Kevin Sweeney

Thanks for the advise David. Scenery does not sound too challenging. My idea about the drone is all theory and may not work in practice. I guess the only way to find out for sure is to put the bird in the air and try it out. It would not take a lot of elevation to get the broad expanse of Lough Sheelin into the backscene, as the land between Ballywillan and Sheelin is low lying and there is a chain of hills in the distance beyond Sheelin, to the east. The image below of Ballywillan is from google street view, the green marker on the map shows the position the street view is from, the black line is the position of the station. The dark areas on the east end of the map are the hills in the background. The location of the street view screengrab is 17 feet above the elevation of the station Hopefully I can get over to Ballywillan in the next few days and try it out. I need to go over soon anyway as I need to photograph the pub, barn, and farmyard next to the station.

Thanks Patrick. my prolific output at the moment is mainly caused by the bad weather, which is keeping confined indoors. It will slow down when the weather improves and I get busy in the garden.

I am a complete novice at scenery so progress might be a lot slower than with the buildings. My plan for the backscene is to take the photos with a drone, as I think this will be a better perspective, than taking photos from the ground.

I came in with a copy of a history project about the station, done by some local school kids back in 1992. The current signal cabin was built right after the War of Independence. The original cabin was about 50 yards to the north and was burned by the Black and Tans during the war. Michael Collins often used the station when visiting his girlfriend Kitty Kiernan in Granard. Her father Larry Kiernan was a carter who drew goods between Ballywillan and Granard. The stone for the spire of the church in Maynooth College was quarried at Ross, Co Meath, carted to Ballywillan and onwards to Maynooth by train. The station has strong associations with the great All Ireland winning Cavan Football teams of the 1930s and 1940s, being only about half a km from the Cavan border. When the conquering heroes arrived by train at Ballywillan, hordes of Cavan people came to Ballywillan to welcome the team and see the Sam Maguire Cup. The well known Percy French song Come Back Paddy Reilly to Ballyjamesduff was written in a pub in Granard. The line "turn to the left at the Bridge of Finea and stop when half way to Cootehill", are directions on how to get from Ballywillan to Ballyjamesduff. The most famous passenger to pass through the station was Queen Mary, wife of George the fifth, during the royal visit to Ireland in 1911.

I'm well on with the railway cottages, so I tried laying out the buildings at the correct spacings to see how they look together. It's really starting to take shape now.

In spite of saying my photos of the second goods shed where not good enough, I decided to try making it based on the photos I have and I'm happy enough with the result.

Didn't manage to get back to Ballywillan yet to take more photos but I did find a photo online of the railway cottages there. The photo has a big copywrite notice on it so I won't publish it here. But the cottages have been extensively modernised and turned into a single house, with an extension added. I'm not going to model the modern house at Ballywillan but will base my model on the MGW cottages at Crossdoney, Co Cavan. And an oblique image of the rear of the cottages from the O'Dea collection. I finally got round to checking out Grahame Hedges work. Very nice indeed.

Wow, that is amazing. That is the kind of layout I'm aiming for. I'm happy with how my modelling skills are developing, I have a good handle on modelling buildings, but I'm a complete novice on modelling terrain and landscapes. Ballywillan will hopefully help me develop those skills on a small project before I try a much bigger project.

It has been great. There is nothing worse than sitting around brooding on your troubles, when you can't change the outcome. You need to focus on something you can change. I always had a casual interest in modelling, I built a few model boats when I was younger but never had the time to really pursue it. When my life changed 4 years ago I suddenly had lots of time and needed some thing productive to fill it with. modelling was just the ticket. There is great satisfaction is making something physical, as opposed to virtual stuff on a screen. There is the sense of achievement as I see my skills improve. Many mornings the very first thing I think about is the current build. Like playing music it bring great joy into my life. Ultimately no matter what your troubles, life is what you make it.

Thanks Mike. I got started with inkscape by watching this video from Michael at Chandwell.

Not related to Ballywillan, but to Bellmont House (see earlier post in this thread) and my next project after Ballywillan is finished. I have a big space available, 15 feet by 15 feet. It used to be my sons bedroom, but he has left home, so it will be my main railway room. I'm planning a 15 foot long scenic section. Nothing elaborate in railway terms, just a double tracked line running through a rural landscape. Bellmont House will be the centre piece, included as part of the Bellmont estate will be a walled garden, with big lean to greenhouse, a farmyard, gate lodge and stables. The greenhouse and gate lodge are finished, and I'm well on with the stables (see photos below). The stables are a model of those in Lough Key Forest Park. With this much space and working in N scale, I will have loads of room for buildings. I'm planning to include an Anglican and a Catholic church, a glebe house, a school, a pub and shop, creamery, corn mill, houses and farms. This awaits when I will finish Ballywillan. For the last four years I have been a full time carer. Which leaves me stuck at home most days, but with a lot of time on my hands. This is why I started making models. Modelling has become my main distraction and therapy, and in many ways my salvation.

Praise indeed. Also thanks for sharing the Planxty Johnston link on youtube, the tune has infested my head and I've been playing it since.

Finished the water tower. The ladder is made from printer paper impregnated with varnish, it is surprisingly rigid,. I won't glue it into place until the tower goes permanently on the baseboard. Next part of the project is a long, single story goods shed. But my photos of it are not good enough, so another visit to Ballywillan is needed, in the coming days. In the mean time I might start doing some work on the base board.

