Somewhere on the County Down

[Tullygrainey]

My Belfast and County Down stable has been quietly growing to the extent that it’s getting a bit crowded at Loughan Quay.

 

I’ve been toying with the idea for a while now of building a small layout for this stuff to run on, something fairly simple that could conceivably be taken out to exhibitions.

What I have in mind is a typical BCDR country through station with a goods siding.  I don’t plan to model an actual location - that’s too constraining (actually too difficult if I’m honest) but places like Tullymurry, Ballygowan and Ballygrainey are the sources of inspiration. The intention would be to select features from various places and bring them together in one layout.

Here’s a rough sketch of the likely track plan. Templot it ain’t but it’s fairly simple.

 

I wanted the scenic area to be a single board but the minimum length needed for the track plan ended up 15 cm too long to fit in the car so it’s now two boards and that being the case, I’ve taken the opportunity to stretch it out to 2 metres.

I’ve made a start on the boards, aiming to make them as light as possible, using plywood in various thicknesses (3.6mm, 5.5mm & 12mm) and MDF for the track bed, all largely assembled with wood glue. The strength of the design lies in the twin longitudinal L-beams on which everything is mounted. As far as I can gather, this approach to construction is fairly common but it’s the first time I’ve tried it. The end product is probably lighter than a traditional flat top with whitewood framing and it’s also considerably more rigid. We’ll see how well it stands up to handling.

 

Landscape profiling from cardboard and cereal packet.

 

I've parked work on the boards now to concentrate on some of the building and structures. I'm still trying to get an overview of how this thing will look and whether it will work. 

More soon

Alan

 

[Galteemore]

How exciting !  Am sure your Midas touch will soon bring this to life. Through station between Comber and Newcastle will allow a nice timetable without having to build loads of commuter carriages ! 

[Dunluce Castle]

Looking forward to watching this progress! 

[derek]

OH Yes , oh yes, oh yes! Can't wait to see this progress, Alan. I will be watching it like a hawk, so no slacking ha ha. In fairness, you have great headway made already. You will have to begin raiding the Costa again for the stirrers.............. Best of luck with it(layout not stirrers)

Derek

[Tullygrainey]

2 hours ago, derek said:

OH Yes , oh yes, oh yes! Can't wait to see this progress, Alan. I will be watching it like a hawk, so no slacking ha ha. In fairness, you have great headway made already. You will have to begin raiding the Costa again for the stirrers.............. Best of luck with it(layout not stirrers)

Derek

[jhb171achill]

WOW! Looking forward to seeing this develop!

[Metrovik]

Just thinking of the stock running on it is amazing!

[Mayner]

Best of luck with the new layout, great to see an open frame baseboard with L girder construction being used on an Irish outline layout.

[David Holman]

Very Iain Rice, Alan and none the worse for it either. Great to know all that lovely County Down stock will get its own bespoke setting.

[Tullygrainey]

1 hour ago, David Holman said:

Very Iain Rice, Alan and none the worse for it either. Great to know all that lovely County Down stock will get its own bespoke setting.

Thanks David. Yes, Iain Rice has been and continues to be a huge influence. 

[David Holman]

Me too!

[Tullygrainey]

First structure, a bridge. As far as I can see, BCDR bridges varied in style and construction but there is a bit of a house style and they do share one quality - they're indestructible. Witness the number which still stand beside realigned roads, in the middle of fields, in people's gardens or on country roads where they're still in use 70+ years after the railway closed. They never fall down.

This one might be a bit less robust being made from foamboard, card, plastic and DAS clay. The Wills rough stone sheets were sanded and filed back to flatten the stonework a bit then coated in filler and wiped with kitchen roll to reduce the depth of the mortar lines. 

 

I haven't modelled round the back. This will be buried in the landscape.

 

Paint does the rest. The brick lining the inside the arch has been added since the photo was taken.

 

The bridge will form the scenic break at the left hand end with a country lane over it.

 

Station building is underway. It's been a challenge with a fair bit of back and forward mainly because I struggle with weathering. More pics as soon as it's fit for human consumption.

