Enderslie - Narrow gauge somewhere on the west coast of Scotland.

[clayliner]

I'm going for a BR Scottish region look.

Hence the blue, presumably?

Looking good - looking forward to more progress when the kids allow...!  ;)

David.

[Tom Alexander]

I'm going for a BR Scottish region look.

Hence the blue, presumably?

Yes. It's not an official pot of BR Scottish region blue, but I think it looks pretty close. It's an acrylic paint called Voidshield Blue by Army Painter. I bought a big set of the Army Painter acrylics last year and have really enjoyed using them. They don't stink the house out or give me a headache and dry very quickly so several coats/colours can be done in one session. I still use enamels for trains as I prefer the finish, but the acrylics will be used for the buildings.

[Ian McAulay]

The official BR(Sc) station colours seem to have been cream and brown (basically LMS colours) with blue signs. A good source of information is https://www.stationcolours.info/18-2/ (also available as a printed book).

However, for another project, I did my own survey based on the photos on the Railscot website https://www.railscot.co.uk/byline.html I looked at (and made sneaky copies of) every station photo that was in colour and dated 1970 or earlier. Most buildings were brown and cream, a few green and cream (ex LNER?) but, particularly on the Waverley route, there was a lot of blue paint around, mainly on doors as they were stone buildings.

Even bigger however, I clearly remember Dunblane station about 1970 painted in cream and blue, much like your model and looking absolutely splendid. (I think Stirling and Larbert may have been much the same too.) So, definitely a prototype and much nicer (IMHO) than the official colour scheme!

Looking at the collection of BR(Sc) totems they have in the National Museum in Edinburgh, the only ones that show any discolouration are ones from seaside stations, so you have the perfect excuse if the blue is a little off. (Theoretically, it should be BS381C colour 175 Light French Blue.)

And I really like the way your layout is progressing.

Ian

[Tom Alexander]

A bit more progress on my layout. One important job I've tackled is to make a pair of controllers. I had looked at Gaugemaster controllers, which are very good, but are at east £35 each. So I've decided to build them myself. I shall try these home built controllers for a while and if they're no good then I will buy a pair of Gaugemaster ones. The home built ones have only cost me about £5 for the pair as I bought all the components of Ali Express.

This is the circuit I'm using.

Controller circuit by Tom Alexander, on Flickr

It's a simple circuit using a variable voltage regulator. However this can only go as low as 1.5v, so the 2 diodes in series with the output are to reduce the voltage further to about 0. There is also a thermal fuse rated at 1.5a in case something stalls or shorts out the track to prevent a complete overload of the voltage reg.

One advantage of this circuit is that it uses a 12v DC power supply, as will the rest of the layout. Using Gaugemaster controllers would need a separate 16v AC power supply. This does restrict the output of the controllers to about 9.5v, but that's more than enough. At that level most locos are going like a rocket!

Built up out of stripboard and popped in a case looks like this.

IMG_0522 by Tom Alexander, on Flickr

And here are the two controllers completed.

IMG_0522a by Tom Alexander, on Flickr

I've also started the wiring of the first board.

IMG_0549 by Tom Alexander, on Flickr

I'll be using the MERG CBUS system for my layout. This is a two wire bus system where everything is controlled by various modules. The control panel will contain modules to take switch inputs and to display LEDs, and these inputs are passed down the bus to the modules that then move servos, switch relays, turn on signals etc. On this board so far is a USB interface (bottom right) that is required to program the modules. There are then two Servo modules (top right and bottom centre), and an output module (bottom left). The servo modules have 8 servo outputs plus 8 inputs. They will drive the points and crossing gates, and the inputs will be connected to micro switches on the points to sense position. The output board has 16 outputs and will switch relays for the sections on the layout. The first block of 8 relays is the blue board with the white wires coming out. Finally the chunky green connectors on the bottom right will connect to the other board and to the power supply.

Next job will be to mount the relays and wire up the power supply so i can start getting the points to move.