Scottish meanderings…

I've returned from a part of the United Kingdom I've wanted to visit since childhood. A combination of colour books from the library depicting the 'Far North' line with blue Class 26 and a few coaches alongside Lochs with big mountain backdrops and my best friend, Tim, who was a big 'Scotrail' fan lit the touch paper and it's smouldered on and off ever since...

Imagine my excitement as I visited Wick station on a gloomy day heading for John-O-Groats... the family entertained my wandering around the empty station soaking up the atmosphere, the smell or stale diesel and oil and wishing I'd just arrived behind a Sulzer type 2, 50 years ago...

Alas, no trains and no diesels, just run of the mill Class 158 Super Sprinters I remember being brand new in my early teens - they don't have the same draw with their heavily tinted small windows. This feels like a massive miss from Scotrail, I'm sure the older 156 had better views? The photo above shows the sort of thing I remember from reading books, blue locos, short trains and a service that really did serve the community... the above is taken at Golspie, just down the coast from where we were staying. Apart from the milk churns and locomotive, little has changed at this charming spot...

Another trip later in the holiday took us to Dornoch. I'll admit the name didn't ring a bell at all, until I studied the OS map after spotting 'Station Road' on Google Maps... 'dismantled railway' and it came flooding back, the short Dornoch branch became the home to a pair of ex Western Region BR 16xx Pannier tanks in the last few years before closure in 1960...

Dornoch station still exists, as does a section of it's platform. My photo shows it serving as a chiropractor, serving the community in a different manner. The goods yard and station site are otherwise now a small industrial estate and there is not much to suggest a railway ever ran here - a sad lack of information boards, and not even a book on the line or history of the area in  he local book shop... so my research was mostly online. An overview of the history can be found here, and I've sketched the route and the track plans of the stations and halts along the short line below.

My mind churned over possibilities, could I adapt the branch and the history of the area to fit my needs? Could I imagine it lived on beyond closure, and saw service through the 1970s? Could my beloved Class 26 burble their way along the southern shore of Loch Fleet? It felt like the way I wanted to explore the concept was very much of that childhood time. I often draw fancy schemes using new ideas and techniques, usually borrowed from friends and other modellers - but how about something more honest, straight forward, and somewhere we could all start?  I drew out a plan in Rail Modeller Pro on an imagined 4' x 2' baseboard using Peco N gauge 'Setrack', with a few stretches of Code 80 'Streamline' flexitrack... 

The opportunity to extend the goods siding and then bend it round to offer a continuous run seemed to fit with the feel of the plan and a gentle wave in the return loop will aid the feeling of the waterside running that much of the line enjoyed. Stock would be Dapol Class 26 and Graham Farish Class 24 with a Mark 1 brake composite, a short CCT or ex Southern van, a few 16t minerals and one a handful of fitted 12t vans. I would model the engine shed as closed up and overgrown. It would be easy to imagine such a scheme growing with the addition of a second 'station' to allow trains to 'run around' before returning to Dornoch.

Beyond the train set the prototype doesn't really offer much in the way of a cameo scheme, although the small platform and single siding at Embo might fit with a stage set presentation... the terminus, as with many British branch lines, is too large for many to model accurately, and the enclosed wooded site doesn't immediately scream 'Scotland', so perhaps, with minimum space a cameo of the bridge over the Loch just before arriving a the junction station of the Mound might work, with an imposing distant mountain back scene, water, and greenery - with the added benefit of the road and railway bridge, as well as lock gates and debris guard to model across the water... this could fit in as little as 2' x 1' in 4mm... for my 4mm scheming, I suspect I would look elsewhere, which leads me onto one final distraction... but more on that another time. Until then, more soon…