Willington (Bedfordshire) LMS in EM

[chris p bacon]

Just now, sharris said:

Will Phil at C&L take it the wrong way.... if I ask for a 3-way?

 

Which way is the right way ? 

[sharris]

The train is most definitely at Innuendo Central now...

 

I'm about to have a 3-way...

 

Based on the EMGS template - so far progress has reached the gluing down the sleepers stage.

 

This follows on from the double slip that I've been working on for the last week or so. It's got to the stage of having most chairs added, but I'll wait until it's in place before adding the ones on the crossing in case it needs tweaking in-situ. Properly weighted stock runs through fine but unweighted plastic wagons have a bit of a bumpy ride at the moment.

 

 

Again, based on the EMGS templates. With the simple points built so far I've relied on the plastic chairs to locate things, but with the double slip I was predicting I'd need to tweak things (impossible with plastic chairs welded to the sleepers) so started by supergluing small rectangles of thin (0.5mm) copper clad PCB in the positions where rail would pass over.

I could then solder (and unsolder) the rails to get it working- I wish I'd thought of that when I started making points.

 

Being copper-clad PCB rather than brass strip means that the fibreglass layer acts as a heat shield so that soldering doesn't melt the sleepers. The 0.5mm thickness is a pretty good match for the height of the rails in C&L chairs above the sleepers.

 

[sharris]

Well that's kept me busy in the evenings this week.

 

Here's where it all started last weekend with an EMGS template and some off-cuts of C&L templates on the exit roads - I know they are a few percent under scale so the sleeper spacing won't quite match the Templot plan for the rest of the track work, but it's around the turnout where I've had to tweak the timber positions anyway, but more truthfully, I haven't worked out how to make a 3-way in Templot yet!

 

 

After a bit of cutting and splicing, C&L timbers to match the template - as I mentioned in an earlier post I'm using their thick ones as they feel more robust and allow more room to thread through rodding should I feel the urge.

 

Shiny, shiny, shiny squares of copper. As with the double slip I decided to solder some bits instead of trying to make it work purely with the C&L chairs to make it easier (and less wasteful of chairs) to tweak things. So glued small pieces of 0.5mm copper clad PCB to appropriate sleepers.

 

I decided to start with the Vs at the far end and work backwards.

 

The complicated bit - this 3-way comprises 3 Vs - a 1:6 off to the left, a 1:8 off to the right and an approximately 1:5 behind the 1:8. Here's the most complicated bit where the 1:8 and 1:5 are joined- the 1:5 is one of the wing-rails for the 1:8.

 

In this picture and the previous one you can also see the somewhat uneven sleeper spacings in the exit routes where I've had to shift them to fit around each other - hence I wasn't too fussed that the template spacing wasn't an exact match for the rest.

 

 

With the crossing V's in place I could add the central exit road and the left-hand exit road and stock-rail. At this point I filed up the first point blade and continued working from left to right (in the orientation of the photos).

At this point all the major rails are in place, along with one check-rail on the left.

 

Putting a collection of wagons of different weights through all the routes they all managed without falling off (even with a lack of check rails) - at this stage of testing the Vs were fettled a little to give a smoother ride (I'd neglected to smooth off the tips and chamfer the rails on a couple - as per Iain Rice's book). 

 

Progress to date - with most chairs added (still a few cosmetic ones to add) and check rails in place.

 

Until I started building this (and the double slip) I'd considered these types of track formations to be somehow magical in how they worked - but building them I've learned how the logic of how the blade interaction works and they're losing their occultish mystery.

 

One thing I didn't realise when I started these two formations was quite how much rail they end up using - I thought I'd have a couple of metres left at the end of it - now I've barely enough to make 2 60' panels!

[sharris]

Having run out of points to build, which has been a somewhat single-minded marathon since Easter, and having almost run out of rail, I thought it was time for some light relief, so this chapter is called:

 

A fruit van for Willington.

 

Willington and the surrounding area is highly agricultural, so I thought there should be some wagons that reflected this nature of the village.

 

As Slaters have brought their 4mm scale Midland wagons back into stock, I thought one of their fruit vans would be in order, recently purchased at ExpoEM.

