I received a newsletter from Brassmasters the other day. They are about to market a rather exciting 4mm scale model of the Princess class pacifics.
I never got into the Princess pacifics. Semis (or whatever you want to call them) were what LMS pacifics were all about in my trainspotting days. But the truth is, I don't remember seeing many Prinnys (or is it Prinnies?) either at New Street or at Tamworth and Crewe. I know the last two locations would be more likely as they were mainly used
I've never used Sketchup before but yesterday decided to download the free version and learn how to use it. Once I got all my Illustrator bias out of the way I found it to be intuitive and really quite good! I am sure I have a long way to go and will come back to that last comment and regret it!
Anyway, the coal hole design had started to come real in my mind, so why not use Sketchup to prove it?
Here is the standard view with the coal truck platform under the tank and the coaling trac
A couple of wagons for the future "coal hole".
Only light weathering (so far); the coal is real, collected from an abandoned surface working above the town of Graissessac, Languedoc, France. The sieving process is not quite right, the scale "lumps" are possibly too small to be prototypical.
I should add that Graissessac is almost a ghost town since the mines were closed. I understand from friends who live nearby that many of the miners were Polish. One of the ironies of the area
After several attempts, I have finally reached a reasonable solution for motorizing the Peco turntable. The two pictures show the arrangement:
Basically I gave up with attaching the motor directly to the plastic well and created a strong plywood substrate. The need to reinforce the plastic well now seems to be unnecessary, so those three holes in the plywood are no longer used.
Meccano parts did indeed come to the rescue. The motor is noisy but not as noisy as the previous kit
The fictional motive power depot had to have a name and I chose one that relates to my childhood, particularly those years when I was an avid trainspotter. Legge Lane does exist but is not close to any railway line, past or present. It is in Birmingham's Jewellry District, post code B1, not far from the city centre. But it is up on a hill so would never have been selected for a railway route. I spent a lot of my adolescence there (and in the nearby Museum of Science and Industry).
The na
My return to France and the Legge Lane project has been delayed for personal reasons. More on the turntable saga and other subjects when I finally get there!
Went to Toddington, headquarters of the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway and persuaded myself to buy a second Airfix 14XX tank engine. The first suffered major damage years ago when knocked off a window ledge in Houston. This one shakes as it runs down the test track, but between the two of them and possibly a Comet chassis I may get a reasonable facsimile of the Gobowen Rattler (the shuttle service between Oswestry and Gobowen I rode many times from 1955 to 1964).
Here are two photos
Earlier photos show a carefully constructed Ratio coal stage placed where coaling will be done (eventually). The prototype for this is, apparently, in Scotland, a long way from the English Midlands, so it really will look out of place. Volumes I and II of LMS Sheds have plenty of illustrations of LNWR style coal holes, basically consisting of two roads under a water tank, one road slightly elevated. The example at Birmingham Monument Lane was one such design but in fact there were quite a few
Cold showery weather - what am I doing in England?! Well, Sunday is a good day to take a loco out of its box and do some detailing and I had forgotten about my Bachmann 75027 in "out of the box" weathered state. It is a very nice looking model and really does justice to the real thing.
I am about half way through the list of work on this model and much remains to be done once I take it back to France where I will apply some really heavy weathering, etc.
The most difficult part was
More on the turntable saga later, as mentioned in my last post. Here is a sketch of the track plan. The diorama is 186cm by 40cm.
Note that the ash plant wagons run straight across the turntable, an important consideration I think. In fact it would probably be only one wagon at a time. The coaling stage is as shown in a recently posted photo but I am considering a typical wagon-to-tender affair with water tank over as seen at Monument Lane. The wagon siding would be slightly elevat
The second generation of Legge Lane's turntable moves to the new apartment and a smaller diorama footprint. A new base was needed and the Dremel Trio tool began to pay for itself in cutting the well for the second Peco kit.
I had cut up an old hardwood framed futon base and this came in useful for the new baseboard. The first idea I came up with was to tap three holes in the base of the turntable well and pin down the flexible base for the motor.
three tapped holes in the base took
My first attempt at motorizing the Peco turntable kit was a good learning experience. First, the motor kit featured in the photo is inexpensive, but this brings with it a number of setbacks, the main one of which is noise.
The photo shows that the motor and gears are fitted directly to the underside of the plastic "dish". The glued strips of wood give the dish strength but I cannot say the result is good (and it looks dreadful!) The slack within the gears also means poor registration but sur
I am far from the layout at the moment and much of my material is also not with me, so it is difficult to maintain entries in a consistent manner.
However I can relate an ongoing saga with motorizing the Peco turntable kit. I am now reasonably satisfied after buying two kits, two inexpensive motor kits and then replacing the latter with a more robust design using Meccano spares. The motor is DCC controlled and the last time I was in France I was able to test it and it is almost ready to cons
Here are two photos taken during track laying. The turntable well and inspection pits were installed first, the ash pit was cut out ready for a scratch built ash plant. Various locos and scenery were placed for the photos.
View from above the shed location toward the turntable and various facilities. Coaling on the left, ash plant on the right
Close up of the facilities area
This is my current project, set up on a cabinet top in my apartment in France which I use for R&R when not working in West Africa. Lack of space precludes any other type of layout except a small branch line and as I like large (and small) steam locos then a detailed fictional late 1950s LMR shed in the Birmingham area seemed a good idea.
There is no prototype, rather a set of ideas translated from numerous sheds in the West Midlands. Monument Lane might have been a good prototype but i
