I was hoping to have finished this castle before this update but the whole castle project is a bit bigger than I had originally anticipated. I am about 95% there and just have small details to finish such as chimney pots, door handles and the like.

So here are some pictures of the castle in place.



Close up



With flags added



Large tree added



Side views with gravel driveway now in place.





How this looks in the greater context of the layout.





I have to say that had I known how much work these conical tower roofs were going to be I wouldn’t have bothered. These really were a mission. I still have to do walls for the front and back of the castle estate. I also have a lot of tidying up to do with the fencing. I am thinking of removing some of the fencing and replacing it with stone walls as this would be more appropriate for the area. I’ll try to do some of the walling tomorrow if I get time.

I haven’t shown any pictures of the back as I am still to finish off a lot of the part at the rear. I’ll show some pictures when I do that part.

I got some track from Paul (Lancashire Fusilier) at the weekend so I am pretty much ready to start my West Highland extension. It will still be based on Spean Bridge but will have to curve a bit. I had better finish up the rear part of the castle and do the tunnel mouths and covering foliage first however so the extension may have to wait until next week or even month.

I have started acquiring a fleet of late eighties early nineties diesels to run on the West Highland lines at the top. I am in the process of installing sound detailing and weathering these. The 47 and 26 both have sound installed. There is also a 37 which I installed sound in but it had to go back as the decoder was faulty. I just have to do the powders on the 26 and 47 and then they are done. Here are some pictures of the 47.

I thought it was about time for a bit of an update. I have actually been doing a fair bit although it hardly looks like it. It has all been focussed on one project though. Recently I removed all the German towers and bridges from the edge of the raised bit and am now left with this which needs remodelled. The plan is to cover over the gap at the top and place a castle on top of it with a bit of grounds. I will need to make a couple of tunnel mouths to go at the ends.



I have a vacant section which was the turntable and am debating what to do with it. I could do a diesel depot or country scene. My current favourite idea is to do a small lochan with an island with tall trees as is often seen in the West Highlands. I’d have to drop the level a bit so it goes well below the track level but it might be worth it. I also thought a rockier outcrop behind it might be good too. I had a picture in mind that I seen of the line to Mallaig in a friends book.



I also intend to extend this section and have my West Highland station in here along with a small depot along the lines of Spean Bridge. I will have to bend some of it round a corner at a 120cm radius so it will have to be modified a bit. I already have the station building made so that’s a head start. The extension will go over my workbench but will be about a foot above it so it will not obstruct using it.


The castle I mentioned earlier is the project that’s taking up most of my time. It’s the biggest building challenge I have had to date. There is a fair amount of work and, knowing what I know now, I probably should have made a simple tower. What I am doing is make a model of Kellie Castle in Fife as it is a local castle. I have most of the exterior done and just a few bits to scribe and colour . Will be getting onto the windows next. I bought some etched brass framework to use; I just have to remember what I did with them!









I also got my Grassmaster too and did a bit of work with that. I redid a lot of the grass to give it a late summer, early autumn look. I found you get better result when doing large areas. I’m quite impressed with the results.







I still have a few loco mods to do too. I need to finish the WD. I put sound in but have to add coal, get rid of the front coupler and weather it a bit more. I also have sound to put into 37, 47 and 26’s for the West Highland bit. Loads to get done. First though, I’m looking forward to getting the castle done so I can get onto the layout extension area. I like the idea of more track. I can make the shuttle lines a bit longer!

I’ve done a bit more work over the last week or so and have a bit of an update.

I have finished off the old gun emplacement and weathered it a bit. This is how it looks for a couple of angles.







This is how it fits into the bigger picture.





I am now working on the old sidings in the lower level where the ordinance would have been delivered down from the gun emplacement. I have ballasted this bit and started on the weathering. It still looks fairly healthy at the moment but I want to give it a really old abandoned derelict look so it looks like nothing has been maintained since 1945. The main Leven to St Andrews line will look relatively well maintained in comparison. Quite a few jobs needing done in this section; more weathering tracks and walls, make the fences look rusty, install girders under the bridges, place plants and trees in and around the tracks and I really need a fence to stop those cows falling off.





While doing this section I continued using the puffer bottle for grass but found it didn’t work so well on these smaller sections. I really wasn’t happy at all with how the grass came out. I decided to bite the bullet and get a Noch Grassmaster as this seems to be set up to do small areas better.