 

 

Now, I'd made one of these years ago before the Slaters wagons disappeared into the black hole of Coopercraft, and it came out looking like this, so I thought it would be good to have a companion.

 

 

However, disaster! When I was looking for a prototype for this wagon to base it on (Midland diagram D361), it turns out that, at least when Essery wrote his Midland Wagons book, the one I'd made was the only one actually known about. Now I could have done the easy thing and just made up a consecutive number, and probably nobody would be any the wiser. Am I going to do that? Of course not! If something can be done the easy way, why not make it 10 times harder.

 

So, scouring my copy of Essery for something it could be, I found this:

 

photo from Essery's book by H.C.Casserley.

 

Essery comments that this, which started life as a D378 is something of an anomaly- D378s normally have a plain planked door, but this has the external X-bracing similar to the D361. The brakes and axleboxes also seem to have been upgraded during its life.

 

Also of note - the date of the photograph is 1948 in late LMS livery, so it is guaranteed to have existed in my period of 10 years earlier- I'll probably backdate the livery to grey period though so I can use it in pre-1936 settings.

 

The most obvious difference is the sides - D378 only had top louvres while D361 had them top and bottom.

 

D364 would have been a closer match with top and bottom louvres but I didn't notice any reference photos for this, so a somewhat odd D378 it will be.

 

The sides of the Slaters kit start out like this...

 

So some butchery is needed. Starting with one set of lower louvres, drilling out and filing to the edge of the external bracing and to the edge of the lowest plank.

only another 7 to go...

 

"When I said ventilated, I didn't mean that ventilated"

 

Oh, ok, so the next step is to patch the planks - I measured the spacing of the end planks at the same height and they were at about 2.2mm intervals, so I cut a strip of 40thou plasticard (the kit sides are about this thickness) leaving some spare either side and scribed a line of planking onto it - I then cut this into 8 sections and by careful trimming and filing managed to get the planks lined up with each other and the rest of the side 

Not so draughty now! I also scraped off the mounded handrail from the door, replacing it with brass wire.

 

The next major deviation is in the underframe.

 

The solebar and springs/axleboxes as supplied. This assumes 3'7" wheels- the only photo of a D361 shows it in coaching traffic, and indeed the kit has coach style hangers on the springs.

 

Oh, well those will have to come off. I like to put MJT compensation W frames on my wagons where possible, so I folded a pair of these. How to fix the springs?

 

I found some MJT RCH style springs and axleboxes- at first I thought I could file the RCH axleboxes to an approximation of the Midland oil boxes, but that didn't go well, so in the end I just cut them off...

 

This...

To this...

Yes, I know MJT have some just spring castings, but I didn't have any to hand. I discovered during this just how fragile these spring castings are around the hangers and lost 4 of them to breakages while butchering them.

 

What to do about axleboxes though? 

 

Fortunately the original ones in the kit were of about the right pattern, so they were reclaimed from the plastic springs.

 

To fit this over the springs and to allow some wiggle of the compensation unit, I file a block out of the top...

 

 

Apologies for the blurriness - it's too much for the phone camera to cope with, but this is a side view after filing - front is to the right, showing the block removed from the rear.

 

The next major deviation from the D641 is the style of brakes. The kit assumes vacuum clasp brakes, while this D378 appears to have vacuum double sided Morton brakes. Other D378s seem to have started life piped through and with single-side brakes - it seems this was upgraded at some point.

 

I have some Bill Bedford MR brake handles, and in this case arranged one side as normal, the other to represent the reverse cam.

 

 

The clasp brakes supplied were cut up to provide the brake shoes and hangers needed

on the back of the shoes I've stuck some 30x10thou strip

This will be used to secure the push rods.

 

I tried making push-rods out of 30thou square styrene strip but they were too fragile, so ended up soldering them from brass strip.

 

 

Having mounted the brake shoes,

I'm waiting for the solvent to fully strengthen before filing the rods to fit between them.

 

 

Edited June 9, 2019 by sharris
Typo

[sharris]

I added the push-rods, offering them up and filing each end until they fitted between the brakes, and added Bill Bedford brake safety loops, supergluing them into place, and remembering that with this style of brake the push-rods on one side are a mirror image of those on the other.

