David Holman

Apart from the size of the layout itself [just 2m x 0.5m], the turntable is only big enough for the Barclay and Kerr Stuart tanks; likewise Railcar 10. Would that I had the space for more!

Go carefully! Essentially, avoid getting glue around the tie bar, or you'll gum everything up.

I have a 2019 ABC which says there were 179 still around, including 11 09s. The Lima 08 is a useful model for 7mm narrow gauge, not least because of the outside cranks. The pancake motor can take a bit of disguising, but on the other hand the crank pins unscrew easily, enabling you to add con rods to outside cylinders. Runs well enough too, albeit not at the same level as the later Hornby ones.

Two new posts on the same day? Don't know what the weather is doing over the water, but in this corner of Blighty, it is still April - windy, with hefty showers involving cats, dogs and donkeys. So, a bit of footy and cricket [thank you Australia], as background to some more modelling. Phoenix has taken quite a while to paint, because no sooner did I tidy up a bit of black then was noticing cream and/or red then needed attention. After that, it needed its name adding, along with the number plates. The latter, being Number 11, was readily made from bits of plastic sheet and strip. My Slater's plastic numbers fret has become rather brittle, so just as well only '1's are needed, followed by a red background then brass coloured paint for the raised bits. Lettering is from a set of transfers that have been lurking in a folder for many years. Unfortunately, each letter has a significant carrier film which can be seen in some lighting conditions. Couplings and weathering are still missing & Phoenix got pretty filthy at times, so that is something I'll need to psyche myself up for. Something else that needed finishing off while the paints were out are two 'red vans'. These were ex Clogher vehicles, used with the Railcars. Mine are resin cast bodies I did several years ago, mated to Branchlines wagon chassis. Have fitted larger wheels, as per Donegal practice, because they initially didn't ride well on the CVR 2 foot ones, especially at the much higher speeds involved. Lettering is just white gel pen and again, couplings and weathering are yet to be applied. These vans only went up to number 23, so given my two have different strapping to ones seen in photos, have given them 24 and 25.

West Donegal Railways A recent comment about the fate of other CVR stock following the 'closure' of Fintonagh has set me thinking. Railcar, Unit and Tractor are all going to its new incarnation as a Donegal/Swilly branch from Letterkenny to Ramelton & likewise some of the wagons - but what of the other stuff? Well, the two bogie coaches have been bought by a friend for his layout, but have been mulling over what to do with the Sharp Stewart 0-4-2Ts. Prefer to keep them, but how might they be used? Regular readers of my ramblings will know that I am not averse to major changes of railway history, while for Belmullet, I even suggested that a small alteration in sea levels after the last ice age would make the peninsula into an island. Works for me, anyway... Baldrick's latest cunning plan came from a browse through Gordon Gravett's book on the Reseau Breton, a metre gauge system in Brittany. Now, this area has much in common with parts of Ireland & the map below shows significant railway development across the area, with new lines being built right up to the First World War. I've also been re reading Martin Bairstow's series of five books covering Irish Railways & the two started the germ of an idea: Ramelton has a population of over 2000 today, while the neighbouring villages of Milford and Rathmullan come in at 1000 and 500 respectively. At the end of the 19th century places like this were often fair game for a narrow gauge line - Schull & Skibbereen for example, so why not have a roadside tramway linking the three? Adjust the effects of the Potato Famine and subsequent migrations to be less dramatic [nothing compared to changing the outcome of the Ice Age!] and there is every chance of a larger population remaining in the area & hence wanting a railway. So, what might this do to Fintonagh? Not a lot, as it happens. The plan below shows how things might alter, with just a new section of back scene and a couple of new buildings - highlighted in green. For the tramway, all I'm thinking is so shorten the front siding to make way for an extended loading dock to become a bay. Stock wise, I wouldn't want much & it would be a case of either getting another Branchlines CVR bogie kit, or use the Alphagraphix card kits of the Schull & Skibbereen four wheel coaches as a starting point. The new fiddle yard has five roads, with two of these allocated to my new Lough Swilly stock. The third will be for the Donegal Railcars [10 & 8], with the fourth for the Unit & a light goods train. The fifth will therefore hold the Milford & Rathmullan tram, plus Phoenix [acting as station pilot] and a few wagons. As is my wont, the main goods yard is deemed to be off scene, via the track exiting at the front of the layout. This will also be the exit for the Tram, while Donegal and Swilly trains will use the rear exit. Should make for a busy scene & I'll certainly need to add a couple of isolating sections to enable two trains to be on scene at once, but at the moment, it is feeling like a neat way to use the two CVR locos and a a bit more of existing stock. An opportunity to invent a history of the Tramway, plus liveries & so on too - more of which anon. Assuming I don't come up with another harebrained scheme in the meantime that is.

