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Chris,

 

Nice to see our efforts on this site. A good job that NER horsebox is empty. I did ask beforehand.

 

I know I am biased, but that ballast looks good in Derek's shots.

 

I have been taking pictures of bullhead rail lengths this weekend, looking at the colours!

 

I watched the valves working on 'Chuffer Davies' GN 0-8-0 too, marvellous.

 

John

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Evening John

 

Yes I thought it was about time now that we have the track & ballast down. Your right, the ballast looks great in the pics. Worth all the pain staking time & effort.

 

Loverly to see your Horsebox amongst those few bits of my stock. I'm sure i've at least one if not two of those to build.

 

I'm demoing at expoEM Autumn (EM North) Sep 9th /10th & will be continuing my work on the test build for the Q1 Frank has created & will also have the Q2 he has built on display with all its loverly working inside motion.

 

Cheers

Chris

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  • 2 weeks later...

A couple of weeks ago we completed the temporary wiring of the main line to allow the running of demonstration trains for the first time over our forthcoming 2017 exhibition weekend (Sept 16/17).  Chris and I took some stock in order to check things would run OK through the point work.  That evening one of our members was taking some video of things happening in the club rooms including our test running session.  This has now been loaded to YouTube and so I am including this link for your enjoyment:

.  

 

Since taking the video we have now completed laying all the rail (on the scenic section of the layout).  We have worked out that there are over 10,000 individual chairs all of which have had to be threaded one at a time onto the rail prior to installation onto the previously laid sleepers. 

 

I now have to go back over all the track work to complete the installation of the rail over the board joints.  This entails soldering the bullhead rail to brass pins previously set into the last couple of sleepers either side of the joint.  Next I cut through the rail with a razor saw, narrow the heads of the pins with a grinding disk in a mini drill to align with the edges of the rail, and finally glue cosmetic chairs to match the rest of the track work and to hide the pins.   It appears to be taking around an hour per track joint and I have around another 50 to go so I'll be at it for a while yet.

 

Russell and John (Smart) meanwhile have started painting/weathering the sides of the rail.  We calculated that on the basis it will take at least 2 coats of paint to complete this work it will require them to paint for a quarter of a mile.  Given the choice I think I'll stick with the board joints.

 

Please come and say hello if you are visiting the Shipley exhibition so we get to know whose reading the blog. 

 

Frank

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This is excellent !  Some impressive work so far. 

 

I have some of Franks etches and met him at Ally pally when I manned the GNRS stand, they've moved up the list with just a few things to finish first and I'm looking forward to cracking on with them.

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Out of interest, how many of the members working on this project also have a layout, and how many of those have an EM layout which uses the stock?

 

I ask out of curiosity, and also because if this is a joint effort, sponsored and housed by the club, then it is a wonderful example of how clubs can work, providing more layout than most could hope to accommodate, and a shared accomplishment.

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Out of interest, how many of the members working on this project also have a layout, and how many of those have an EM layout which uses the stock?

 

I ask out of curiosity, and also because if this is a joint effort, sponsored and housed by the club, then it is a wonderful example of how clubs can work, providing more layout than most could hope to accommodate, and a shared accomplishment.

 

Hi,

In answer to your question: of the 10 or so members involved in building Clayton we have quite a variety of circumstances.  To my knowledge three of the group have 'OO' layouts at home.  Only one of these has been featured on RM Web - Bacup.  Two of our members have built 'The Mill' which is their first EM layout but whilst this is a private layout it is currently housed at the club rooms as neither has the space for it at home.  Three of us own 'Hungerford' which is a Great Western EM exhibition layout also stored at the clubrooms.  The goods stock and some of the parcels stock on Hungerford has been built by someone who is primarily an LNER modeller which is why there is so much NE goods stock running on Hungerford although no one to my knowledge has ever queried this at exhibitions.  Hopefully this goods stock will form the basis of the stock for Clayton.  The locos and coaching stock will be built by several of us and will be bespoke to the layout because we have researched the specific stock that operated over the Queensbury lines.  I'm sure some of the stock will find its way onto other EM layouts from time to time but that is not the primary reason for building it.

 

I believe Clayton (as with Leicester Goods and Hungerford before it) will be a great example of the benefit of belonging to a club where members with a variety of backgrounds,  specialisations and skill levels come together to achieve something that would be extremely challenging for a single individual.  For instance very few individuals will have the space to house a 30ft long layout and very few would have the time to build the quantity of stock needed to populate it even if they spent a lifetime doing so.  Our ambition is to build the best layout that we can collectively, in around an 8 year time frame, including the stock although unlike the layout the stock will remain the property of  the individuals who built it. 

