The Far North Line

Another good photo day today -overcast and showery - so was back in the loft for another pic session/ operating time. Some of a passenger train arriving.





And a HR 0-6-0 off with the breakdown van and the PW coach to some task.





Lastly, the Dornoch tank is doing some shunting....

 

They have had light weathering but this doesn't show up well in photographs unfortunately. I'm imagining the breakdown van has had a recent repaint - in reality it stayed in very faded LMS until its withdrawal.

 

Recent photos have involved a lot of stock, and a rake of vans which was left on the layout caught my eye as I ascended the loft ladder the other day, so I took the camera up at night and tried a few shots under the daylight tubes. Here are some of them; the vans as they were left...



And with the branch engine of the day attending to them.





I also took a walk around the yard to see what was around....

 

Thanks, but I'm a bit embarassed about that one - its an unfinished corner of the layout - the weighbridge is still unpainted and the office is straight Coopercraft. It was one of those things I never photographed properly for some reason and it is only recently I have managed to obtain good shots of it. A job to do soon, I think. Delighted to have POTW though.....

 

Some of the Ratio and older Parkside vans have the option of opening doors, as does the venerable Airfix meat van. I tend to use these rather than hack through moulded sides but I'll take a look at some of them and come back on this - I've been doing this a long while and don't keep notes, and once I move on to the next project it tends to go out of my mind. If I was starting again in this digital world I would have done things differently and recorded as I went, but we are where we are, so a trip up to the layout and a search of the memory cell is called for ...

 

I have taken a look at my open door vans, and they are Ratio SR plywood sided, Airfix Meat van, and Parkside LNER early wooden type. Most of the latter are from their now discontinued mould but I think the newer tooling has the same option. Their fish vans also offer this. I generally have just stuck to these for ease, although I have done one of the new Parkside BR standard vans with opening doors but because my stock is only ever seen on one side I tend to make the opening version on the unseen side so it can run as normal in pulled trains, and it is somewhere in my stock cupboard hiding. I have far too many wagons, but enjoy building them so they steadily increase. I have made several open wagons with dropped side doors and there are usually one or two around the yard to be seen. Here are a couple of shots from a recent shunting session at Thurso.







And a close up of a newly finished conversion of a Cambrian LMS van - an early build with braced wooden ends which I scratchbuilt.