Over the past couple of weeks I have added a 2mm layer of adhesive foam to the remaining boards including the seven in the fiddle yard. My choice of a roll of 10m x 1mm 'Envoy Multi Adhesive Underlay' via Ebay has proved relatively easy to lay and economic at just shy of £18 for the roll. The adhesive layer on one side needs careful handling when peeling back the clear plastic covering sheet but once in place it grabs well and sticks. You will not remove it easily. Made of recycled rubber tyres
Before getting on to the construction of the walkways here are a few photos of the 'stench pipe' fabricated from 1.5mm brass tube bent to a suitable shape with the connection to the loo added for good measure!!
After much thought I decided to make the walkways from nickel silver strip and wire in order to give it a degree of strength and to minimise any accidental damage.
Looking at the set of drawings of the 20ft box in Midland Record No 2 there is a good drawing of the handrail cla
I hope you have all had a good Christmas.
I thought I'd share a few photos of the trackwork added during a quiet hour on Christmas Eve.
Well nearly complete. All the track on Board 21 is now in position with just the sleeper staining - Jacobean Dark Oak - and the droppers - Palatine Models - left to do. The track has now crossed onto Board 20 the track ends being soldered to 12BA brass screws which are screwed through the ply rivets. I use a pair of ply sleepers on each side of the trac
Earlier this year I came into possession of a Proscale Princess which was originally built by Alan Sibley. The model,46200 Princess Royal, was DC with a Portescap motor and I have converted it to DCC for use on Barrow Road - not strictly prototypical but I like the model.
Alan obviously was sparing in his use of solder to assemble the kit as I had to re-attach a lot of small parts which fell off when I breathed on them!!!
Hope you like the video
46200 Princess Royal
It is a while ago since I did any wiring on the layout when the UP and DOWN main lines were partially completed and wired with their own BUS bars and droppers.
I decided it was time to get on with some more wiring and started making more droppers out of 1/0.6 wire, these being soldered onto double ended tags which can the be fixed to the underside of the boards.
Over 200 of these were made up in preparation for the task. The single core wire is easier to push through the 1.3mm holes drilled th
This update covers work carried out since my last entry. The lift out board has been tweaked to ensure it slots into the layout by the shed door. I have replaced the over catches with a more robust set to ensure the board locks firmly into position.
Black card strips have been laid in preparation for the final lengths of track to complete the UP and DOWN main lines.
The second pair of ' King turnouts' for access to the Up and Down Storage sidings and the Second Crossover are
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
The additional Masokits etches arrived in the post this morning so work on the Metro tank ceased temporarily - I need some extra information on it anyway....
I have now made up the remaining 17 lever slots for the frame and now have the complete 47 positions for the levers which will, hopefully, be added tomorrow.
Here are a few photos of todays work.
Having completed fitting all the droppers on the current scenic boards - roundhouse excluded - I have made a start on adding the BUS bars to the layout. I have decided to split the scenic section of the layout into a number of power districts or Zones as follows;
Zone 1 - Up Main
Zone 2 - Down Main
Zone 3 - Turnouts Group 1
Zone 4 - Turnouts Group 2
Zone 5 - Loco Shed Sidings
Zone 6 - Loco Shed coal/ash area
Zone 7 - Loco Shed rear sidings
Zone 8 - Loco Shed Turntable & Roundhouse si
My latest conversion of a RTR loco is Bachmann Compound 4P 41157 which I have renumbered 41140 as I have a photo of it on shed.
Conversion follows my now standard method using Alan Gibson wheels with Markits 10BA crankpins, reusing the Bachmann motion.
The tender has a Dave Franks chassis but this time I had to leave off the water pickup gear in order to add extra pickups on the two rear axles of the tender. I'm pleased with the conversion.
Here is a video of 41140 on a Glouceste
I have started to convert some of my Bachmann short firebox Jubilees to P4 in order to run them on my layout. This project had been stalled for a while as I pondered on the best way to do this, however a visit by Dave Holt, David Clarke and Steve Ridgeway in September gave me the necessary push to get on with it. My conversion replaces the wheels with an Alan Gibson 3mm axle set of drivers plus bogie and tender wheels. Replacement crankpins are Markits stainless steel products. The only other mo
Time for an update on the slow progress with the two ash disposal pits. Unlike the other outside pits, which were all updated and in some cases elongated using concrete, these two pits remained with their original brick structure and 5ft cast iron panels to support the track.
