Monthly Archives: January 2019
Aultbea Update
From time to time, we have dropped in to see progress on a layout being built by Peter Bond, called Aultbea. As we dropped in to see him yesterday, I have some update photographs.
Most of the progress has been on the buildings including the centre piece which is the train shed and station building. As you can see, this is a pretty big structure as it consumes two full length coaches.
The view inside the trainshed is particularly impressive; I think you can smell the diesel fumes and sea air!
The builder in a characteristic pose, talking…………….
Although the layout is based on one of the proposed schemes to open up the north west of Scotland (of which there were a number) it is also firmly inspired by Oban as you can probably see, plus chunks of Kyle of Lochalsh including the goods shed and a bit Fort William with the train engine coming beyond the station and idling on the station approach.
Damaging Value…..
Over the last few years I have acquired a few coaches painted by Larry Goddard. As you can seen below, these are beautifully painted and, particularly, lined coaches. Although he is not really building much any more, Larry’s work comes up from time to time on ebay and I have been nabbing a few of these. They are not particularly cheap, but then there is a fair amount of work in building an etched coach and in reality the price I am paying for them is hardly a fair reflection of this time.
Whilst I have been able to line fairly well in the dim distant past of my teenage years, I don’t think my lining was as good as this and, more importantly, I have misplaced my lining mojo. Although I have plans to try and rediscover the mojo, these coaches do provide a means to get a few very nice coaches to get the layout moving.
This particular coach is to the LMS’s diagram 1778 and originate from 1925 – 28. They were the first standard design for the LMS and will have been found throughout their system, including on the Highland section. My intent for the layout is to have a pair of through trains to Edinburgh/Glasgow with through coaches to London – this will form part of this.
Whilst the basic building and painting/lining of the coach is top notch, there are some issues that I have sought to deal with. First of these is that the bogies are fairly clunky and being assembled from components they are unlikely to be truly square. Thus, I have disassembled these and used them as cosmetic sides to some Bill Bedford sprung bogies.
The coach as built comes with some paper concertina corridor connections – all very 1970s in they look and as they are stretching, they look rather rubbish so off they came. In their place, I have built some of my etched ones – these are a spin off from the dia 51 full brake kit that I am working on. This shows them part built and I will be looking to do a posting on these in their own right once I am fully happy with them.
If mucking about and making the coaches for P4 is not sufficient to undermine the resale value of the coach, the final task to weather down the very glossy paintwork will. These were obviously predominantly aimed at collectors and are finished to showroom standards. The railways of the steam age were amazingly dirty places and a loco or coach in an ex-works condition would be pretty mucky by the end of its first run, let alone its first year.
Thus, it can not stay as clean and glossy as this, no matter how beautiful it looks. I have a weathering day planned for a couple of weeks time, and attacking this will be one of the tasks…………..
One for the Paintshop
I am sure I am not alone in having in mind a list of modelling jobs to do over the Christmas break and to find that the bulk of the list remains uncompleted when it is time to go back to work!!
One item on my list was to finish a North Eastern Railway autocoach that I have had underway for a while and that at least has got itself off the list!
The bulk of this is from a D&S etched kit which I have seriously devalued by opening the box!! I have replaced the fixed bogies with some test build sprung bogies that I have had under development for rather too long now (they are finished, but for the castings which I need now to produce following the demise of Lochgorm Models for at least the time being).
I also replaced the roof with some metal sheet rolled to the curves. This proved a real challenge and took more than one attempt as I found you could not roll the section with the holes for the clerestory already cut as the bend all occurred at this weakened point. I also took the effort to put on the gas lines with fine wire as I think these add so much to a model of this era.
I think they are very attractive coaches but there is a problem with them – they tended to go in pairs so I have another to build! Just not quite yet! Fortunately, the BPT is not down to me, but I think you may find yourself under pressure soon John!!!!
Cover Girl! ……..and a shameless plug!
Portchullin is a cover girl again, as it features on the front cover of the DVD supplement that accompanies the just available (perversely February 2019) British Railway Modelling.
It features me blathering on about the inspiration for the layout, the origins of the real line and the prompting of its building. I even managed to remember to thank Peter for building the signal cabins this time, so hopefully he will not cold shoulder me for six months this time……………..
This DVD is only available with the subscription copy or if you take it in a digital format, so you can not rush down to WHSmiths to get it – I dare say that this is the publishers of BRM seeking to encourage you to take out a subscription!
In addition to this (and probably partially as a result), Portchullin has also got itself nominated into the BRM/RMweb’s 2018 British Railway Model Awards – click the banner at the head of their website here. It would be great to see the layout do well in the poll, so if anyone fancies doing a bit of voting, all contributions would be gratefully received!!
If you wish to see Portchullin in the flesh, its next outing is in May at ExpoEm in Bracknell. Look forward to seeing you there.
highland miscellany 