November 2026 Forth and Clyde Area Group meeting

Simon, Jim, James, Alisdair, Alastair, Chris, Stuart, Graham and Nigel met for our November session at ESME's Almondell premises. No prepared theme this time, just personal projects.

Angus was working on track, somewhere behind his desk fan.  True, the photographer could have moved to one side a bit in order to see what's going on, but you can't have everything. 

James was working on his test track. All very neatly put together. The recessed switch plate avoids damage during transport.

Simon was also working on track; this time the photographer did his job properly. An old-style Association kit, acquired in a bargain bundle at a Derby Expo, was being put together.

 

At the time we had counselled against his bulk purchase, querying his sanity, but there was method in his madness... some of the kits became donors of their rather nice crossing assemblies, here being built into a new formation for his Glenfinnan project.

Simon also had a rather nice pump bottle for liquid flux, which allows him to always have a small puddle of the stuff ready for brushing where required without the risk of knocking over an open jar. These pump bottles are apparently available for small money from AliExpress (a tip originally shared by James, who seems to know his way about the mysterious east). Once you see one, you have to have one.

 

Graham was working (still) on an Association kit for the Farish shunter. It now moves under its own power; no brakes or outside cranks yet. Running-in the single driven axle was the order of the day.

Chris was progressing his Nigel Hunt L&Y 2-4-2T chassis, with much filing of very small bits of etch.

Jim was working on a Cleminson chassis for a Caledonian 6-wheel van (20 built in 1906 to diagram 115) from a modified Lothian Railway Models print. The J-hangars are printed with the solebars; the springs and axleboxes however will be attached to the chassis W-irons and the idea is they will move within the J-hangars as the Cleminson does its stuff.  

It seemed to hold promise, but the pivot points for the chassis were inadvertently given the wrong spacing on the van body print, which will need to be done again. No big deal.

 Stuart was working on terraced houses for his low-relief backdrop.

 

The road on which the houses will sit is at an incline of 1 in 20 and the idea is that the low-relief terrace reduces into the hillside as it climbs.

Alastair was working on track design on his laptop. This does not make for a fascinating photo, so one has not been provided (sorry Al).

Alisdair had a couple of loco projects on the go: finescaling a Farish BR Standard Class 4 tank chassis:

and continuing work on his Highland Big Goods. The photographer messed this up too and forgot to take a shot of the loco. This is the tender drive, which as you can see has been built out of focus. Oh well.

Nigel was working on wagons from kits of various origins.

 In addition he was, as usual, generously sharing his DCC expertise.

Next month the meeting will focus on a a Show and Tell session, hopefully with some differences from today's session, otherwise the blog will be struggling to stay fresh next time! Better photographs would be a start...

 

September and October Forth and Clyde Area Group Meetings

For all those folks who have been clicking on to the blog over the past few weeks agog for news of the September FCAG meeting, your agogness can now be ameliorated.

First; the good news - the September meeting managed to attract record numbers. Unfortunately, this is also the bad news, as it was a new record for low attendance; only 2 stalwarts rattling around in the meeting room with Alastair and Stuart being those responsible for keeping the flag flying, albeit somewhat limply.

Alastair managed to get his MERG DCC kit finally put together and satisfying all meter tests. He has not yet managed to test it in real life, but we all have perfect confidence that all will be well. (Don't we?) Nae pictures as electronic gubbins can't be captured on the glass plates the Photographer uses.

Stuart had been following the more traditional route to modelling, by using pencil and paper (remember them?) to draw up the buildings to be inserted into his forced perspective 3D backscene for his Copy Pit line layout.

Having thus disposed of the goings-on at ESME in September, we bring the story bang up to date with hot press on the October shennanigans.

Billed as a Locomotive Workshop, it was slightly disappointing in numbers with only 8 attendees and, what's more, only 3 of these chaps (for all were such) were actually working on locos. Heigh-ho. Having said that, one attendee had fallen foul of a disease picked up in foreign parts (Beckingham) and as he had been slated to give a lift to another, that was two down on known loco folks. 

However, there was plenty active modelling going on at Almondell, First all, of those who were actually working on locos, Chris had returned after a few months yo-ho-hoing on the high seas of St Mary's Loch to pick up on his Nigel Hunt radial tank. 

He was puzzling over the radial axle and trying to remember where he had got to before he donned his bell-bottoms and spliced the mainbrace. However, failing to follow the usual practice of ignoring the instructions, he had the gall to look them up on his computer without even appearing shamefaced. No wonder the bits he had put together already, looked nice and neat. Cheating, that is!