 

Next came the vacuum hoses - I thought the ones on the sprue looked a bit featureless so I set about making my own. The basis is 0.7mm brass wire. To add texture to the hose I stripped the insulation from some wire-wrap wire and wound it tightly around one end of the 0.7mm wire for about 1cm, painted on a bit of flux and gave it enough of a tinning to keep it in place. At the ends of this I wrapped a little more wire-wrap and soldered it to hint at pipe connections, and bent everything to shape, adding small bits of wire to approximately resemble a picture of the hose from Essery's book.

 

 

After cleaning up, I superglued them in place just to the left of the coupling plate. The photos of fitted wagons in Essery's book show some types of wagon with the hose mounted to the left, some to the right - in the view of this van it's not clear which side it is, so it's 50:50 whether I got it right or not!

 

After adding some lead on went the roof, first drilling some ventilation holes in the floor. There has been much written recently in the MRJ letters pages about lead disasters as it reacts with adhesives - my method is not to glue it, but to strap it in place by gluing thick styrene strip to the insides of the wagon, over the top, locking it down.

 

A blast of primer, a few spots of filler to go, and it's waiting for its final livery, buffers and couplings - I have some old PC Models screw couplings that look the part - if I can remember how to put them together- I lost the instructions ages ago!

 

 

 

Edited June 9, 2019 by sharris
Minor corrections

[Bogie]

You reckon that is only 10 times harder?

 

Looks much more complicated to me - but it is great looking result.

[sharris]

Everybody needs a D299 on their layout (Compound2632 has a long running thread on the topic!), and when I bought the Slater's fruit van, I picked up Slater's D299 at the same time (bit of nostalgia: the Slater's D299 was the very first wagon kit I built- this one will be the third, and each one is unique).

 

The parts as they come off the sprues (there are actually brake bits for both sides) - not all of them will be used.

 

The first thing I did was throw away the floor - the one supplied is devoid of detail and as I'm going to be using MJT rocking W-irons the representation of the underframe beams gets in the way. 

 

A new floor cut of of 30 thou plasticard with plank and door scribed in with the venerable skrawker - must be over 20 years old now! I also scribe lines on the other side to mark out the centre-line, wheelbase and some more to balance the effect of scribing the top to reduce the possibility of distortion.

 

Since I use MJT W-irons the moulded on ones are shaved off from the rear - here's one half done.

 

 

On the front, I also shaved off the number plate plaque as for some reason Slater's put it the wrong side of the V for most pictures of D299s I've seen.

 

At one end, I separate the axleboxes from the springs so they can be mounted on the rocking W irons.

 

Next I prepare the brake gear. The moulded safety loops are solid plastic- I chop these off and glue Bill Bedford loops in their place. D299s came with single sided and two sided brakes. The prototype version I've chosen this time has 2 sided brakes as I thought it more likely to survive well in the LMS period than a single sided version. I'd already made a D299 to one of the last lot variants (with extra vertical strapping on the sides) + double sided brakes, and a single sided version, so this represents another variant I came across in Essery's book.

 

Now I build the body, two pairs of side+end that I cement to the floor and to each other when each piece is set. Next comes the mind numbing bit - I can't leave these things alone, so add internal bolt heads with tiny cubes made from 20x10 thou microstrip.

 

(I could have just modelled it with a tarp over the top and saved a lot of bother!)

 

Next I bend up and solder the W-irons in the usual manner and slot the fixed one in place in the moulded axlebox holes - with Slater's wagons I find this leaves the feet on the W-iron dangling and I need a shim of 10 thou or so between the W-iron feet and the floor (and a similar shim the other side beneath the rocking one).

 

Once the W irons are lined up I line up the brake shoes with the wheels, make sure there's clearance so they don't rub and cement in place.

 

The next job is the brake lever - this particular D299 has the short version. For brake levers I like to use the Bill Bedford etches as something a little more representative of the real thing than Slater's version. Sometimes I use the Slater's V on the outside, with the Slater's lever chopped off, but I broke them, and used Ambis etched Vs instead.