I had been thinking about which castle to model for the section behind the field and have come to the conclusion that it will have to be Kellie Castle because of location and appropriacy. Trouble is that it will not all fit in the given space. I will have to do a bit of thinking to see if I can extend that area to get it in.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been trying to finish sections of the top of the layout at the front so I can start work on the cuttings below. I had forgotten that there is a lot of work needing done down there. I haven’t even painted the rails yet. That’s the problem with having a break; I forget what I had done and hadn’t. The plan is to work from the top down so I don’t dump scenic stuff on the completed sections.

I painted all the fencing green so next step will be weathering that with rust and adding some missing pavement to complete that area. I boxed up all the German buildings so I now have a bit of space to work in.




I had got reasonably far with my wheat field but ran out of (Busch) wheat. I ordered another pack from Hearn’s hobbies but it just arrived on Friday afternoon so haven‘t had a chance to pick it up yet.





What I have done is finish off the woodland scene. I have pretty much finished that off and made walls to bound it next to the road and edge of the cutting. I’ll need to get some markings on the road to finish that off.

The last blog entry was about a new German layout that I will be building. Having discussed this with a few people it was suggested that it may make more sense to finish of the layout I already have. I thought that was fairly reasonable as there would be torage issues, so that's what I have been doing. I had to remove the German city scene and will remove the Bavarian station and am replacing it with an extension of the cliff scene backwards. This is how it's looking now.










This is being modelled on the top of Elie cliffs where I used to go camping as a teenager. There are many old army blockhouses from WW2 still intact there and so I aim to include an old gun base and a blockhouse.







The base of the large gun was knocked up fom a Peco turntable with additions made from mdf and pollyfilla. I have still to weather and finish the base of the gun emplacement but you can get the idea. I still have to knock up a blockhouse but that will be quite easy with MDF and pollyfilla.

The grass cliff tops were made using a Noch grass applicator bottle and it seems to have done a reasonable job. The grass cliff tops continues for a fair bit and then reaches a fenced off bit where there is a short stretch of woodland. I have made loads of trees for this bit and they are ready to go. I want to get fences and walls in place first before "planting" these as they may get damaged otherwise. I have completed the forest floor and it has plenty of ferns and mushrooms and floor litter.







Over the road from the wall will be the top narrow end of a wheat field. This is what I am doing now.




Over the other side of road from the wheat field will be a new small Scottish baronial type castle along the lines of Falkland palace or St Andrews castle. A smaller and semi ruined sort of building. This will go in the space here.



So there's plenty to be getting on with there for the next few months.

It does seem some time since I last updated my blog. I have gone through a lengthy period of reflection on model rail and what I want to do in the future. Some events that occurred last year gave me reason to reconsider the direction I was headed in and I have now had a bit of a think about what is coming next.

One of my conclusions was that having the layout in the garage was a major off putting factor. Over here it’s either forty degrees or cold and damp, neither of which are particularly enticing. So what I wanted was to have my layout back in the house. As we don’t have enough space in the house there was only one solution; extend.

We had been intending to move back to the UK this year however due to the current financial situation we thought it best to stay here as we both have reasonable jobs and it would be mad to go into an insecure situation. We had also looked at other larger houses but wanted to stay in the same area so extending seemed the logical choice. Having the opportunity to extend my agenda was to get a new railway room in the house. I have managed to get this but with one limiting factor; it has to be only a metre wide at most. The room has to double as a guest bedroom, computer room and music room for my guitars and amps so I cannot dominate the space too much. The idea is to have a 4.5 metre by 1metre layout. It would seem logical to do a plank type layout but my main interest is fast express trains and this type of layout is inappropriate.

My current thought are that 1metre is sufficient for a pacific to turn in. I do have a couple of my locos which would not make it round this sort of curve but you can’t win them all. The plan is to have to have two loops for the express trains and and have a small station halt with some sidings. The layout is to be based in Prussia in the period between 1918 and 1945. It will alternate between epoch 1 and 2 depending on what I am running. It will be exclusively German. My current layout had different sections which represented Scotland, Germany and Switzerland however some people chose not to notice the dividing boards between the sections and accuse me of mixing up nationalities stock as a means of point scoring. This new layout will remove that option for those types.

The idea is that for the epoch 1 running the station area will be a forestry based scene as there will be much woodland around the back area. For epoch two there will be a large rail gun which will be on a shuttle and pop out occasionally to shell the Russians plus some marshalling yards for eastbound equipment.

I have kept the track very basic as I intend to make this realistic. The temptation is always to stuff in as much track and buildings as possible. I intend to resist this and keep it as close to reality as possible.

