Glen Ogle

[gtmspyder]

Hello again, here's an update on the happenings with Glen Ogle.

You may remember my purchase of the inexpensive Christmas laser cut models, depicting various Christmassy scenic buildings, that I thought might be an easy way of adding buildings to the circular return of the small board at top of the layout, to fill in the small triangle of land overlooking the castle, well here are three I purchased in various stages of demolition and conversion.



The one on the left is going to be the villages church of St. Fillans to replace my first attempt at a church which is the building on the right of the three.  This will now become the village Parish Hall.  The centre building with the rather large hole in the roof where I have already removed an appendage, is to become the village School, and the village name is to be Brigadoon, seeing as it is now a completely fictitious stage on the railway, and it may only ever appear on any exhibition circuit every 100 years. ;D

And here the three are in the not yet finalised position on the layout.



You may have noticed that I have now fitted and painted a back scene to this section of the layout, curving round to the right of the castle, and a side scene board butting upto the original end of the Glen Ogle baseboard.

This picture gives a better view of the nearly finished models, this picture was taken before the curved back scene board was painted the fetching sky blue I used from the emulsion tester pots I used.  The church has now been clad with corrugated iron sides and roof, leaving the tower in rendered stone.  The school has been clad in plasticard stone with a scribed thin paper-card roof to represent slate tiles as I did with my original attempt at the first church, now the village hall in rendered stone, and card roof.

 

There's still plenty to do, but I thought you might be needing a Glen Ogle fix to get you through the weekend.

Tarah for now,

Brian T.

[gtmspyder]

The Glen Ogle extension now known as Brigadoon has had a little scenery addition in the form of a builders foam mountain side planted along the scenery divide at the baseboard joint.



Before squirting the foam, I spread some cling film across any area I did not want the foam to stick to, and placed two small spray cans, wrapped in cling film, in the two  holes through the scenery former divide on the track, to form tunnels through the set foam for the trains to pass through.



When the foam had set, the two spray cans were pulled clear leaving nicely formed tunnels in place.





I then set about carving the in-situ foam using my reciprocating saw and a hacksaw blade to form the contours of the hill side.



St. Fillans church was placed just to get a feel of the size of available space now the ground had been covered in foam, the piece of spur track, originally intended to be a branch down to the village of Killin on Loch Tay, has been lifted, and the curved back-scene temporarily removed, to give access for cutting the foam to the rear of the layout.



The remainder of the village buildings were placed randomly, again as I am still unsure how they will be used to depict the village scene,



It should look a little less alpine when I've hidden  the foam under a more scenic colour, perhaps trimmed a little more of the foam away, and maybe,  reinstated the branch spur, we will have to see.

I have had another TIA, (A small stroke), and I am tiring very quickly, so please bare with me for the small updates I am posting.

Regards,

BrianT.

[clayliner]

Looks good, Brian. When I first saw your foam I was reminded of John de Fraysinet's 'meringue' technique for bulk forests, but it turned out to be rocks instead...

Take it easy. - don't overdo things. We're happy to wait for more!

David.

[gtmspyder]

Hello David, thank you for your continued interest in the Glen Ogle saga, I wish I had the skills, and the apparent available money of John to model at his quality, but we do our best with what available skills I can muster :D, and it does help to keep being encouraged by visitors to my scribing's.

I think the next 009 magazine episode is coming up in next months print if you have been following the story.

I wish there were someone local who could share my lonely furrow and feed the horse, :( the reigns are chaffing my hands ::).

Kind regards,

BrianT.

[gtmspyder]

The village of Brigadoon has had the council employed tarmac layers put down a layer of wet and dry in the village square, hopefully this will save the many visitors vehicles from getting bogged down in the mud, churned up by the railway contractors as they worked to re-instate the short spur of set track line, put in to feed the line intended to link the village of Killin in the Mk 1 version of the layout, with the original Callendar and Oban line.  This has been laid with new Peco 009 main line rail and ballasted with the local granite used on the rest of the layout.  The snow covered hillside has now disappeared under a covering of grey tinted poly filler as an interim measure to the final scenicising of this part of the layout.



Offcuts from the shaping of the foam forming the hillside behind the village to the left of Brigadoon, have been glued to the curved back scene to form a start of the hillside to the distance beyond.



To accommodate this sliver of scenery, the track around the rear of the castle has been re-aligned slightly to give a greater distance between the back scene and the Sea water loch and castle.  The repositioned track has been newly ballasted, but the track shoulders have yet to have the greenery reinstated.  This will be done as part of the finishing to the foam rocks.



The still unfinished village buildings have been laid on the newly laid tarmac, and a clearance test train propelled around to make sure that this very small and valuable piece of real estate can accommodate all this infrastructure.  Luckily, at the behest of Rev Mc Tut, no trains will be allowed on the Sabbath, so services will not be disturbed, but during the week, the three trains a day will provide some interest to the pupils in the nearby primary school, and I have no doubt many half pennies will be flattened under the wheels of passing rolling stock, and passed off at the local sweetie shop in the hopes of getting two sticks of liquorice and a bag of kali rather than the one that it's true worth should purchase.



The school boundary will require a substantial fence to protect the children as they reach across the intervening space to place there half pennies.



