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
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
It has been a while since I posted anything on the forum. I have just received a John Brighton built DJH Crab 42778 from David Clarke which is fitted with sound and the attached video is a trial run on a section of the down main line past Barrow Road shed.
Before anyone comments I have noticed that the front bogie is off the rails!
Since my last post my lockdown modelling has come on leaps and bounds. The viaduct is now almost finished and has been clad with coarse stone courtesy of Mr Wills
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 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
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
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
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
Before I show the PHD buffers here are a couple of photos of the nearly finished set of buffers in position at the end of the head shunt.
Two sets of buffer stops on Barrow Road are very similar to the design catered for by Pete Harvey's etch, which consists of a set of suitably shaped brass plates and rail jigs.
The following series of photos give an idea of the build sequence.
Two pads of double sided pcb have been added to the beam in order to
Having formed and soldered up the two main support structures
the main beam was formed from two pieces of rail each 30mm long. There is a narrow gap between the two rails so I used a short length of 0.2mm nickel silver strip as a temporary spacer during soldering. I also used two additional pieces to join the rails together.
I have since modified this by using a couple of pieces of thin double sided pcb to make the beam insulated from the trackwork - [ Mark, I have taken note of you
On friday my former LMS crab returned from the Severnside Works paintshop for a test run up the main line. Formerly 2798 it has re-emerged as BR 42763. Here are some before and after photos.
The Hawksworth coach is a modified Hornby with drop in P4 wheelsets and has been weathered for it's owner, Morgan, by Gerry Beale.
Another visitor was a Gresley RB dia 167 in BR rebuilt form which Morgan has started to build for the Bradford train.
And finally a shot o
It's been a while since my last post but I haven't been wasting time. I purchased three magnificent scratchbuilt P4 locos after meeting Graham Warburton at the Taunton members day; a Patriot, 8F and Crab, all of which were in LMS livery. After much heart searching I made the decision to remove this livery and have them repainted and renumbered in BR livery to suit my 1950/60s modelling period. With the help of my friend Morgan all three had their paint stripped and removed and the 8F and Crab a
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
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.
Having finished the lever frame and instrument shelf I decided to start the assembly of the box side panels. So far I have glued the rear and two ends to each other and to the mdf sub base and left the front off in order to fix the interior detailing.
Apparently the floor covering in most Midland signal boxes is linoleum so I cut a piece of 5 thou plasticard and painted it 'lino colour' before fixing the instrument shelf and lever frame in position at the rear of the box.
The two stoves [unfi
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 inside wall of the Workshop has an 'I' girder under the upper windows either side of the building to support the travelling 15 ton crane.
After pondering how to represent the girder & their supports I opted to fabricate the girder supports from plasticard and used a plastruct 'I' girder fixing them to the inside wall using superglue gel - I am pleased with the result.
I will give some consideration to modelling a representation of the crane in due course.
Having made about half of the total requirement of inspection and preparation pits for the shed I decided to have a break and try something different - after all you can have too much of a good thing!
I have managed to find the whereabouts of a drawing of the hydraulic wheel drop at Rose Grove Shed - I can recommend the National Archives website for those of you looking for original research material -
http://www.nationala...ew.asp?ID=B6200
as I found the set of drawings at Mancheste
The new floor for the roundhouse has been used as a template to cut out the turntable pit and the inspection pits using a router. At the same time all the pits outside the shed have been cut as have the four inside the Workshop - a total of 38.
I need to add a few more pieces of 6.5mm ply under the turntable to strengthen this area - in the meantime I must remember not to lean on this area of the board!
Here are a couple of photos showing the result. The cut out for the shed pits remind
Further progress tonight with the addition of 3 of the 4 pairs of stock rails.
Each stock rail requires a joggle for the switch blade, a number of cosmetic rail joints - each with a Colin Waite fishplate - and a set of funtional chairs where there are no rivets, followed by soldering the stock rail to the rivets.
My new brass Roger Sanders gauge is shown in the photos. This gauge makes fine tuning of the pointwork a pleasure.
Following the show last weekend at Cirencester I am looking after the Brinkley 60 foot turntable bridge and couldn't resist placing it in position inside the roundhouse. It looks rather good... maybe I should keep hold of it;)
Meanwhile back to the ash disposal pits...........
Having completed the front elevation I had a short break before starting the wall adjacent to the sidings by assembling the end wall. With only one window this proved to be an easy task until I realised I had forgotten to chamfer the upper layer of bricks. A few passes with a craft knife later and this is the result....
followed by some paint....
Moving on to the sidings wall here are some pics of the interior elevation with the second crane girder in position...
and the exterior wal
It's a while since I did any work on the boards, so with the temporary lull in work on the shed buildings I decided to spend some time on the boards.
The last work was cutting the styrofoam to produce the incline base on the boards north of Barrow Road road bridge. It is at this point that that incline begins at 1 in 89 rising to 1 in 60 up the bank to Fishponds Station.
The styrofoam has been cut and fixed to the boards. Note the position for the North Exit from/to the shed where the trackwor
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.
More progress this afternoon with the front elevation of the sand dryer now complete. There are two 'I' girders above the window which I chose to fabricate from two pieces of brass section soldered together. The larger girder was cut and shaped from a piece of 4mm square section brass tube whilst the smaller one was cut from 3mm wide channel section.
Once finished the construction followed that of the end wall posted yesterday, with the only additional work required being the forming of the