 

Being a bit sunny today, I took it out to the garden for a waft of Halford's grey primer.

 

 

and with the W-iron disconnected to show how I mount the axleboxes for compensation 

 

 

When it comes to buffers I'll drill out the moulded housings a bit to take Wizard sprung heads.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[sharris]

SWMBO is away at the moment which has given me an opportunity to put the boards up in the lounge and leave them up while I work out the exact positioning of all the track formations, and discover what works and what doesn't.

 

 

Of course, it's when you get to this point that you realise how much track you're short of - I reckon I need about 2.5m (5 metres of Bullhead) to fill in all the gaps - oops - should have bought twice as much last time I saw Phil on the C&L stand.

 

This is also when you discover that not everything fits on the 4 boards I've made - might have to make another short one for the last bit! 

 

The goods platform form will also have to shrink a bit compared to the original for the space I have - ironic really, as that's the only bit of the original left which I went out and measured.

 

All the sleepers are C&L thick timbers. I felt at board edges these might be a bit fragile, so I've been making more robust edge pieces

These are made on 1/32" balsa I happened to lying around with C&L thin timbers glued on the board insides (outer ends) and 1/32 ply sleepers glued on the board outsides, with thin copper clad glued on top. The balsa backing gives a large area to glue the module onto the underlay - for which I'm using fairly medium density 3mm neoprene sheets acquired from 4D Models.

 

Loosely fitted for now between track either side - once everything is properly aligned and glued down I'll run a slitting disc across the middle to separate the two sides - the exact size and join position will vary from piece to piece.

 

In other news, a couple of Parkside PO wagons are under way 

 

 

Originally bought because I had a couple of POWSides transfer sets floating around for ages which were slightly too large for the Slater's PO wagons they were originally slated for - POWSides seem to have grown them slightly to fit 1923 RCH wagons.

 

Both local traders for the Oxford-Cambridge line.

 

I was expecting to have to do a detailing job on the Parkside wagon as I've done previously with Slater's, but it turns out Parkside put a lot of work into the interiors, so no work needed making doors in the floor or adding internal ironwork - so mostly I made these as per instructions although I'm replacing bits of brake gear with brass.

 

The Phorpres Bricks transfers went on without too much trouble (except for the post-code on the address which didn't come off), while the Stevens & Co was a disaster- I'd kept the transfers in storage for too many years and the letters had glued themselves to the protective backing paper - in the end I did it letter by letter from a couple of sheets of individual letters and numbers.

 

 

[chris p bacon]

10 hours ago, sharris said:

This is also when you discover that not everything fits on the 4 boards I've made - might have to make another short one for the last bit! 

 

The goods platform form will also have to shrink a bit compared to the original for the space I have - ironic really, as that's the only bit of the original left which I went out and measured.

 

Looking good.   Willington is actually quite a long linear station so I'm not surprised at how long it needs to be. 

 

I like the PO's, I picked up a new 'Parkside by Peco' a few weeks ago to build for a friends layout,  I was very pleased with how crisp the parts were and how well it went together.

[Compound2632]

On 30/06/2019 at 18:08, sharris said:

Everybody needs a D299 on their layout 

 

Only up to the early/mid 30s if that - I'm not aware of any photos of D299s in the post-1936 bauxite livery. Built 1882-1902 (apart from a small number built later to use up material), my suspicion is that the oldest were already being replace in Midland days, from about 1913, by 10 ton 5-plank opens (D302/D663A) and then in the 1920s by the large number of 12 ton wagons to LMS D1666/7. Their low capacity by 20th century standards - 8 tons - probably told against them.

 

Really nice detailing of the interior. I do have one quibble though. The drawing (cty. Midland Railway Study Centre) clearly shows that the bolt heads on the inside of the wagon were countersunk, so the inside ironwork should present a smooth appearance. This seems to be borne out by Midland-period photographs, though good views of wagon interiors are rare. These wagons were used for merchandise as well as minerals, so the lack of protruding bolt-heads presumably reduced the risk of damage to goods in transit and perhaps made stacking crates etc. easier. I suppose it's possible that by the thirties, repairs and overhauls might have resulted in replacement of the original countersunk bolts but the latest photo in Midland Wagons, plate 99  taken c. 1936 and showing a Lot 919 wagon - the late batch built 1917 - appears to be without prominent boltheads on the inside.