Always nice when a hand built chassis does as it is supposed to! Very neat.

Not suggesting you copy me, because dropper wires to an under baseboard bus, is the correct convention as Alan says. However, in building over a dozen layouts over the years (and taking them to over 100 exhibitions), have never used the approach. Instead, just solder wires to each track section and then run them to tag strips under each baseboard. Power goes to the tag strips from the controller and transformer. Any track joints in each section are soldered too. Taking layouts to shows involved repeat dismantling and reassembling of baseboards, with the electrical connections between them achieved with multiple computer D plugs and sockets. Over the years, have had the (very) occasional failure of a solder joint, but easy to find and fix.

Measure twice, cut once, the old saying goes - to which I would add, Look, Look and Look Again. This is because, in checking out photos of Phoenix, noticed that I'd missed a couple of things on the Railcar and Unit, in particular the front buffer beam - or lack of it. Must admit, I had wondered about this especially whether it was painted a different same of red to the body. Well, how wrong can you be, because not only is the buffer beam much narrower than it was in Clogher Valley days, it is also black. So, out with the Dremel and a slitting disc to cut down the offending articles, then a coat of matt black and job done. The ladder to the roof rack on the railcar is in the wrong place & needs to be offset to one side, but that will have to wait, so don't tell anyone for now. Phoenix has proved to be another reason to study as many photos as possible. Cream upper body, red lower body and black under frames? Not quite. The window frames seem to be black, as is the beading above/below the red body work. This certainly helps lift the ugly duckling a little, though swan it ain't! The picture below gives some idea, though there is quite a way to go yet, in particular weathering. Some photos show it utterly filthy, but in others it is quite well turned out, so no decision yet.

Indeed, but you now have 22 pages of enjoyment to catch up on!

Certainly no scrapping allowed - though have wondered if (had they been in better condition), the Swilly might have been tempted to take them on? Not sure what purpose they would have had, but might have looked good in that lined, dark green they used.

Added most of the bits to Phoenix yesterday, so gave it a coat of primer and took these photos to check things. Now needs glazing and crew, then the roof can be fixed, then couplings & it will be painting and lettering time.

Shades of the Bulleid pacifics. Can never understand why they were rebuilt and 'unrebuilt'. What was wrong with original?

While the Railcar and Unit were little more than repaints, a fair bit more work is required to turn the Atkinson-Walker tractor into Phoenix. The model started life as a set of etches from Worsley Works, but as these were actually for Phoenix, I had to adapt them for the tractor. This involved making a new, shorter 'bonnet', different roof, 'steam' chimney, fenders, headlights on the lower body and a representation of the vertical boiler and steam engine. All these now need replacing to put it back [forward?] to Phoenix! The first picture shows the chassis I used - a motor bogie I picked up from a second hand stall at Expo Narrow Gauge several years ago. While there is no evidence of a manufacturer, I think it might be Rivarossi. Either way, it is four wheel drive and comes with a flywheel too, albeit also a top speed much higher than required. Glued a couple of L shaped bits of brass to it, drilled to take fixing bolts to the body. The next pictures show the body, with some of the bits removed - headlights, roof, interior, fenders, etc. This morning I unsoldered the 'front?' windscreen and then set about altering the bodywork. Was hoping that I would find I still had the Worsley etches in my scrap box, but no. However, a reasonable substitute appeared in the etches from the J26 kit - namely the cab extension to turn it into one of the Waterford & Tramore locos. A bit of trimming was required, but along with a couple of spectacle rings I found, it all saved me a lot of awkward work. The cab extension on Phoenix is wider than the A-W body, so needed a couple of strips of brass to fill the gaps, but otherwise it was only a couple of hours cutting, filing and soldering to get the basic bodywork to its new outline. The original tractor wasn't pretty, but Henry Forbes conversion did it no favours at all! Plenty still to do mind.

