The Calder Vale Mineral Railway

[Ruston]

I just won this on an internet auction. Listed as "rare" and not in a railway book section, so I guess that's why I was the only bidder.

Edited November 4, 2022 by Ruston

[Ruston]

I went to the York Exhibition, today. There were some very nice layouts on show, some that were so good that they almost made me want to tear mine down and burn it.

 

But I haven't... yet.

 

Amongst various bits and pieces I bought a little cast whitemetal sundial on a pedestal, from Langleys, to fit in the garden of the Railway Manager's house. So, before I go and plant it in his garden, does anyone know how such a thing should be oriented? I don't want to just place it any old ways. I know that the dial is tiny and no one will really notice but I'll know that it's right (or wrong).

[micknich2003]

Dave, look it up on Tinternet, you are bound to find what and more you need to know, I think it's the "Gonoma" that needs to be correctly orientated.

 

Edit, there is a YouTube film on setting up a Sundial, also plenty on Tinternet, I have just looked.

Edited April 20, 2019 by micknich2003
Further infomation.

[jdb82]

5 hours ago, Ruston said:

I went to the York Exhibition, today. There were some very nice layouts on show, some that were so good that they almost made me want to tear mine down and burn it.

 

But I haven't... yet.

 

Amongst various bits and pieces I bought a little cast whitemetal sundial on a pedestal, from Langleys, to fit in the garden of the Railway Manager's house. So, before I go and plant it in his garden, does anyone know how such a thing should be oriented? I don't want to just place it any old ways. I know that the dial is tiny and no one will really notice but I'll know that it's right (or wrong).

 

Whilst I'm no expert, I did set one up in my garden when I lived in the UK. The 'pointy bit' needs to be pointing towards true north (rather than magnetic north). If you want to get really technical about it, the angle of the pointy bit is different depending where in the world the sundial is made/intended to be used. The angle needed for a sundial in southern Europe would be different to that needed in the Calder Vale. I think the angle needs to be the same as your latitude (I think around 54oN for you?). May be a bit overboard for a layout though! I'm sure your representation of true north with be perfect :-)

 

We tried making one with the kids I work with here in Brunei, however being almost on the equator meant the sun was almost directly overhead for most of the day, and so barely cast any shadow at all!

[Ruston]

Thanks. North will do then. It will be a while until I get to landscaping the manager's garden - I have a mill and a wagon repair shop to build before that.

[Ruston]

Today I set to building the railway's carriage and wagon repair shop.

 

Artists picture mounting card, reinforced at the corners with hardwood and window frames from York Modelmaking.

 

Clad with plywood that I scribed the planks into before fitting. Small platform area added.

 

The wood was given a wash of diluted Tamiya black acrylic and allowed to dry before overpainting with green acrylic. This was then rubbed with sandpaper to give a weathered effect. A Neilson smokebox, from an ancient Nu Cast kit, has been added to be the works boiler, for driving woodworking machinery, poking out into the open. The chimney is a piece of plastruct tube that will be stayed using nylon thread once the building has its roof.

 

 

Edited November 4, 2022 by Ruston

[Ruston]

Carriage & Wagon repair shop ready for planting on the layout.

 

Edited November 4, 2022 by Ruston

[Gordon A]

Hi Ruston,

The employees would not like your carriage / wagon repair shop because there is only access along one side of the vehicle within.

Having adapted the goods shed at Bitton as our covered restoration shop I can vouch that having one wall very close to the track on one side is a right pia.

A very nice building but impractical for the given purpose.

 

Gordon A

 

Edited April 24, 2019 by Gordon A

[Ruston]

Just now, Gordon A said:

Hi Ruston,

The employees would not like your carriage / wagon repair shop because there is only access along one side of the vehicle.

Having adapted the goods shed at Bitton as our covered restoration shop I can vouch that having one wall very close to the track on one side is a right pia.

A very nice building but impractical for the given purpose.

 

Gordon A

 

"The employees'll get what they're given, and if they don't like it there's plenty o' room in t' workhouse for 'em!", as CVMR General Manager Ozias Harding was wont to say.

[hartleymartin]

You could always put an outdoor work area in front with a gantry crane.

[Ruston]

On 27/04/2019 at 14:49, hartleymartin said:

You could always put an outdoor work area in front with a gantry crane.

I have some left over Walthers gantry crane parts from the one I built for River Don Works, and I thought about having it outside the wagon repair shop but there isn't room for one.  It's probably too extravagant anyway, so for taking out wheelsets there will be a set of shear legs outside the doors.

 

Here the shop is in place but not yet fixed, or the gaps filled with ballast, weeds and grass.

 

As you may have noticed from the above photo, I have roughly painted in some dark green to the backscene. This is a background for the trees that are yet to be made and planted on the embankment, just in front of the backscene. Although what you have seen of the backscene so far may have looked rather white this is down to flash photography but in reality there was too much blue, which made the sky look more like somewhere around the Mediterranean than the West Riding. I have now greyed a lot of the blue out and have used the airbrush to add some air pollution.

 

Whilst I had the airbrush out I went over the track and added dirty grey over the unevenly-coloured washes that I put on the sand that is used as ballast. The photo also shows the now finished NER coaches and the repainted (second repaint now) and rebuilt Thomas The Tank Engine Stroudley-esque brake. This has been finished as varnished wood and has had spare torpedo ventilators and oil lamps from the NER coaches added to the roof in place of the home-made lamps (and no ventilators). The roofs have also been quite heavily weathered, which goes against many pre-grouping era modellers, who seem to think that soot never fell from locomotive chimneys and that cleaners were on hand to clean coach roofs at every stop. Even if that were so, Mr. Ozias Harding wouldn't stand for it. "Why should I pay good money for men t' clean t' coach roofs? Passengers don't sit on t' bloody roof!"

