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Lancaster Green Ayre - The Barn Owls have returned.


jamie92208
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Merci Beaucoup. It will be very useful when I get there later this week.   Also I acquired a just started Slaters Kit for another compound at Doncaster last Saturday and now need to do the necessary research to decide which one to make it into.   I've already got Holbeck's 1004. I hope that I can access all my reference books soon as they are in transit.

 

Jamie

 

No hurry Jamie. You can't run three days a week at the moment anyway, or you will have a picket line across the viaduct......

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Merci Beaucoup. It will be very useful when I get there later this week.   Also I acquired a just started Slaters Kit for another compound at Doncaster last Saturday and now need to do the necessary research to decide which one to make it into.   I've already got Holbeck's 1004. I hope that I can access all my reference books soon as they are in transit.

 

Jamie

 

When my parents moved to France in 1985, their furniture got there before them! Rather messed up my father's plans for decorating the house.

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When my parents moved to France in 1985, their furniture got there before them! Rather messed up my father's plans for decorating the house.

 

My good lady has left the logistics to me. She was in charge of the packing in the house.   For some obscure reason the layout has already gone and is put up in the shed. Several trailer loads of other items have gone across but the main remaining items are now on pallets in a warehouse in South Leeds and are due to arrive about a week after we get there.   Hopefully everything will emerge again in it's own good time.  I am looking forward to getting my modelling desk set up properly with shelves for reference books above the bench.   The racking for the shelves is already installed.   Proirities…..   I suspect though that there will be other demands on my time once the pallets arrive.

 

Jamie

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according to railuk.info No 1005 and 1022 were green ayre based, 1006 hellifield

 

http://www.railuk.info/steam/steam_search.php

 

Thanks Sam, that sounds good.   I will have to do some digging when I get access to my Midland 1920 allocation book.   A Hellifield Loco sounds good.

 

Jamie

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Well there has been a little progress.   As we are actually getting a little time to chill out. I went to the car today and extracted the Slaters Compound kit.  The only thing missing from it that I could see was the instructions and a spare set arrived today courtesy of the very efficient staff at Slaters.

 

I actually read the first few pages in detail and the historical notes led me to having a go at making this into 1009 which was one of the 7' driver'ed MR batch that was superheated in 1922 so would be right for Green Ayre in Superheated form.

 

I unpacked the kit and found that the frames appeared to be very well and cleanly made, slotted the wheelsets in and lo and behold a rolling set of frames ran smoothly along the glass top of a  dressing table. (In the spare room)

 

I managed to measure the wheels and they are the 7' ones that I need for 1009 and all the pick p holes seem to have been made in the right places.

 

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If it runs with coupling rods as well as it does at the moment I will be very pleased.

 

If anyone can help me guess the age of the kit I would be interested.   It has a Maxon motor and the old address on the box.

 

All in all a stunning buy from the Bring and Buy stand at Donny for just under half the retail price.

 

Jamie

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Not a huge amount to report except that I am now resident in France.   The remainder of our possessions arrived on Monday and seems to have survived the lorry journey well.  So far we have unpacked 8 of 9 pallets and are now distributing the stuff to the house and various parts of the shed. My Giggleswick station sign arrived safely.

post-6824-0-94595000-1530134856_thumb.jpg 

I will have to find somewhere to put it up.

Most of my reference books, stock and tools/unbuilt kits etc are now unloaded, though there are a few crates on the last pallet. I haven't got all my racking and shelving built yet so this pile of boxes and crates has been created.

post-6824-0-60974200-1530134860_thumb.jpg

 

They aren't in the way and will gradually get sorted.

 

Tonight I even managed to get some work done.   I did start to rewire the fiddle yard control panel earlier this year but never really got chance to do much. I put the panel up tonight and even managed to find most of the tools I needed, plus more importantly the book of words (AKA wiring diagrams) and spent some time working out how to make the wiring neater.   I worked a scheme out but need some small screws to secure chocolate blocks to the panel.  These will be bought tomorrow when we go shopping.

 

At least it's a start.

 

Jamie

 

 

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Not a lot to report in terms of actual progress on the layout as the great unpacking is still in progress.   I have however managed to find all of the loco kits, and most of the coach, wagon and other kits that I knew I had to build.   These are now to the left of my workdesk.  Locos on one shelf, wagons on another, together with a few road vehicles, and coaches on the bottom two.  

 

As I'm now in France I don't have access to quite a few of the locos that I used to borrow to run at shows. I've therefore got to get my fingers out and build some.  On the shelf are the following.

1. A Slater's Compound that I picked up at Doncaster last month.

2. An Alan Gibson 483 class 2P that came via Ebay

3  Another Gibson 2P that came via the Guild Sales and Wants.

4. A Gibson 4F

5. A London Road 2F part built that Tony Bond was building for me before he sadly died.

6. Another 2F that I was given on condition that I finish it within 2 years.

7. An 0-4-4T

8. A 1F 0-6-0T

9. Another 1F 0-6-0T

10, finally the first 7mm kit I ever started, an Andy Beaton 9F.   Don't ask where that fits with Green Ayre but look at my ID, the only main line steam loco I ever rode on.