The backdrop will be curved as the square edges were always a bane on my current layout. I will have the ground gradually rise after the station for about 6cm so that it will be above the rear storage yards. Insufficient storage with poor access was always an issue on the current layout and the storage there was wasn’t long enough to accommodate many of the longer trains.There will be roads crossing the mainline at each end so that the curves at the end can be concealed by bridges. I would prefer to avoid any telling tight curves. Woodland will fill the back area.

I don’t really have much time for modelling now so my plan was to take a couple of weeks off work and get the baseboards and track sorted out then.




I have chopped up the layout into three sections as it is a bit lengthy and would appreciate any comment or thoughts.

My layout plans have been on hold for a little while. Basically we have decided to move house next year and my layout will not be able to be transported. This has created a dilema about what can be salvaged and what I would like to do next. The plan is to do a modular layout based on a loop with storage yards at the back with interchangable modules at the front. I found that the concept of having different scenes was a bit difficult for some people to grasp so decided it would be better to interchange modules according to what I would like to run.

So first up will be a layout based on Spean bridge station on the West Highland line between Glasgow and Fort William. I decided to start off by building the station first. I got plans for this from an old Railway Modeller magazine article by Ian Futer.

I started off by making the four sides. The wall is stiff card with wooden doors and trim. The brick is Wills sheets.





Windows were made from etched brass and clear plastic.





These were connected together and a card roof was made to put on top.







I made the drain pipes from brass wire. End result doesn't look too bad. It will need a few touch ups though. I've tried it on my station platform on my layout but it's too big and hangs over the edges.

Recently I have been doing lots of smaller projects rather than big things. I felt that there had been many tasks that I needed to do that I had been putting off for a while that I needed to get round to. One of which was weathering my locos. When photographing a loco on the new BRMA sound demo layout I noted that what spoiled the picture, e.g. made it less real, was that it was clearly straight out the box; which it was, literally. I resolved to start weathering my stock immediately.


I have weathered quite a bit of rolling stock previously and had not yet done a loco. Probably due to the, “this loco cost me 200 quid and I’m reluctant to dowse it in gunk syndrome”. Anyway I got over it. My first effort was my new Bachmann Class 47 with sound. I don’t normally go for diesels but the reason I got this was because I was looking at a sound decoder for my Class 31 and found that the new Bachmann Class 47 cost only twelve quid more than the sound decoder for the 31 and would also save some time farting around installing the sound. Once I got the loco I had to paint up the add on detail parts. Unlike some of the Hornby diesels the loco didn’t come with pre painted detailing parts so you have to check pictures and pain the ends the appropriate colours. Once this was done I applied various weathering powders till the required effect was achieved.













Next up was my Hornby Class 31 however while examining the model to decide how I would go about it I noticed that the corners were cracking off. This is covered on a separate thread and weathering didn’t get very far on this.

I had decided to do diesels first however due to an accident, fate determined that my BR52 Kreigslok would have to be next. Terrible shame. In war conditions these would not have been getting cleaned so they would have looked pretty grotty. Unfortunately there are few colour photos of that period so I have had to make do with what I could find. One thing I have found is that the red chassis and running gear of the German locos comes out really well with black turps based wash. It really highlights well the intricacies of the wheels brakes and underneath. The upper body and tender take the powders better. Giving a nice result.

I’m now getting onto the rolling stock hauled by the BR52. I have ordered a few items to add to this train but have been waiting a while for these. The plan now is to work my way through my previously neglected rolling stock and add on all the detailing parts I can and weather them appropriately.



















In addition I have also added more to the Plockton station scene. I flattened the platform more as it was a bit too rutted. I have ordered lamps and power boxes to add to complete the scene. I’ll make the signs myself. I've made the stuff to go on the signs to print off so just to paint the signposts and boards and add them to the scene. The country side is a bit more full with forest floor covering and a few trees.
















Round the front I have painted black the boards so that it provides a greater contrast between the boards and the layout. Sort of brings it out a bit.



Here's a few more shots of the BR52 on the BRMA sound demo layout to finish.

One section of my layout that has been neglected for some time has been the German city scene. There were a couple of reasons. First is that I haven't had nearly as much time to spend on my layout since my youngest son came along and secondly, I have been getting round to installing point motors in this section. I didn't want to ballast or scenic before I had these installed and working.
This will soon be resolved as I will be ordering some lS150's and point motors soon to enable me to finish of this section. A project that I thought I could start which was not dependent upon this was the interace between the epoch 1 Bavarian station and the city walls. I have recently decided to make the actual city an epoch 2 scene rather than epoch 5. This will involve a bit of work as all my buildings are set in epoch 5, so all the computer shops will have to go and be replaced with contemporary scenes. I am reluctant to have nazi flags etc on my layout so I will have to get it as close as possible without making people think I have facist leanings. I have also decided that the city that this cutting is going through will be based on Nurnberg as I have plenty of pictures that I can base new structures on.

