Railway of the Month

In the current March 2010 issue of Railway Modeller, the Railway of the Month is:

Peffermill - A compact terminus set in 1960s Edinburgh

In the years immediately prior to Beeching, the suburbs of Edinburgh still had a myriad of workaday branch lines running both passenger and freight. BRIAN SUNMAN evokes the spirit of those bygone scenes with his current 4mm exhibition layout, described by him and IAN FLEMING.

It’s about 20 years now since I built my first exhibition layout, Bonchester Bridge, a small branch line terminus layout set in the Borders of Scotland during the 1960s. The layout travelled around the circuit during the 1990s and appeared in British Railway Modelling magazine for November 1993.

My next attempt at building a layout was to be called Kirkton, using Kappa board for the baseboard, having seen it used to good effect on other layouts. This just didn’t work for me; mainly because I tried to use the Kappaboard mixed with a timber framework . I spent most of my time putting extra timber supports under the baseboard to level things off. This, as you can imagine, defeated the object of the exercise of trying to make lighter baseboards. So, I decided to go back to basics using tried and tested methods with timber and plywood.

My next decision was to make a new start on a smaller layout, having wasted quite a bit of time on Kirkton, such as laying track, wiring and making buildings for it. This, I thought, would make Peffermill Road a more achievable project, instead of getting even further discouraged with more delays.

I then took some inspiration from Kirkintilloch, a branch terminus not far from Glasgow, photographs of which are featured in George O’Hara’s Scottish Urban and Rural Branch Lines and British Railways Scottish Region Colour Album No. 1. The thoughts for the idea mainly came from the bridge crossing the river to a private siding, which meant that the river would then go down the middle of the layout. With the whisky distillery on the far bank and the station on the near bank of the river, this almost makes it two separate layouts in one.

So the seeds were sown for Peffermill Road, set in Edinburgh in the mid to late 1960s. Thename for the layout was a choice between Peffermill Road and Niddrie Mains Road, although I think the latter would have been shortened to Niddrie Mains. Both names came from a street map of Edinburgh.

Buy this month's RM for a complete track layout and approx. ten detailed photographs.

Structures and scenics
Construction began by cannibalising bits from Kirkton, such as electrical components, alignment dowels and the station building, which fits in quite well, being of North British origin. It is based on the one at Kirkbank station. The drawings for this are in the book LNER Country Stations by John Brodribb, and the model was scratchbuilt using Slater’s Plastikard. The construction of the other buildings followed similar methods, except I used Kappa board for strengthening of the buildings. So I found a use for the Kappa board, and Kirkton wasn’t a complete waste of time after all!

Most of the buildings are based around structures in the Edinburgh and Glasgow areas except one, which is the back-street garage at the front of the layout. This is based on one in Hull, which is built of brick; I changed it to stone to blend in with the rest of the buildings on the layout, and I don’t think it looks too out of place. I have used Peco platform sides for the station platform. The distillery building is part of the Metcalfe brewery kit.

Scenically, the grass was made with carpet underfelt which was pulled apart into clumps, and glued down with PVA then left to dry. All the loose stuff was pulled off, then the rest was painted with watercolours. I then used an old toothbrush to get the grass to stand up again. The river bed is a ply base painted a dark brown, with two to three coats of clear varnish applied until a fair representation of mucky water was achieved.

I have recently added LNER ground signals and point levers from Model Signal engineering. I intend to add point rodding at a later date (when I have built the signalbox)! At the front near the fiddle yard entrance I was going to have a detached house but I didn’t think it fitted in with the rest of the layout. Having bought quite a few of the latest diecast lorries, I went for the easy option of a lorry park, the surface of which was made from crushed-up bits of concrete, bashed with a hammer. As it turns out, I am thinking of changing its use to other things such as a second-hand car sales lot, or a funfair. This is something that is under review; I may carry out the changes from show to show or on different days of an exhibition.

Trackwork and control
The trackwork is C&L and SMP bullhead. The points at the front are C&L plastic construction, while the pointwork at the back was built using copperclad sleepers. The former are operated by Tortoise point motors, whereas the latter are hand-cranked.

Couplings on the rolling stock are Sprat & Winkle (the 3mm version), using electromagnets to activate them. Although three-links admittedly look excellent on this sort of stock, the Sprats are pretty reliable and much less stressful, and the small group which operates the layout is unanimous in its opinion that the constraints of exhibition usage and eyesight make them a sensible choice!

The layout was originally built for DC control. Being someone who had no intention of going DCC, I was finallyconvinced when I helped Ken Gibbons operate Ascott-under-Wychwood at Expo EM North. On the Sunday, someone said “this layout’s too quiet”; he then presented a Class 20 to us. The loco was placed on the track, function one was pressed, and the sound of a Class 20 spluttering into life was heard. From that moment I decided to go DCC. I have also noticed a big improvement in the running of the layout since changing over – it is much smoother in operation. The control system I use on this layout is the Bachmann E-Z Command, which is a good system withwhich to start – easy to use and robust, ideal for exhibition use.

Locomotives and rolling stock
The locomotives are all diesel, although it is hoped to have a small industrial steamer for the distillery. The locos, all types representative of the area (classes 17, 20, 24, 25 and 26), are, with one exception, of Bachmann, Heljan and Hornby manufacture. The Class 17 (Clayton) is a DC Kits item skilfully made by Ken Gibbons, and, despite being powered only by a Black Beetle, it runs very smoothly, although again I think the Lenzdecoder inside helps here.

In line with the Corstorphine branch (which also provided some of the inspiration for the layout), a Hornby Metro-Cammell DMU works the suburban passenger service to Edinburgh Waverley. Again this is correct for the location; although a Gloucester RC&W Unit would be even nicer, it’s not something that I expect to see R-T-R any time soon!

The wagons are mostly a mixture of Parkside kits or Bachmann R-T-R. They mainly represent the types which would be seen on day-to-day goods traffic into the station yard, and a more specialised selection is marshalled into two formations which serve the distillery siding at the rear. A rake of shock-absorbing wagons handles the valuable outward traffic, and a set of grain hoppers brings in barley for the process. These are three of the LNER wooden van pattern and two BR standard steel hoppers, modified from the old Hornby-Dublo/Wrenn model.

Future plans
Obviously there are still things to be done on Peffermill Road, such as replacement signals; the one I use at the moment is a Ratio one, which is on loan from my old layout Bonchester Bridge, and there will be a signalbox. This, at the moment, I presume to be just off scene, but the model will be put where there is currently a grounded van body and a platelayers’ hut. This will be done in the not too distant future, I hope.

Thanks must go to Ken Gibbons for the Clayton and the station lamps, and to Ian Fleming and Jeff Taylor for their help in exhibiting the layout.