Alan

 

[Galteemore]

Lovely structure and beautifully observed weathering Alan 

[David Holman]

Magic! Hadn't thought about sanding down Wills random stone, let alone filling the mortar lines, but works really well. There is a clear (and very effective) artistic hand at work, Alan. Only have to look at your other models to see the connection. Proper job.

[Tullygrainey]

10 hours ago, David Holman said:

Magic! Hadn't thought about sanding down Wills random stone, let alone filling the mortar lines, but works really well. There is a clear (and very effective) artistic hand at work, Alan. Only have to look at your other models to see the connection. Proper job.

Thank you David. I find the Wills random stone very versatile stuff which can be made to look very different depending on what you do to it. It also seems to be equally useful in 4mm and 7mm. I used the filler trick quite a bit on The Stone Yard. It's a pity it comes in such small sheets!

[Mayner]

44 minutes ago, Tullygrainey said:

Thank you David. I find the Wills random stone very versatile stuff which can be made to look very different depending on what you do to it. It also seems to be equally useful in 4mm and 7mm. I used the filler trick quite a bit on The Stone Yard. It's a pity it comes in such small sheets!

The Wills "Coarse" Stone SSMP200 used in Alan's bridge is a completely different and much more useful material than their "Random; Stone SSMP228. 

The Coarse Stone is much more prototypical in appearance laid in courses than the 'Random" stone which is random in nature for the entire height of the panel. In reality a mason building a 'random' stone wall would have built the wall in 'courses' of about 2-3' and the horizontal layers would have been visible.

I have used the Wills Coarse stone for building and structures, but as someone with a background in the building trade haven't been able to "build" a convincing wall in coarsed random stone widely used in Irish railway structures.

Rubble

Random

Semi Coursed

Edited November 7, 2024 by Mayner

[Tullygrainey]

Yes  Apologies for causing confusion by calling it by every name but the right one! John is right. I used Wills SSMP200 'Coarse Stone'. I always thought the 'Random Stone' sheets looked a bit odd. I understand why now.

[Killian Keane]

The coarse stone is wonderful stuff, I just wish they sold it in bigger sheets, until now I didnt know about the random stone, and googling it, it does look rather odd, I think Ill be sticking with the coarse

[derek]

On 6/11/2024 at 7:56 PM, Tullygrainey said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 It's been a challenge with a fair bit of back and forward mainly because I struggle with weathering. 

Alan

 

No Alan, you don't seem to struggle with weathering, or anything  else for that matter. Absolutely love the bridge. Excellent

Edited November 8, 2024 by derek

[Tullygrainey]

3 hours ago, derek said:

No Alan, you don't seem to struggle with weathering, or anything  else for that matter. Absolutely love the bridge. Excellent

Thanks Derek. Believe me though, I’m not joking. I never feel in control of weathering. I mostly get there in the end but usually by the scenic route, having been round the houses a fair few times.

[Tullygrainey]

I used Neill’s Hill, just over 2 miles out from Queen’s Quay on the BCDR main line through East Belfast, as the basis for a model of a country station building for this layout. The original building is long since demolished though a number of photographs exist. It had a fairly typical BCDR look but with less of the special brickwork on station buildings like Cultra or Carnalea which make them trickier to model well. It's not a slavish copy of Neill's Hill, more a nod in that direction.

The pics are self-explanatory I hope. Brickwork is Slater’s English Bond plasticard, windows, doors and roof tiles came from York Modelmaking and the chimney pots are 3D prints from ModelU.

Paint was applied, removed and re-applied so many times in the course of trying to get the effect I wanted that I reckon the brickwork genuinely is weathered.

 

 

[Dunluce Castle]

Lovely muted colours and the way it blends all together! Brilliant. 

[Galteemore]

That’s just spectacular. Really captures the subtle BCDR look you’ve set out to achieve.

[Patrick Davey]

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[Tullygrainey]

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[David Holman]

Classy. Very classy!

[Mayner]

Amazing progress Alan seems to be evolving into a master class on layout building.

[Tullygrainey]

After a racing start, this layout ground to a halt whilst a spate of engine building claimed the bandwidth. Now that there are enough locos to keep the works fitters in full time employment for a while we can get going again here, this time with a goods shed.

