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A 4mm Scale Model of Bristol Barrow Road Engine Shed in P4

 

 

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Entries in this blog

Bristol Barrow Road - Hitting the Buffers

I have done some research on the type of buffer stops used on the shed and have identified three different types in five positions:-   The first type is found on the headshunt alongside the coaling tower and has been difficult to identify as photos of this area have usually have a 16 ton mineral wagon blocking the view. I have managed to find a couple of useful shots one of which is courtesy of Patrick O'Brien on his flickr site:- http://www.flickr.co...157625157165429 The buffer stop is to
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Bristol Barrow Road - The Devonian

Bristol Barrow Road - ' The Devonian '

It's been a while since I posted anything on this blog however I have been very busy on the layout during the past year completing several small buildings in and around the shed yard and cladding the Barrow Road viaduct with Wills Coarse Stone sheet and making all the scenery along the front of the layout. My latest completed project is the conversion of 11 Bachmann mk1 coaches to P4 using Bill Bedford sprung bogies with MJT frames; Masokits gangway connectors plus other detailing. Her

Bristol Barrow Road - Test Fit of First Roof Pitch

With the layout now fully erected again following the Christmas and New Year break - the room doubles up as accommodation for guests - I have now had the opportunity to test fit the first of the roof pitches on the roundhouse girders.                 In the meantime I have managed to build another 14 trusses so hopefully the second pitch is not too far away from completion.
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Bristol Barrow Road - Roundhouse Roof

It has been a while since I did any work on the roundhouse roof so I recently added the smoke hood support wires, 4 to each hood, to the 22 that are inside the shed. The roof is entirely scratchbuilt from brass section and nickel silver wire. The smoke hoods are of two types - 3 older wooden types which are ex Midland/LMS in origin which I scratchbuilt from plasticard and brass angle, and 19 'asbestos/concrete' units which are cast in resin by my Friend Morgan from a 3D printed master.
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Bristol Barrow Road - 20th November - 50th anniversary of closure

I attended an interesting talk in Bristol last night given by the Barton Hill History Group on the 50th anniversary of the closure of Barrow Road Shed. It was surprisingly well attended - around 200 - with a lot of former railway employees in attendance. As my own commemoration to that day here are my own colour photos taken at the shed around that time. Those showing 1420, 6435 and 7029 are from the 17th October 1965 as I believe are the others.                    
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BRISTOL BARROW ROAD - The Engine Shed

It has been a while since my last post this being due to a move of house last year and the consequent storage of the layout and stock. Earlier this year I took delivery of a kit of parts to build a new home for the layout.   Over the past few months with the help of friends the shed is now finished and yesterday I moved Barrow Road into it's new home appropriately christened 'The Engine Shed'. The intention is to make the layout a continuous run for the main line complete with a fiddle yea
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Barrow Road Coaling Tower

Since receiving the model of the Coaling Tower from Peter Leyland I have been collecting research material on the operation of the tower with the intention of making the coaler operational. Whether this results in full operation, with the wagon tipper operational, or whether the wagon hoist is just raised under the hood, remains to be seen.     Recently I obtained permission from West Coast Railways to visit their Carnforth Site in order to photograph the Coal & Ash Plants as part of t
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Bristol Barrow Road - Turntable Pits

I thought it about time I added some track to the turntable pits so for the past week I have spent some time making up lengths of nickel sliver bullhead track adding M1 Exactocscale chairs and Palatine rail droppers. One length of track is then carefully positioned and fixed using Butanone. The second rail is then added using gauges.             UPDATE 13th July 2016   After adding around 1100 M1 chairs the 24 shed roads now have rail added.   Here are a few photos.    
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Barrow Road Demo at Scaleforum

I have just about recovered from a very busy but enjoyable weekend demonstrating at Scaleforum with two of my friends from the Glevum Area Group, Morgan and Paul. I took two of the boards to the demo - limited space at this years show prevented me taking any more - these being the roundhouse/workshop board and the sidings board alongside the shed. A selection of locos and rolling stock was on view together with research material. Thanks go to Morgan for demonstrating his CAD drawings of the
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13

Bristol Barrow Road - The Viaduct

Those who know Barrow Road Shed will be aware of the stand out feature namely the 13 arch viaduct that bisected the shed site. This allowed excellent views of the coaling and ash plants on the north side and the yard and roundhouse on the south. There was a gate in the viaduct that led down into the yard via a flight of concrete steps.   Photo from top of coaling tower 1966.   On Saturday I went to the Wigan Show and collected a model of part of the Barrow Road viaduct - the main line brid
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Bristol Barrow Road - New Baseboards

Bristol Barrow Road now has a full set of baseboards - 21 in total - to enable the layout to operate as a continuous circuit with Up and Down main lines and a 20ft plus fiddle yard. All the baseboard construction is the work of my friend Chris Yates who has made all the additional boards over the past 12 months. The curved boards at both ends of the layout have proved to be an interesting exercise the sides formed from three layers of 3mm ply glued and clamped around former jigs. Board 19 lifts
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Bristol Barrow Road - Boiler House and Stores

By way of a change I have spent some time assembling the two kits of laser cut parts for the boiler house and the stores at the rear of the shed these being the last of the buildings provided by York Modelmaking back in 2010. Both buildings are made from 2mm laser cut mdf with hard plastic [Rowmark] for the window frames and brick details which I glue to the mdf. Each building was given a coat of grey primer and coloured using Faber polychromos crayons. The tiles are also from York and are self
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Bristol Barrow Road - Storage Sidings Track

