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Stour valley dream - more thoughts on fiddle-yard and final scenic baseboard

Fen End Pit

Entry posted by Fen End Pit

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Over the last couple of weeks I've managed to get the final scenic baseboard constructed. This board will house the completely fictitious sidings to a mill. I've already got most of the mill buildings which are based on Ebridge mill in Norfolk. The board is a slightly odd shape to incorporate a removable section which will lead the track round to the fiddle-yard. This is made removable so that the bed which sits in the railway room can still be used when needed as a bed!

 

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At the other end of the layout the overbridge is coming along nicely. This is mainly cut in 1mm MDF with a frame of 3mm. I've painted with Humbrol brick red, applied mortar with 'Wilko' own-brand fine filler and then applied some washes of Vallejo Acrylic grey. The white painted section is for sighting the advanced starter signal which is just in front of the bridge. The wing walls will be buried to around 40 degrees in the sides of the cutting.

 

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The original bring looks like this. It is a 5 segment arch bridge, which means that there are 5 arcs which form the elliptical shape. Following some discussion on the Scalefour society forum I was appraised that just drawing an ellipse in CAD wasn't accurate as the builders would not have been able to make form-work based on an ellipse. The internet revealed how to construct a 5 segment arch with rather too many uses of the word 'bisect' for my humble brain. Still it's Scalefour - getting it - Alright!

 

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A fair amount of consolidation and re-pointing has happened on the bridge so I don't trust that the weathering now is what it looked like in 1955. There is probably quite a bit less soot and a lot more lime leaching out of the brickwork now.

 

Moving on the the fiddle-yard I had another go at making a cassette. This time I used a base of 3mm ply rather than 6mm. This has several advantages over the earlier version. The 3mm version has a little flex in it and actually sits better on the baseboard. The difficulty of making two surfaces completely flat over the size of the cassette meant that the original 6mm version had a tendency to rock along its length. Secondly the use of 3mm ply means that I can make the tongue and groove joint in two layers of different sizes, this then gives some vertical alignment which the earlier version didn't have.

 

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The cassette and the entry track can be brought together and we now get horizontal and vertical alignment.
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I've also drawn up a first experiment for the 'cassette clamp' which I'll try to cut over the next day or two.

 

David

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Boycie1946

I will agree that the interlock idea on the fiddle yard cassette looks good.  My how the design etc has moved forward since those heady days of the first cassettes.

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Dave Holt

Shouldn't worry too much about the exact arch form for the bridge, it looks to replicate the prototype very well indeed.

I must say, you modified cassette alignment arrangement looks very nifty and a significant improvement on the previous version. Did you need to make a number of trial units to get a good, firm fit between the two sections of the joint. Presumably, fine adjustments are possible with laser cutting?

Dave.

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Fen End Pit
  • RMweb Gold

Hi Dave

 

The laser can cut pretty damn accurately, so as long as I got the drawing right, the bits fit. The thickness of the laser <.5mm was enough for the alignment between the two parts to be a nice sliding fit.

 

thanks

David

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