The Far North Line

Track cleaned and should be good for a while. I've not really done a lot of running for the best part of a year, as last summers tidy up of the terminus grew in to a bit of a saga, so all stock was packed away and a good running session was done to check there were no hiccups in electrical continuity. All OK apart from one loose joiner in the hidden section that was soon remedied and I have been catching up on running more than operating, giving the too large fleet an airing, but some of it was prototypical. Here is a HR Clan Goods arriving at Thurso , running round its train, shunting it to the stops and then going to the shed to wait its next duty.

 

Had a glitch with up loading - here are the rest...

 

Following a request on a FB page, I took a couple of helicopter shots to show the overall scenic sections. The layout is shoeboxed in to a small attic and this is all the viewable bits. There is a continuous run behind the backscenes with some loops - I'll show these later.

 

I'll post some more behind the scenes pics soon to show how I work it,and here are a couple from the batch...

 

The "visitors" are hangovers from earlier layouts, when I had a more eclectic taste.. Most were disposed of but I hold on to some from sentiment. The WC was here as a postulated transfer of some of the SR's frankly excessive number of them to the Highland for main line use as the 1948 trial proved them more than worthy of such a task, and some made it further north as well. This one does have some local connection - it is 34059, Sir Archibald Sinclair, Air Minister during the war and later ennobled as Viscount Thurso, but whose family held vast estates in Caithness for centuries. My belated building of HR and CR locos has rendered most of them redundant but some of the modern ones are retained as I have sort of plans to run the layout now and again in a forward sort of "what if" as opposed to my current HR locos life extension, where instead of steam being replaced in the area in 1961 it was modernised and BR Standards made a mass appearance on the scene. Watch ou for this one!

 

Track plan, such as it is. The layout is housed in an attic 11' x 9' and the scenic parts take up the entire room bar a hidden run and some loops behind the backscenes.


The hatched lines are the backscenes and the solid ones the running line and loops. Some views with the backscenes off during some long overdue trackcleaning, which show the loops and set up.



The lops behind the approach to Helmsdale with its access point on the left. The loops are electrically broken in the middle so two trains can be held in each.


The exit/ entrances to both stations - the two Helmsdale platforms at the left and the Thurso branch to the right.





All point motors are on the surface - my back refuses to do any more under baseboard work than absolutely necessary..
And two shots of the backscenes in place and the access points to the hidden lines. Stock is shuffled at the bench end - bench is for running repairs only - most work is donr on my other bench in a seperate room.

 

That out of the way, back to the illusion..... A short freight arriving at Helmsdale.

 

To finalise a look at the layout, here are the control panels for the two stations - Thurso first.



Firmly of the DC persuasion, the controller is an Orbit product, a now defunct range from the early nineties, but unsurpassed IMHO.



Just installed, as a trial, is a Morley Vector Crawler. It almost gives the Orbit a run for its money, and I'll report back once I've put it through its paces properly. The Gaugemaster controls the turntable and by using the brake function I can get a very slow precise movement from it for alignment.

The Helmsdale and "main line" controller here.


The Roco at the left operates the turntable and out of sight beside it is a hand held Orbit. The power switches, marked by the conventional signs can be switched between it or the panel one so a train can run on the loop while another can potter around in the station. Additionally, by using the switch at the far right, confusingly sitting on the main running line...., the terminus controller can run on to the loop or into the sectioned right half of Helmsdale platforms - I found during the build trialing that this was a useful operational feature.
The red and green buttons and associated knobs and slide switches are my sole concession to sound. I have tried DC sound systems twice now over the years and both times quickly tired of them -but I do like to hear a steam whistle echoing up the Strath, so there are two, real recordings as opposed to an electronic one on the previous layout. One is of a Black Five and the other as close to a CR one as I could get. The length and volume can be controlled and this I do find evocative of childhood recalls of the engine going about its business.

 

The track was cleaned and Track Magiced so the next job was the locos. Here they are after their visit to the bench.


Seeing them like this, and cleaning every one, made me realise the amount of kit building and general butchery I have done these last few years - far too many engines but its good to have a choice.....That's not all of them as the Black Five fleet were still on the cleaning bench and another four are awaiting T9 mazak rot treatment. Eventually they made it back to their shelves.



They were all given a wipe of Deoxit and the amount of gunge that came off was amazing, esp from the rear faces. I do give them a quick wipe now and again, most recently with a Gaugemaster rail brush but the Deoxit was something else... Slow speed and starting is now transformed and a resolution made to do this more often - it shouldn't be such a big job now years of grime has been removed.

 

\i have shifted the engine feeding facilities at the terminus from one side of the track to the other to give a better view of things. Still a WIP, hence the glitches, but I will return to this once I have done the required work. Doesn't look much but a fair bit of landscaping was called for along with a wire in tube for switching one of the bullhead points installed last year that had no space for a point motor. Before and after first then some general ones.

 

Thanks, Art Printers/ ID Backscenes supply the weather - I was going to use the overcast sky but I can see the real thing if I want that so plumped for sunshine....

 

Further to the above an alteration to the watering facilities has taken place. The existing tank is a cut down Airfix GW one and the dimensions are not really consistent with the actual HR one but it is something that I have lived with rather than tackle making a more scale version. However, I happened to come across a modeller who is working with 3D printing and he kindly offered to produce one for me. After some tooing and froing he did a tank that I have used at Helmsdale and further discussion with him resulted in his making a tank and tower for his own needs based on the one at Garve, which was drawn up in the Fifties. This is smaller than the Thurso one but apparently easy enough to alter dimensions to suit my needs. This is what arrived - I got him to omit any wall details but he is going to incorporate stonework on his version.

And with some work done on it.



The striations are painfully obvious in the images but are almost invisible to the eye and in the general context of the layout are not apparent at all.

Finally, a couple of it in situ. It has just been plonked in place and with being a solid base is not sitting snug in places, so I will have to bed it in - easy enough as the surface of the yard is 1/16th cork and can be removed easily. I normally do not bed buildings down so they can be shifted for photography without leaving an obvious footprint but I'm not getting away with that here!

 

Another project that has been sitting almost finished for a few weeks now is another "what if" - this time an ROD 2-8-0 that the HR debated purchasing after the Great war. that came to nothing but here it did, and over the fullness of time adopted some native features - round buffers, tablet catcher and Peter Drummond's copy of his brothers watercart tender. They were nicknamed Hielan Roddies after their mixed origins by their crews....
I have not got round to colouring the drivers or applying any weathering but I thought showing it on screen might jildi me up on this matter.... Here it is hauling empties to the Brora coal mine for filling - I have taken some geographical liberties here to justify such traffic passing through Helmsdale. The usual double sided transfer trick has been applied again...

 

Trying out the Morley controller eventually led me to dig out my two H&M 3000's that last saw the light of day some thirty years ago - they were supplanted by the panel mounted Orbit's when they appeared, which were and are excellent controllers but a vanished breed now. The Morley gives a very smooth start and slow speed control but no better than I can get with the Orbits so it has been sent to the reserve and my old 300's given a new lease of life. Despite being unused all this time they work perfectly still, the only problem being oxidation on the direction toggle switches on both, which was cure by repeated to and froing till contact was restored. I thought I might have to go inside the controllers to sort this but it was not necessary. These controllers offer a variable momentum and a brake function plus a steady speed option for gradients and the like but the combination of the speed slider and the brake produce excellent shunting operation and I remembered how much I enjoyed using them back then. Their only drawback is their footprint as they take up a lot of space but by tucking them away on a shelf this has been overcome. Here they are as part of the controls - they slide back under the baseboard when not in use.