David Holman

They were in Model Railway Journal, Joe, but as to which numbers, I have no idea other than they were fairly early

Signals are fragile things at the best of times and very prone to damage even on a permanent layout. My triple signal on Arigna/Belmullet has survived 30+ shows mainly because it is removable for transport and storage, plus the posts and brackets are whitemetal, with everything else in brass. Being 7mm scale, it is that bit more robust, so goodness knows how the 2mm boys get on. Wizard models do a nice range of signal kits. They look complicated, but the instructions are very good, so might be worth a look.

A locoshed for Belmullet Can't believe it is 4 months since I did a workshop post, but everything has been layout orientated of late, so it is time to do something more specific. Anyone who has built a loco shed will tell you they can be awkward things, that are not a little fragile until the roof goes on. This is mainly because the opening for the loco results in weak spots on the two front corners while because they are perforce, single storey affairs, there is nowhere to put any internal bracing either. Experience has taught me that it is useful to build a loco shed on its own subframe, which can then be screwed to the actual baseboard once everything bar ground cover has been completed. I've based the shed for Belmullet on the one at Ballaghadereen, though I've made the workshop section only half the length. This is because I want a second siding coming off the turntable, so I can park a wagon of loco coal [and another for ash], alongside the line leading to the shed itself. This then made for another weak corner, which you might see has been braced with a short piece of aluminium angle. The core of the building is 5mm foam board, which is covered with Wills 'random stone' sheet on the inside and rendered stone sheet from the same source on the inside. The windows are from the York Modelmaking range and very nice they are too - saving a lot of work in the process, plus they only work out at around £1.50 each. Compared to covering the shell in Das clay and scribing the stonework, the Wills sheet is pretty quick too, while it also offers a lot more relief than scribing yourself. The downside is that a lot of filling is required to make the sheets match up, especially at the corners, with subsequent extra scribing too. The base is a piece of 3mm plywood [from Hobbycraft], which nicely matches the height of the cork floor tiles I use as track underlay. I cut a slot out for an inspection pit [which will be deepened by a similar slot in the baseboard itself], then made a length of track from copper clad sleepers and code 100FB rail, as per the rest of the layout. At this point, a couple of errors became apparent. First, the front opening was too narrow for any loco to pass through, and second, the shed itself was too short for any of my tender locos! A bit of robust filing eventually sorted the opening, but the shed length required more thought. At first I considered just lengthing it by adding a new section, but that would have messed up the symmetry of the windows. Instead, I've put an extension on the rear wall of the shed, using Wills corrugated asbestos sheet, as sold for 4mm scale. Indeed, all the Wills sheets are 4mm scale, but they seem ok in 7mm & the asbestos version has bolt heads moulded on as well. Anyway, the story is that, like the Achill Island branch, Belmullet was originally worked with MGW E class 0-6-0Ts, but soon after tender engines arrived, one was driven rather too enthusiastically into the real wall. Realising the need for more space at this point, the engine sized hole was enlarged slightly and a timber framed, wiggly tin extension built. A bit of fun was had with the interior, putting in a little basic detail in the form of a decent sized stove [large enough to do a bit of smithing], a workbench either side [one with a large vice on it], plus a storage cupboard for the loco crews. The flooring has been built up to be level with the tops of the sleepers, using card and more embossed sheet - brick setts this time - filled in with Das clay. On the outside, you can see my method of doing guttering. 2.5mm square plastic strip is used for the gutters themselves & this is projected out from the tops of the walls by additional pieces of the same section. The roof slates, when added, will overlap the gaps you can see at the moment. So there we are so far. I'm hoping that, by the time the shed is finished, a Kitwood Models 10.5" laser cut turntable kit will be available again, as that circular hole in the baseboard really needs filling!

Certainly looks the business so far. Another one to watch, methinks.

Very subtle = very good indeed. Not easy!

More 'blocking in' work recently. not very exciting, but gradually builds up the overall scene. The goods shed and loco shed have both been covered in Wills 4mm scale random stone, while the other buildings are rendered stone from the same source. The goods shed is about 3/4 relief, so a very odd shape, which has been done very much by trial and error - lots of both in fact! The windows on the loco shed are from York Modelmaking. With micro strip now costing around 50p for a 30cm length, ready made, laser cut frames are increasingly both attractive and cost effective. Other work, if you can call it that, has been a case of spending quite a lot of time just looking at the layout. Not hours on end, but little and often, in an effort to try and visualise the scene and get the overall balance looking right. Hence the cottage will probably now move to the right hand end of the middle board, so there is room for a bit of hard standing/goods yard effect next to the goods shed.

How is it that ugly, modern buildings can make such interesting models? Never a problem with Warb it seems!

Astonishing stuff.

The Worsley 7mm one is ok too, with room for Delrin chain to make it 4wd. Presume the artwork is the same as the 4mm version, so note that it represents the later model. If you want the earlier one you'll need to adapt the windows.

Splendid, to say the least! What are the internal dimensions?

