorama. Clifden was also the intended terminus of the Ulster and Connaught Railway - a three foot gauge line starting at Newry, taking in some of the Cavan and Leitrim, then wandering across to the West coast. No exactly micro layout though, but the possibilities are endless.

Pretty high tech for the day and still look great now.

Works beautifully through the windows.

A bit of gentle fettling for the area around the ground frame this week. Chinchilla dust on gloss black paint for the ground cover, subsequently gone over with acrylics and weathering powders when dry. The water tank has been fixed down and any gaps fills with DAS. On the platform ramp, made a gulley, down to a raised drain to take away excess water when loco tanks are being filled. As for the signalling, you can see the ground frame hut has been finished off & now sports a porter, leaning on his broom, as suggested by Mayner. On the other side of the track, the point rodding has been boxed in, Sligo Leitrim style - my excuse is that it protects the metalwork from the salty air, plus being a lot easier to make... Spent this morning trying to make the signal work, though it still needs to be hooked up under the baseboard as well as needing a repaint and the all important ladder. Given the recent photos of MGWR locos, thought I'd include another in that glorious green livery, so here we have Achill bogie 'Wolf Dog' and a short mail train, which will grow after reversing at Northport/Belmullet, for the trip to Ballina & Claremorris.

Resin casting also has merit, as Andy suggests. Have used it a lot on my 7mm scale standard and narrow gauge projects. Make one side and one end from plasticard, then make a mould of each ( plenty of materials available on line). This bit takes 24 hours to set, but after that the two part resin sets in 45 minutes and can be assembled with superglue. Very cheap to do, though you still need wheels and chassis of course.

Fab - and pretty decent build time too.

High Level gearboxes are very good too.

You will have problems with the second plan because the tracks are too close together and passing trains will collide. The tighter the curve, greater the overhang and third radius, which looks about 15" /375mm is hideously tight for anything other than short, four wheel stock. Even if stuff will go round it, bogie stock really won't look right.

Good to hear. Go for it and enjoy the journey.

It is a bit scary when you research something obscure, only to find not far down the listing, your own 'might have beens ' staring back at you!

This is probably going off at a slight tangent, but does the old Wrenn/Hornby South Eastern R1 translate into anything vaguely Irish? Converted one to EM without any problems and the motor/gears were good for the day. Mind you, that was nearly 40 years ago, when I returned to model railways following the usual sojourn of pushing up the value of brewery shares and chasing girls. At the time, I knew almost nothing of modelling and the tool kit was vestigial, so an R1 might be a starting point perhaps and there must be a few out there second hand.

Looks like 'grey board', which you can get from artshops. Hobbycraft usually sell it too. UHU sticks it well, likewise Resin W. Lots of nice 'gingerbread' in the details, especially that penultimate photo.

Love that little guy!

A few furrowed brows and much head scratching later [along with some splinters!], the area between the tunnel mouth and the platform has been rearranged. Thinking about it, the water tower was probably too close to the track and certainly blocked the view along the platform into the tunnel. To correct this, I've cut a section out of the platform ramp and moved the water tower along a bit. In the space this creates, there is now room for a four lever ground frame, for which I'm making simple corrugated iron shelter. There is possibly room for small PW trolley [hand powered], parked at right angles to the track. The practicalities of all this are we have a lever for the locking bar, another for the point, plus one for the home signal [beyond the tunnel] and another for the starter. The latter is one of Richard Chown's, that I picked up at Guildex four years ago and been looking for an excuse to use it ever since. The ground signal by the point is assumed to be moved with the point blades. Nothing is fixed down yet, but the pictures hopefully give an idea of what I'm aiming at. On a completely different front, I've also been brooding over a more exact location for Northport Quay, which up until now has been vaguely deemed to be somewhere between Sligo and Belmullet. However, I also wanted to give a plausible reason for my coaster and have been increasingly drawn to the area between Ross Port, on Broadhaven, through Blacksod Bay, past Achill Island and down to Westport. This section of the coast looks fairly sheltered from the worst Atlantic weather & somewhere that a small coaster might find plenty of work serving both the islands and small mainland communities. Now, I've always been a bit of a geographer & it is clear that glaciation has had a significant impact on this part of the world, so have expanded that theme to produce the sketch map below, where the sea level has risen a few metres [or the land has sunk] to create a slightly altered coastline. This means that Belmullet is now an island, not a peninsula and Achill Sound is likewise too wide and deep to cross by causeway. There is actually a short canal at Belmullet, linking Blacksod Bay with Broadhaven, but under my new scenario, both Achill Island and Belmullet can only be reached by boat, for which my coaster will eventually be ideal. Like as not, there will be steady trade along the whole coast from Ross Port all the way to Westport as shown by the dotted lines on the map. As for the all important railways, I've created the town of Northport, near the coast opposite Belmullet [now on the island] with, like Westport, a short branch to a Quay station and harbour. Note that, like the line from Galway to Clifden, trains would first have to reverse in or out of the station. The railway to Northport runs from Ballina, so there is no need for a line to Achill [sorry JB!], which instead is served by the coasters and ferries. At the moment, this scenario works so well for me that I'm seriously thinking of renaming Belmullet to Northport & I've drawn a sketch of the terminus below the map. All the other elements stay the same with the four companies running into Sligo [MGWR, WL&WR, SL&NCR and GS&WR] all having running powers into Northport. No other changes will be needed to the Belmullet layout [other than a new station nameboard]. So, what could the Ice Age do for your layout...?

Somehow been missing the last few posts, so off to write out 'must pay more attention' 100 times. Just sublime.

Enjoy!

You may well be right. Changes are being explored!

That's the one, Mark. Alongside The Art of Weathering by Martyn Welch, one of the most useful books you can have. Gordon has done two excellent books on modelling trees too.

See how it goes - modelling is often all about compromising and perhaps the steep slope can be partially hidden by fencing, a boarding or some such.

Thanks, that's good to know, though having put the water tank at the end of the platform now limits the view from any signal cabin/hut. Do like the thought though, so maybe the water tank could yet be moved a tad. As per Fagin, the situation is under review!