Adding colour...

I took some pictures of Arnold Lane Wharf yesterday with a decent camera. Here are some of them.

Nettie with some wagons

The whole thing

The Kerr Stuart

Nancy and Peggy - The Amazons

Nancy and Peggy again

Lord Stoner

IC known as 'small red'

'Big Red', 'Small Red' and 'Ena'

Steam railcar set - Nursie

Syd

After dark

And now in black and white...

I'm pretty sure that I now have all the major buildings for the road behind the station in Port Lucy. I have some more painting and weathering to do but fundamentally they are done. The next step is to make a removable mini baseboard that will just fit on top of the basic baseboard where the buildings are now perched. It is too far back to do anything with it where it is so it has to be a module with the tram track and all the electrics contained within it. I stole the idea from Nick Welch which he details in his splendid book, Ffestiniog Odyssey.

 

 

I've just had the weekend off and was looking forward to getting some modelling done, maybe some ballasting or some wiring... nope domestic stuff needed doing and so I did very little. What I did get done was to finish the painting of my second Chivers Innisfail coach. I decided to go for a completely different look to the first one so this one is the un refurbished version.

 

The two coaches together

 

Ruth and Nettie down on the wharf

 

I'm pretty pleased with the faded green paint on the coach, it needs some vac pipes and a fleet number but is essentially done. Sadly the loading gauge is slightly too big for Arnold Lane so they will be part of the main line fleet.



Fade to grey

I plumped for the grey Brigadelok as it looks the smartest to my mind. Shame it will probably end up black and grubby.

I've now had a chance to do some testing of the beastie and had no problems with the rear overhang on my curves with either short wagons as seen above or with a rake of passenger coaches.

 

She easily sailed up the big hill with theses three coaches which is as much as will ever be needed. It won't usually be a passenger loco anyway. I can report that the running is as smooth as the other new Minitrains locos which is gratifyingly slow and smooth.

 



The new building arrived from Ireland and will be the perfect view blocker for the tram.

Since I took this picture I've also had the 'Caledonian Hotel' arrive which is another scenecraft building but this time in low relief. With a bit of a re jig I think I've now got all the Port Lucy buildings, some need painting and detailing but otherwise its good to start work on the town in earnest.

Three little maids from Germany

So which one do I keep? One will become Agnetha, I suspect I'll have the grey one and convert it later. It needs to lose the fairy lights in the lamps and it definitely needs some coal rails or a greedy board type arrangement. Hmmm...

Modellers block

I've had lots to do around the house and at work over the last few weeks so I haven't got much modelling done and I haven't felt much like it either. However I've been off work this past week and so amongst the decorating etc I have had a good tidy up in the garage and also done a bit of work on the big layout.

I finally got round to finishing off the woodwork round the back of Port Lucy which keeps the backscene boards in place and has a light on a pole. All much more solid.

Apart from that I've been trying out building arrangements for the town above the station. I need to make this as a separate module so that I can get the tram track and its associated auto reversing module installed and working. It looks like I need some low relief buildings to go behind the station building and perhaps some other buildings to hide the right hand end of the tram line where the tram hides while waiting to reverse.

Another thing I've done during the great tidy up is to clear all the cack of my workbench so it is usable again. To prove that, I got out my weathering box which has a variety of weathering powders and pastels in it. My two newest locos got subtly weathered. Nettie and Lucy (MK2). I also added a little age to the two VoR bash coaches.

Over a few evenings I've also painted the new loco shed for Port Lucy. It looks quite good, needs a few details like oil cans and maybe a noticeboard but otherwise its done.

Slice of white

With all the recent wedding/birthday activity out of the way I found time today to add some basic blocks of expanded polystyrene scenery to the layout.

This shows the line snaking around under the StRuth baseboard, the train is coming away from Port Lucy.

This is the same train slightly earlier in its journey just crossing the river and about to enter the cutting which it is seen emerging from in the first picture.

Here, a mixed train is leaving the cutting on the final approach to Port Lucy. Mixed trains will be normal for the IoSR once it is properly up and running. I've been doing some experimentation with train make ups and loadings and a couple of large bogie coaches seems about right with a van or wagon or two. The stock falls into two sizes really, the larger size seen in these pictures and the smaller FR loading gauge stuff. The double Fairlie can haul five of the FR size bogies up the hill but four makes a better train.

Green

After a hectic weekend of mostly driving to Surrey and back I had a chance to do a bit of modelling yesterday afternoon. I decided that on the new Lucy the 3D printed safety valve cover was always going to annoy me so I cut it off and replaced it with a whitemetal one. This involved some touching up of the paint and rewiring the chassis as I managed to bugger that up in the process.

While I was feeling brave with the soldering iron I decided to have a go at getting the long languishing Beddgelert up and running. I've been getting it finished off with a mind to selling this along with the old Lucy, now Angetha. I'm overwhelmed with expenses at the moment so need to make some cash, this was what the new Lucy was supposed to be for but I like it better than the old one which is anyway too long to use on my silly curves without some work.

The last thing I got time to do was to add a first coat of paint to my Skylark, I've plumped for a pale green which so far rather suits her. Hopefully I may get a chance to get another coat on this evening but I have a feeling Mr Tesco is beckoning me.

The observant will notice a missing cab step on the right hand side facing forward, not sure where that went but I'll knock something up out of styrene.