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The Works


PaternosterRow

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Anyone familiar with my models will know I’m a bit of a ‘Shed’ nut and this is another one. In response to an article in Railway News last summer I’d set my heart on a depiction of a locomotive works once my Barrow Hill layout was finished. The fact that I also grew up in Birmingham has something to do with a fascination for factories. It seems the industrial areas of my home town have left an indelible mark that just can’t be ignored even though I now live in rural Ireland.

 

 

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Horwich Works – an Ivatt Mogul being brought out of the erecting shop via the traverser. This is basically what I want to emulate. The photo is from the October 2012 issue of British Railways Illustrated.

 

 

 

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Stage 1 – the traverser and interior area. The traverser is a simple piece of 3mm Perspex with a piece of Code 100 glued on top. The wheels are upside down bogies from a couple of Lima Mark 1 carriages.

 

 

 

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Heljan Class 33 atop the traverser unit. Two pieces of electrical wire hang down from the underside and connect the traverser track with the middle running tracks below – this allows the trains to run by their own power along the traverser deck and on to the internal shed roads.

 

 

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The first wall section and the internal over head crane support beams in place. The windows are Brassmasters – these have been doubled up with a piece of plastic between so they can be viewed from inside and out. All the brickwork are good old Scalescene's textures - Painted and Aged Brick.

 

 

 

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Couldn’t resist including this exterior effects shot. It’s the good old Dapol plastic kit of a 9F. I drilled a hole in the underside of the boiler and pushed a straw into it – the straw extends down under the baseboard so smoke could be blown up into the boiler and out of the double chimney. The top of a Superquick Coaling tower cab be seen above and beyond the external wall.

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Fantastic work, perhaps a diorama side, where by the various construction phases of a locomotive are shown.

 

ScR

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Wow! I just knew you were up to something behind the scenes :-)

 

This is going to be quite something - already is! The traverser structure looks great, it helps divide up the scene and make it very interesting to look at.

 

Your solution with the bogies for the traverser is very clever. Is the traverser based on a prototype? 

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Fantastic work, perhaps a diorama side, where by the various construction phases of a locomotive are shown.

 

ScR

Thanks ScR.  Yep, that's the plan to have something shown being constructed or overhauled - just don't know how I'm going to do it yet.  Might use Dapol plastic kits in various stages of construction.

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Love that last picture, very atmospheric, lovely stuff!

Thanks very much Wenlock.  Couldn't resist tinkering around with a bit of real smoke.  Love those Dapol kits and I don't mind playing about with them because they're so cheap.

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Wow! I just knew you were up to something behind the scenes :-)

 

This is going to be quite something - already is! The traverser structure looks great, it helps divide up the scene and make it very interesting to look at.

 

Your solution with the bogies for the traverser is very clever. Is the traverser based on a prototype? 

Cheers Mikkel - a 'wow' from someone of your caliber is high praise indeed and it really made my day.  What I really want to achieve from this layout is the type of realistic pics you've got out of your goods shed.  If I can just capture a really good atmospheric shot with natural sunlight streaking through a window and some smoke then I'll hang up my hat!

 

Alas, no - the traverser is really a pastiche of different types.  They all came in different sizes in reality and I wanted to ensure mine could take the length of a Western Hydraulic.  Most of them were also very low to the ground and would only really be 3mm deep in 00 scale - that would have been really difficult to model.  Instead, mine is a compromise and my 6mm deep traverser  (18 inches in reality) would have been a H&S no-no in a real works - even in Victorian times!  Hence my attempt at including walk up ramps on the model in order to make it all look a bit more credible - this closely resembles the set up inside the Swindon works.  However, when you look a photos of Swindon, the height difference between traverser floor and the working roads is barely 9 inches and is hardly noticeable because of the walk up ramps they incorporated into the design.  They would have had no trouble wheeling trolleys up from the traverser road level simply because there'd be no step to negate.  Hope all that makes sense?

 

The current glitch at the moment is that after all the measuring and squaring up of the floor area I noticed a 1.5mm difference in height between one end of the 4ft model and the other.  The baseboard has curled up slightly at one end despite all the efforts made in its construction.  It's hardly noticeable but it really is annoying when you've put so much effort in - the perils of working with wood, eh?

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Mike, does that 1.5 mm height difference mean anything? We certainly can't see it.

 

It seems to me you'll get some fantastic close-up photos out of this. Can I ask what kind of camera you use? My own trusty old point and shoot has finally given up. (I have an SLR but it just doesn't work for close-ups - I think it's the wide angle that makes the difference?).

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Hi Mikkel,

 

It's only because of the effort I put in to construction trying to avoid warping in the first place.  I'm just being picky I suppose as I'll probably be able to work around it.

 

My camera is a small point and shoot too - Panasonic DMC-TZ6 - which has a built in wide angle lens.  Brilliant for tight space photography and despite the small chip inside the close up shots can be stunningly clear.  It was a generous gift from my sister-in-law a couple of years ago and I love it.  It was a pic from this camera that won me BRM's photo comp last year and whilst I like the new Fuji 35mm Bridge it's definitely a more 'outside in the sunshine' type of camera for long shot photography.  Taking pics of layouts is a science all of its own and I can't help think that it is actually the smaller cameras that are better suited to it.  Unless, of course, you've got a few grand and can afford the really expensive type of 35mm SLR's with interchangeable lenses and a good quality artificial light source etc.  Good luck with your choice as I should image that with all the stuff now available on the market picking a camera to suit your needs is a mind boggling exercise!

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Beautiful work so far.Its that feeling of space that comes comes across in the top photo.Best wishes for success with this one.

 

Eric & Gripper.

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Hi there, I've just found this post and your gallery pictures - this really is inspirational stuff.  I'm working on my own works model at the moment and found your post through a google search looking for pictures of overhead cranes! I should have just started searching right here on RMweb before I did anything else :)  

Great work, the atmospheric shots in the gallery are really something.

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