This is the page I printed from Inkscape for the water tower base and the completed base. Ignore the few pieces on top of the sheet they are parts for a crossing keepers cottage. Inkscape is a brilliant program, before I learned how to use it I drew everything by hand. It took a lot of time to learn how to use Inkscape, but once I got the hang of it I can make models a lot faster.

Once again folks thanks for all the kind comments. They are much appreciated. I got the base of the water tower completed today. Now that I have four structures I decided to lay them out and see how they look together.

Continuing on the theme of the connection between music and modelling. Famous musicians who are (or were) also railway modellers include. Johnny Cash Eric Clapton Phil Collins Roger Daltrey John Entwistle Merle Haggard Jools Holland Elton John Frank Sinatra Bruce Springsteen Ringo Starr Rod Stewart Pete Waterman Neil Young George Harrison while not a modeller, was a trainspotter in this youth.

Almost there with the signal cabin, just the downpipes to do. I'm going to leave out the finials on the roof. The bad weather is keeping me indoors, so making good progress at the moment. Below is a screen grab from the O'Dea collection in the National Library taken on October 12 1959, about a year before the line closed. The man in the photo is Neal Fearon. Originally from Crossdoney, Co Cavan. He spent most of his working life at Ballywillan. After it closed he was transferred to Mullingar. He still lived at Ballywillan and I'm told cycled to work in Mullingar, a mind boggling round trip of 50 miles. They were tougher people back then. He had a big family most of whom emigrated, but one of his sons is still living in the townland. Next job is the water tower.

Only played in Belfast once. I played with quite a few Belfast bluesmen in the monthly Blues Jam in Monaghan but don't recall ever playing with Dermot. Belfast is a great city for the blues.

Music and modelling are similar in that they are both crafts, we all start out raw, the more time and effort we can invest the better we get. We all start out making the same idiot mistakes, but we learn each time and hopefully do a bit better the next time. So long as we are having fun it's all good. The three chord trick player can have just as much fun at the house party as the virtuoso player. O'Carolan and O’Riada were both musical geniuses. That's a lovely image of a steam train running to the beat of a bodran. Although on a bad day it might be more Percy French than O’Riada.

The more i think about it the more connections I see between making music and making models. Both require technical and artistic skills. I'm an acoustic blues guitar player, there are so many old blues and folk songs that refer to trains and railways. Lots of lyrics about leaving on a train, gotta catch that train, I hear a train a coming, if you miss the train I'm on, meet me at the station etc. Great songs like Freight Train and Railroad Bill. I have a good friend, a brilliant blues harmonica player, he can reproduce train whistle sounds and the clackety clack rhythm of a train running on old style tracks.

I wondered why the two platforms were different heights, that answers that question.

The only thing that has changed visually in those photos in 37 years is the Guinness sign is gone from the barn. i will have to include the sign in my layout. While Gilligan's pub is closed the building is still intact, although an extension has been added to it. There was also a pub the Mill Tavern, down on the main road which is also closed. Two pubs in a rural townland is a good measure of how much of an economic asset the railway was to the local community. While the railway is gone 62 years it remains a part of local culture and folklore. Old people in the area still tell stories about it.

Joining this forum has really energised me and helped to lift me out of the post lockdown blues. I have made good progress the last few days on the goods shed. Only the main doors and the downpipes left to do. I am off shopping tomorrow and will buy a small roll of 0.6 mm mild steel welding wire. The plan is to paint it black and use it for downpipes. It will be a bit over scale, but working in N scale some compromises have to be made and it should look OK. Next part of the project will be the signal box. I am waiting for a bright overcast day, to head back to Ballywillan with my drone. The plan is to take photos looking south so I can experiment with the back scene. This will make for a very picturesque backscene with Lough Kinale, Lough Sheelin, Mullameen and the hills of Westmeath as a backdrop. I will have to return in the summer to catch this scene when the trees are in leaf. I also want to photograph Gilligans pub and the barn, sheds and farmyard, and the railway cottages. All of which will be included in the layout. The baseboard will be 7 feet by 2 feet. There will be some compression on the north end as I want to include the bridge that carried the railway over the road in the layout. Without compression the baseboard would be 9 feet long. I am also thinking of using some modellers license at the south end and including the crossing keepers cottage which is about a mile to the south.

Three more of my models This was one my first scratch builds. The thatch is made with cotton wool, mixed with watered down PVA glue and acrylic paint, compressed between two panes of glass. The gate house at Lough Crew, Co Meath. All textures are Scalescenes. Another early scratch build. A conjectural model of Finea Castle, which once stood next to the famous Bridge of Finea.

On Bellmont I used all Scalescenes Texture sheets. On the Ballywillan Station house, I created the stone work from photos of the building, using Inkscape. The slates on both buildings are Scalescenes. I will include a coin in the next photo I post. I will post some more photos of my completed buildings. N scale is fiddly and in the case of Bellmont I had to simplify the portico, which has a lot of fine carved detail, I could not replicate in N but could be done in OO. The biggest problem I had to overcome was impatience, cutting corners in my rush to see a finished product. It helps that I am a musician, it is like mastering a musical instrument, or a musical genre, keep repeating until you get it right and eventually you develop muscle memory.