 

I am confident that all of us will be better modellers at the end of the project than we were when we started irrespective of our skill levels at that time and we look forward to sharing our achievements with subscribers to RM Web.  It is also our intention that some of our achievements may benefit the wider modelling community through our development of kits for rolling stock required for Clayton where no kit exists currently.      

 

If there is anyone out there who would like to become involved in the Clayton project then all they need to do is become a member of the Shipley club.  

 

Frank

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Hi,

In answer to your question: of the 10 or so members involved in building Clayton we have quite a variety of circumstances.  To my knowledge three of the group have 'OO' layouts at home.  Only one of these has been featured on RM Web - Bacup.  Two of our members have built 'The Mill' which is their first EM layout but whilst this is a private layout it is currently housed at the club rooms as neither has the space for it at home.  Three of us own 'Hungerford' which is a Great Western EM exhibition layout also stored at the clubrooms.  The goods stock and some of the parcels stock on Hungerford has been built by someone who is primarily an LNER modeller which is why there is so much NE goods stock running on Hungerford although no one to my knowledge has ever queried this at exhibitions.  Hopefully this goods stock will form the basis of the stock for Clayton.  The locos and coaching stock will be built by several of us and will be bespoke to the layout because we have researched the specific stock that operated over the Queensbury lines.  I'm sure some of the stock will find its way onto other EM layouts from time to time but that is not the primary reason for building it.

 

I believe Clayton (as with Leicester Goods and Hungerford before it) will be a great example of the benefit of belonging to a club where members with a variety of backgrounds,  specialisations and skill levels come together to achieve something that would be extremely challenging for a single individual.  For instance very few individuals will have the space to house a 30ft long layout and very few would have the time to build the quantity of stock needed to populate it even if they spent a lifetime doing so.  Our ambition is to build the best layout that we can collectively, in around an 8 year time frame, including the stock although unlike the layout the stock will remain the property of  the individuals who built it. 

 

I am confident that all of us will be better modellers at the end of the project than we were when we started irrespective of our skill levels at that time and we look forward to sharing our achievements with subscribers to RM Web.  It is also our intention that some of our achievements may benefit the wider modelling community through our development of kits for rolling stock required for Clayton where no kit exists currently.      

 

If there is anyone out there who would like to become involved in the Clayton project then all they need to do is become a member of the Shipley club.  

 

Frank

 

Good morning Frank,

 

 you mean Hungerford is a Great Western layout! I thought it was LNER. Never mind, a little bit of payback is due, possibly in the form of the GWR toad mentioned in your moving pictogram. Didn't some sort of GWR railbus (or something similar) run through Clayton. Out of interest, how much stock is required for the layout?

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Good morning Frank,

 

 you mean Hungerford is a Great Western layout! I thought it was LNER. Never mind, a little bit of payback is due, possibly in the form of the GWR toad mentioned in your moving pictogram. Didn't some sort of GWR railbus (or something similar) run through Clayton. Out of interest, how much stock is required for the layout?

Only on the basis it could also have been a BR Western Region layout. You are correct that a GWR diesel railcar was tried out on the line but this was post the period we are modelling. Disappointingly the trial was unsuccessful because of the severe gradients, Mr Brunel's GW lines were generally much flatter by comparison.

 

As to the stock required for Clayton, if I recall correctly the fiddle yard has been designed for around 28 distinct trains each of which will require a locomotive, plus we have the additional storage on the turntable for up to another 10 locomotives. I don't know the exact ratio of passenger versus goods trains we plan to operate but I'm guessing at around 50/50 of which probably only 6 passenger sets are already spoken for and we have around 8 locomotives built or being built so there is still plenty to go at.

 

Frank

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I enjoyed the MRJ article and this looks not only like an interesting layout but a really well executed one.

 

I am puzzled why creating the ash ballast was difficult; could you simply break it down with a hammer perhaps underneath a piece of cloth so that the ash can be cotained.  It is what I do with coal, although I don't need to break it down to such a degree.  I am also puzzling over the colour that ash ballast was - it was definitely close to black if wet but rather more grey if dry is my present conclusion.

 

 

 

 

Mark

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I collect my MRJ tonight, but am looking forward to the article!

 

I've recently been doing ash ballast & put mine through a coffee grinder, which has made the job easy.

 

Like Mark I use a hammer for coal, but with the smaller lumps required (& with more than a tenderful at a time!) I looked to speed up the process & am happy with the result.

 

The coffee grinder was about £10.

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I collect my MRJ tonight, but am looking forward to the article!

I've recently been doing ash ballast & put mine through a coffee grinder, which has made the job easy.

Like Mark I use a hammer for coal, but with the smaller lumps required (& with more than a tenderful at a time!) I looked to speed up the process & am happy with the result.

The coffee grinder was about £10.