 

Feel free to curse me liberally for pointing this out, as you evidently put a lot of care and effort into that inside detail. I like the improved floor including the bottom doors. One feature I've never seen modelled is the catch handle under the solebar for the door release mechanism. (An RCH standard fitting from 1887, probably based on Midland practice as T.G. Clayton was I think chair of the RCH wagon committee at the time, it ought to appear on any mineral wagon with bottom doors.)

Edited January 26, 2020 by Compound2632

[sharris]

@Compound2632 well, that should make any MR open builds quicker in the future!

 

You might be right about a lack of late-livery D299s and they may well have been scrapped by the time they were due for that repaint. I think my rendering of that lot 919 example may be on your thread somewhere (incidentally my copy of Essery says c1936 - did he firm-up the date of the photo in a revised version?)

 

I haven't tried modelling a door release, but it looks like Ambis have something on their V hanger etch that might do the job 

 

http://ambisengineering.co.uk/WV1.pdf

[Compound2632]

19 minutes ago, sharris said:

You might be right about a lack of late-livery D299s and they may well have been scrapped by the time they were due for that repaint. I think my rendering of that lot 919 example may be on your thread somewhere (incidentally my copy of Essery says c1936 - did he firm-up the date of the photo in a revised version?)

My typo, now corrected.

 

20 minutes ago, sharris said:

I haven't tried modelling a door release, but it looks like Ambis have something on their V hanger etch that might do the job 

 

http://ambisengineering.co.uk/WV1.pdf

That's it. It doesn't look as though it can be made working more's the pity!

 

There's been a whole thread devoted to getting the bottom doors shut again:

 

[sharris]

In a slight diversion  from Willington, my attention has shifted about 4 miles to the east, to a mill outside Blunham. A line branched off from the East end of Blunham station to serve the mill. South Mills no longer exists, but when it did produced bonemeal fertiliser. A previous incarnation of the mill processed linseed.

 

Bedford Borough Council archives have a few pages on the mill:

http://bedsarchives.bedford.gov.uk/CommunityArchives/Chalton(Mogerhanger)/SouthMills.aspx

 

From this archive article and a couple of grainy photographs I've estimated the sizes of the main buildings (the article includes notes from a survey that helped with some of this), and with a bit of imagination I managed to create what might be a plausible approximation.

 

Drawing it out, the facade of the main building takes up most of a sheet of A3, these old Mills weren't small buildings! 

 

Up til now, most of my modelling has been in plastic or wood - for reasons described elsewhere, this time I've decided to use mostly card, and luckily I'd obtained a couple of sheets of 1mm A1 just before the lock-down.

 

Having drawn out what I thought would be a plausible building, the last few days have seen me transferring the drawings to the card. Most walls consist of a base layer and an overlay to represent the two depths of brickwork apparent in the archive drawings. I've now got to the point of cutting out all the walls and their overlays, although the window openings need an arch added, and I still need to cut out all the windows and doors in the main building. I now have quite an extensive flat-pack of all the walls:

The parts closest to the camera are a railway-served shed - a line runs right through it, which I intend to be inset into cobbles and will probably construct with the minimum amount of thin copper-clad I can get away with.

 

Floors will come from the leftovers, roofs I might have to dig around for some thinner card.

 

One thing I'm not trying to think about too much is the number of windows, all of which need frames and leading, and with the lock-down not much chance of getting anything etched!

 

Hopefully it will all all make more sense as it goes together!

 

The intention for the moment is to create it as a diorama - operationally a single track isn't that exciting, although if I extend the model there is the option of a passing loop.

 

[sharris]

Having finished cutting out all the main parts, I laminated most of the walls yesterday and left the glue to go off, keeping everything flat under a jenga-ish pile of 18mm ply blocks - intended for cross-bracing the Willington boards when I've worked out clearances for point actuators.

