I am continuing the debugging of the track. Following the test of the turnouts from the Up main line into the engine shed with the 3F - shown in the previous videos - testing with my Hornby Black 5 showed that all was not well with the double slip. The Black 5 had an annoying habit of mounting the crossing V at the coaler end of the slip. This double slip was the first 'complicated' piece of track I ever built and has only recently come into full operational use. If you look closely at the slip
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.
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
A few weeks ago I received the second phase of Templot from my good friend Morgan consisting of the south exit including a single slip, Lawrence Hill Junction and some modified trackwork that goes behind the junction signal box to the shed.
In the prototype the double track lines, from the Junction, that run behind the junction signal box operated as two single lines, one to St.Philips Station and the other to the Carriage Sidings, St Philips Goods Yard and the Cattle Dock, however for the mode
I have been slowly plodding on with the storage sidings and have now completed turnout 26 out of 39. The main UP and DOWN sidings are finished as far as the track laying is concerned with a number of buffers to be added at a later date. They are not yet operational as the task of wiring and the addition of digital cobalt's is the next item on the schedule after track laying is complete. Extra sidings are to be installed at either end of the UP and DOWN sidings and the first of these, which leads
The first two B7 'King' Turnouts have been installed this afternoon together with the first two metre lengths of K&L flexitrack [ have I had it in stock that long!!]. The track board joints are my usual 12BA brass cheese-head screws through ply sleepers. With the holes are drilled 1.2mm and screwed down they have the benefit of vertical adjustment to the underside of the rail prior to soldering. Each rail is then cut in situ using a fine razor saw. Strips of 0.3mm black card are used as a ba
Since my last entry I have had a rethink on the curved scissors crossover. It is critical to the running of the layout and being on a curve I have decided to simplify the entrance/exit of the Up and Down storage sidings by using a single crossover at each end. These will be C12 1600mm radius one will permit trains to access the down main from the UP sidings whilst the other from the DOWN sidings to the UP main.
My decision followed additional work on the working timetable and following the m
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
It's been a while since I updated my blog but we haven't been idle. Chris has made two Power Boxes one for the scenic side and a Booster box for the Storage sidings. Each contain a Maplins X21M Power unit, PSX circuit breakers, a DCC Concepts 12v Power supply PSU2 and NCE Units - a 5amp command unit in the main box and a Booster in the other. They do look rather smart.
Main Power Box
Booster Box
Engine Shed Sidings now has a panel for the turnouts which controls the Fishponds banke
Following my recent posting I received two constructive comments from RMwebbers.
I forgot the box stands on a concrete plinth and that there should be steel RSJ's to support the 2 central pillars above the lead out slot. This has now been rectified by adding a layer of 60thou plasticard around the base with the top edge champered. I have just made the pair of transverse 'I' beams to go under central pillars - not fixed yet so not in the attached photos. Thanks for your comments Keith.
An
This morning I decided to have a short interlude from trackwork and completed work on the shed entrance STOP sign produced for me by Chris of York Modelmaking. After spraying it yesterday with Halfords red primer and finishing with Humbrol 5070 acrylic red I spent around half an hour carefully removing the paint form the raised lettering and lines before fixing it to the front wall of the roundhouse. A rather pleasing result.
For those who missed Scalefour North earlier this year the Scalefour Society have just added a selection of photos of my layout on the Society website.
http://www.scalefour.org/shows/S4North2013/BristolBarrowRoad/
Since the show I have been concentrated on the additional trackwork at the rear of Lawrence Hill Junction signal box and have surveyed Lawrence Hill road bridge that will form the scenic break at that end of the layout. I have drawn up a plan for this additional scenic board wh
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.
Further work on the buildings continues with the 'new' sand dryer building, which from aerial photos in my my possession was built in the late 1940s
.
I found a stock of old Formcraft bricks which I decided to use to build the front with it's pillars and use slaters english bond sheet for the remainder. On reflection this was probably not my best idea as it took rather longer to build than anticipated.
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
Roundhouses used a variety of smokehoods for smoke ventilation and Barrow Road was no different. In Midland/LMS days these were made from timber and at number survived late into the BR period.
However these were replaced by asbestos/concrete units which lasted until the end of the steam period.
Timber Smokehoods inside Barrow Road
Smokehoods - Roads 11 to 16. Note that roads 12 and 14 retain the timber version.
My friend Morgan kindly produced a CAD drawing for the later version
It has been some while - June in fact - since I posted anything about the roundhouse. Since then I have had a closer look at the structure of the roof and realised that I had seriously under estimated the number of roof trusses required for the roof. Looking at an aerial photograph of the shed roof I plotted the 13 trusses and realised their positioning made no sense. This made me have another look at my collection of photographs and I have now calculated that the majority of the trusses are at
The roundhouse kit of parts provided by York Modelmaking contained 13 roof trusses that were cut from 2mm mdf, but having made the decision to replace the two main girders with metal versions I decided to go the whole hog and replace the roof girders. Now I know some will think this to be foolish but I have concluded that the mdf versions are not robust enough to facilitate removal of sections of the roof for display purposes.
the mdf version of girders and trusses
This decision has no
Having measured the remaining stock of 5mm x 3mm slotted 'T' section I was pleased to find my calculation for the original order was just enough for the 8 pieces required for the top and bottom parts of the short 19ft girders. It did mean that 3 pieces would formed from off cuts - two per girder which is better than purchasing more .
The wall end of each of the four 19ft girders will have downward extensions to form the wall fixings. During fabrication I soldered a 2mm x 0.5mm piece into a c
Well it's been a while since I posted anything on the progress of Barrow Road. After an enjoyable day out at the members day at Taunton I returned to domestic duties and have finally managed to decorate two rooms in the house which included replacing the flooring.
I have now returned to more interesting tasks and have made some progress on the girders for the roundhouse roof. I have nearly completed the six 46ft long girders but have run out of 2mm and 2.5mm 'T' section brass so further wor
I purchased a Proxxon Cut off saw a few weeks ago to enable accurate cutting of the brass and nickel silver sections required for the roof girders and eventually the roof trusses [ the likely follow on project after the girders ].
I did send the first one back after discovering a problem with the on/off switch - it tripped the RCD each time I switched it off! The replacement appears to be alright and I have used it to produce all the diagonals for the lattice girder with pleasing results.
I've had a few days off from Barrow Road at Railex with my other layout Sheep Pasture, a Cromford & High Peak subject.
Sheep Pasture at Railex
[ See Kempenfelt photos of layout dated 2nd June - please ignore his earlier post ]
I'm now back on the job finishing the girders, both long and short, by forming all 1400 rivets in the overlays for the top and bottom of the girders.
Here are some photos taken today during completion of all the girders - trial assembly revealed the
In my last blog entry - was it really two weeks ago - I mentioned I had started to give some thought to the roof girders which support the two inner pitches of the roundhouse roof.
The three pitched roundhouse roof has four supports - the outer walls form two - the other two are 4' high latticed girders each supported by four cast iron octagonal columns, situated under the two troughs of the roof .
I obtained these columns from Colin Seymour - Alan Gibson - as left over stock from the EM Bat
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.
I have made good progress since my last posting and the second roof pitch is now finished and test fitted.
In order to fit the roof pitch on the sidings side of the roundhouse the side wall required some modification to position and fit the 22 roof trusses. This meant hand cutting a new set of 22 slots for the new roof, filling the original 13 laser cut slots and the scribing the brickwork. The new slots were carefully cut using a fretsaw, scalpel and drill - an interesting exercise.
I h