In 7mm scale, if you want to do 36.75mm gauge, the instructions say you simply solder the top hat driving wheel bearings back to front, which gives a decent spacing for the drivers, plus a bit of side play which can be taken up by washers if required. Sounds a bit crude and when I made my first J26, I did consider making plasticard overlays for the frames to hide the gap. However, perhaps because we mainly see our models side on, the difference hasn't been noticeable and over many exhibitions, nobody has yet commented on this and all subsequent kits have been built the same way. Presume it would work ok in 4mm scale too, but if the bearings stick out too far, it would be a simple matter to file them down a bit. Another thought on 21mm gauge is curve radii. On Fintonagh, the points are 900mm radius, which has been fine for the 0-4-2Ts and railcars, but when I built the Barclay 4-6-0T, found this was a bit tight as I'd made the frame spacers the same width. Hence a rebuild may be necessary with narrower spacers to enable a bit more side play.

Code 70 better for lightweight track Colin. Nothing wrong with EM standards. Indeed, have used 4mm finescale standards on Fintonagh for 3' gauge, 21mm track in 7mm scale. So 1mm flangeways through the points, standard finescale wheels/flanges and 19.2mm back to backs. Has worked well over the years.

Would think there's a High Level gear box that will fit. The crucial thing will be to fill every available space with lead to ensure enough adhesion. No worries about binding coupling rods or quartering driving wheels though!

Well done! At the time, always thought it was one of their better models and nice to see it running well. Will today's high quality mechanisms still do the same in 40 years time? Who knows?

There is no doubt that a lot of these old models have plenty of charm, though few compare to what is available today. Good fun doing them up though and nice to give them a new lease of life.

Interesting, but then Rice always is. Since his dad demise some of his books, especially the American track plan ones are going for silly money, like £200+... Will be good to see how you get on, as there is certainly room for improvement on my model!

Fine progress thus far, Alan. Don't know if this will help, but here are a couple of pics of my AlphaG GSWR 2-4-2T. The pony trucks sort of float on a couple of 0.9mm N/S wires, though am wondering if 0.7 would be better. 0.5mm phosphor bronze wire for the pickups on these wheels, but they have tendency to stop turning going through points.

Thanks folks - certainly helped with my thinking. Here is the Unit, now Donegal No5 in its new, two tone livery. Very much shades of BR parcels lorries?

So, from a might have been to an actual, with the Donegalification of CVR Railcar 1. Had the privilege of exhibiting Fintonagh in front of Railcar 10 at Cultra's last show a couple of years ago, but like the Unit, it was made in 2017 and is covered from page 11 on this Workbench thread. Unlike the Unit, it was a scratch build, owing to the Worsley Works etches not being available at the time. The chassis is brass & nickel silver, but most of the bodywork is plasticard sheet and strip. As far as I can tell, the main changes in going to the Donegal involved moving the headlight from the bonnet to the cab roof and adding a luggage rack and ladder to the roof. Needless to say, it wasn't a quick paint job & has been going on at the same time as work on the Unit. Being a dark brown on the Clogher, the first step was to paint the whole model in Precision Paints Donegal cream, to act as a kind of undercoat. Several coats were needed of this colour as it is not very opaque. The same makers Donegal red is much better and only needed a couple of goes over the cream for the lower panels. Transfers are as per the Unit and overall think the model is now looking very dapper in its new livery. Returning to the Unit, followed Galteemore's excellent idea and cut a suitably sized piece of thin red card and used Blutack to fix it to one wagon side. However, as well as this Plan B, also thought of a Plan C, which simply involves painting the top two planks cream - essentially matching the cab. Must admit, I quite like this, but will throw my self at the mercy of the jury, so please let me know!

In 7mm scale, the kits are pretty accurate in terms of fitting together without needing filler or fettling. Reducing to 4mm shouldn't affect that. St Mologa is tiny, so wouldn't recommend it as a first attempt if you've got little or no experience of brass kits, but the J26 was a lovely, simple model to make. Likewise the 2-4-0s should be ok.

Just arrived in my email inbox. Lots of terrific stuff from regular contributors here. Well done folks!

It does indeed, Paul. The model looks better in the flesh than it does in the photos, but Am still wondering if the wagon bit would look better in red. Think I'll try Galteemore's idea to compare the two.