John had brought along his cast whitemetal J39 tender which he is going to support on the Association tender chassis. This is his first 2mm loco, so while he was pondering how he is going to fix the two together, some fiendish chap suggested throwing away the cast tender frame sides and replacing them with the cosmetic frames from the kit supplemented with the LNER Group Standard axleboxes from the Shop. 

Nothing better for the morale than having the suggestion that you throw away parts of what you have already done...

Meanwhile, Alisdair (note the spelling) was proudly showing off what he had done at Beckingham the previous weekend with finescaling a Farish BR 2-6-4T using the Association Fairburn 2-6-4T conversion from the Shop. He was whining away about having to do his own thing with the trailing bogie, as the Farish bogie design for the Standard tank had changed from that for the Fairhurst. His cries of "It's no fair, so it's not!" were drowned out by the laughter of the others.

Life's tough, laddie!

Despite the noise across the table was putting him off, Alistair (note the spelling) was manfully working away on a Highland Railway carriage body kindly supplied by 3DMan. 

Despite the racket, he was shaping little bits of clear plastic to provide the glazing.

Across in another corner, Alastair (check the spelling) was busy designing the track for his nascent Queensferry layout by means of a magic contraption which showed nice pictures on the picture box thingy sticking up from the typewriter bit.

Apparently, the plan is to print the template out then build the turnout on top of the print. This scribe's suggestion that he just build it on top of the picture bit were treated with disdain, for some reason.

Mountains were being moved by Stuart on the next table along where he was constructing part of his forced perspective 3D backscene.

Made from layers of building insulation foam, Stuart is endeavouring to show the hills in the background to his fine model viaduct by compressing the horizontal dimensions whilst reducing scale with the road on this bit being modelled at 1mm to the foot.

Jim was knocking together a Caley (what else could it be?) pig iron wagon made from his own etch. 

Dumb buffers, very short wheelbase. Probably not something to be hung on the back of his Dunalastair (check the spelling).

Yer man Simon is having a surge of enthusiasm again for his Glenfinnan layout after wasting months on home improvements. Nae sense of priorities, that man. Having met with difficulties in putting in the operating gubbins for the pointwork at the east end of the station when it is in-situ on the layout, he has made the bold decision to build a new version off-layout, then fit in all the gubbins, before installing it. So turnout construction was his task.

Interlaced sleeper turnouts in the 1950s. Good to see BR were continuing fine old NBR customs. 

And that's the waffle for this month, folks. Next meeting will be on Saturday 14th November. 

October 2026 Beckingham workshop

A trio of Forth and Clyde regulars made the trip south to Beckingham village hall, near Doncaster, for the two-day Autumn Workshop organised by the 2mmSA Events team and Laurie Adams' North Mercia area group. As expected it was a great success, with participants from home and abroad, and several acknowledged experts on hand to offer advice.

Each participant got a decent working area with power and the hall lighting was very effective, as you can see below. We were organised into three sections - locos, carriage-and-wagon, and track - and we got our heads down for two uninterrupted days of model-making. It was also a chance to put faces to names and learn from everyone else's experience.

Loco table:

The Australians punched above their weight - so that's quite a lot of punching - supplying several loquacious participants who kept the Poms on their toes for the whole weekend. They even brought their own wheels. Here's Bruce from Oz turning flanges off the intermediate and driving (I think) wheels for his 5'3" gauge Victorian Railways "A" class Baldwin 2-8-0, which he's building from his own etches. 

C&W table:

Track table, with the Central Shop in the background:

A close-up of Laurie's "portable" workbench, which seemed to lacked only hot and cold running water. Maybe not even that.

A series of delicious cakes were consumed over the weekend, as well as two finger-lickin'-good buffet lunches, supervised by Caroline with her customary calm efficiency. It is fair to say we were completely spoiled. Our grateful thanks to all the organisers, experts, and participants who made the weekend so rewarding. A good time really was had by all.

August 2026 Forth and Clyde Area Group meeting

The August meeting had a reasonable turnout given that it was the holiday season. James, Jim, Angus, Alisdair, Graham, Simon, Stuart and Stephen were present. Most of us worked on individual projects but final tweaks were also made to Mearns Shed before its next outing to the Edinburgh show in a month.

Angus was busy with a Worsley Works etch for West Coast Joint Stock vehicles. 

Stuart was contemplating control arrangements for his NFine layout. He revealed that it will have a ten-track fiddle yard with a spiral and the intention of three sets of alternative scenic sections which other members of the Perth club will work on. All quite a lot more complicated than he's previously let on! The fiddle yard is built and ready apparently. This could get interesting. 

James was putting DG couplings on a dozen wagons for a shunting puzzle layout he apparently has up his sleeve. Another project hiding in plain sight! At this rate the FCAG news desk may have to hire a new reporter.

