7mm G&SWR Paisley Canal

Intercity126

Western Thunderer
Paisley Canal is a small 7mm layout I started to build some years ago when I returned to the hobby and realised that my detailed and repainted early 1980's vintage Lima diesels were no longer state of the model railway art. I considered my options before deciding on a complete change in scale was in order and some of you may remember some early photos of the bare baseboards & track from the now defunct MIGO+1 forum.

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Track is built from Exactoscale and C&L components. I started with the points at the top of the image (right hand side of the layout) and built these on templates, which restricted the geometry somewhat. The later build curved point closes to the camera is much more satisfactory.

My interests are very parochial and I wanted to model an ex Glasgow & South Western Railway line during the "Golden Age of Trains" - which to me was the period of transition from green to blue diesel liveries which I remembered so fondly from my childhood.

The Layout

The odd baseboard shape was dictated by the available space in my old apartment. Despite only having the space for a micro-layout, I wanted to have a double track, main line railway. I wanted to avoid straight lines and eventually came up with the idea of a plan based upon a sweeping S-bend. This also suggested to me a possible prototype: The Paisley Canal Line was opened by the G&SWR in 1885 and followed the course of the former Glasgow and Ardrossan Canal. The canal was purchased by the G&SWR, unceremoniously filled in and used as the trackbed for the railway. The line is very level but the fact that it was once a canal is evidenced by the many curves and earthworks to maintain the level.

Paisley Canal station was situated in a cutting, overlooked by the booking office (which I have partially modelled) with the platforms being to the right of the modelled area (these and the rest of the railway network were originally represented by a 3 road traverser).

Although my track plan is fictitious (designed purely for amusement in operation), I tried to fit the layout as far as possible within the actual topography of the area. The retaining walls and the booking office on the road overbridge being the distinctive features. I subsequently added the tenement end overlooking the tracks.

To control my fictitious track and signalling arrangements, I provided a signal box, based on (mirror image of) the box at Hawkhead on the same stretch of line.

I entered the layout into the RMWeb 2010 challenge which provided the spur to take the layout to a basic stage of completion as shown below. There was a summary thread and a building thread on RMWeb.

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One line is under an engineers' possession, which gives the excuse to shunt trains on the mainline (and call a minuscule run round loop a double track mainline...

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Due to a combination of family priorities and indolence, the layout lay operational (but unused) for some further years until I was asked by some local contacts here in Norway if I would be prepared to exhibit the layout in the local show. This provided the spur to do a bit more work and the layout was exhibited as a "work in progress" at the local show in Bergen in 2018 in the state as shown.
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The layout proved surprisingly entertaining to operate for the 2 days of the show. Rather surprisingly both of my Wee Girls seemed to enjoy shuffling trains around.

I didn't bother using the traverser as anything more than short static roads, which caused a bit of a rethink. It had always bugged me that I hadn't built the backside of the building with the staircases down to the tracks - I originally intended a backscene to be built, but in the layout's new permanent place at home it is partially in front of a picture window and a full height backscene no longer makes sense so I built a short additional scenic board and plan to extend this building to its full size. I also curved the main tracks over a little to extend the curve through the points which hides the fact that these were laid when I was still suffering from the "PECO" mentality in tracklaying. A shot of work in progress below with some crude "rapid prototyping" to get a feel for the possible changes.
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The track is now laid on this section and I have since started to put in the basic platform structure and some supporting steelwork for the extended road bridge. The near side of the station building will need extended as the actual footprint should be triangular. Photos to follow in due course. I am considering taking the layout back to the local show again this year in its rebuilt form, so need to step up progress quite a bit.
 

Intercity126

Western Thunderer
Thanks all, for the interest in my little layout. My New Year's resolution was to be a bit more active on the forum in the coming months, with the aim of forcing myself to make a bit more progress.

Graham - The track does seem to be the thing that has aroused the most interest, but it was clear that the left hand end was much better in this respect. The right hand end needed something done to improve it scenically as the change from layout to fiddle yard was quite abrupt (as can be seen in the photo below), hence my decision to dispense with the traverser.
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The fact that I was using modular points at this end also meant that the points were slightly staggered, as can be seen here when I started to lay the track on the replacement RH baseboard. Not normally a problem at home, but caused some fraught moments when I was taking the traverser (with protruding rails to the exhibition). I soldered the rear rails to the point before re-cutting at the new baseboard joint.IMG_20181111_175858.jpg

I think the new arrangement looks much better. It flows a lot better and gives me the opportunity to make the rear of the building and staircases.
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I have also put in the anticipated form of the extended platform and a parcels bay. This together with some extra supporting girders under the lengthened road bridge, make this part of the layout look a lot more visually interesting now (plus give a bit more play value).
 