 

So, excited to see how it fits together I've spent the morning tacking the pieces together with bits of masking tape and setting it up in the lounge - overall it's just over 700mm long (longer than the table I set it out on!), about 280mm deep and, excluding the boiler room chimney, about 260mm high. 

 

rail-side view of the main building. John Usher's drawings (in the linked archive article in the previous post) show the water-side view. I've estimated the opposite side to be similar but with doors in the centre of each arch. Usher's drawings show a winch house in the arches, could be just one, could be two - I've gone for symmetry.

 

Looking towards the rail-served shed. The sides of the shed are down to imagination and guesswork - the overall size is estimated from the survey.

The end of the shed is based on Usher's drawings.

 

The opposite end of the mill - Usher's drawing shows the boiler house (between the main building and the lower building at the end, but not the very end - I found a couple of grainy photos online that I based this on

 

https://www.blunham.com/Blunham/WebAlbums/OldBlunham/South+Mills_Mill_Early_60s_1=56.html

 

 

Water-side view - on this side some of the walls descend into the mill pond - I've made these 40mm below ground level. 

 

The blank area area on the wall is where the housing for the mill wheel would go - currently I haven't laminated the back wall as I intend the viewing direction to be from the rail side, and will stop flush with the back wall - it's big enough already without making a proper mill-pond!

 

 The whole building will get a coating of Howard Scenics embossed brick paper.

 

Now to work out a reasonable way of constructing 85 window frames! (What was it I said on Dave's Sandy thread about my blood pressure going down since the lock-in?)

 

 

 

[chris p bacon]

22 minutes ago, sharris said:

John Usher's drawings (in the linked archive article in the previous post)

 

That is looking really good, I remember it towering into the sky when I was about 5/6 years old and it was probably the tallest building I'd seen (there was nothing that size in Sandy)

The Ushers were a large family involved in building in the area, they built many hoses including one next to where I live (I was also born here) it was a grand affair with a huge conservatory with a lantern roof, they didn't do things by halves!

 

Quote

Now to work out a reasonable way of constructing 85 window frames!

 

If it is of any help I have a Silhouette cutter and could cut them if you had some drawings or a dxf file (I use Inkscape which is .svg but convert them) I'm not sure whether I have any card but you could post it. Just a thought......might lower your blood pressure too....

 

 

[sharris]

Thanks for the offer, for the moment I'll give the soldering iron a whizz.

 

The windows factory opened for business this afternoon.

 

I managed to get a bit of a head-start as in my scraps box I found the remains of a window frame etch (Ambis?) 

With a little bit of fettling of the openings, the 8 3x4 frames are a reasonable match for the 8 high up windows on the end building.

 

As for the rest, I built a little jig with pins on a bit of hardboard left over from IKEA packaging. The outer frame is made from strips of 5 thou brass - the first few I made 5mm wide, but have reduced it to 4mm to save a bit of brass. These are soldered into a rectangle defined by the pins.

 

 

Starting with the centre, I then solder pre-tinned 0.33mm brass wire to the frame, aligned with lines scribed into the hardboard.

 

After doing the 3 horizontal pieces, I run a file across the back of them, and repeat with the verticals

until I end up with

 

 

At this point I can tweak the horizontals and verticals to straighten any off-true.

 

Then I wipe the grid with a bit of flux and a touch with the iron to lock the horizontals and verticals, and rub the back along the direction of the verticals on a file.

 

Cleaning up, trimming  and flipping over I end up with 

 

 

10 down so far, only another 60 or so to go in this size, then 10 smaller ones.

[hayfield]

Looking to be a very interesting layout, I do like large industrial buildings. Don't know how I missed this thread in the past

[chris p bacon]

8 hours ago, sharris said:

but have reduced it to 4mm to save a bit of brass.

 

Very clever use of scrap. If needed I have a lot of scrap etch material* in either NS or brass, mainly 0.3mm & 0.4mm, can easily be posted just let me know what sort of widths would be more suitable.

 

* there is no truth in the rumour that it's stuff already built...

[sharris]

27 minutes ago, chris p bacon said:

* there is no truth in the rumour that it's stuff already built...

 

If you have any LNWR loco shaped scrap, preferably with motor and wheels...  

