Jump to content
BRMA 2020 awards - click here to submit your entries in the relevant categories.
Followers 83
  • entries
    135
  • comments
    702
  • views
    60,214

About this blog

Kelvinbank, a Caledonian Railway project.

Entries in this blog

General

Caledonian railway telegraph poles , part 2

Making all the poles and fitting sockets for them has kept me going for a few weeks. Chilly weather and bad light slow it all down a bit.   The poles are 3mm dia dowel sanded to about 2 mm dia at the top. I doubt I could drill a 3mm hole through the baseboard square enough to make the poles stand upright so I made some sockets from spare brass tube, 25 mm long with bits of wire soldered on. The bit across the bottom acts a stop but still lets any debris fall through.  
Dave John

Dave John in General

5
General

Caledonian railway telegraph poles , part 1

Dead easy, several suppliers make plastic ones. Buy some and plant them ?   Well, no. These are not any old telegraph poles, these are the telegraph poles of the Caledonian railway. As with so many aspects of pre-grouping different railways did things in a different manner. “Signalling the Caledonian” by Jim Summers has an entire chapter on the subject giving many details and a couple of useful pictures of the L+D under construction so combined with photos from elsewhere I know what I’
Dave John

Dave John in General

5
General

The back of trains and 2020........

I consider myself to be a very lucky man. 2020 hasn’t been the best of years for me but it has been a damn sight worse for a large proportion of the worlds population. The lockdowns mean that I have been able to spend more time modelmaking, perhaps the upside of it all.   A year most of us will be glad to see the back of, so I thought I would do a few photos of the back of trains.   A late afternoon train vanishes under the bridge.     Tail end of a mixed
Dave John

Dave John in General

9
General

Fixing a traverser

Way back I made a blog about the traverser. I’m the first to admit that traversers are not the ideal storage solution, but space dictated the use of one. At the time I used some heavy duty drawer slides, smooth movement but I always had some problems with backlash when running round a train. To add to the problem they had some sideplay, only a mm or so, but that turned out to be an issue.   Anyway, couple of weeks back I turned the layout on to run a couple of early evening trains whil
Dave John

Dave John in General

7
General

CR D38 Glass wagon part 3

The D38 Glass well wagon has given me a challenge but I’m reasonably happy with the overall result.   The support frame has a slight lean, but it is only really noticeable in closeup and square on photos. As specials I think the wagon would be in good condition for the Edwardian era, it is in its first decade in service. I therefore just gave it some very light weathering.   If someone has any transfers a scale 1” high that say “OIL” then I’ll buy some. those 3 dots above the
Dave John

Dave John in General

9
General

CR D38 Glass wagon part 2

The main assemblies for the wagon are now largely complete.   Frame has been detailed, spring castings should have more leaves but those look ok to my eye.     Body has the sides fitted. and the floor is planked. Note the holes in the body sides. I think these were to enable the screw clamps to be tightened up when used at a lower level, together with a pair of clamps at the bottom of the well.     The fiddly bit was making the support frames.
Dave John

Dave John in General

5
General

CR D38 Glass wagon part 1

I seem to be in a wagon building mood these days. Dunno whether I’m locked down, locked up or or which tier of the cake I’m on, so wagon building is a cheap and time consuming activity.   Now it might be argued that I’m getting my ratios wrong again, too many unusual wagons and not enough of the bread and butter diagrams. I’d agree, but the fun is in the odd stuff. I therefore decided to have a shot at one of the 1896 built D38 glass well wagons. Decent pics in the wagon books and a di
Dave John

Dave John in General

9
General

Wagons, real and imaginary.

An odd title you make think, but I shall explain.   Firstly the real one. The CR had large numbers of pig iron wagons, in practice used whenever a low sided wagon was needed. Another of those general types you can never have enough of. This example is built from the 51L kit, though I have used my usual method of a copperclad sub chassis for the W irons and sprung buffers.           Ok, the imaginary wagon. I mentioned that I cut some extra bits when
Dave John

Dave John in General

13
Followers 83
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.

  I accept