Grim-up-North; Goathland, Queensbury & Bradford.

[Graham T]

Very nicely done!

[jcredfer]

Wow.....      Internet down for a while then???

 

Beautifully symmetrical, my Drill Sgt would have been proud of you.....   and that's saying something very much of a compliment!

 

 

Edited July 30, 2021 by jcredfer

[manna]

G'Day Folks

 

OK, I forgot the spiders and the Sharks, the spiders, mainly 'Redbacks' (similar to the Black Widow of the US) hide mainly under outdoor seating, including 'Loo seats' and Bar-B-Que's' want to see them run when I fire that up ! I've yet to see a Shark in my backyard !!

 

Lovely work on those brackets.

 

manna

 

[St Enodoc]

55 minutes ago, manna said:

I've yet to see a Shark in my backyard !!

Give it time...

[Sasquatch]

On 30/07/2021 at 16:44, manna said:

G'Day Folks

 

 I've yet to see a Shark in my backyard !!

 

Lovely work on those brackets.

 

manna

 

Bears are bad enough. (I've yet to actually see one). I know they come by every so often, we sleep with a window open and only last week something huge was outside. The dogs ran over barking and it ran across the creek, shortly after that my neighbor let off a couple of rounds to make sure it didn't get into their veg garden. The creek attracts all the wildlife which have been drinking up all the water in the dogs swim hole.

 

Regards Shaun.

[Sasquatch]

The brackets are coming along better than I anticipated.

.015" x .060" plastic strip has been employed to beef them up into steel T section.

 

Only 6 more to finish.

 

 

Some more trains on Queensbury too...

1966 and ex war dept. 2-8-0 shunts a solitary plate wagon across Brow Lane assisted by a LMR brake van.

 

 

    1950s after cessation of passenger services a J50 on light freight duties hauls coal towards Keighley on the Bradford to Keighley Queensbury lines route.  

 

Squatch.

[stevel]

6 hours ago, Sasquatch said:

Bears are bad enough. (I've yet to actually see one). I know they come by every so often, we sleep with a window open and only last week something huge was outside. The dogs ran over barking and it ran across the creek, shortly after that my neighbor let off a couple of rounds to make sure it didn't get into their veg garden. The creek attracts all the wildlife which have been drinking up all the water in the dogs swim hole.

 

Regards Shaun.

Bears! the first week at the current house, I stepped out the back door to be greeted by three bears walking past at about 10 paces, got back inside mighty sharpish.

[Sasquatch]

47 minutes ago, stevel said:

Bears! the first week at the current house, I stepped out the back door to be greeted by three bears walking past at about 10 paces, got back inside mighty sharpish.

Always let the dogs out first!

One of my wife's customers discovered a bear in her car. Made one hell of a mess apparently!

 

Regards Shaun

[Sasquatch]

After digging out a scrap of plywood my brackets have been taped down and painted with bauxite primer and flat camo brown. Hopefully I'll have time to fix them onto the viaduct tomorrow.

 

The sun sets right behind the mountain top on August 3rd and this evening made for a great couple of photos due to the smoke from the California fires. 

 

 

Squatch On holiday in Kentucky https://wkdq.com/kentucky-man-encounters-bigfoot-creature/

 

Edited August 4, 2021 by Sasquatch

[Bogie]

Geez . . . at first I thought the photo showed the fire bearing down on you and you were still modelling!

 

Couldn't work out it if was absolute devotion to your craft or plain madness.  Then looking at the brackets again I thought definitely the latter!

 

Great modelling and equally impressive photos!

[Sasquatch]

Very happy with the way these have turned out...

Almost disappears on the front cover of Great Northern Outpost Vol.3.  https://willowherbpublishing.com/ 

 

These might not get attached to the viaduct today or indeed this summer unless the smoke retreats. Having the air conditioner running will most certainly cover the layout with settled smoke! It's thick here today and extremely  unhealthy to be outside.

 

Edited August 4, 2021 by Sasquatch

[jcredfer]

The smoke sounds horrific and just being in the location must be a constant concern.  The press over here seem to be, cautiously, indicating a reduction in the pace of spread, I very much hope they have got something right, for a change.

 

Best wishes to all

 

[Sasquatch]

1 hour ago, jcredfer said:

The smoke sounds horrific and just being in the location must be a constant concern.  The press over here seem to be, cautiously, indicating a reduction in the pace of spread, I very much hope they have got something right, for a change.