 

One of the 2P's was going to be numbered 467 in memory of a good friend (Jock67B) who sadly is no longer with us.   I finally found the kit today and started doing a bit of research about it. To my consternation I found that 467, though allocated to Hellifield, was never rebuilt to a '483' class but was withdrawn in 1926 with a single curved splasher and an H boiler.   I will have to wait till my scratchbuilding skills get better to make it.   I now have to spend some time researching which loco that kit is going to become. Time for a glass of wine and some reading I think.

 

Jamie

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'Time for a glass of wine and some reading I think.'

 

At least you've got ready access to the local wine, claret for Midland Red?

 

Dava

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'Time for a glass of wine and some reading I think.'

 

At least you've got ready access to the local wine, claret for Midland Red?

 

Dava

 

A very nice locally grown Merlot at 1 Euro 70 per litre from the local vineyard.   Red Pineaux comes a close second.

 

Jamie

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Books have been consulted and the grey matter stirred up.    I've now decided to make the two 2P's into 453 of Green Ayre(shed code 32) and 468 of Hellifield (Shed code 30a).  The 4F will carry my old Police number and will thus be shed code 17 from Toton.  The interesting thing will be what to have put on 468's shed plate.  The code was actually 30a under the Midland scheme but No ne seems to know if the suffix letters were actually on the plates.

 

Jamie

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It might be worth asking on the pre-grouping section of RMWeb.  There are a few quite knowledgable folk about things Midland.

 

If Jamie isn't one of them I don't know who is. Midland Railway Study Centre? A quick search on "shed plate" throws up item 11694, a mounted collection of shed plates including 21B (Heaton Mersey) - but are these all pre-1923 plates?

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If Jamie isn't one of them I don't know who is. Midland Railway Study Centre? A quick search on "shed plate" throws up item 11694, a mounted collection of shed plates including 21B (Heaton Mersey) - but are these all pre-1923 plates?

 

Thanks Stephen and Andy, and also thanks for the comment.   I'm not sure about the plate being pre 1923 as a capital B is used and in the MRS book on loco allocations all the suffix letters are lower case.  I will email one or two people in the MRS and try and get and answer.    I won't be needing the plate for a few months so there's no tearing hurry.

 

Thanks again.

 

Jamie 

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Would they be Midland Wyverns.

 

Jamie

 

Only if they regularly had the hangover from hell variety? If so, they look surprisingly chirpy on the Crest?

 

Don't Drink Pineau and Drive (expensive or hand-built 0 gauge locos, at any rate - you can drive a car round these parts after drinking anything, it seems to me...)

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Only if they regularly had the hangover from hell variety? If so, they look surprisingly chirpy on the Crest?

 

Don't Drink Pineau and Drive (expensive or hand-built 0 gauge locos, at any rate - you can drive a car round these parts after drinking anything, it seems to me...)

 

Wise advice Mike.  I've noticed the somewhat relaxed approach to such things, even for journeys of a few hundred metres round the village.   

 

Hope things are going well for you.

 

Jamie

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More research was done last night using the links provided by Stephen and Andy.   It would seem that the letters were capitals and seem to have been more common than first thought.   I will probably get a 30A plate.  As I grew up only 6 miles away from 30A it seems appropriate.  At one time in my teens I had free rein to cycle over there, borrow the key to the shed then walk across the tracks and wander round the shed looking at all the lovely preserved locos that were in there.   

 

Jamie

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A good day and for the first time since we actually moved to France I got my soldering iron out and did some work on the layout. I set off to try and get the first of the new point switches working in the Fiddle Yard. Initially this didn't start well as a terminal broke of the DPDT switch. However I got a new switch out and set to work tore do things in a much neater way. It all came right and I even got the Indicator LED's working. At the end I was able to power up the panel and hear the correct Tortoise go over in the correct hand. I then had just enough time to do the first wiring for the next 2 points which have the switches very close together. I also earned some brownie point by mending a bracelet for Beth that needed various tools and a soldering iron. Then it was time for the day to continue in a good way as we watched the football. Now it's time to get ready to go out for a meal.

 

 

Jamie

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Another day another two point switches and LED;s installed. That's over half of one quadrant done. Hopefully I'll be able to run trains through the Fiddle yard by Wednesday as a 5 yr old is coming to operate. What I need to do is start on the other end of the down yard and also get a couple of power switches wired in. Nothing lie having a target to aim at.

 

 

Jamie

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Well some more progress. I've now got 7 point motors wired and have started on some of the track power supplies. Today I've had to do some jury rigging as a 5 year old grandson of one our French neighbours is coming to play trains. I eventually wired an H & M duette into the Down yard and eventually managed to get a loco to run all the way round the mainline. However it came off at a board joint so I got my soldering iron out but even a 60W one wasn't man enough to re-solder a track joint. Over lunch I had a think about this and realised that the locos were all running rather slowly. Having thunk over lunch (Freshly cooked mussels in cream and white wine), I decided to test the mains voltage. It came out at 145 volts. The layout is fed via a spur from an inverter that also supplies the swimming pool. I am going to have to get my sparky back to see what he has done and where my volts are going missing.

 

 

Fortunately I managed an alternative supply via a long extension lead and the voltage is up to 235, which is about right. Things are running a lot better.

 

 

Jamie

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