Coketown

[relaxinghobby]

Coketown

 

What a marvellous modern age this is, the late nineteen hundreds, even the humble workman’s cottage has a fresh water supply, the modern conveniences of gas lighting and a small separate out house in the back yard. The water closet is self cleaning with a flushing system.

 

 

This is a scene revealed whilst shunting a train of new wagons.

 

A cross section of the street allows normally hidden things to be modelled. The inside of a tunnel and the drains.

 

 

Or course it's the half relief terraced houses from Metcalf card kits, a short piece of tube pushed into the end of the cross section to be a soil pipe. I believe modern flush toilets started to be introduced in the 1870's in ordinary housing.

 

After the track was laid and the background scenery nearly finished, someone gave me the half finished terrace kit and I had to find away of fitting it onto the layout. The tunnel entrances where moved out 2 inches and this road-over-tunnel piece was constructed out of cardboard and feather board.

 

Edited January 12, 2018 by relaxinghobby

[relaxinghobby]

The other end of the yard, a diesel loco pulls some tool vans from the little wooden platform.

The coal cells are empty a fresh delivery is urgently needed.

The hand rails are still unfinished.

The diesel is a basic and cheap Model Power product with a repaint. Looks like a 1930s type diesel loco perhaps?

Edited January 12, 2018 by relaxinghobby

[Edwardian]

P1010084a.JPG

The other end of the yard, a diesel loco pulls some tool van from the little wooden platform.

The coal cells are empty a fresh delivery is urgently needed.

The hand rails are still unfinished.

The diesel is a basic and cheap Model Power product with a repaint. Looks like a 1930s type diesel loco perhaps?

 

I have always enjoyed your original and inventive 'period' conversions of RTR loco and stock.

 

Yours is one of the examples that has inspired my own bashing and bodging freelance line. 

 

I would be happy to see more pictures of your layout and its denizens.  The culvert - coal drop area is nicely modelled and a very effective composition.

[relaxinghobby]

 

The industrial railway that runs the trains into Arkwright Mills often considers the great Victorian virtue of parsimony above practicality.

Fortunately it turned out to work very well this time. One of the new second hand loco's bought at a bargain price and proudly painted up

in the railways own colours can, after all fit into the bore of the old tunnel. United Coal and Coke's chief mechanic and dogs body suddenly

realised he had not checked if this big new loco could fit.

 

Phew. it just fits.

 

 

This big 0-6-2 tank is considered superpower around here, on this layout we are more used to little engines like the blue tank, engine number 1.

Edited January 12, 2018 by relaxinghobby

[relaxinghobby]

 

Loco number 1 sets off with a short mixed train back to the mainline. This is the sort of train suitable

for a small shunting plank layout. There are a lot of bits and pieces here, the platform is part of a

raised floor from a US plastic kit for a store house. the teak coach is made from sides of Hornby teak

Gresley coaches. And number one is of course a modified Bachmann "not Thomas" call me Billy entry level

loco.

 

The foot boards on the coaches are very necessary, because trains enter the platforms from an angle it has to be set back a long way to allow clearance for larger pieces of rolling stock to get past without clouting it.

Although this is a mixed train, looking at the picture I've just realised that the train is made up of an open goods wagon and two passenger break vans, there is only one compartment, so not much room for passengers then.

 

[relaxinghobby]

 

 

The mineral branch coaches, a set of ancient four wheelers and an odd brake van. This set usually is used for the morning and evening workman's trains and the mid morning shopper's train from the villages along the branch. The break van is based on a picture of one on the Wenford Bridge Railway in Cornwall, little more than a shed on wheels.

 

 

 

 

Such a grand loco hauling the branch train into the rickety platform at Arkwright Mills, it must be borrowed from a mainline company. This helps locate where the railway is, somewhere near Great Western country?

 

 

 

 

Look how the flash has highlighted the coaches axles, something which is not seen by the eye in normal operation of the layout.

 

[relaxinghobby]

This photo can also be seen on Edwardians Castle Aching thread. Looks like a new loco of the small and cheeky

shunting type on its first day out of the workshops in a fresh coat of paint.

