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Inspired by Brent June 1947


The Fatadder
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The second cattle dock is coming along nicely, lots of cutting up Ratio fence to remove the large posts in order to better line up with the lengths required to match the base. It is now complete to the same stage as the first dock, and requires painting before I add the gates and the rest of the detailing.

 

I have also made a start on forming the terrain to the right of the yard, the idea is to build up a sub structure raising the height in this area with the softwood beams (and a soon to be fitted plywood deck which will support the approach road and the houses). Along with the 12mm ply bridge deck placed roughly over the running lines (which will soon be incorporated into the bow string bridge). The 4 inches or so between the timber and the track will be filled with pink foam profiled to the embankment.

 

The main reason for this is that I want to get the slope into the yard, retaining wall and more importantly the raised area to the right of the cattle dock into position. Once this has been roughly carved to shape, I will be able to make a final decision as to whether or not I will try realigning the track and shifting the cattle docks towards the bridge.

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Well last nights layout work was not in the slightest bit productive, one of those days where the layout is left in a worse state when I went back inside than it was when I went out….

 

The plan was to make a start fixing the sub frame for the Hillside Road bridge / raised area in order that I could install the raised base for the grassy area between the cattle docks and the embankment. Fortunately before gluing anything into place I remembered that access to the double slip would be reduced, and I would have no line of sight over the track. This would make testing a lot more difficult, so the slip needed to work perfectly before I could carry on.

 

Initial testing with a Grange had proved ok, but loose testing with a Hawksworth coach flagged up an issue in one direction (from the branch platform to the branch). The clearance wasn’t large enough so some stock (such as the aforementioned coach) would go straight through towards the down main. In trying to adjust the switch blades I have managed to make the slip not work in any direction. Furthermore the fit between switch blades and rails is now quite poor, so my current thinking is once again tending towards ripping out the two sub-assemblies comprising the centre of the point, and then relaying (hopefully it will be possible to do this without ripping up all of the slide chairs….)

 

In the meantime I am thinking that perhaps shifting attention to the other end of the layout might not be such a bad idea.

 

One job that I have been putting off is building the platforms (which once complete will allow the installation of Station Road and the rear embankment, the other two jobs are the installation of the Avon Bridge (which is now a couple of evenings work away from completion) and fitting the back scene.

The latter is still posing trouble for me. Can anyone confirm if a self-adhesive back scene will stick to an unpainted plasterboard wall?

 

Tonight is the wife’s night out, so I am restricted to the indoor workshop (and no doubt back to painting the bridge), while tomorrow I intend to make it to the club for the first time in a couple of months thanks work… So it looks like it will not be until the end of the week that can get back to work on the layout.

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While I have yet to find 1947 references for the freight train marshalling details (and the all important power groups) I have now found a source for both the October 47 working timetable and the matching carriage working document, both are in the collection of Brunel university,

 

I then planned to make a slight diversion on my way home from the airport on Friday week, only to find out that they only open Monday to Wednesday during the summer holidays!

So looks like a visit is out of the question until September as I can only arrange to get there on a Friday en route home from Sevilla.

 

Will have a quick scan through the national archives listings (I seem to recall they have a drawing of the station as well), so that might be worth a visit instead.

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Another night with not a huge amount of progress on the layout, getting distracted looking for Saint parts didnt help.

 

I did however manage to rip up the rails on the Exeter double slip, (leaving the outer rails insitue,) before then cleaning up the remaining sleepers. This is now ready to start fabricating new switch rail assemblies over the next couple of evenings.

 

Hopefully this is going to resolve all of the slip related running issues, particularly given how much better the Plymouth slip is working.

 

I also found time to sort out the roof on my first Hornby Toad, giving it a coat of Volvo dark grey.

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At the moment I am trying to ensure there is always a loco running on the rolling road when ever I am working out in the garage on the layout. After a quick installation of a Zimo decoder, today was the turn of 4526.

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The first real modelling this evening was to finish off my second Hornby toad, finished as a Laira example (the number I believe is taken from the correct batch of AA15, but is almost certainly wrong for Laira...) The roof has also been resprayed with Volvo dark grey, while the sides were repainted in Phoenix GWR grey (as I was a little hard with the scraper when removing the large logos).

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I had planed to apply the transfers to my Parkside gunpowder van, but really wasnt getting on with the waterslide transfers for the red X (which kept breaking / falling off.) I am going to give it a coat of gloss varnish and then try again tomorrow.

