St Petrocs. TomJ's Blog

A few criticisms/suggestions (picky ones, because I'm a clay geek):

 

-I've noticed the linhay doors have no lintels! These were usually timber, sometimes concrete, sometimes brick, and a bare few steel and segmented granite. A lintel over each door will help "finish" the structure. There are a number of ways to do this on a "finished" model, but probably the easiest is just by simply gluing some thin styrene strip in place above each door to represent the timber lintel.

 

-Also consider adding guttering and downpipes. Clay kilns had really large roof surfaces, and required quite a hefty drainage system.

 

-The trackwork looks a little bit clogged up with ballast, on the sleepers etc. It's also patchy, deep in places, light in others. Good choice of colour however. Consider going over it with a flat screwdriver, to chisel the ballast off the tops of the sleepers, then build up any areas that are a bit thin. This should even it out.

 

-The track immediately in front of a linhay should really be set in concrete. The only exception to this is if your layout is set quite early on, for example 1930s/40s. Plaster and fillers of various types can be used, even wood filler. The resulting effect from having set the tracks in concrete is usually very realistic.

 

-The corrugated roofing appears to have no sheet overlaps. I know this seems trivial but it really does make all the difference. Overlaps should be set at approximately 6.5 foot intervals. The best way to achieve this is to simply cut the corrugated material into 13mm wide strips, and then use thin strip at the bottom of each strip of corrugated to give it a slight angle, as if it were overlapping a sheet underneath it.

 

-The tracks look a little close to the kiln building. The loading edge was often a few feet away from the wagon, with planks being used to bridge the gap for wheelbarrows. Modern hydraulic front end loaders have plenty of reach. Some sites had portable conveyor belt loaders. So no need for the kind of tiny gaps at train stations.

 

-You've modelled the buildings in half relief, but personally I would've used a bit more of the foreground space by modelling the kiln in full scale width. In N scale this works out as around 90mm wide. This allows for the prototypical positioning of chimneys and furnace rooms.

 

-You're probably already aware of this but clay kilns were almost always built into a hillside or slope of some sort. Because of the fact that you've modelled your kiln in half relief, the backscene is very close to the foreground, so you've lost a sense of depth there, because the overall scene just terminates at a wall, where otherwise it would've been a gentle slope.

 

-Your silo is not too unprototypical, these types have been used in the past for fine clay, such as clay from a mechanical mill. These were fed by pneumatics, augers, and bucket conveyors. Usually underneath it would be a big bulk powder bag on a pallet, with a loading tube aimed into it. The loading points for clay slurry however were basically a pipe on a gantry, with a big valve, a loader's shelter, and a flexible rubber tube. The actual slurry tanks were large, tall, floor mounted vertical tanks. These required some pretty hefty pumping equipment due to the clay thickness.

 

-As for the oil, to the absolute best of my knowledge I don't think there has ever been oil delivered by rail to a dryer. Oil fired mechanical dryers recieved a restock of oil from a tanker lorry, and were kept topped up. These were a bit larger than the type you have on your layout. Usually horizontal, but sometimes vertical tanks of about 6 feet diameter, 25/30 feet in length, usually in a pair. These were usually sited a "safe distance" from the dryer building.

 

-Looking at your model I'd say you would've been better off with one length of kiln building, rather than two short buildings joined. The only reason I say this is because 200 feet is basically a minimum length for most kilns in Cornwall. The few that are much smaller are really really old, or just simply not rail connected.

 

That's about all I can think of at the moment. Apart from that, nice little concept, good overall sizes, buildings all look the right height, etc. I hope this helps anyway.

 

Best,

Scott.