Not all railway work is glamorous work or even clean.

Fortunately for loco number 1 the wagon also looks clean and has not yet carried a load.

 

[relaxinghobby]

 

This picture shows many interesting things about my Arkwright Mills layout, I usually cut down the digital pictures I submit here just so that they show a close up of the model in question. Also cutting off the world out side of the layout. So laid bear here is the truth behind the back-scene, messy reality is revealed.

It's a shunting layout 4 feet long and based on the classic Time Saver design. Compared with other classic designs such as the recently featured Awdry/Thomas' branch in the Railway modeller and also the Gore and Defeated a roundy-up-and-over trainset design. I've not yet seen a modern treatment of that one yet.

 

There are 3 exits from my layout that can be connected to other layouts should I ever expand it, currently they go to fiddle yards on the right hand side, although one still needs a plug and socket added to carry track power, that would be the line where the tender sits. On the left the exit is blocked by a large cupboard.

 

This is a snapshot in modelling time. Some modelling and baseboard project have been successful and others have come to nothing.

 

The photo depicts a Great Northern loco hauling a short passenger train away from the platform towards the tunnel and the rest of the world. This could be an a workman’s train taking workmen to their daily toil or a connection to a mainline city station. The flash photography reflecting from the factory windows gives an impression it is an early morning shot? Does that appear to be a small nuclear explosion on the left hand side? This is an older photo I can not remember what is reflecting the flash-light there?

 

I have tried to depict here an industrial scene, a short loop line serving factories on the less fancy side of town, perhaps a bit like the Derwent Valley railway on the out skirts of York or some other grim Victorian city.

 

The loco is of course a Hornby body but on a cut down Bachmann pannier chassis. This gives correct wheel base and better slow running. This is one of the old split frame ones and required a lot of sawing to get it to fit the new body. The coach I found ready made at a club sale and is from a Ratio kit. It rides very high see the buffers compared to the loco. I bought it cheap with one of the bogies missing and replaced them with some Bachmann ready to roll ones but they hold it up too high. To make it look more pregrouping perhaps I should scratch off the LMS?

 

The passenger brake van is freelanced to a vintage design, I like lantern lookouts, they give the roof an interesting profile. It's my first plasticard scratch built piece of rolling stock and still has no windows many years later. At the time I was happy that at least it rolled, it sits on a mangled, cut down and re wheeled Triang wagon chassis.

 

The front of the layout has the bicycle spoke point operation on show, they are top quality stainless steel spokes, not such a cheap option when you buy from a modern fancy bike shop. A very crude system they slide though holes in the various layout cross members, one of the spokes was made into a super long drill bit that could reach across the layout, simply by filing a flat on the end and making a basic drill. The point polarity is switched using industrial micro switches pressing onto each spoke. So far only one has gone out of adjustment. An effective way of operating the points.

 

A red button remains unconnected to a never installed bit of electrickery, a vibrating door bell mechanism glued underneath to help start sticky locos, it never got finished. A miniature DIN socket is also unconnected, it was going to be standard power supply connection so I could quickly swap around home made controllers, it never happened but I still use two bare wires twisted together, an even more universal connection method.

 

 

The little green hut is an old Triang accessory. I'm just trying out the position. It seems a bit over scale but could be improved with some detail. The area in front of the track remains undeveloped scenically and is a catchment area for useful bit and bobs such as a track rubbers, an uncoupling stick, emery paper, etc. I did prepare some building for this area such as the Wills plastic coaling stage but found anything higher than the rail tops interferes with uncoupling so they were never fixed down.

 

The three green tenders with buffers at both ends are the water cart conversions for transporting water up onto the country branch, my prototype for this is that on remote railways without a water supply old tenders were converted into tanks to supply staff housing and loco needs and or weed killing trains. These 3 are all Dapol conversions, the one on the track is a cut down Schools class kit, the two underneath are from City of Truro kits the 4 wheel one has had the side sheets removed and a centre portion cut out. Any kit or part complete 2nd hand model that comes into my procession quakes with fear of the knife. Next to that that's not a lump of cheese it's a slice of wood, you can see the end grain, I was trying it out as a track rubber.