 

The old sleeper retaining wall (made from balsa strips) has reinforcing added in the shape of lengths of bullhead rail. I really ought to add some safe access to that signal for the lamp man.

Edited November 4, 2022 by Ruston

[Ruston]

I haven't done anything to this since the previous post but I have been having some practice operating sessions. One thing that these have revealed is that Dingham couplings are unreliable on the many sharp changes of gradient. These couplings worked brilliantly on my previous layout but everything was flat and another problem is that there is no standard coupling height on the variety of stock, where everything on the other layout was standardised BR period stock, represented by RTR models.

 

So, the Dinghams are going to be replaced by 3-links. I'll need to have a whole weekend to replace the couplings on some 40 wagons and 12 locomotives - that should be fun...

[Barclay]

But 3-links look so great, you'll never look back. Probably.

[Ruston]

31 minutes ago, Barclay said:

But 3-links look so great, you'll never look back. Probably.

I had them on a OO layout 30 years ago and still have them on my O gauge. It was just when I came back to OO that I wanted a totally hands-free system for the shunting layouts that I built. This one doesn't really have that much shunting, or at least not much on-scene, and as it's not going to be exhibited the hands-free facility isn't really needed.

 

I've found that the best way to use 3-links is to have a steel link on the end of the chain and to have it only on one end of each wagon, with all wagons facing the same way. That way the magnet on a stick doesn't try to pick up two links at once on the wagons that you're trying to couple.

[Sandhole]

On 08/05/2019 at 19:12, Ruston said:

One of the mystery locomotives on the Calder Vale was Hathor, which, says Tatlock, is believed to have started out as a tender locomotive, possibly built by E.B. Wilson. Other sources say that it was built by Neilson Reid for one of the Scottish main line companies but the order was cancelled and the locomotive found its way to the CVMR. Either way she was rebuilt (possibly for the second time) by Kitson & Co. of Leeds and in the state shown was used on passenger services on the CVMR from 1891 until the end of The Great War, when, worn out, it was cut up on site at Elland.

 

The photos are probably just after the Kitson rebuild as the name plates have yet to be fitted. The livery is described by Tatlock as being a dark plum colour with red lining, red wheel spokes and cranks. She was fitted with vacuum and Westinghouse air brakes and was banned from the high level lines due to being too heavy for the wooden trestle bridge.

 

 

 

I've been away from this site for a while, so you have probably answered this... Is that excellent beast based on what I think it is based on? Outside cranks and an 0-4-2??? Really Cool!!!!!

                                                                 Chris.

[Barclay]

Understandable not wanting them on an exhibition layout. It has been scientifically proved that it is impossible to couple or uncouple a 3 - link when someone else is watching you do it....

[Ruston]

Some junk has been added to the shed area.

 

Black Hawthorn on a workmans' train.

 

The first loco to be converted to 3-links is the Neilson, which has also been in works to cure running problems. It now runs much better after taking out washers from between the frame and rear wheels.

 

Edited May 22, 2019 by Ruston

[micknich2003]

Dave, how did you get on with the Sundial?

[Ruston]

1 minute ago, micknich2003 said:

Dave, how did you get on with the Sundial?

CVMR General Manager Mr. Ozias Harding (for it is his garden in which it will reside) thinks it a complete waste of money. Mrs. Harding, however, wants a sundial and although Ozias is a tight-fisted so-and-so, he knows when not to argue with his other half and has sent a letter to the West Riding's  finest  cheapest landscape gardener asking for a quote for designing a garden and the erection of the sundial within it.

 

Basically, I haven't done anything with it as yet. I need to do the rest of the garden first.

[5050]

By 'eck lad, tha's got better things ter do than beggar abaht in't garden.  Get thissen inter workshop and gerron wi' them cooplins!

[Ruston]

Trouble at t'mill.

t

I've started work on the last major structure, a small textile mill or dye works (as in dying wool, not manufacturing dyes) that serves to act as a view-blocker for the high level line disappearing into the fiddle yard. The part that still shows as white card will have the stairwell sticking out to the side. That is an enclosed stairwell within the walls and not a fire escape. I'd thought about having a fire escape on the side facing the tracks but I don't think such a thing would have been installed on a building like this when it was built and there was probably no health and safety legislation about having to fit one in the late Victorian/Edwardian period.

Edited November 4, 2022 by Ruston

[Ruston]

I went in to the shed, after tea, and forgot what it was I'd gone in for. Somehow I pulled a kit out of the stash whilst I was in there and have just come out with this.

 

Edited November 4, 2022 by Ruston

[Regularity]

Cute.

[Barclay]

11 hours ago, Ruston said:

I went in to the shed, after tea, and forgot what it was I'd gone in for. Somehow I pulled a kit out of the stash whilst I was in there and have just come out with this.

 

Interesting - what is it?

Edit - I've seen the name of the photo in the link and that it's a Neilson. Still want to know more though.

Edited June 5, 2019 by Barclay

[Ruston]

1 hour ago, Barclay said:

Interesting - what is it?

Edit - I've seen the name of the photo in the link and that it's a Neilson. Still want to know more though.

 

It's the High Level 12-inch Mineral Engine kit.