 

(seriously, thanks, although at the moment I'm quite well off for brass sheet)

[sharris]

Window frames are now about 60% installed, and bricks are appearing on the walls (Howard Scenics embossed paper) and walls are now permanently joined in the two end modules. The centre module (the main building) is still a flat pack while I finish off the brickwork.

 

However, it occurred to me that I actually have no idea how things would have come in and gone out on the railway line that runs through the site.

 

There were large boilers in the building, so obviously a need for coal, but when it comes to raw materials (bits of dead animals) would that be delivered in general merchandise wagons? And just stacked up in the wagons or in sacks? Likewise the finished product, bagged up and sent out in merchandise, or loose a bit like bulk grain in hoppers?

 

Does Anyone with an agricultural background have any hints on the comings and goings of a bonemeal factory?

[chris p bacon]

I remember seeing vans in the yard, but that was in the 60's when vans were common.

 

Early goods were generally carried in covered open wagons

[sharris]

Things have moved on a fair amount with this project now, and has reached this stage (I really should have filled in more progress as I’ve been going along!):

 

 

the vents on the end warehouse roof probably didn’t exist, but they do break up a large otherwise rather boring extent of plain roof!

 

 

however, I’ve come up with a dilemma (or more accurately a trilemma) of how to fill in the centre section of roof on the main building.

 

 

I’ve come up with three alternatives so far which I’ve mocked up:

 

this one I call the ‘barely legal’ option. A single ridge, but the slope either side is only about 22 degrees, which, reading around is borderline for the minimum slope allowed for a slate roof.

 

This one echoes the double peaked roofs of the boiler house and shed at the left end of the building (looking from the ground side). The pitch is a more sensible 40 degrees, and more aesthetically pleasing, matching the pitch of the gables either side. However what happens when it rains? 
 

 

like the second option, the front and back pitches are a sensible 40 degrees, but the water trap in the middle is replaced by a flat roof - but is that realistic for a building built in the 1870s?

 

I’m not completely convinced with any of the options I’ve come up with so far.

 

The side and end elevations in the article I originally linked, and the few photos I’ve found don’t appear to show the centre rising higher than gables either side, so a single ridge with a steeper pitch doesn’t seem to be an option.

[chris p bacon]

Looking really good 

 

For the roof option it is the one you call "barely legal" Slate can go down to 22.5 degree slope with ease, so the fact it works out to that pitch means it's the option they chose.

 

You can confirm this by ruling out the other options.

 

Double peak - this builds into an inaccessible internal box gutter and the water has to go somewhere, I'm sure I read somewhere that internal gutters were avoided on mill buildings as any blockage or flash flooding internally from the downpipe would not only ruin whatever wheat/corn was being milled but made the building too damp to mill for quite a period of time.

Flat roof - Highly unlikely on a commercial building such as this. In 1873 there were very few options for large flat roof areas, Copper was used for decoration but was very expensive, so Lead was the more common alternative. This would only come in sheet sizes approx 2' wide so had to be joined by 'Rolls' on the width and seams on the length. Although this building was quite an investment for the Ushers, a lead roof of that area would have cost more than the rest of the roof.

Think in terms of Bleinham House, when Capability Brown landscaped the grounds the Duke had to strip the lead from the roof to pay for the works. The stripped lead not only paid for the works of brown but also for the replacement slate roof and rafters to support them, that gives some idea of the value.

 

I have to ask....looking at the size of the Mill...at what point did you start living alone..

 

[sharris]

Thanks Dave - I was really hoping you’d chip in with a professional opinion!

 

SWMBO is actually chiding me on to get it finished. Really she has no grounds for complaint as she’s set up the corner of the lounge as her workstation since she got a Cricut machine for her birthday - actually she’s on her second machine now, the first one broke down - I’m claiming it was entirely coincidence that I’d previously been experimenting with plasticard on it.

Edited May 23, 2021 by sharris

[sharris]

So, went with the single ridge sloped roof. Now waiting for the glue to dry before I start laying slates.

 

The rood in this section consists of a base layer of 1/16” balsa with a layer of  0.5mm card on top with guide lines for the rows of slates, which will be cut from printer paper.