Brian T

Western Thunderer
Good to see that you`ve resisted straightening out the track on the extention through the platform`s.
And i like the view through the bridge too;it`s definitely got that eyeability factor to it...:thumbs:

Brian.
 

JimG

Western Thunderer
I hesitate to make a wee suggestion :) but I think that the columns supporting the road bridge might be of larger diameter. These pictures are from the derelict Crow Road station in Glasgow which was in a similar setup to your Paisley Canal station, with Crow Road and the station building on a road passing over the station platforms

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Images linked from Report - - Crow Road Station & Tunnel- Glasgow- Mar 2014 | Underground Sites

Jim.
 

Intercity126

Western Thunderer
Suggestions are always welcome, Jim. The girders are end on and they look a lot more substantial from the side - the flanges scale to 6" with a web of about 1'.

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The effect I was trying to achieve was along the lines of the linked view of Elderslie (photo on Flickr) where both the station and the road bridge behind have steel support columns with cross bracing.

Elderslie - February 1966
 
One Step Forward

Intercity126

Western Thunderer
One step forward...
Two steps back.

This is a rule that seems to hold hard and fast for me, therefore (logically) the only way to progress is to go back....

One thing I have been wanting to redo for some years is the scenic treatment of the layout. The original idea for setting the layout in autumn came to me during a trip to the UK for a family wedding. We took the train from Glasgow to Leeds with a short diversion to Cumbria. The autumn colours were spectacular and any further idea of spring greens were shelved.

The scenic treatment originally applied was unfortunately rushed in an effort to get the layout complete (enough) for the RMWeb 2010 challenge deadline but the desired effect was just about achieved when I took the layout outside in late 2010 for the Challenge Entry photos.

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I was never really happy with the final effect, though - the matted static grass applied with the "puffer bottle" being particularly unsatisfactory. I have recently been watching some videos on YouTube by Luke Towan that (although based on Australian scenery) give an excellent step by step guide to use of modern scenic materials.

It was clear however that to move forward, I needed to take the two steps back.... Yesterday I "bit the bullet" and moved the layout into the middle of the working area, stripped away as much as I could of the old static grass and painted the area in a dark brown, ready for further treatment.

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I also decided to tidy up the back side of the scenery with a coat of the same brown, down to the plywood baseboard sides. Masking tape for a nice edge.

It all seemed to go OK and should be a good substrate for further scenic treatments, the worst bit being making the leap of faith and tearing down the existing work. There is no going back now....
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Joe1980

Western Thunderer
Completely understand the need to take it backwards and doing it again with static grass. My first few attempts were absolutely shocking and simply ruined one side of the layout.

Good luck with the leap of faith!
 

Intercity126

Western Thunderer
How does Trojan moquette - if that is Trojan moquette - come to be in Norway?
It is indeed Trojan moquette - it's very popular in Scandinavia, all the "high-end" furniture shops stock a Trojan range.... ;)

Seriously though - I have been involved in the preservation of the 'Ayrshire' Swindon Class 126 DMU (now at Bo'ness) since the very beginning (1982). I normally make it over to Bo'ness for two work-weeks a year. At one point in the late 80's we purchased some Trojan to re-cover the worst of our seat squabs and cascade the better ones, but a subsequent Lottery funded project allowed us to get the original Swindon DMU moquette remade by original supplier, Holdsworths. Pic below shows second class (smoking) moquette. Myself and one of the other members bought the spare Trojan.
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Dog Star

Western Thunderer
Your "126" website is very intersting and worth reading. Thank you for explaining about the "Trojan cushion", I can now see why the website does not (apparently) feature the same material within the corresponding carriages.
 
You must bring us.....another shrubbery!

Intercity126

Western Thunderer
A bit of a delay since the last report, but I have been making some progress - backwards and (a little bit) forward.

As a boy, I used to love doing scenic work on model railways. Progress could be so rapid when all you had to do was glue down acres of vividly dyed sawdust and top it off with some equally colourful rubberised lichen, but unfortunately the trend nowadays seems to be towards realism, hence my decision to strip off all the old scenic material and start again.

As I mentioned in an earlier post I have been watching some videos on YouTube by Luke Towan to get an understanding of the use of modern scenic materials. I wanted to make some adjustments to the scenery and noted his use of a lightweight filler for the top layer. On further study the product he was using seemed to be a lightweight paper pulp and plaster mix. I duly decided to make my own and enthusiastically started ripping up newspapers and immersing them in a bucket of water. A few days and some further mashing later, I was rewarded with a bucket of finest papier mache. Yum, yum!
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The volume I had produced was quite a bit more than I was requiring, but I decided to press on. To act as a binder, I added some PVA glue to a couple of handfuls of the disgusting mix. It worked more or less as intended, but in retrospect the addition of a plaster or cement based material that would bind the moisture would have been better as the the stuff took an age to dry.

