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Shed extension unwrapped. It is unweathered as yet but won't receive much weathering as it is supposed to be a fairly recent addition in the intended time period.

I need to add some bits and pieces - bits of dismantled loco and other junk. Empty oil drums is a favourite for this sort of scene but would they have been around as far back as 1900, or would it be wooden barrels for oil, grease and other such things?

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Didn't you know that Xerxes Montmorency Gittins, a distant relative of Exuperias Aloysius Hipployte Gittins the main contractor, invented the sheet iron drum in 1900 which was introduced to the railway soon after!  

 

I bet Wiki doesn't know that!..............:rolleyes:

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14 hours ago, Ruston said:

I believe that he upset Zacharias Aldwyth Cooper, the owner of England's largest wooden barrel manufactory, with his invention and was found soon after having accidentally brutally cut off his own head whilst shaving. His death meant that the steel drum did not come into use until some American stole Gittins' idea a few years later.

 

Anyway...

 

I've got the canal looking more like a canal than in the earlier pictures.

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Nothing fancy here, just Tamiya acrylics. Khaki paint, a coat of yellow gloss varnish and built up layers of cleargloss varnish to give a slight ripple effect.

 

I know I keep on saying this about your work, Dave, but that split level canal shot is perfection!!! 

There is nothing wrong about it at all. You should be chuffed to bits with it.

DCC Sound be beggared! I can hear the gentle hiss of the Peckett waiting for the next move, with the sound of the Neilson creaking along with the stone train!

Speaking as somebody with intimate knowledge of 'The Cut' round Worsley and out over the edge of The Moss, you have got that canal surface perfect!!!!

I can feel the breeze blowing over the water and the birds singing!!

That simple backscene just sets the whole picture off!!

I've rambled on too much, so, to quote Mark Williams,

" I'll get my coat!!"

                            Chris.

 

 

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In 1900 the railway purchased two coaches from the North Eastern Railway and refurbished them in its own workshops.

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They are both Pocket Money Kits, by Jim McGeown, that I bought, unbuilt, from another RMwebber, last year.

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I have just returned from Scalefour North with various modelling bits and pieces; couplings, wagon transfers and other things. Notably a second hand but unbuilt GNoSR coach kit, by Prickley Pear, which matches the one I am currently building. More importantly I have the last piece of the track plan jigsaw.

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I have decided that a traverser is too much faff and one is enough, so for the other end of the railway I have gone for a turnplate, which won't turn all the way round - a sector plate? Anyway, it's custom-made by Tim Horn and is nothing more than a sheet of the same good quality 9mm ply that the baseboards are made from, laser-cut and drilled for the pivot. At £15 I couldn't have made it any cheaper myself and certainly couldn't have cut it as accurately!

 

Once it's fitted and the tracks laid upon it, all that remains is to install a shelf at the rear for the high level and the track plan is complete.

 

I also bought a load of Gibson split spoke wagon wheels for upcoming rolling stock projects.

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10 hours ago, Ruston said:

I have just returned from Scalefour North with various modelling bits and pieces; couplings, wagon transfers and other things. Notably a second hand but unbuilt GNoSR coach kit, by Prickley Pear, which matches the one I am currently building. More importantly I have the last piece of the track plan jigsaw.

DSCF3411.JPG.06a9f5536d426fa09b53784d2247aa55.JPG

I have decided that a traverser is too much faff and one is enough, so for the other end of the railway I have gone for a turnplate, which won't turn all the way round - a sector plate? Anyway, it's custom-made by Tim Horn and is nothing more than a sheet of the same good quality 9mm ply that the baseboards are made from, laser-cut and drilled for the pivot. At £15 I couldn't have made it any cheaper myself and certainly couldn't have cut it as accurately!

 

Once it's fitted and the tracks laid upon it, all that remains is to install a shelf at the rear for the high level and the track plan is complete.

 

I also bought a load of Gibson split spoke wagon wheels for upcoming rolling stock projects.

 

Ruston, that looks like a wonderfully neat solution. Tim Horn's products are clearly first class and also a bargain at that kind of price! If you don't mind me asking, how long is the sector plate? 

 

Cheers,

David

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On 07/04/2019 at 02:34, south_tyne said:

 

Ruston, that looks like a wonderfully neat solution. Tim Horn's products are clearly first class and also a bargain at that kind of price! If you don't mind me asking, how long is the sector plate? 