Alisdair had done some work on detailing a Highland 20T brake van 3D print from Lothian Railway Models. The vehicle to the right is Alisdair's scratchbuilt model of the later version of the same van: the sloping sections to the guard's lookout were apparently added after complaints of bruised heads from the (prototype) occupants!

And why, you ask, are there no model occupants? Because at the moment the model has no floor (and no glazing). It does have handrails and rain-strips however, so the union can complain all it wants.

Alisdair also had his scratchbuilt Highland brake coach for comparison.

 

Mearns Shed had been put together and connected up...

before being taken partly to bits again so Simon could install some corrugated iron fencing he'd prepared along the shed boundary next the backscene. This works nicely to ease the eye into the slightly-blurred backscene an inch or so behind, while leaving a gap of undefined distance where a burn might plausibly run below the viewer's eye level. It looks better once all the buildings are in place.

 

In the afternoon there was an informative presentation on Alex Jackson couplings in 2mm scale from Jim. Here's what he showed us:

A Youtube video showing the coupling in action, albeit not in 2mm scale, is here.

The presentation does not include Jim’s comprehensive explanations, but he’s happy to field questions if you have any (2mmSA members can write to the Data Officer e-mail address given on the front page of the Newsletter; non-mambers who are RMWeb users can contact “Caley Jim”).

Several group members will be demonstrating at the Scottish Finescale Modelling Skills Day in Linlithgow in a couple of weeks. It's free, so do pop in if you're in the area.

July 2026 Forth and Clyde Area Group meeting

 Jim, James, Alistair, Alasdair, Simon, Jack, Graham and Stephen attended the group's July meeting.

Mearns Shed was brought out for testing after some remedial electrical work.

The test loco was Jim's Caley Jumbo.

Jim had also been working on his etched chassis for the Caley diagram 70 prize cattle van from Lothian Railway Models. The 7mm wheels are distinctive. This is a test fitting under an unpainted body.

 Jim also showed us some recent painting work for a commission, lining a steel-sided coach (3D prints of the Caley 57’ vehicles preserved at the SRPS, source unknown).

 Jim's usual technique for panelled vehicles is basically to flood the panels with a number of very thin coats to build up a solid colour, and to line on top of the beading with a mapping pen. This time he had to find a different way for the lining since the steel-sided coaches have no beading! He did this using the method he developed for lining locomotives: Sellotape on a ceramic tile, painted, then sliced with a scalpel and steel rule into thin strips, then the paint is gently separated from the Sellotape (which is left on the tile; use of a tile is critical to the technique, other substrates are less effective) and coaxed into place on the model. This was used to form the chocolate-brown uprights and the gold (yellow plus a tiny drop of red) lining.

Jim uses thinned varnish as adhesive (dip a spatula into thinner, touch in a Dappen dish - google it - to drain; repeat; then repeat in the varnish, mix in the dish, and apply) for the paint-strips. This also  softens the paint-strips so they are flexible. In this case it worked better to apply a thin line of varnish to the vehicle then place the paint strip on it to soften, teasing it into place with a couple of cocktail sticks and (one presumes) large amounts of patience and concentration.

The key, Jim says, is to work on a small part or a single side at a time, leaving it to dry overnight, before moving on to the next section.

The rest of us got on quietly with a range of projects. Alistair worked on a Highland diagram 19 coach. Graham pondered adding Simpson springs to the tender chassis of a part-built J39 acquired at the Derby bring-and-buy stall: the plan is to replace the tender drive with a coreless motor in the boiler, but retain current collection from the tender. Simon footled about with coach couplings. Alasdair enlisted James' help to debug some MERG kits.

The previous weekend the group had its summer outing to the Bo'ness and Kinneil Railway. This was an all-day affair, starting with a trip behind an ex-colliery 0-6-0 tank, in a restored Thomson third. Great fun.

Simon is often ribbed over his penchant for buying Thomson coaches at every show he attends, so unsurprisingly he was delighted to be on the real thing.

After that we had a run in a Class 117 DMU - also great fun - then we had lunch in the café. Next, thanks to some string-pulling by Alisdair, it was on with the hi-vis vests and over the sleepered crossing to visit the signal box.

 

This was followed by a guided tour of the loco yard and carriage shed. The yard tour provided a chance to grab some detailed photos of Class 26 mini-snowploughs and buffing gear.

We tried out the newly-opened viewing platform in the erecting shop, where D49 62712 "Morayshire" had its boiler out, and several other projects were under way.

We wrapped things up with an extensive visit to the Museum of Scottish Railways.

In fact our group remained there until closing time and had to be gently reminded that it was time to leave! Thanks, Alisdair, for organising such a successful outing.