The view through the village square towards the castle, is only occasionally blocked by passing trains, and I recon the villagers can live with that to get a fairly regular transport facility to the metropolis of Callendar back down the line through Glen Ogle, and the influx of visitors to the newly discovered castle recently placed on the map of Scotland. ;D



Well that's enough of the fairy stories for tonight.

Regards,

BrianT.

[gtmspyder]

More work carried out on the Glen Ogle Brigadoon extension. The scene has had a makeover starting by a change of water colour from summer blue to a more peaty brown.

The rocks surrounding the sea loch have had a little colour added and a sprinkling of greenery.



The Loch water has had a coat of clear varnish applied, with a stippling of green into the drying varnish around the bank sides.



The village buildings have had a dry brushing of colour to tone down there pristine finish.



A start has been made on the tunnel mouth leading to the village, but until the glue dries, I am unable to apply a facing of Das scribed stone which will be my preferred method of finishing it, I will then need to cut away the foam surrounding the exit to fit it in place before finally blending it in.

Regards,

BrianT.

[clayliner]

Trains on the Sabbath - I should certainly hope not!

David.

[gtmspyder]

Well it would seem that the Reverend McTut has had his way with train scheduling, and no trains will ever pass through Brigadoon on the Sabbath, and looking at this view of the church in the Friday evening sunshine, not many church goers will either.



In fact the whole village looks pretty much deserted, perhaps its true that Brigadoon does only come alive every one hundred years.



On his last visit to the site, Major Marindon was critical of the lack of fencing to the railway property, a Board of Trade requirement, and threatened to delay the opening of the line on the due date.  Because of the loss of revenue this would inevitably lead to, the Laird, a major shareholder in the new narrow gauge conglomerate, met with the church elders and the primary school headmaster, to agree on a suitable fence around church and school, and he undertook to buy the fencing, and arrange contractors through his board position to erect the fencing when they came to fence off the remainder of the railways property.



Catalogues were perused to find suitable fencing, and pricing, and all the selected items were chosen from the same company, who incidentally manufactured the earlier acquisition of the Bow string bridge, were laid out on the boardroom table, which just happened to be holding the boards latest executive toy, a new test track to check the running qualities of long stored models, ready for an outing to Mansfield later in the year.



Post and wire for the countryside track.



Substantial post and rail for the school playground.



And a more genteel iron, looped top fence, for the church.



While no one was looking, my two year old Grandson, Jacob, ambled into the board room and proceeded to test the executive toy.



You might be interested in the grey box Jacob is fiddling with. I first put this together forty years ago to run a rabbit layout that I exhibited at the Easter, York Model Railway exhibition.  It contains three transformers for layout power, one at rectified 12v DC. with that transformer powered through a mains lighting dimmer, the second an 18v AC output to power the point motors through a home made capacitor discharge module, and the third is again a 12v output that originally powered a second train control, but will now power the auxiliary models and features as required on Glen Ogle.  The white knob is the stripped out interior of the dimmer switch.  This offers superb control of all the loco's, and I now have no need to resort to the Gaugemasters I had been using until I decided to resurrect and try out this old home made version once again.



The test track and controller will be visiting the next South Yorkshire Group meet if anyone wants to play.

Regards,

BrianT.

[gtmspyder]

It's Sunday on the Glen Ogle layout, the village of Brigadoon has had a good turnout for the morning service and now suitably invigorated by the Reverend McTut's words, they stream out of the church and make there way home.  Most of the ladies have stayed behind to discus the forthcoming events in the church calendar, while the men hurry to the nearby hostelry to quench there thirst.  The Reverend McTut has offered thanks from the congregation to the Laird, for his gift of new railings for the church and adjacent school.



The school is closed, but the local residents are using the bench outside to take in the sun seeing as the gate is open, and are having a conversation with other passing residents.  The caretaker of the village hall, Andrew McMuckle has just opened up the hall ready to get the building ready for tonight's Cailie, he likes to get to the hall early to switch the heaters and the water boiler on or the residents who will be attending will grumble.



The railway management have applied to the Reverend McTut and the village elders for dispensation from the normally rigorously enforced Sunday ban on train movements through the village on the Sabbath.  They gave the need to clear the line of debrie from a small rock fall just the other side of Brigadoon where the line enters a cutting, before the Monday start of services, as the reason for asking for the Sunday ban dispensation.



The weather is being kind to the volunteers who have boarded the single coach conveying them to the rock fall site, and the sea lock is as still as a millpond with the bridge being reflected in the water.



I think that very nearly brings to an end the development of the village of Brigadoon.  From the original depiction of the Forestry commissions wholesale planting of Fir trees, that originally covered the scenic side of this 24 inch (600mm) square board, whose sole function was to do away with a fiddle yard, and return trains to the other end of the layout thus making it a continuous run, into an additional scene to add interest to the Glen Ogle layout.   This depiction, while in no way real in actuality as far as the history of the original Calendar and Oban railway is concerned, gets around my dislike of the end to end running that the original concept of building the Glen Ogle Viaduct had at first forced on me.

There will no doubt be further additions to this little layout at sometime in the future, but I hope anyone who has been following my ramblings, has found some enjoyment in my methods and there outcome.

Kind regards,

BrianT.

[Tom Haythornthwaite]

Thoroughly entertaining and instructive!