 

Cheers,

David

It is 54cm long, which is the same as the traverser at the other end.

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Bleedin’ excellent looking, Dave. Glad you liked them and good shout on the wheels. Like you I joined mine as a 3-wagon rake with wire hooks and loops.

The weathering and lettering looks spot-on.

I’ve read somewhere that wagon works staff would take chauldrons with knackered wood and just set fire to them, before retrieving the ironwork from the smouldering remains to make a new one!

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1 minute ago, Corbs said:

Bleedin’ excellent looking, Dave. Glad you liked them and good shout on the wheels. Like you I joined mine as a 3-wagon rake with wire hooks and loops.

The weathering and lettering looks spot-on.

I’ve read somewhere that wagon works staff would take chauldrons with knackered wood and just set fire to them, before retrieving the ironwork from the smouldering remains to make a new one!

That would save a lot of work, I guess. The far left hand corner of the layout is going to feature part of the company's C&W shop and that could make an interesting little cameo.

 

One other thing that I did, which the kit and its instructions don't mention or feature, is to fit flat brake levers. The kit just shows to use 0.7mm wire. I was going to make a pattern to mill some out of sheet but couldn't be bothered and simply heated up the wire and battered it flat instead.

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I'd noticed they were flatter, looks way better than the rod I've used. Did you bend them to shape before flattening them or after?

The Beamish Transport Online blog has quite a bit about Chaldrons but does take some sifting through the articles:

http://beamishtransportonline.co.uk/2009/12/chaldron-waggon-restoration-project-announced/

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1 hour ago, Corbs said:

I'd noticed they were flatter, looks way better than the rod I've used. Did you bend them to shape before flattening them or after?

The Beamish Transport Online blog has quite a bit about Chaldrons but does take some sifting through the articles:

http://beamishtransportonline.co.uk/2009/12/chaldron-waggon-restoration-project-announced/

I bent them to fit before heating and hammering them flat. I notice the one in the link is fitted with a ratchet to keep the brakes on, and a more complex mechanism (cast iron brake blocks too?) but most didn't have this, so I just used wire. I have the Chilton Ironworks book The Chaldrons and most in there seem to have just a plain bar, with no ratchet or any other means of keeping the brake on. How the brakes were pinned I just can't work out.

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Serious rollin stock (No G) projects (If you listen to Radio 2 on a Friday afternoon, you'll understand).

 

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Great North of Scotland coach. Prickley Pear kit.

 

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NER Saloon, as seen previously before painting.

 

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Break van. This is to be a CVMR van and is built from a Slaters Midland van, with the addition of beams for buffering to chaldrons and a second verandah (all made from plastikard). I have also filed off the moulded handrails and will add brass wire handrails in their place.

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6 minutes ago, mike morley said:

I'm obviously missing something here, specifically anything that might be described as sleepers.  What's keeping those rails in position and in gauge?

Superglue.

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3 hours ago, mike morley said:

Is that a method you've tried before or an experiment?  As the price of copperclad is getting scarily high it has considerable appeal.

It's the first time that I have used it but I was talking to Geoff Tiffany at last year's Scalefour North and he told me about how he had superglued rail to wooden sleepers and how it fared better over time than soldered joints on copper clad on a layout that he built years ago and had been stored in a garage. The only reason that I have used it here is a miscalculation that would have put the level of rail on sleepers above that of the rail on the scenic section but fixing the rail directly onto the board puts it at a height to match the track on the scenic section.

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On 28/03/2019 at 18:43, Ruston said:

 

I need to add some bits and pieces - bits of dismantled loco and other junk. Empty oil drums is a favourite for this sort of scene but would they have been around as far back as 1900, or would it be wooden barrels for oil, grease and other such things?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Superb work, which I continue to enjoy seeing.

 

Apropos oil drums, we had this discussion on Castle Aching a while back, and, as discussions on CA generally go, we went into it in sufficient depth to reach what we felt was a sound conclusion that there would not be metal oil drums this side of the Great war. The details elude me, but whereas you might be able to find examples of oil drums earlier, at least in the States, the norm was wooden barrels at this period.

 

Allied discussions were Scottish shale oil - use of shale oil for compressed gas for Pintsch coach lighting - and the Norfolk shale oil industry (true, if abortive and possibly fraudulent). 

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