Finally it was time to get on with the double slip, the first step was to unsolder the good bits from the existing switch rails. Next was to file up the first side's replacement switch rails. Finally the 5 parts were soldered to the copper clad strip and test fitted onto the sleepers and is now ready for installation. Just need to get on and finish off the other side tomorrow and it will be ready for installing (again). fingers crossed will actually work this time

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A little further progress on the double slip this afternoon, the second sub assembly has now been completed. This was followed by installing both sub assemblies onto the sleepers, I have used additional copper strip on the outer ends (next to the knuckle rails) along with the central copper strips to hold it firmly in place. This was followed by some initial testing to confirm that the gauge was correct, and that the issues of wheels rising up on the knuckle rails had been solved (fortunately it has). The final job is going to be refitting the tiebars and tortoise motors, not a job I particularly look forward to (given how many attempts it took to get the tiebars ok last time.)

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Between filing switch blades, I had a play with the rolling road to see if a 4500 was happy with just two rollers (which it was). So now two locos can be running at once. I really need to get a separate test track wired in, ideally with a toggle switch on the output of the Powercab between the test track and the layout.

 

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Once you've got this trackbuilding cracked, I might be looking for some lessons.

 

Good progress so far.

 

TONY

Always happy to help, though I do think there is a certain amount of bodging going on in my track building technique. When it comes to building the track for wheal Imogen (in P4) I am going to have to significantly improve the quality in a lot of areas!

 

The slip now has tie bars installed and has been reconnected to the Tortoise. This time I have differered from my usual approach and used grease proof paper to enable me to solder with the switch closed. I started with the more difficult inner rails, setting the open clearance, then repeated with the outers. The second tiebar took a couple of attempts, but initial testing looks promising. Certainly the Hawksworth coach which originally highlighted the problem now works fine, tomorrow I will test under power...

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Have you tried Rizla instead of Greaseproof paper? It's much thinner.

 

Tiebar/Stretcher(s) (without wishing to involve the terminology inspectorate), are always a problem on double slips, because basically the two sets of blades are trying to move in different planes. Sooner or later a single tiebar is probably going to fail. Its much better to have two separate tiebars but linked together.

 

Unfortunately there isn't always room to do this in 4mm and especially in the finer standards.

 

It's much better to use something that can flex more easily than a single piece of copperclad, so 4 small double sided copperclad pads soldered to a length of tinned copper wire, provides a degree of the necessary flexibility. A loop of the same wire soldered to it, gives the necessary tortoise/cobalt connection. Even then they can fail but not so often. Additionally each pair of blades could have their own separate auxiliary stretcher bars, not only is this prototypical (indeed every set of blades should have at least one auxiliary set) but it also takes a great deal of strain off the main stretchers.

 

Hope that helps.

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Have you tried Rizla instead of Greaseproof paper? It's much thinner.

 

Tiebar/Stretcher(s) (without wishing to involve the terminology inspectorate), are always a problem on double slips, because basically the two sets of blades are trying to move in different planes. Sooner or later a single tiebar is probably going to fail. Its much better to have two separate tiebars but linked together.

 

Unfortunately there isn't always room to do this in 4mm and especially in the finer standards.

 

It's much better to use something that can flex more easily than a single piece of copperclad, so 4 small double sided copperclad pads soldered to a length of tinned copper wire, provides a degree of the necessary flexibility. A loop of the same wire soldered to it, gives the necessary tortoise/cobalt connection. Even then they can fail but not so often. Additionally each pair of blades could have their own separate auxiliary stretcher bars, not only is this prototypical (indeed every set of blades should have at least one auxiliary set) but it also takes a great deal of strain off the main stretchers.

 

Hope that helps.

Stephen, see this post on my layout thread for how I have done exactly that.

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/94350-mid-cornwall-lines-1950s-western-region-in-00/page-39&do=findComment&comment=2786496

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Thanks for the advice,

I think adding a second stretcher bar sounds sensible, so I will look at doing that later on. At this point I will leave the main one as is, given I don't want to buy another 4 motors and font currently feel comfortable building a more complex linkage to drive 2 seperate stretchers from one motor. The building of the slip was complex enough already...

 

Fingers crossed it will hold up ok...

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Very interested in that Saint you are working on in the background at #360? Could I ask how you are doing that. or if there is a thread for it?