 

Best wishes to all

 

The huge "Bootleg" complex is supposedly 84% contained. At 413,765 acres its the 3rd largest fire in Oregons history.

The Dixie fire in California is only 34% contained at 274,139 Acres.

40 miles east of that there's the "Sugar" fire. 105,075 almost under control.

So they are right to a certain extent...

 

...However on Sunday evening a lightning storm generated by the so called monsoon which caused all the flooding in Arizona and Utah moved north westwards north of here by about 20 miles. That storm has sparked  79 new fires in remote areas two of which are now  550+ acres and 400+ both 0% contained. Incident response team has been ordered. 

Further reading here 

 

There's also a lot of fires across central Oregon and in the North East.

As a general guide more square miles have been lost to fires this year already as opposed  to the total in 2020! 

 

Why Biden's Federal Government can't fund a program to convert all those old bombers sitting idly in the desert into fire retardant deployment aircraft  to fight a real threat to the American tax payer and help save millions of animals, billions of trees and the timber industry into the bargain is mind boggling!

 

Hope you're safe.

Shaun

[manna]

G'Day Folks

 

OK over here in Oz, it's winter, so wet we are developing webbed feet, and creeks have a little water in them,  so no chance of a Bush fire, our biggest problem is 'Dry' lightning strikes, thousands of strikes in overnight storms, that produce no rain.

 

manna 

[jcredfer]

Gracious me, that's an amazing number and distribution of the Lightening Storms and the resultant fires.  That is an amazing number of storms without an associated downpour, too.  I have to wonder, like yourself, why the Central government haven't deployed the National Guard aircraft and retired aircraft, in large numbers to distribute retardants.  If they are short of volunteer pilots {and I am sure they wouldn't be if they were just to ask} let me know, i would love the opportunity to help and there would be many others too. 

 

It isn't as if there have never been previous fires to deal with, but with no real, apparent, new organisation developed to keep the events within acceptable limits.  You are right, "mind boggling".  Perhaps the recent increased concentration on climate changes may, eventually, cause some positive action.

 

Thanks for your good wishes and likewise to all over there.

 

[Sasquatch]

Time for another train.

Echoes from the front cover of the book.

 

[Sasquatch]

Confined to barracks at present I have occupied the dining table to continue with the rolling stock modeling and thought that a post of what's on the agenda might be worth it if not just to keep the thread alive.

  

When not in use, stock is stored in these common cheapo stackable plastic drawer system. I find them sometimes at yard or estate  sales for $1 or less. Each drawer will hold up to 6 locos/coaches or up to 20 wagons. Needless to say all of one type of wagon or coach is corralled together in one drawer, for instance, tank wagons or teak suburbans and they're most handy at show time. 

 

 

 

About half of my freight stock has been kit built over the decades during which time skills and standards have improved and many bits have found their way into the lost parts tin. (Mostly buffers and brake levers). The task this week has been to start working through the drawers to fix, maintain and upgrade it all. I will admit that some of my earlier weathering jobs take a lot to be desired. 

 I'll not be going into detail on every item of stock of course and only will include those which might be of interest whether for the method involved or because the item is interesting or a personal favorite. 

 

First up are these two MDVs by Chivers Finelines. A beautiful kit to put together of an interesting prototype. The MDV was the last design of coal wagon built by BR. The design reverted back to 21tons, had top flap doors and were vacuum braked. Thus painted bauxite, so a rake of coal wagons can be broken up a bit with some of these at the head of the train. (I do believe they ran in rakes on the southern region actually) but it's only models right!

 

The up-grade has been to include the safety loops on the braking detail. This involved drilling 8 holes for the staples which I bent up 8 at a time before separation. 

 

Did the same under a Parkside Highfit.

 

 

 

Next I got into the LNER van drawer. I do like a LNER van build and my all time favorite wagon design is the dia.187 ply fruit van.

 

It represents the pinnacle of LNER van development and to my eye at least is a very handsome vehicle.  The model, no longer available from Parkside, was built many years ago. If I were to be constructing one today many details would be added. So  much detailing has to be worth doing. One of the buffers had to be replaced, another needed a new head. The vacuum cylinder has also been replaced with a better one, brake shoe pull bars and another set of staple safety loops complete the underframe mods. 

The body  gets door stops and door handles etc. from wire and staples. Lamp irons door guides and sole bar brackets etc. from plastic strip. 