Adjusting tone and topography A quick comparison with last week's photos should show that the land has shrunk and the water level has risen. Fortunately not global warming just yet, so nobody needs to go out to source gopher wood or animal pairs for now. However, it was obvious that for this part of the Mayo coast, everything was just a bit too big and bright. Google Maps and Google Earth are very useful in helping to get an idea of a landscape far away from home and there are some excellent pictures online too, so the last week has been spent adjusting things accordingly. It is not in any way 100% accurate, but I hope I'm starting to capture the feel of the low lying, almost treeless Mullet peninsula, with Achill Island brooding in the distance. The latter should really be even lower on the horizon, but the back scene topography needs to be as high as the loco shed roof, while as mentioned last time, the sky behind will be on separate boards. I've pondered long and hard about the relationships between the 3D scenery and the 2D back scene - including doing away with the barn and cottage. A long of time has been spent just sitting in front of the layout, trying to visualise things and several sketches have been done too. At the moment, the buildings will stay, though I've angled the cottage to be parallel with the track in the look. The goods shed has been made longer, but also lower, so its roofline roughly matches that of the Co-op store next door. Mrs H has given her approval - she has a good eye for proportions, though this perhaps begs the question of what she sees in me. An unfinished project probably! Perhaps the biggest problem has been how to hide the baseboard joins in the back scene. I considered making the buildings removable [as on Fintonagh], but they would take up a fair bit of extra space when transported. Well painted trees can do the trick, but the area seems rather tree-less. However, checking photos again shows a few conifers, while some of the farmsteads look like they have windbreaks planted, so this is what I've done. The tones of the distant peninsula have been build up with numerous thin washes of acrylic, while I've done away with all the hedgerows and drystone walls. The more distant the landscape, the easier things get as everything tends to blur into a blue/grey, but middle distance requires a bit more colour [albeit pale] and detail. Whether additional washes will be added, depends on how it looks when I next go in the workshop, though the foreground certainly needs more work [it will probably wait until I start the actual ground cover, so I can best match the colours] and the two ends have had little done to them yet.

Am a big fan of dioramas. Fairly quick to do and a great way to try out new techniques. Will look forward to following progress!

With track laid as well as this, the trains ought to run very nicely indeed.

Looking good!

That looks interesting, Eoin. Where might we get one, perchance, please?

A GW Models rivet press, no less. Had one for years and am sure I will wear out before it does! Money well spent.

Grandt Line do packs of individual rivets (in strips and various sizes). However, having tried both these and the plasticard squares method, I prefer the latter, not least because you need to drill holes for the Grandt Line ones, so it takes twice as long! Haven't tried the transfer rivets, but they sound promising. As for the Sligo van - certainly looks good to me.

It will look fine with the talc treatment. Get the cheapest possible and stipple it on with a half inch brush, then vacuum off. Works a treat. After use weathering powders where brake dust, oil etc would have been deposited.

Thanks JB, it is all soldered construction. The plain track is my work, but the double slip is by Marcway - all £180 worth of it. Well outside my abilities, so a necessary investment.

Getting creative at last Having spent what seemed like an age with the electrics, even though they are not yet complete, I really needed to do something creative for a change. The recent focus has been on the back scenes, as these will go a long way towards defining the setting of the layout. However, before that I needed to get the layout set up as it will eventually be when exhibited again. Arigna Town had built in legs on all baseboards, but these required lots of coach bolts, plus I wanted to be able to use the trestles and beams from Fintonagh as storage space in my workshop is tight. A slight problem is that Fintonagh is just under 3 metres long, while Belmullet [like Arigna] is nearer five. Therefore what I have done is to make extension pieces to the longitudinal beams used under Fintonagh, so they now take the three scenic boards of Belmullet. The sliding/rotating fiddle yard keeps a single pair of hinged legs, adjusted to match the 120cm track height, and piggy backs off the end of the three scenic boards. With that settled, I could then focus on making new back scene boards. These will eventually be in two parts - a permanently attached 'landscape' layer, with separately attached 'skyboards', behind. If I had gone with an all in one back scene, high enough to be covered by the front pelmet, it would have made the baseboards too big to get in the car for transport. I did think about having the sky on a separate, fabric back scene and may yet still go for this, but the structure the latter would require would be complicated and require more setting up time at shows. At the moment, the back scene includes sky on it, simply because I am 'blocking in' the main scenic elements, to help me visualise what the scene will look like when it is finished. Had a railway actually been built to Belmullet, like as not the station would have been parallel to the Blacksod Bay shoreline and a right angles to the canal built to join it to Broadwater Bay. Hence the scene tries to represent a bit of the Belmullet peninsula on the right hand side, with it then opening out to the dark and brooding Achill Island in the distance. The latter section is one I'm so far fairly pleased with, but the peninsula section is currently looking too bright - even for Ireland's vivid greens, so will be toned down as more detail is added. However, I don't want the back scene to dominate the model railway. Other 'blocking in' work has been to make shells for the new buildings and cut out spaces for ones that are being recycled from Arigna. The latter include the signal box, station building, water tower, cottage and barn. The new loco shed and goods shed will both be covered in Wills 'random stone', while in the corner, next to the goods shed will be a 'co-operative' warehouse clad with corrugated iron from the same source. Front left will be a small representation of a distillery - offices full relief, the rest very much low relief. Not exactly prototypical, but it adds a useful extra source of traffic for more interesting operation. One other thing I've done is to transfer the LED strip lighting from Arigna to the underside of the shelves above where the layout mostly lives. This is important as I need to paint the back scenes in the same light as they will be exhibited - it is amazing how much difference different sorts of lighting can make to your palette.

Fine detail and a big layout don't always go hand in hand. No problems here though!

Good stuff, Tony - as ever! I also use Woodlands cinder ballast, the fine grade - even in 7mm. However, it can look a bit dark, so I dust it with talc [as well as other weathering colours, as appropriate]. Wait till the glue has throughly dried though, or when you vacuum it off, most of the ballast will come with it.

Scale Link probably do some as well

Behind the scenes is often just as interesting as the scenic side. One of the many impressive things about this layout is the very high standard of presentation. Would that my workshop was this tidy!!

In 10mm scale I would definitely go for wagon and coach bodies made from wood. David Jenkinson made Gauge One coaches from plastic sheet, but as the model sizes increase, can't help thinking that using full size material becomes more appropriate.