The Far North Line

Thanks - the covered car is from Ten Commandments, who do a useful range of loads and accessories.

I had an operating session at the weekend , with a bit of indulgence, and I'll look at one sequence here. Until the arrival of the Black Fives in the late thirties most trains changed engines at Helmsdale, and this is an aspect I have imagined continued in my model world - makes for more operational interest/ play value.....

As I have said before, I have a rather broad take on timelines with my model, pregrouping locos lasting a good bit longer than happened in reality, but I also have an occasional look in the other direction, mainly because I have a reserve fleet of newer engines that were used on earlier set ups, when I was less exact with what ran, mainly because the bulk of todays roster were still lying unmade in their boxes, since the seventies in some cases. I'll feature these sometime , but for the mo. the engine to be seen is a rebuilt Battle of Britain class. There is a slight justification for this as one ran on the Highland main line in the 1948 loco exchange trials, and impressed greatly with its performance, so fast forward some fifteen years where steam is blessed with a managed decline and the mass electrification of the S region has displaced surplus Pacifics to places where they can be of use.

So, a train approaches Helmsdale, where the engine is detached and runs back towards the shed for attention and the replacement locos, a pair of 4-4-0's take its place.







Meanwhile, the station pilot detaches the restaurant car from the rear of the train and moves it to the box sidings where it will be refuelled with gas and made ready for its return working to Inverness.







Sir Archibald is given a whirl on the turntable and then sits on the approach siding to get any necessary oiling etc and then goes to the shed and the crew retire to the mess shed until their next working - Helmsdale enginemen are not passed for such mighty beasts, so this is an Inverness rostered working.






Finally, its shunting done, the little tank runs onto shed, nothing else needing done and peace descends on the station again...

 

Some recent photo activity on the layout- all taken in daylight only.

 

Another operating session this afternoon - modelling has ground to a haltover the summer, mainly due to my battles with an enforced change from XP to W10, and playing with trains is a relaxing break - can't gather any oomph for anything more creative - so here is a record of the local distillery trip working back to the station and shunting the wagons in to the holding siding to await the next passing freight. The brake van is tucked away in the opposite stock sidings.



Arrival. The wagons are detached...



Then the loco runs round and takes the brake van to the sidings...





and then banks away .



A look over the stock sidings with the RC and TPO waiting for the next working - The TPO lies overnight; the RC goes south in the late afternoon.

 

Been a bit slow recently, but another loco has roled out of the works - CR 0-6-0 57585, long time Thurso resident and a hack around of the Hornby 700. Hornbys LSWR fixation has been handy for the Scottish loco basher as all Drummond engines are much of a muchness .....
Anyway, a couple of pics. Note the homespun cab extension to give a bit more shelter when running tender first.

 

Thanks all; flattered that it is top billing of the week! I'll post up a bash by bash in a few days although its fairly straightforward and gives a close call to a proper 812. Due to the pitch of the boiler that is the only Jumbo variant that can be done - all the others had a lower pitched boiler and lowering it is not feasibile. Alas the HR Barney is a good deal smaller than this - I'll do a shot of the two to illustrate this.

This is the second 812 I've done. 57587, the Helmsdale resident was done a couple of years ago to replace a DJH kit that was so flawed that I eventually could no longer live with it. Here are the two of them side by side as it got a bit of work done on it at the same time - better chimney and some tender rear detail I somehow managed to omit during the conversion.