After faffing about with various kinds of embossed plastic sheet and getting nowhere, I settled on a foam board shell covered with DAS then sanded smooth and scribed. This is my second attempt. The first one was just wrong but it's been useful for experimenting with paint and colours. For this attempt, I used photos I took of the surviving BCDR goods shed at Comber as a guide to the shape and size of the building and the stonework though it's not a slavish copy of that building (now the town's fire station).

 

Quoins and arches were scribed first then horizontal course lines were penciled in and scribed. These help guide the scribing of individual stones and keep things under control. I have scribed stones in the shape of pillows in the past.

 

Next, a thin wash of a pale colour and some individual stones picked out in stronger colour got things started. Painting was all done with artist's acrylics, mostly raw umber, titanium white and mars black.

 

From there, more thin washes and retouching of the feature stones gradually built up the colour. A bit of black into some mortar lines and some dry-brushed yellow/green added a bit of weathering.

 

I started out using the same ready-made roofing slate sheets that I used on the station (see above) and though they worked perfectly for that building they just didn't look right here- too small and too neat for a slightly decrepit goods shed. So it was back to the paper strip method using strips cut from grids drawn up on the computer. They're glued onto a plasticard base here. The method produces a slightly irregular effect - well it does if you're not too fussy about it - which I think suits this building.

 

The danger here is that individual slates can curl up in a most un-slate-like manner as the paint dries. They can usually be glued down again.

The roof isn't attached yet. I have some window frame etches on order and need to fit those before gluing it down. Gutters and downpipes are next.

Back in harness, somewhere on the County Down.

Alan

 

[David Holman]

Pure magic and oh so subtle. That pale, weathered stone really looks the business.

[Tullygrainey]

2 hours ago, David Holman said:

Pure magic and oh so subtle. That pale, weathered stone really looks the business.

Thanks David. The Comber goods shed which I used as inspiration appears to have been built in sandstone, possibly from the nearby quarries at Scrabo - there was a rail link from the BCDR Donaghadee branch line in the 19th Century. However, what I've ended up with looks more akin to limestone, like the harbour at Donaghadee where I often walk and which coincidentally also had a BCDR rail link.

 

[Galteemore]

Looks fabulous and authentic Alan. 

[derek]

@Tullygrainey. Excellent work as usual Alan. Can I ask you about "scribing" the das  clay? Do you leave the clay to dry completely before scribing, and if so what do you use? I always try to have my stonework done while clay is soft, but I intend starting on a station building soon, and I don't think my usual method would be practical. Also, the subtle green/yellow weathering- I am totally going to steal that idea. Looks great. 

[Tullygrainey]

Thanks Derek. Yes, I leave the clay to dry completely before scribing it.  If the clay is soft, there's a tendency for it to move away from the scriber and create raised bits either side of the scribed line - more like ploughing than scribing. When the clay is dry, it's possible to get finer scribed lines and they stay where you put them. I use a hardened steel centre punch which has a fine point but anything sharp and pointy would do. As to yellow/green weathering, steal away. I'm fairly sure I nicked the idea in the first place after seeing it somewhere - possibly in a magazine article by Gordon Gravett.

Alan

Edited Sunday at 17:44 by Tullygrainey

[Patrick Davey]

Am with @derek - your ideas shall be duly stolen Alan!!  Great to see you back making progress on the layout, can’t wait to see The Golfers’ Express hurtling through the station and past this amazing shed, hauled by No. 6…. or maybe No. 30….. or even No. 12……?

[derek]

On 11/5/2025 at 6:43 PM, Tullygrainey said:

Thanks Derek. Yes, I leave the clay to dry completely before scribing it.  If the clay is soft, there's a tendency for it to move away from the scriber and create raised bits either side of the scribed line - more like ploughing than scribing. When the clay is dry, it's possible to get finer scribed lines and they stay where you put them. I use a hardened steel centre punch which has a fine point but anything sharp and pointy would do. As to yellow/green weathering, steal away. I'm fairly sure I nicked the idea in the first place after seeing it somewhere - possibly in a magazine article by Gordon Gravett.

Alan

Thanks Alan. Should have thought of a punch. I was thinking more along the lines of something electricity driven, or even air driven.  One of my punches is heading for the grinder so.