Having made 7 of the 10 lengths of iron panels [ fabricated from brass section] I decided I needed a break and started on the pits themselves. The pit under the ash plant itself is 220ft long and is curved. The shorter
Further progress today with all the rail now laid on the three point 'zig zag'. The new gauge really helped with the fine tuning - I will now revisit all the other completed turn-outs to fine tune using this jig.
Just a single slip and turnout to make now and I can start some track laying on the boards.
At long last I have completed building all of the various pits; those inside the roundhouse, the engine sidings, the preparation pits and the ash disposal pits, a grand total of 33 not including those inside the workshop.
The brasswork of the ash disposal pits has now been sprayed with halfords grey primer which makes it possible to photograph them without the glare from the metallic surface. I have added a number of track rivits to the surface of the brass especially near the board joints i
The lever frame is now satin black and the signal levers red - what a difference a spot of paint makes
The remaining levers will be painted over the next few days after the paint dries thoroughly.
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
Barrow Road shed had a number of locos visit yesterday and the following photos give a flavour with locos belonging to myself and a number of friends from the Scalefour Society. You know who you are.
At last... I can add another entry!
Here is the office chimney which I have constructed form some old Formcraft/Alan Gibson/C&L brick parts.
The chimney is constructed from 4mm scale english bond brickwork parts - see photo - which are placed over lengths of plastic rods, which fit through the holes in the brick parts, to assemble a convincing chimney. I have a stock of these parts which I have previously used to build the water tower on my Sheep Pasture layout.
Just finished scratch building the Block Instruments, Bells, Telephones, Repeaters etc and fixed them to the shelf along with the Signal Diagram display panel - the latter will have a photoshopped diagram added after painting. I now have a Springside kit of whitemetal parts to sell after deciding they were not suitable.
In all a very fiddly job but the results are very satisfying.
The Block Instruments are made from 2.5mm square brass section with square section plasticard inserted into
With the walkways now complete and painted - a coat of Halfords white primer with the planks given a wash of Humbrol 53+62 - the time has come to fix them, the steps and the firebuckets to the box.
I decided to fix the walkways to their support brackets using a thin coat of araldite so that removal for any repair at a future date is possible. Here are a selection of photos of the completed signal box - I hope you like the result - I certainly do.
I have spent some time assembling the front elevation of the shed but needed to wait to collect some amended parts - my fault - as I found a photograph showing an additional window by the office block. This window was only noticed when I enlarged a photograph of the shed interior - of course once observed it became very noticeable and I had to add it to the building.
The exterior view of this window is obscured partly by the office building itself and partly by the porch entrance to one of i
My latest conversion is a Bachmann Patriot which has the same chassis as the Jubilee. Wheels are again Alan Gibson with Markits crankpins which have been spaced using 4 x 1mm washers per axle. Brake shoes have been removed an refixed with additional plasticard spacers. The tender has a Dave Franks Fowler sprung chassis.
Below is a link to youtube. Question: - how do you upload videos from youtube these days?
https://youtu.be/yib4hZZ-TbI
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
Just in time for Christmas here is D41 plus four Bachmann Mk1s on the first test of the Up Main from Lawrence Hill Junction through the storage sidings. The Bachmann Peak runs on a Rumney Models chassis courtesy of Justin and the Mk1s run on Bill Bedford bogies courtesy of Morgan - thanks to you both.
Happy Christmas and New Year to you all.
Robin
The sidings wall of the workshop is the last piece of the workshop & roundhouse to be assembled and coloured so I thought I would show a series of photos to show the sequence I use for colouring. As mentioned in an earlier blog I use Faber Castell Polychromos crayons. The following sequence uses
Pompian Red - 9201-191
Terracotta - 9201 - 186
Burnt Ochre - 9201 -187
Raw Umber - 9201 - 180
Brown Ochre - 9201 - 182
The weathering is added using Schwarz Black - 9201 - 199