 

The layout currently sits on top of a set of chest o'draws, the slight difference in height allows for a collection of junk underneath. There's a blue non working tender from the GBR range,an 00 Gauge Society track rubber, some loco chassis the end of a cheapo model power diesel, this space quicly gets over full because modeling is an on going process, projects are always in progress, some are complete and some fail, as a puzzle they won't run or I lose interest.

 

The scenery is only abot 15mm thick and is the ends of mostly Model Yard factory kits,

 

I wanted to have a built up, hemmed in, overshadowed by dark satanic mills sort of vibe that’s why it looks like everyone else’s layout, I’ve used all the warehouse and factory kits I could find. From left to right it is the sides and ends of a Model Yard cardboard warehouse made into a sort of block. Then a Metcalfe boiler and engine house, the chimney is too short, as it is it would supply smoke directly into the windows of the houses, it should be perhaps twice as high but if it were it would poke through the lighting rack and top of the layout box. So it's there for impressionistic reason to suggest a taller chimney.

 

Then comes three more Metcalfe kits or just the ends and a smidgen of side walls, how deep should low relief models be, just enough to get the right effect? Then a home made low releaf warehouse, cardboard and brick paper, windows made by painting the frames onto plastic. The blue hoist housing and door are grafted onto it from Metcalfe left overs. then more home-made cardboard, a retaining wall with reset arches and the end of a house, the house is just a cut-out, one thickness of card and brickpaper. The tunnel mouth is a mix of feather-board and soft card from the back of a block of writing paper they are both easily carved into stone work and the terrace row onto it the half depth terrace from Metcalfe again. Many buildings are placed just off of square to hopefully give a slightly realer look or confuse the eye or for artistic effect or something.

 

The area in front of the track remains untreated without scenery and fills up with small tools like an uncoupling sticks made from a wooden coffee stirrer, brass track roller gauges and another track rubber, fine emery paper, miniature screwdrivers etc.

I was going to have scenery here such as a Wills coaling stage and coal staithes but they got in the way of uncoupling.

The green hut is an experiment in position, will it be in the way of operation, it's a signal cabin or ground frame hut and is a very old Triang model. Although it seems a bit over scale it could be made into a nice model by adding detail, the pyramid roof looks very railway like to me.

 

So this is my never finished layout, a trip around the edges of the photograph showing areas that usually cut out as too untidy to show in here's my model photographs.

 

Edited January 30, 2018 by relaxinghobby

[relaxinghobby]

 

The Small Sharpie stops it's train at Arkwright Mills halt. The little 0-6-0 loco is almost hidden behind it's large tender, must be at the start of it's duty as it has a full load of coal? Some ancient 4 wheelers form the train and a brake van with the characteristic tiny guards lookout. Very similar to the ones found on the Great Southern and Western Railway of Ireland’s old 6 wheel carriages.

 

The long van painted red in front of the PLV is of continental origin, an H0 model from Piko. It's profile is very similar to British outline vans and is going to be part of my grand vitesse fast goods trains, it was backwards converted by gluing on a oil lamp pot type fitting in the middle of the roof. 00 14mm wheels where added, larger than the Piko ones but this brings the buffer beam height up enough to match 00 stock. The whole train has the oil pot type of archaic lighting method, progress comes late to this minor part of the railway system.

 

 

The train has left, all is quiet after a few minutes of bustle. Two wagons on the left stand over the coal drops and in the siding by the factory on the right is a tanker wagon and a carriage truck carrying a container. Under the bridge is a NSR open goods wagfon. What this factory makes is still a mystery, all sorts of different things are delivered to or taken away from it in a great variety of trucks and wagons, yet we still have no clue as to what is actually made there.

 

The container is the van part of Lima H0 GWR long brake van with some plasticardend doors stuck on.

