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White Peak Limestone & Tarmacadam


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Nant Y Mynydd is almost finished and with my little Judith Edge 48DS up and running I have been eyeing up the space between my desk and the lowest bookshelf. I reckon it is the perfect space to store a micro layout...

 

The plan is 3ft.10ins x 15 ins. and If I cut a hole in the central support of the bookcase I could even screw the fiddle yard at the other side and operate it in situ.

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All trains enter and depart stage right, under road bridge. An old quarry face, topped with trees forms the backscene.

 

1930s - steam - Hornby Peckett

 

Goods inward - tar tanks and the occasional wagon of steam coal for locomotive use.

 

Despatch - tarred roadstone and plain untreated crushed stone in private owner 4 and 5-plank open wagons.

 

1960s - diesel - Judith Edge 48 and 88DS Rustons, Thomas Hill 4wDM

 

Goods inward - none

 

Despatch - crushed roadstone or railway ballast in 16-ton minerals, 24-ton hoppers and/or BR engineers ballast wagons.

 

For 1960s operation the tar plant would be removable, leaving the footprint of a demolished building.

 

Edited by Ruston
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And I bet you'll have it finished in a couple of weeks..............................

 

Looks interesting.  Hope you've got plenty of corrugated iron for the crusher. If you need inspiration for the loco shed I've got the 2 books on industrial sheds - but then I'll bet you have too!

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  • 3 weeks later...

Cutting the first sod.

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I still have all my fingers and thumbs after using that vicious circular saw!

 

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The back and sides are only 8 1/2inches high to fit under the next shelf in the bookcase for storage. This will mean that either the quarry face will be very low, the trees will be dwarfs, or the trees and quarry buildings will have to be removable. Once construction of the scenery gets under way I'll look at the latter as that is my preferred option.

Edited by Ruston
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A slight change of track layout. The tar and stone plants can be combined in one building and are no longer split by the end of the run-round loop. The end of the loop will be inset in concrete, or just partially buried, so a loading facility for lorries can be added at the far left.

 

Edited by Ruston
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Tracklaying has begun.

 

The shed track has been soldered to copper-clad board to make fitting of card, or plywood flooring easier. Copper-clad has also been used for the weighbridge for the same reason.

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When building Nant Y Mynydd I found it very difficult to fit rail joiners on to the bullhead rail, and the special joiners that Peco have now designed for bullhead rail don't seem to be universally available yet, so I have not used any rail joiners at all. The trackwork has been lined up visually and a piece of plasticard slotted in to keep the rail ends from touching and to provide an expansion gap. Once the glue holding the track to the baseboard is dry these pieces of plasticard are removed. Each individual rail has its own power feed and I intend to make my own cosmetic fishplates from plasticard.

 

This time around, to increase the reliability of the points I have soldered feeds to the tags that hold the point blades in.Wires feed the fixed rails between the frog and the blade too, meaning that there are no electrical connections that rely on friction.

 

With all this faffing around I'm beginning to wonder if I should just build my own track next time...

Edited by Ruston
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The next thing to do will be the sub-baseboard wiring, fitting of point motors, uncouplers etc. As I don't have any of that yet I have turned to building stock for the BR period.

 

Apart from 16-ton minerals and iron ore tipplers being used to carry limestone, I have also seen Dia 1/161 hoppers for this traffic and I quite like the look of them so I am adding more to the two that I will be borrowed from River Don Works. I aquired another two second hand wagons, one Dapol and one Mainline. The frames differ on them but the bodies are the same - both are also too long and heed a lot of work to get them anything like they should be...

 

Not only is it too long but the body is mounted on a ridiculous plate, which is around a scale three inches thick.

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Stripped down. The couplings, frame and wheels are of no use, so will be binned. The supports need to be cut from the floor plate.

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The first razor saw cut is made adjacent to the panel join.

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4mm needs cutting off the centre panel and this has been measured and then marked out with masking tape as a cutting guide.

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A Parkside 9ft. wheelbase chassis with independent brakes (as on a mineral wagon with bottom doors) is used for the frame sides and brakes. For some bizarre reason this frame kit does not include headstocks, although the version with Morton brake does. I have used the spare headstocks from a Parkside plate wagon, which have been narrowed.

