patrick

The fascia is now in place between Waterford fiddle yard and Grange and the scenery roughed in around the new road bridge at Glen More.

[attach=config]13096[/attach At Keilys Cross level crossing the fascia was installed and the backdrop fixed. To the right of the crossing a keepers cottage is planned and an accommodation crossing to the right of the buffer stop. Today the new road bridge will be put in at Glen More. As soon as the scenery is done the valance and fascia will be painted matt black.

http://www.flickriver.com/photos/johnmightycat/sets/72157626386375365/ Nice set of photos here which I don't think anyone has posted a link to.

http://mrsvc.blogspot.com/search/label/Layout%20Design Here is that link again. I hope it works this time!

Here is an interesting site for all those into model railroad planning.

Beautifully atmospheric, after viewing the photos I almost felt that I needed to wipe the mud off of my shoes!

I have been ordered by the doctor to take it easy for two weeks so naturally I worked on scenery. The white material is Woodland Scenics Sculptamould which has been used throughout the layout. It is really easy to work with, is extremely durable and far less messy than plaster. The incomplete hills on the backdrop which are too high will be painted out and replaced by lower ones similar to those at Glen More. The surface of the benchwork is insulation foam which has been cut out and lowered in much of this area although it is difficult to make out in the photos.

Please accept my condolences.

New Irish Lines has a great article on Ballingrane in a past issue, all of which are available online. Anyone know which issue, I don't have time to search for it right now.

Very nice. I look forward to seeing more Irish wagons from you.

Just use the extra ends that come with the Parkside Dundas 12 ton BR van with the Pal Van kit and make a new door from plasticard. You need to do a little carving to make them fit.

I have noticed that lack of progress in certain parts of the layout is often a result of uncertainty or unhappiness with the plan or progress so far. A case in point is the west end of Glen More station where a level crossing was planned on the curve over the maim line and passing loop at the end of the platforms. The location was prototypical, every passenger station should have a road crossing near the station building and it looked well on paper. Early on during construction I roughed in the crossing using black card for the roadway and the Wills level crossing kit (it was planned to replace it with an SSM kit later) but it never looked right. The gates were too short to clear the tracks and avoid being side swiped by passenger coaches and the whole set up seemed to draw attention to the sharp (by prototype standards) curve even though the minimum radius is 26 inches. As scenery construction progressed from the fiddle yard West of the station and to the viaduct on the East this gap with the improvised level crossing remained. I was clearly not sold on the original plan but the layout needed to have a level crossing. A few posts back I outlined the plan to extend the layout to include the point at the East side of the passing loop at Grange. At present the main line and loop disappear under a road bridge into the fiddle yard. The new extension will add two to three feet to the scenic part of the railway on the west side of the road bridge and the question arose as to how to hide the new entrance to the fiddle yard. I didn't want to use a second road bridge so near the first or introduce a second tunnel on the layout, one is enough, they are not common features on Irish railways and I am striving to make the layout look a typical stretch of railway. This plan would of course involve tearing out the double track road bridge which I hated to do since the scene came out so good. The solution came to me over a beer in the layout room last Friday night. Remove the double track bridge at Grange and rebuild it in place of the level crossing at Glen More. Use a single track over bridge to hide the entrance to the West end fiddle yard and put the level crossing in on the west side of the viaduct on the single track (it was originally planned to have a single track road over bridge here). The next day the improvised level crossing was moved to the new location where it works so much better and a cardboard mock up of the road over bridge was made to evaluate the plan. An added bonus is that the bridge will break up the rather long flat stretch of railway through Glen More and improve the scenic potential of that corner of the layout. Enough of my ramblings so here are a few photos of the level crossing and bridge mockup.

http://shipspotters.nl/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=115&start=90 Here is a photo of one of the steam cranes working at Fenit in 1969. I tried to post the photo earlier but it didn't take!

Shunting at Glen More.

The first signals (SSM) were completed and installed at Glen More last weekend. Next up are some semaphores.

The hard standing was modeled using thick high quality card which I found in a craft store. It was painted with a spray can of grey primer, the closest color to concrete I could find at Wal-Mart, and the expansion joints and a few cracks were drawn on using a sharpie pen. I'm very pleased with the result. I have issues with the signal boxes on the layout. Eventually I would like to replace all the buildings with scratch built models based on those at Kilmacthomas and Durrow.

Recent progress on Glen More goods yard and backdrop. The Bitumen depot is based on the facility at Tralee. John Mayner posted a photo of it a while back which was used as a reference to model it.

Glen More railway station in the late sixties.

I'm getting flashbacks of being ten years old waiting on the footbridge at Fenit for the summer Sunday seaside special to arrive from Tralee. On a real good day a boat would be in and a Deutz would be shunting wagons between the station and the pier where the steam cranes would be unloading timber. I can feel the warm sun, smell the suntan lotion the seaweed and diesel exhaust and feel the Choc Ice melt on my fingers!

I just realized I spoiled the last three photos by putting the signal cabin roof back on backwards after doing the backdrop! I may update the paint job on the cabin by painting over over the green with grey but eventually replacement with a standard GSWR style cabin similar to the one at Dungarvan or possibly Kilmacthomas is planned.

The layout backdrop is being redone. The joints were filled and sanded, something I should have done from the start and the hills, which never looked right to me, they extended way too high and the color was wrong , were painted out. I am considering consulting an artist aquaintance of mine for advice before proceeding any further. For now it looks a hell of a lot better.

Vehicles are lacking on the layout at present as virtually nothing is available off the shelf over here and my limited resources has so far gone into getting the layout up and running and for scenery. The only accurate scale vehicle is an Oxford diecast Morris (I think, I know nothing about cars) The other vehicles are two Hotwheels front loaders and an Ertel John Deer tractor, None of which are anything close to oo scale but were found at the supermarket for a dollar each and were put on the layout to give it some life for now. One of the front loaders is at the beet loading siding at Keilys Cross and it at least gives a strong visual clue to what goes on there even if the barley which represents the crop is just a stand in for now until I find something better. There is also a Spanish HO scale model excavator which I got in Berlin when I lived there in the 80's Its tracks are crude and it lacks detail but the proportions are nice. Once the basic scenery is complete and detailing begins the vehicle issue will be addressed. Because of the rural theme of the layout not many vehicles will be required and I hope to acquire some nicely detailed models which will reinforce the location and era of the layout........I may have to learn something about cars!

I remember cycling out to Fenit from Tralee to see that shipment of starch being unloaded. The cargo was packaged in paper sacks like cement and unloaded into open wagons by the three steam cranes. A H van was present loaded with tarps to cover the loads. I don't recall a Deutz present to shunt the pier on this occasion, but a CIE lorry with an improvised buffer beam, a sleeper tied to the front with a rope was used. I believe the weighbridge was used at Fenit to weigh the wagons. At the end of the day an A class arrived from Tralee, assembled a sizeable train of starch and the H van and returned. The other traffic I remember from Fenit pier was timber for Mc Cownes in Tralee. Mc Cownes had a large property south of Tralee station with a timber and coal yard , a foundry and feed mill all served by rail.

This weekend ballast work was completed at Glen More and the first foot crossing put in. Ground covering was also done behind the up platform (Waterford to Cork is designated timetable Up). The next step is to redo the backdrop. The photo shows a Cork Waterford passenger meets a goods train.