Edited August 19, 2018 by relaxinghobby

[relaxinghobby]

Over in the thread 'Railways in fiction and Fantasy' I've shown some photos of what is basically a train of pre-grouping stock and called it the Ankh-Morpork and Sto Plains Hygenic Railway from Terry Pratchet's Disk World series. A pioneer railway on a new continent on an imaginary world.

AM&SPHR. I think the use of Hygienic by Sir Terry was genius it really set the period mood for me, the early modern industrial age of Victoriana.

 

Here on this thread I'll describe the models shown in the photos.

 

 

The engine is Lion from the long gone Ks kits. I bought this model ready made and painted with the intention of motorising it somehow, It is EM gauge but with the Ks type of wheels and axles it could be re-gauge to 00 by sliding the wheels along the axles. These types of loco seemed to survive quite well on small railways, often long enough to be re-boiled without the high haystack fireboxes, I think the Bodmin and Wadebridge had one of this type called Camel.

 

 

The open wagon with round ends is a model of A North Staffordshire fish truck for running in passenger trains. scratchbuilt body, 4 sides of plasticard and a kit chassis.  None of the stock has a continuous brake so I have place a brake van at each end.

 

The leading brake nearest the engine is based on a Norfolk Steam Railway  prototype and has a small rear extension which I guess is a dog box or tool box. It is made from a cut down Hornby brake van on a metal Tri-ang chassis.

 

Followed by the most luxurious carriage a re-chassised Tri-ang Rocket coach so I suppose it has a Liverpool and Manchester prototype just like the engine Lion.

 

 

Then next another Bodmin and Wadebrige prototype, scratch built in plasticard using a photograph as a guide so middling accurate

 

 

The 2 compartment coach with large windows is freelance using sides from a narrow gauge kit, the next a cattle wagon is also based on sides form a narrow gauge kit with new ends made from plasticard.

 

 

The final coach I think of as a a sort of Social and Great Unwashed class carriage, sort of parliamentary carriage, a basic 3^rd or 4^th class adapted from a Jouef H0 model cut in half horizontally and a 3mm strip of plastic inserted just under the windows to make it tall enough for 00.

 

 

Then finally a guards van with the lantern roof look so the guard can easily control his brake from his high observation point. It is a serious bit of modelling using a Roxey brass etched kit of an early LBSCR van.

 

The Crampton type locomotive behind is another enlarge H0 model, being converted into a light duties well tank it is a push a long model, I fitted a guards luggage van with a motor bogie to push it about. A project which is taking quite a long time.

 

 

The figures are from all the usual sources and badly painted by me particularly the faces, the large grey figures are meant to be trolls and are carved up fire rescue crew from the Airfix RAF ground emergency set. The top hatted gentleman is a white metal figure back dated by adding plasticard discs made using a leather punch, building them up on his head as a stack.

 

What has meant to be Disk World whimsy has turned out to be a little bit Steam Punk instead?

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/124676-railways-in-fiction-and-fantasy/page-5

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/124676-railways-in-fiction-and-fantasy/page-6&do=findComment&comment=3390580

Edited December 8, 2018 by relaxinghobby

[relaxinghobby]

 

 

 

 

 

 

A sight often seen on 21-century heritage railways, the purchase and transplanting of railside buildings and equipment. Footbridges and signal boxes are an example of larger items carried to a new location and hopefully a useful second life.  It must have happened in the olden days too, or as in this case, the always strapped for cash industrial backwater railway would get hold of a second-hand signal box and move it to a new site. 

 

Here the line superintendent watches as the latest second-hand bargain is carried as an oversizes load through Arkwrights Mills to  a new spot down the line, it must be a special working, probably on a quiet Sunday as any line side items like signal posts and telegraph wires will need to be temporarily removed and then replaced after the oversized load has passed.

 

The steam crane, just visible on the left is to help move stuff and lift the box onto its final home. Then the carpenters can make good any damage and the signal engineers get to work setting things up. The heavy iron internal lever frame locking mechanism must be traveling separately. Something rarely modeled as they are out of sight inside the box.

 

[Caley Jim]

Just one question.  How did they get it through that bridge/tunnel on the right!  