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The inset photo shows the longitudinal mounts that have been cut from the floor plate and notched to fit in the new frames.

 

The hopper body is glued to the chassis and the various supports are glued in place.

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Here's one I did earlier but using the frames from a Bachmann BR Dia 1/100 mineral wagon.

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Edited by Ruston
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The original idea for this micro layout was to have plain stone and tarred stone leaving by rail. Subsequent reading on this subject has shown that the carriage of tarmacadam by rail was rapidly diminishing by the mid 1930s, so there wil now be no tarmacadam carried by rail in either era.

 

Plain stone will still leave by rail and tar will still come in by rail but the tarred stone will be carried by road vehicles.

 

Pictures unavailable due to them being held ransom by the pirates at Photobucket

Edited by Ruston
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Thanks for the demo of how to adapt the hopper wagons.  It's something I've had on my 'to do bucket list' for ages.  I might get a couple of the underframes this weekend at York.

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 I have finished tracklaying and 90% of the ballasting is done and the track and points are wired up and working; only the DG electromagnets remain to be wired but are fitted. A bolt-on fiddle yard/sector plate has also been made. It's a bit stiff to turn but as soon as I can find a candle to rub on the surfaces I'll give that a go.

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The plaster casts have all been made for the old quarry face and are now in place.

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Edited by Ruston
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If you use the Wills clear corrugated sheet it is thinner and corrugated on both sides.

 

Gordon A

Yes, but the corrugations are wider to match the corrugated asbestos sheets.

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The engine shed is finished and has been temporarily planted. It will only be fixed in place after the scenics and greenery are finished.

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The weighbridge uses two Wills kits to provide two bridges and one cabin made from the two so as to give a window and door facing each bridge. One for road and one for rail.

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Edited by Ruston
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On 27/04/2017 at 15:11, Gordon A said:

Ruston,

 

By the time you have two sets of weighing machine read outs in your hut you will not have much room for a table, chair, persons etc.

 

Gordon A 

No worries, the weighbridgeman is on a diet.

 

I have done more work on the bridge. It's inspired by the one at Wirksworth quarry, where it blended in to a rock face and seemed a tight fit for the wagons that had to pass through it. I thought about making it from Wills sheet but even the random stone sheet looked too uniform and so I took the plunge and decided to build the arch properly. Using rolled DAS again, I used a van and a section of toilet roll, covered in cling film, as a support until the glue had dried.

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Edited by Ruston
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I thought I'd post this out of general interest. Whilst searching the interwebs for pictures of quarry buildings I came across this picture of Bowne & Shaw's Black Hawthorn 0-4-0ST at Wirksworth. What interests me is the load; a great lump of stone, and the fact that it is on/in a BR Plate wagon. I guess this must have been another product of quarrying that was carried on the main line into the BR period as I don't suppose it would be on a BR wagon if it was some internal movement.

 

https://mikemorant.smugmug.com/keyword/black%20hawthorn/i-tfXLgK9/A

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I thought I'd post this out of general interest. Whilst searching the interwebs for pictures of quarry buildings I came across this picture of Bowne & Shaw's Black Hawthorn 0-4-0ST at Wirksworth. What interests me is the load; a great lump of stone, and the fact that it is on/in a BR Plate wagon. I guess this must have been another product of quarrying that was carried on the main line into the BR period as I don't suppose it would be on a BR wagon if it was some internal movement.

 

https://mikemorant.smugmug.com/keyword/black%20hawthorn/i-tfXLgK9/A

Looks like limestone "clunch". These are large lumps selected for use in architecture to carve large ornate building elements, or cut to size to suit. When first quarried it is soft and easy to shape/work, but dries to a more hard-wearing and tougher stone with time. Commonly used now in the restoration of Churches and period buildings. 

 

Paul A.   

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Looking at the picture there are no chains to hold the lump in place.

 

Who was responsible in ensuring that the stone was properly loaded and secured for safe transit on the main line?

 

If chains were required who supplied them and how were they returned?

 

Gordon A

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