The section decided on had a board in place for a backdrop which ended abruptly and, quite frankly, looked stupid. I looked for ideas which would enable me to loose the backdrop yet have some form of interface which would bridge to the two eras and hide the control area. The picture below of a bridge and tower in Nurnberg seemed a good idea asit could apply to any era.



Having used plasterboard previously for modelling I had thought of using that again however the problem would be the joins. For this reason I used MDF with pollyfilla over it. First of all cut the MDF to size.



Then glue and nail it all together.



Cover it with pollyfilla and etch the brickwork onto it.



Start on the paintwork and try it for size.



For the roof, Faller and Vollmer make roof tiling sheets which are handy as the diamond style tiling is time consuming to do. These sheets are just cut to size. This was still a bit tricky as the roof doesn't have straight edges. There is a bend about a third of the way down.



This was the end result.







The bridge next to the tower was made from plasterboard with a roof cut to size from the roof sheeting.



I haven't permanently attached the structures as I need to lift them off at this point for access. I have one further tower to do at the end which will replace the Faller kit structure in the pictures.

The Faller old city walls and tower will need to be repainted and weathered to fit in. I will permanently attach them together and plaster over the joins. I am still thinking about what to use as for the city square ground cover, e.g. whether to pave, have asphalt or gravel.



I also decided to curtail the Faller road system somewhat and only use half of the road length I had initially intended. I'm not sure about the availability of epoch 2 vehicles but I'm sure I can knock up something. I have also been looking into Veissmann signals but there are some issues with which decoder to use.

Here are some more photos of where I'm up to at the moment.



























Well after my initial attempt at using MDF and pollyfilla I decided to have another go by making the tower at the other end of the bridge to finish the scene off.


Same process but as there is a semicircular part at one end I had to improvise a bit. I used empty bog roll tubes to make the curved bit.



It seemed to be successful and retained rigidity once it had the pollyfilla on it.

Putting the windows in was a bit tricky as I had put scrunched up bog roll tubes inside the other bog roll tubes for strength but do-able.



I used a lot of DCC Concepts new weathering powders on this to try them out. They come in a handy container with a screw top so are a bit easier to use than the stuff in the bags.

I still need to tidy it up a bit by levelling the roof and so on but will allow it to dry thoroughly first. Paint, glue and washes are a bit wet yet.

This is how it turned out.













This is what it's supposed to look like.

In order to complete my raised level station I wanted to contrsuct a station building which was unique. My first choice was for a West Highland Swiss chalet style building however due to restrictions of size this wasn't going to be possible. I then perused the stations on the Kyle line to see what was on offer there. The Plockton station took my fancy as I have been there a couple of times and have passed through it more often. The station is mainly wood and as I have plenty of wood left over from my ship building days decided to proceed with this.

Armed with a bunch of photographs, some card, several strips of wood and a tool kit I set off to contruct an interpretation of Plockton station as it was in the early nineties.



First step was to collect dimension and put them down on card to act as a base for the model.



Next step was to vertically plank it. There are thin strips of wood which run vertically which I was unable to do with wood due to the inability to cut wood that fine so I used twine run through PVA.



Looks shocking at this point doesn't it? It does improve. Next step was to do the doors and windows. I also slapped a bit of paint on.



Next step was to add pillars. There are five of these at the front of the building supporting the canopy. These are made from carved hardwood at the top and bottom and a plastic cylinder in the middle.



Next step was to attach the pillars.



After this the roof was done. I had a bit of a talk to Richard Johnson about this and he suggested wood painted to use as tiles. This was a long and laborious process however it was worth it. Bearing in mind that the roof is the part that will be seen the most often it is not an area to to skimp on detail. The lead capping was done with paper painted with acrylics. After instalation of the roof came the chimney, made from wood and plastic parts superglued togther.

Finally, I added the carved gables. So this is how it now looks. I still have a couple of adjustments to make like levelling it and weathering some parts. I will redo one of the pillars as it's a bit wonky but it's most of the way done.









This is how it now looks converted to a restaurant.



To see it as it was modelled go to this link. and this

I still have a few more details to get however haven't located where to get them from yet. I need a couple of etched brass weather vains and a couple of etched brass lamps to add on. Once these are on I can finish the main building. In the meantime I had better finish off the background scenics and platform detail.