To answer Mark's point first: the ash on the layout right now is straight out of the sieve and is almost coal black in colour. It has been said many times that colour does not scale and I think Clayton's ballast is an example of this. Of course over the years the ballast would have been subjected to deposits of steam oil and other items which would have affected its colour and so it is our intention to weather our ballast but as yet we haven't worked out how.

 

As to the preparation of the ash we tried all the techniques you have suggested including hammers but it always took a lot of effort to produce a small quantity of acceptable ash ballast. As we said previously we tried 3 different grinders and all self destructed very quickly. Had we hit upon a grinder that was man enough for the job then perhaps we would have persevered with doing it ourselves but as it was and because of the quantity needed we decided to cut our losses and ask for help from Exeter university. The actual trip to Cornwall and back was an enjoyable adventure for me and infinitely more fun than I had had attempting to prepare the ballast manually, so it was a win-win as far as I'm concerned.

 

Frank

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Evening all...

 

Not a lot of action on Clayton this evening at club due to all hands needed in preparation for the clubs exhibition this weekend.

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/123715-shipley-exhibition-september-16th-17th-2017/?p=2754990

 

We did get chance to take a moment for a bit of playing train. Franks Q2 & my J4 pass on the main line.

 

post-19016-0-73677500-1505255789_thumb.jpg

post-19016-0-19443900-1505255800_thumb.jpg

 

Cheers for now.

Chris

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I enjoyed the MRJ article and this looks not only like an interesting layout but a really well executed one.

 

I am puzzled why creating the ash ballast was difficult; could you simply break it down with a hammer perhaps underneath a piece of cloth so that the ash can be cotained.  It is what I do with coal, although I don't need to break it down to such a degree.  I am also puzzling over the colour that ash ballast was - it was definitely close to black if wet but rather more grey if dry is my present conclusion.

 

 

 

 

Mark

 

 

Evening Mark

 

I'm glad you enjoyed the article in MRJ. Yes, its defiantly an interesting prototype & we're doing our best to reproduce it as accurately as we can.

 

Regards the ash ballast, as Frank has said above we will be weathering it in to try & get the right appearance.

 

Cheers

Chris

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hello Frank

 

I've just been pointed in the direction of this blog from another site I regularly visit. I did enjoy my visit to see Clayton back in May when I was in the UK, especially those new unpainted locos shown above. I have the construction of the twin from the two Howlden luggage lavatory composites on my 2018 program - so hopefully I can achieve that. I'll post some photos on here in due course.

 

Regards

 

Andrew Emmett

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Evening.

After a couple of weeks off from most things model railways this evening has seen me make a start on laying the final stretch of the scenic track on Clayton, about a 1M of double track. Starting with the laying of sleepers following a centre line drawn on the track bed, this made easy using the flexi templates designed by Frank. Next will be the final bit of ballasting (yay!!!) & then the fitting of the rail.

Some of the team have dropped back into woodwork mode as work on the fiddle yard boards begins. Also templates have been made for the station platforms so work on these can start.

Cheers
Chris
post-19016-0-28073500-1507103302_thumb.jpg
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post-19016-0-24933700-1507103471_thumb.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...

You may have been wondering why I have been quiet of late.  The reason is that for the last nearly three weeks I have been beavering away with constructing the points that we need for the fiddle yard.  The attached picture is of the 26 points I have managed to build over this period.  These include the points at either end of the yard which give access to and from the 'exchange' sidings.  These sidings can be accessed from both the  Up and Down lines.  The remainder built so far are all those required for the Down side of the yard.   Given that the total requirement is for around 52 points, a double and single slip, as well as 2 diamond crossings, I am still not quite half way there but at least I am managing to achieve the 1 point/day target that I set myself.  These points are all being built at home and meanwhile at the club we have started building the fiddle yard baseboards. 

 

What this does mean is that I have called a temporary halt to the rail at the board joints.  I have completed the board joints on the main line and the marshalling sidings so it is only the board joints in the yard that are still to be done.  This work will now be completed in the new year.

 

If all goes to plan we will have the f/yard boards and the points built by the end of this year (2017) so can start laying the fiddle yard out in the new year.  We will be using SMP Code 75 track for the plain track in the f/yard so that should speed things up a bit.post-30999-0-75487800-1508279422_thumb.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

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  • 2 weeks later...

Frank and Chris,

 

Just a quick note to say how much I enjoyed reading about your project in the last MRJ. The article was fascinating, and I really liked the lengths you went to to get correct ballast. I think your efforts were worth it, as the track work looks superb. I'm also a huge fan of using jigs to assist with repetitive tasks, and that sleeper jig is really ingenious. That point making is also very impressive, shame they are only for the fiddle yard as the flow is beautiful.

 

I'm interested that you chose to model a not very photographed station. My chosen layout location is also not particularly well pictured despite being on the ECML, so will be interesting to see how you develop things further.

 

Keep up the great work and updates.

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