Far North Line - Helmsdale

[jamespetts]

That is a lovely looking layout.

[The Sligo Rover]

It looks very special.

[Phil s]

The turntable looks superb, excellent work.

[Walkingthedog]

The photographs are excellent.

[Ultima Thule]

Thanks. I was photographing a bit today, in response to a query on another forum about my coaches - more anon - and took some of the shed ATM. It is acting as a depository for locos getting their exercise; I have far too many engines than needed so like to give them a chance to stretch their legs to keep them in fettle. Anyway, by chance they were all ex HR locos, very few of which lasted long enough to get BR livery and certainly not lined black, but that was due more to LMS loco policy than mechanical condition, and I have given several life extensions. This can be a Marmite moment for some modellers, but I like to postulate what might have been, and in my defence, I have built the actual engines that did work the line in the Fifties, but exercising the imagination is good for one, I think.

Anyway, a Highland miscellany...

[Mountain Goat]

That looks really nice. Like the trolley track. Nice feature to add.

[Ultima Thule]

The background to Helmsdale, about half way between Wick and Inverness, and an important staging post in steam days. It has the usual two platforms, typical HR goods shed with minimal goods facilities, but most interestingly for modellers, an engine shed where the Dornoch locos were maintained and some elderly pre-group engines were used for banking and PW duties. Until the end of steam, some services started/terminated here, so there was often a Black Five around, and the mail coach and restaurant car were removed from northbound trains, so spells of activity did occur.It was latterly a crew change-over point, but until the Black Fives arrived, with the capacity for a full run to and from the end of the line, engines were changed here on nearly all trains, so with some modellers licence, some extra interest can be added to the workings.
The railway was the employer in Helmsdale- I have seen the figure of seventy quoted, shared between motive power staff, PW, and the usual station requirements; certainly the shed was better equipped than most wayside depots- it had a fitter and boilersmith to attend to the branch engines, washouts and running repairs were looked after, with apparently little need for visits to Inverness.








I have omitted the main station building and half the platform length to fit the space available, and also to get some openness at the north end, rather than have the whole area filled with platforms- the shed site is as it was but different! Due to the room, I have had to move the turntable further up into the shed area and reposition the sidings somewhat, but it does retain something of the real thing.The shed building was a real one-off - the Highland tended to have "house" styles for their buildings, but this shed conformed to nothing- it was a hotchpot of horizontal weatherboarding and corrugated iron, with seemingly random apertures placed in no order. The roof and vents are often seen in a tattered state and doors appeared and vanished over the years. As a result of this, I decided to not bother with a scale model of the shed as such, but based the model round the Ratio curved roof as used on their coal shelter and carriage shed, and used board and batten as the woodwork, in common with every other HR timber building. This sin apart, all the other buildings are copied from photographs and,apart from some corrected mistakes along the way,are passable replicas of the originals. The turntable at Helmsdale was replaced in 1948 with a 60' model- mine is a Roco model, Anglicized as far as practical due to a lack of a decent UK version.

From my studies of this station it seems that the shed facilities underwent an upgrade in 1948, with brick messsheds and huts being built, along with the new turntable. The mess shed is similar to those erected by the LMS in 1943 at Aviemore, Tain and Wick to improve conditions for loco crew on lodging turns, and must have been appreciated by the engine crews, but by the time they were built here the need for them had largely vanished, with the increased traffic workings gone, and the long decline of the railways beginning.Post war allocations saw the last of the Small Ben's and latterly one or two of the Pickersgill 4-4-0's here, along with a Caley 0-6-0, and I am broadly going along with this- there is not a lot of scope for what-if's here, although I suppose I could imagine a distillery trip working - Brora has a distillery, and perhaps the brickworks and coal mine might generate some traffic as well.Helmsdale had a fishing fleet at this time- nothing on the scale of Wick or the east coast ports, but there was a loading bank at the south end of the station for fish vans- these would have been attached to through freights, I imagine, but perhaps sometimes a special working might have been needed...

[Ultima Thule]

That looks really nice. Like the trolley track. Nice feature to add.

Thanks; the Wickham Trolley had a brick shed built for it in the improvements post war, and on the layout, like all the other buildings, it is removeable to allow close up shots, which has the drawback of visible plonking line, but is inevitable. To the eye it isn't too noticeable and larger buildings like the engine shed are set in to place with a base to fit in to. Here it is in situ.

[Walkingthedog]

I surround my removable buildings with soil, grass and other bits and pieces so the building plugs into the ground.

[cheshire lines]

Very impressive modelling!