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I have started construction of a new fill-in section out of corrugated cardboard to bring the ground level up to the level of Causeyside Street and form the basis for the walling. Shown here is the papier mache being used to adjust the ground level up to the required level

Luke recommends real dirt as a good base layer for subsequent treatment and I duly dug up a small container of finest garden dirt for drying, sifting and gluing down as my base layer. It took only a short inspection, however before I noticed that the container was teeming with life, and I completely bottled it - not because I'm afraid of a few creepy crawlies, but because Mrs Intercity126 caught me in the act and made enquiries....
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I wish I had persisted with the dirt method as I took a complete wrong turning here and decided to substitute wood ash from the fire. The texture was OK, but the colour was far too light.IMG_20200126_201139.jpg

It took another couple of days of dying the ash with watered down poster paints before I was happy to move on and start applying the intermediate layers - I have gone for a combination of Faller "turf" for the areas that will later get static grass.

Areas which are planned to be under deciduous bushes, trees and miscellaneous shrubbery have received a layer or two of minced beech leaves from the garden, with a scattering of Woodland Scenics and Faller foliage to represent undergrowth.
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It's starting to look a little bit more like I intended.

I was certain that I had purchased static grass at the local model railway show, but in my ignorance I had purchased 2mm fibres... Fine for a bowling green. Several packets of longer static grass are currently in transit from the UK.

In the meantime I cobbled together this fairly lethal looking static grass applicator from a high voltage generator, a tea strainer and gaffer tape. Tests with the 2mm fibres seems to indicate that it works, but I'm going to have to make something a just little bit more professional looking....IMG_20200202_185945.jpg
 
Danger, danger.... High voltage!

Intercity126

Western Thunderer
Experimentation with the static grass generator were not proving to be as successful as I had hoped and I began to notice that the body of the 9V battery was attracting the grass fibres much more strongly than the tea strainer electrode. I also noticed that I was receiving a lot of unexpected shocks when connecting up the battery to my power leads....

I began to suspect a wiring error: I could not find any connection diagram with for the generator I had purchased and had assumed that red and black were wired to the battery + and - (which was correct) and the two white wires were the high voltage leads. A bit of Googling later led me to believe that the two white wires were in fact both high voltage (+) and the black wire was a common negative to the high and low voltage sides. A little bit of re-connection later and my static grass fibres suddenly started getting very interested in the new toy.

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I pressed on and gutted an ancient plastic torch to provide the body, switch, etc. The base trimmed from a yoghurt container and (lots of) hot melt glue separates the fibre holder and electrical sections. The trimmed down tea strainer fitted neatly in the space vacated by the torch glass and the probe from an old multimeter provides the electrode. The fibre capacity is a bit small (but so is my layout).

The device does seem to be quite effective when fed with well loosened fibres. Ironically recovered fibres are better in this respect than fibres fresh from the manufacturer's packets. Excess fibres are recovered using a vacuum cleaner with a sock held over the nozzle, being careful to keep a very tight grip on the sock. The vacuum cleaner's initial excitement and subsequent sock-disappointment is palpable...

I'm finished the first few passes on the rear of the layout. As I complete one area I rework the next-worst areas and a fairly random arrangement starting to emerge. Still a way to go, but I think its an improvement to the 1st version.
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Areas with leaves shall be covered by bushes, etc in the next step.
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Intercity126

Western Thunderer
A final push has seen the remainder of the main board covered with various static grasses and foliage material. Not yet final, but close enough to allow me to move the layout back into position.

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I have started to make the armatures for the various bushes from 0.5mm iron gardening wire. Quite simple to make once you get into a routine, but quite tedious and sore on the fingers. I tried to make these look like some sort of Hawthorn and a few Birch were attempted the next day. I need to paint the armatures before going further, but this will need to wait - I'm in the UK for some days - Model Rail 2020 at the SECC beckons tomorrow with some days at Bo'ness working on the DMU during the week.
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With no modelling possible, I thought I would provide a little bit of context for the model - I found the attached 1952 aerial photos recently on the Britain From Above and used here under their terms and conditions. They have provided a lot of useful information for development of the layout, which has a fictitious track plan, but hopefully shall have reasonably accurate topography and main buildings.

SAW046355 SCOTLAND (1952). James Robertson, Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland, 1952. An oblique aerial photograph taken facing West . | Britain From Above
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SAW046360 SCOTLAND (1952). James Robertson, Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland, 1952. An oblique aerial photograph taken facing East. | Britain From Above
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