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Charlie Strong Metals (and Watery Lane Sidings)


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On 05/10/2019 at 16:49, BritishGypsum4 said:

I'm always intrigued in how people come up with ideas for small compact layouts so eagerly watching developments on here. 

 

Me too, as I see totally unable to come up with anything myself but admire work of others!

 

Ralf

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On 15/12/2019 at 18:19, DanielB said:

How about a wagon works? Would give you plenty of excuses for some rather out-there rolling stock. :)

It's something that I've thought about doing for a while but I can't come up with a track plan that pleases me. A scrap yard is another one that I'd really like to do but the problem with that is wagons would come in empty and ought to leave loaded. How do you fill a wagon with scrap that looks realistic, without the Great Hand From The Sky? Then again I don't suppose placing wagon loads in is any different from using 3-link couplings...

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8 minutes ago, Ruston said:

It's something that I've thought about doing for a while but I can't come up with a track plan that pleases me. A scrap yard is another one that I'd really like to do but the problem with that is wagons would come in empty and ought to leave loaded. How do you fill a wagon with scrap that looks realistic, without the Great Hand From The Sky? Then again I don't suppose placing wagon loads in is any different from using 3-link couplings...

Electromagnets on the crane. just like the real thing..

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37 minutes ago, Ruston said:

It's something that I've thought about doing for a while but I can't come up with a track plan that pleases me. A scrap yard is another one that I'd really like to do but the problem with that is wagons would come in empty and ought to leave loaded. How do you fill a wagon with scrap that looks realistic, without the Great Hand From The Sky? Then again I don't suppose placing wagon loads in is any different from using 3-link couplings...

Empty wagon goes behind building or off to one side.  Out of sight it is replaced by a full one or the load is put in place.  Full wagon reappears.

 

As someone who procrastinated for years, with the benefit of hindsight, I wish I'd just built something on a small scale.  So what if it gets scrapped or sold on later?  Building it is part of the pleasure isn't it?  It is likely that rolling stock and buildings could be reused anyway and possibly the track and baseboard too.

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14 minutes ago, TheQ said:

Electromagnets on the crane. just like the real thing..

But not only would that mean building a working crane (something that I don't think I could do), I would also have to make scrap out of ferrous materials and I don't think it's wise to have scraps of steel and iron spilling onto the tracks, or possibly getting into locomotive mechanisms.

 

3 minutes ago, Stubby47 said:

How about a town gas works?

Possibly.

 

My problem is that I think about it too much. For instance a gas works - I'll think how large the structures on a gas works are and decide that if I compressed them to fit a 4ft, plank then the works would be too small to justify its own locomotive and would have had a horse instead, or would have closed down and been replaced by a larger works by the time diesel locomotives came into use.

 

I've just bought one of the open-cab Rustons, in Army livery, and I'm thinking of some small MOD siding in the 1960s. Vanwides, containing who knows what military ordnance, concrete post fences, Nissen huts, a Land Rover or two etc... Or repainting it to be worn and weathered and have it on a scrapyard in the 1980s. I have ideas of tracks up to the rail tops in mud, bits of spilled scrap all over the place, ex-BR stock piled up, wiggly tin buildings etc. Basically something inspired by my visits, in the 1980s, to C.F. Booth in Rotherham.

 

AB478BoothsJuly88.jpg.3a8f034448ea25c52e2fd6d7dbd6d699.jpg

 

1039029247_RR10288@Booths_Feb88.jpg.67863d7cd71c35426111fb14935945e0.jpg

 

RH466630_Feb88.jpg.61897e16e368216231e939e827c29260.jpg

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No name has now got a name. I'm going to name it Charlie Strong Metals. The original track plan and layout was going to be set in Small Heath, Birmingham and despite not having given it a name it was going to be Shelby (whatever), so it seems suitable to keep it in the family.

 

Me, obsessed with Peaky Blinders? Whatever gave you that idea? \/

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Looks a good plan Dave, I like the track layout and although not an issue with short wheelbase locks and wagons you have avo6reverse curves and any potential buffer locking. Will look forward to seeing it develop 

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Oh dear. I appear to have gone all "modern image". If you can call the 1980s modern? However, the end of 1980s is as modern as my modelling will ever get, anyway.

 

modernimage-1.jpg.57bbced43b8f176afd39c1453750b574.jpg

I've downloaded some images of this type of POA wagon from Paul Bartlett's site and will weather them as if they've been in service for maybe 2-3 years. I want to see the blue and yellow livery, as I remember them, before they became rusty wrecks.

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Things have changed from the original plan. In fact there's nothing left of it. The layout is no longer to be self-contained, on one board and will instead have a fiddle yard. I want it to be portable but otherwise permenently set up under my book shelves. It will take up the same place as White Peak did originally, but this time I will cut a hole in the centre support of the shelves, so the fiddle yard can be connected to it in-situ.

 

The track plan has changed, now that it is to be a scrap yard.

1841536135_CharliesYard_PLAN.jpg.c745a73902c387a079f5cbadcf6e95bc.jpg

The premise is that if we had been looking down in, say, 1870, we would be looking at a double track main line, as we would have in the first two photos that I showed of C.F. Booth's in Rotherham. Booths' yard and the tracks that go under the former Midland line at the entry to the yard are on the exact route of the tracks of the Sheffield & Rotherham line to their termimus station in Rotherham, which was on what is now the site of the Royal Mail depot, on Westgate. So there is a realistic background to this type of set-up.

 

On the far right is an embankment that will carry either a railway, or road. Across the top is a retaining wall and the backs of industrial premises, whilst on the left is a large wiggly tin shed belonging to the scrap yard. Perhaps road vehicles are stored in here and non-ferrous metals sorted.

 

The lorry weighbridge is the original bridge and cabin from when the site was a railway goods yard and as this is the road access the rail track will be embedded in a mixture of original stone setts, concrete and general muck and mud. A fuel pump and storage tank are provided for filling both road vehicles and yard shunting locomotives.

 

Two gantry cranes span scrap piles and a mobile crane will be added. This would pick up and move parts of vehicles and machinery that are broken up in the  area to the left of the RH ganrty and put them on the pile. The topmost rail line is where BR stock for breaking would be stored and the LH gantry where they are broken up.

 

Because there is no run-round, two locomotives are required to shunt the yard. I want to try and make large piles of scrap and disused machinery and vehicles - give the impression that this yard is busy enough to need a railway connection and its own shunters. Too many layouts have a scrap yard siding tacked on and when you look at the scrap pile it would barely fill a single wagon!

Edited by Ruston
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I think I may have posted these before but here are the only surviving photos of the scrap yard layout that I built in 1988.

 

00srcrapyard1.jpg.2038960d71d07c6d1da585205199bd4b.jpg

 

00srcrapyard2.jpg.acf94bac241c760ad78dbbdcc56a5d7a.jpg

The only thing that I have left is the Atkinson recovery truck that is now minus bodywork and parked on White Peak.

Edited by Ruston
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