I've even found the original tin of Humbrol HR110 LNER bauxite to touch all that up. Not bad after 30 years or more.

One last thing that needs addressing on some of these older Parkside builds is the rust build up on the axle points. 

A simple task of springing out the wheel sets and wiping off the powdery rust before dipping in oil and popping them back in!

The rust on the actual axle is 30 years of real weathering so will be left until these models get condemned.    Incidentally some of my models have been in service longer than their prototype counterparts.    

 

Happy modeling...

Squatch.          

[stevel]

how are things in your neck of the woods, with the fires, have you had any rain lately.

When i got my wagon stock out of long term storage, all the wheels had turn to rust and mice had chewed them up and made nests in them.

 

[Sasquatch]

15 minutes ago, stevel said:

how are things in your neck of the woods, with the fires, have you had any rain lately.

When i got my wagon stock out of long term storage, all the wheels had turn to rust and mice had chewed them up and made nests in them.

 

Hi Steve 

We're kind of surrounded by fires, so no matter which way the wind blows we get smoke! (That's why we're spending so much time in doors). The smoke in Medford was so thick you couldn't see across town today. We keep missing the rain too. I did turn a bit damp one morning but not enough to notice, as soon as the sun came out it disappeared in the blink of an eye!

 

Shame about the mice chewing up your stock, sounds like it was beyond repair? I found a black widow under my desk in the garage last week. Seems like even the lizard that lives in there in avoiding them.

 

Regards Shaun

 

Edited August 20, 2021 by Sasquatch

[stevel]

we are surrounded by fires, but got rain a few days ago, and the sky has been clear for a couple of days, stayed indoors as much as possible.

Hope you get some rain ASAP, are you getting layers of ash on everything like we had here.

[edward66]

No entries since August 20th, hope everything is alright in Oregon!

[Sasquatch]

1 hour ago, edward66 said:

No entries since August 20th, hope everything is alright in Oregon!

Hi Edward.

Yes! Thank you, we're just kind of plodding along; too many projects being worked on at once, with too many things getting in the way.   

 

For instance the garage remodel...

 

 

...nice new narrow windows going in and stubborn paint to get off.

 

I rebuilt the stud work and found some ply to build up the sheeting underneath.

(When the inside gets dry walled, it'll provide a better view for photography).

 

 

 

 

It's getting there, the strip details should be finished on the back today ready for the paint tomorrow.  

 

We're planning on getting the other end done next week which also needs a new door. I have a large powerful 15"plane set up in my wood shop to plane out all that pine and cedar that I seasoned, so brought some poplar to make two new doors (one for the garage and one for the laundry house).

 

That's why very little modeling is getting done. I'll update on that tomorrow.

 

Hope everything is well with you mate and all the Grim-up-Northers  

 

Regards Shaun

[St Enodoc]

4 hours ago, Sasquatch said:

Hope everything is well with you mate and all the Grim-up-Northers

Yes, thanks!

 

A. Grim-down-Souther

[Sasquatch]

On 09/09/2021 at 18:52, St Enodoc said:

Yes, thanks!

 

A. Grim-down-Souther

Look on the bright side, spring is just around the corner!

 

Good to know that you're doing alright down there.

 

Regards Shaun

 

[Sasquatch]

Having said yesterday that I'd provide a modeling update today, I must confirm that not a lot has been done. Nothing worth posting yet anyway. So how about some trains instead?

 

By the time I had chosen some different stock to run and swapped it over with the last lot; then had a fair shunting session with the new trains it had got dark. So apologies for the poorer quality of the raw images.

 

BR days sees J39 class with an up semi fast freight consisting of a fitted head of bananas followed by parcels, steel beams and tar.

 

Local passenger service behind class 3 tank has been held in the down platform to allow the freight to pass...

 

...good job by the looks of all the holiday makers luggage that requires loading.

 

Turning the clock back then to LNER days we find the Friday down pick up goods being double headed by two J class tank engines. The train will be split at Goathland (The summit) where one engine will shunt the terminal stock and return to York with any empties.

 

Nice portrait of 2313 standing at the down starter.

 

    Not a substantial train at all.

 

Lastly I thought I'd include this image because it includes an interesting model van, the LMS insulated one. Quite simply  a Ratio banana van body on a Cambian 9ft RCH underframe.

Squatch. Rooting around for inspiration to get the old mojo flowing.

  

Edited September 11, 2021 by Sasquatch