 

Jim

[relaxinghobby]

It's being backed in from the other direction, and there are brake vans on both ends, the crane can lift it over small bridges?

The carpenters have just assembled it from smaller pieces and built it up on the well-wagon? Help.

[Compound2632]

It's a Midland box - it should come as a self-assembly flat-back?

[CKPR]

On 4 February 2017 at 16:40, relaxinghobby said:

 

The industrial railway that runs the trains into Arkwright Mills often considers the great Victorian virtue of parsimony above practicality.

Fortunately it turned out to work very well this time. One of the new second hand loco's bought at a bargain price and proudly painted up

in the railways own colours can, after all fit into the bore of the old tunnel. United Coal and Coke's chief mechanic and dogs body suddenly

realised he had not checked if this big new loco could fit.

 

Phew. it just fits.

 

This happened in real life when the Furness Rly. sent their new 4-6-4T engines up the line to Whitehaven and discovered that they wouldn't go through the doors of Corkicle loco shed...

Edited March 3, 2019 by CKPR

[relaxinghobby]

Hi CKPR. Surely a new engine even if it was a very big one like a Baltic tank would be built to fit the loading gauge? The shed must have been able to clear earlier engines but even on smaller engines the highest point the chimney top must have been up to the maximum of the gauge? Perhaps it was the outer corners or gutters of the cab roof that struck? Is there a photo of the incident, the official photographer would be in attendance?

 

Hi Compound, the trouble with this signal box is that it was acquired second hand, very cheap by the mineral railway had to transport it themselves, so they decided to do it at minimal cost and trouble. That means transport it in as large a pieces as possible, maybe they hoped to depend on the hand of God to help at tricky bridges?

[CKPR]

Probably happened because the FR baltic tanks were ostensibly 'designed'by Rutherford who was actually the CCE with no actual experience of engine design and so contracted the work out. Moreover, despite having superbly well appointed engineering works, the FR always bought in its new engines from outside builders. Given these circumstances and the fact that the baltic tanks were a maximum size design, it was perhaps inevitable that there was some 'drift' on some of the dimensions. Anyway, it's a good story and  entirely in keeping with being the only railway to ever lose an engine down an old mineshaft where it remains to this day !

 

[Ruston]

On 27/03/2019 at 22:50, CKPR said:

Probably happened because the FR baltic tanks were ostensibly 'designed'by Rutherford who was actually the CCE with no actual experience of engine design and so contracted the work out. Moreover, despite having superbly well appointed engineering works, the FR always bought in its new engines from outside builders. Given these circumstances and the fact that the baltic tanks were a maximum size design, it was perhaps inevitable that there was some 'drift' on some of the dimensions. Anyway, it's a good story and  entirely in keeping with being the only railway to ever lose an engine down an old mineshaft where it remains to this day !

 

It's not the only engine to be lost down a mine shaft. I remember reading in an issue of Industrial Railway Record about a loco and wagons that went down a disused shaft at a colliery, Sadly the driver also went with it! I'll see if I can find the article.

 

Edit: Found it! It's in issue 141 and the colliery was at Low Hall, of the Wigan Coal Corpration. The loco was an 0-6-0 Peckett, built in 1908. I can't copy the article but this link shows the loco and gravestone of her driver, Ludovic Berry - http://www.healeyhero.co.uk/rescue/Collection/ian/page_12.htm

Edited March 29, 2019 by Ruston
To add link and information.

[eastglosmog]

On 27/03/2019 at 22:50, CKPR said:

Probably happened because the FR baltic tanks were ostensibly 'designed'by Rutherford who was actually the CCE with no actual experience of engine design and so contracted the work out. Moreover, despite having superbly well appointed engineering works, the FR always bought in its new engines from outside builders. Given these circumstances and the fact that the baltic tanks were a maximum size design, it was perhaps inevitable that there was some 'drift' on some of the dimensions. Anyway, it's a good story and  entirely in keeping with being the only railway to ever lose an engine down an old mineshaft where it remains to this day !