Both C12 crossovers are now built, one for each end. Starting at the Lawrence Hill Junction end of the layout I have now extended the hand built track onto the first storage yard board to join up with the C12 crossover at that end. The first B7L turnout from the Up Main to the storage sidings is also built and is test positioned in the following photos. I have built the end curves using ply and rivet construction to make sure the gauge widening is correct. All the straight track in the storage s
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Bristol Barrow Road - The Shed Foremans's Office

Having spent some time recently converting RTR models to P4 I decided I needed a change so here is a bit of scratchbuilding. The office for the shed foreman was situated in front of the roundhouse entrance. Looking at the maps and the photographs in my collection, I noticed a discrepancy in size of the shed and realised that around 1949 the length of the building doubled.  This being confirmed by an aerial photograph in my collection. n.   Using photographs I produced a scale
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Bristol Barrow Road - Roundhouse Ventilation - an update

I have just finished fitting the 22 smoke hoods and chimneys to the roundhouse roof trusses. In order to enable future maintainence I decided I needed a method that allowed easy removal and chose to use two lengths of 0.8mm nickel silver wire to fix and support the piece brass tube used for the chimney section of each unit. These can been seen in the attached photos.   I also needed a suitable height jig to postion each unit at the correct height and orientation in order to mark the position f
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Bristol Barrow Road - Empty Mineral Train

To the north of Bristol Barrow Road shed and Lawrence Hill Junction there is an incline on an 1 in 60 gradient to Fishponds Station in the NE of Bristol. The gradient starts at 1 in 89 immediately under Barrow Road Arches, which is the road which bisects the shed yard. The working timetable limits the number of wagons descending this incline to 30. With this in mind I have just finished converting 15 Bachmann 16T minerals to P4 to add to some Parkside wagons to give a rake of 30. Here is a
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Bristol Barrow Road - Fiddle Yard Track Plan

After a great deal of thought I've finally decided on a track plan for the fiddle yard - well the main bits anyway. There will be five storage sidings to the side of each of the up and down main running lines which will run through the middle of the sidings. The sixth track will be a run around loop for locos etc. This also has a pair of turnouts for additional storage into the four corners in order to maximize use of the space available. I am considering putting one or more loco turntables in t
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Bristol Barrow Road - Turntable Pit for 60ft Cowans Sheldon turntable

I have been at Railex all weekend helping to operate our S4 group layout Brinkley. One of the highlights of my weekend was collecting the Turntable Pit for the 60ft Cowens Sheldon turntable used in the roundhouse.   Thanks are due to Morgan Gilbert for all his hard work with the design and the CAD modelling and to Phil Hutfield for producing the turntable pit on a CNC machine out of an acrylic polymer - [brand with-held].   I have attached some photgraphs which show the pit in position. Of n
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Bristol Barrow Road - Lawrence Hill Junction Signal Box - Update 2

After a call out this morning to sort out my son's car, I managed to do some more on the box this afternoon.   Both ends are now assembled and have been test fitted against the front elevation. The corners interlock very well with the front elevation and are a stepped design to form an overlap with the four laminated layers of each piece.     Next the rear elevation......
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Bristol Barrow Road - Ambulance & Mutual Improvement Hut 2

I've been a bit busy on DIY this past week decorating the bathroom - my regime has been decorating in the morning modelling in the afternoon. Remembering I promised some photos of the Shed in situ here are a few. Keep safe, Robin                     Repainted the darker patch on the door wall as the photo shows it up as too dark.    
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Barrow Road - The Workshop

Following the Scalefour Society AGM I have had a short break from modelling - no I haven't been away, I've spent the past 4 days up and down a 6.7m tower scaffold painting the gable end wall of the house. Now that job is finished I have made a start on the shed workshop which is at the rear of the shed. The workshop is a feature of most Midland railway roundhouses and was used to repair the small Midland railway locos up until grouping and continued to do so through LMS days - although by the
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9

Bristol Barrow Road - Saskatchewan a fourth Jubilee

Another Jubilee is now allocated to Bristol Barrow Road having just completed another P4 conversion of a Bachmann RTR model. Saskatchewan - 45561- is the latest added to 45577 Bengal and 45662 Kempenfelt which I have converted in addition to Patriot 45506 as shown in my last post. The other Jubilee 45572 Eire is on loan from David Clarke.          
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Bristol Barrow Road - Templot & Trackwork 2

I have now completed most of the trackwork on the existing boards with only the South Exit turnout to finish the second phase of templot. The latest build consists of 8 turnouts, a Double Slip, 3 Way turnout and a catch point. Phase 3 will be the 2 new boards - to be constructed - one at each end of the layout which will form the scenic breaks. One will be Lawrence Hill Junction itself, with the road overbridge and the other Days Road Bridge at the rear of the shed.   Lawrence Hill Junction si
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Bristol Barrow Road - Ash Plant Buildings 2

The next building on my list is the brick built shed next to the ash plant which I believe housed the plant control equipment.   The model is made from plasticard with overlays of Slaters english bond brickwork. The ladder rom the ground to the roof of the building together with the longer one to the platform on the ash plant are scratchbuilt using 1mm x 0.3mm nickel silver strip whilst the steps are 0.45mm wire. The mortar course is a wash of black acrylic which is then sand back to l
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Bristol Barrow Road - Lawrence Hill Signal Box - Update 7 - A night on the tiles

The kit of parts from York Modelmaking included a set of their self adhesive tiles of the type I used on the shed sand dryer and office complex. I could have used them again on the box but using at the available photos to measure the size of the prototype tiles I found they were 9 or 10in wide, whereas the self adhesive version are a scale 12in. I decided to use my tried and tested method using 5thou plasticard and set about making a plasticard jig to assist cutting individual tiles to a cons
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