 

Best wishes,

 

Alastair M

There are a couple of posts on building the Saint on my blog (linked below). It is an ancient Wills kit purchased ready built off eBay, turned out to be a real mess with lots of repairs needed so was stripped down and started from scratch. Having been in the works for something like 4 years it's about time it was finished
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Thanks for the advice,

I think adding a second stretcher bar sounds sensible, so I will look at doing that later on. At this point I will leave the main one as is, given I don't want to buy another 4 motors and font currently feel comfortable building a more complex linkage to drive 2 seperate stretchers from one motor. The building of the slip was complex enough already...

 

Fingers crossed it will hold up ok...

Now I'm confused. Stoke Courtnay's Double Slip has just the two tiebars, so 2 motors only. The supplemental tiebars I spoke of would be just there to help keep the rails in gauge and not connected to any motor. They would just take part of the strain. Stoke Courtnay's hopefully have enough flexibility to prevent any breakages for some time without them.

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Now I'm confused. Stoke Courtnay's Double Slip has just the two tiebars, so 2 motors only. The supplemental tiebars I spoke of would be just there to help keep the rails in gauge and not connected to any motor. They would just take part of the strain. Stoke Courtnay's hopefully have enough flexibility to prevent any breakages for some time without them.

 

understood,  sounds a good way forward.

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Well it looks like I am going to need to build a third attempt,

 

Testing this evening was going pretty well, the switch blades all now work perfectly. But the centre of the slip is a mess, the approach rails were slightly too long. a little adjustment with the Dremel shortened them, but now the wheels drop into the gap causing quite a bounce. I am not sure what the next step is, other than thinking about ripping it all up and starting yet again. I am starting to think next time I will remove all rails, lift the sleepers and work off bench to enable full testing before installation.

 

Other thoughts are tending towards adding a 10 or 20 thou fillet in the gap at the crossing so that the bounce is less pronounced. Running was ok with the b sets, ok for locos but a lot worse with unsprung short wheelbase wagons.

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Edited by The Fatadder
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No modelling this week while I've been working in Sevilla, but now on the AVE to Madrid to fly home in the morning at which point normal service can resume.

 

Looking forward to starting platform construction at the weekend, even if I've yet to work out how I'm making them!

 

Right now all I want is renfe to turn on the dammed AC

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Having bought some softwood from which to build the core of the platform and loading bays I can't wait for the children to go to sleep and given me an excuse to go out to the garage.

 

I did however manage to make it out for half an hour driving trains with my eldest earlier, after explaining (to a three and a half year old) how the powercab works to speed up and slow down a loco. She progressed to driving 4526 on the rolling road.

 

Once she had the hang of this she progressed to driving 9018 on a rake of Hornby Colletts on the up main, before finally switching to a West Country (which promptly failed when entering the fiddleyard). No 1 job before starting platform construction is to work out why!

 

As for platforms, I'm still in two minds as to how I am going to do this, I still need to fit point rodding between the platform edge and track (plus lots of painting. It has me thinking about building the platforms removable, initially screwed to the baseboard, with a pair of intergrated bolts which will remove the whole unit for painting. Option 2'is to build a wooden core, then paint track before clading the wood with embossed plastic which has been pre painted.

 

If I can work it out option 1 has a real advantage in that it will assist in signal but option 2 will make installing the embankment at the rear a lot easier.

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Once she had the hang of this she progressed to driving 9018 on a rake of Hornby Colletts on the up main, before finally switching to a West Country (which promptly failed when entering the fiddleyard). No 1 job before starting platform construction is to work out why!.

The oil bath leaked and the whole lot caught fire! Or it just slipped to a standstill.

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The oil bath leaked and the whole lot caught fire! Or it just slipped to a standstill.

Thankfully not the former (or a burnt chip), but may well be the latter as one (LMS) coach had derailed and along with the 7 Colletts it might well have been too much for it.

 

At any rate it's now had an hourbof running in on the rolling road and is a lot happier

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Thankfully not the former (or a burnt chip), but may well be the latter as one (LMS) coach had derailed and along with the 7 Colletts it might well have been too much for it.

At any rate it's now had an hourbof running in on the rolling road and is a lot happier

Should have used a Castle!!

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Should have used a Castle!!

The perils of letting a three year old choose what to run, she still needs to be taught what a propped loco looks like....

 

 

Annoyingly not made nearly as much progress as I hoped on the platforms.

 

The softwood I found is too thick to easily curve, so cutting lots of small sections (along with plasticard padding to curve the brick facing.)

 

I have started with the raised area at the plymouth end of the yard, which is also the most complex shape! The more complicated bit is finished, so now I just need to add the easy bits, clad with plasticard and add a top. Then it's onto the up platform.

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