 

Pedant mode on:

FR115 didn't fall down a mine shaft - it fell into a subsidence fissure that opened up when the overlying ground collapsed into the iron ore workings.

Pedant mode off.

[CKPR]

From henceforth onwards, I shall always refer to FR No 115 as falling into a reet big 'ole in t'ground  !

[relaxinghobby]

 

His Lordship has a new locomotive, for the garden estate 2 ft 3 inch narrow gauge line.

If Her Ladyship can spend her allowance on cattle breading and ridiculous great bulls form far away he can spend the estate allowance on something practical. Although perhaps an 0-4-0 or six couple tank would have been more practical than a replica of the new mainline singles now speeding with the finest expresses west from Paddington he has always admired all that rich green paint and shiny brass work.

 

 

When the telegram arrived telling his Lordship of it's arrival up at the junction he bagged the inspections brake and organised a special trip goods up the line to collect it. Here it is being brought into Arkwright Mills yard by a mainline loco and will be collected by one of the light railway engines for the final trip to it's new home at the estate. Fortunately the new red brake van has arrived from the coach builders so the expense of hiring the GNR  engine can be set against the need to bring down the new brake to the yard.

 

 

How practical is a single wheeler for a small narrow gauge railway will we see. It is of course an old die-cast Lesney model made in roughly N gauge long before N gauge had been invented, I guess the small scale was waiting in the modellers collective subconscious, waiting for the development of small enough motors to make tiny moving trains possible.

Here in the photo it is riding on a re-vamped Hornby-Dublo metal flat wagon. With some plastic break gear and Bachmann miniature couplings added.

 

 

 

 

 

Now it's here it's looking decidedly second hand, perhaps a bit of touching up the paintwork before Her Ladyship get to see it for the first time.

 

I've just measured the loco it has 11.2 mm gauge wheels, or at least outside the flanges so a little bigger than N ?

 

The GNR saddle tank running the trip goods is a toned down Hornby 1980s very shiny J 52 in Great Northern livery. Some matt green on the wheels and two coats of Humbrol matt varnish over almost every where else and some half black, half silver on the coupling rods give a toned down look compared to the factory shiny chrome look.

 

The two brake vans are part of my enthusiasm for small breaks, the compartment one is based on a LSWR prototype and adapted from an old Mainline model and the red one is a proper scale model, scratch built body on a widened Lima H0 brake van chassis. The drawing can be found on the Plymouth and South Western Junction Railway website.

 

https://brucehunt.co.uk/plymouth devonport and south western junction railway/pdswjr goods stock.html

Waiting for transfers and varnish

 

 

Edited April 24, 2021 by relaxinghobby

[CKPR]

No dafter than the privately owned locomotive 'Gazelle' in her original form 2-2-2t [https://colonelstephenssociety.co.uk/locomotive notes topics/gazelle.html ].

[Tom Burnham]

Gazelle did get from King's Lynn to Chesterfield and back in a day, so it wasn't that impracticable.  I wonder if Mr Burkitt was able to negotiate running powers over the West Norfolk as well as the GER, the M&GN and the LD&ECR?

 

[AdamsRadial]

On 24/04/2021 at 08:08, relaxinghobby said:

How practical is a single wheeler for a small narrow gauge railway will we see.

There was a miniature railway with a Stirling Single, typically I can't find where I put the pamphlet, but there is indeed a precedent for you to draw upon. I'll rummage around and see if it surfaces.

 

ETA the pamphlet remains determinedly hidden but the name came back to me, look up The Jaywick Miniature Railway.

Edited April 25, 2021 by AdamsRadial

[relaxinghobby]

Thanks to AdamsRadial for the heads up on the Jaywick seaside railway with their live steam miniature Great Northern Single. First photo found on flicker the other is a thumb nail from a Youtube video.  The search engine Duck-duck-go found these quickly.

 

 

photo from -trainsandstuff- found on flicker photo website.

 

 

 

 

Video posted by T Hutchinson

 

Railway looks to be about 18 inch to 2 foot so n-gauge could represent it on an 00 layout, with n gauge stock?

Edited February 12, 2022 by relaxinghobby