Charlie Strong Metals (and Watery Lane Sidings)

[Ruston]

Finish painting, detailing and weathering required.

 

[Ruston]

There is now a wooden sleeper floor and the structure has been painted. It has been made to look as if the thing has been built from materials salvaged from the scrapyard.

 

Although you can't see it well, because the shot is overexposed, the concrete yard has been weathered to darken it and to have tyre marks all over it. Another thing that you can't see, unless I move the cars, are the oil stains where they park every day. The Maxi and the Allegro now have Birmingham plates. The HA van has Leeds plates, which are in fact the reg. number of the HA van that my grandad owned.

[Barry O]

Looking really good.  The shed looks much better than the first one.. more decrepit but functional!

 

Should the HA van have a non matching wing? Ie a replacement for the one that rusted away in another colour?

 

Baz

[Ruston]

21 minutes ago, Barry O said:

Looking really good.  The shed looks much better than the first one.. more decrepit but functional!

 

Should the HA van have a non matching wing? Ie a replacement for the one that rusted away in another colour?

 

Baz

No, but it should be dark blue. I just haven't got around to repainting it yet.

[steve45]

2 hours ago, Ruston said:

No, but it should be dark blue. I just haven't got around to repainting it yet.

Don't forget the red oxide first, it might last a couple of months longer..................

[Ruston]

[Ruston]

Workbench and a store inside. 88DS outside.

 

[5050]

On 04/01/2021 at 21:07, steve45 said:

Don't forget the red oxide first, it might last a couple of months longer..................

Back in 1970/71 a mate of mine worked at Vauxhall on the Wirral where they made Vivas.  He was always on nights (for the extra money) and the tales he could tell about what went on were horrendous.  Put me off having a Vauxhall for years.

[Regularity]

2 hours ago, 5050 said:

Put me off having a Vauxhall for years.

Owning one was enough for most people.

[simonmcp]

I knew a Renault salesman who said where he worked they wouldn't take a Renault, even one they sold new, in for part exchange for a new one. My late dad once bought a Vauxhall Viva on a Friday, we had it for the weekend and on Monday it went to the scrapyard.

[steve45]

6 hours ago, 5050 said:

Back in 1970/71 a mate of mine worked at Vauxhall on the Wirral where they made Vivas.  He was always on nights (for the extra money) and the tales he could tell about what went on were horrendous.  Put me off having a Vauxhall for years.

I still wouldn't buy one now!

[37114]

1 hour ago, simonmcp said:

I knew a Renault salesman who said where he worked they wouldn't take a Renault, even one they sold new, in for part exchange for a new one. 

Having owned a Renault 21 I think that was a sensible approach 

 What I can't understand is anyone owning a Renault deciding to then repeat the mistake and purchase another one....

[simonmcp]

Oh I don't know, my late mother (no my parents didn't die because of the cars) was once lent a Renault Fuego, in the late 70's, for a whole weekend 'test drive'. That thing was like a Tardis - it seemed twice the size inside than out.

[Northmoor]

I've never owned a Renault; my parents had two Scenics - which they've liked - and once had an R21 as a hack for a couple of years with little trouble.

 

I've never owned a Vauxhall either but had plenty of mixed experiences of them as hire cars:

• The late 90s Omega was a very nice comfortable mile-eater.
• Vectras I was never sure about.  The 1.8 or 2.0 were OK-ish but the 2.2 I once had seemed to make everything worse.  It was a rocketship in a straight line but felt very nervous through quick corners.  This was the era when they always looked like the rear was jacked up 2" too high.
• Early 2000s Corsas I had good and bad (dreadful actually) experience of.  The diesel one was great, it was really torque-y and would roll up hills on the A303 in 6th, then on one occasion I got a 1.2 for an M4 journey.  It is by far the worst car I have ever driven, it just felt so sluggish as to be dangerous for a motorway.  It could not actually pull away in 5th gear at any speed, the slightest incline caused it to slow down from 70mph.  No other car I've driven cannot maintain 70mph in 5th.  Exiting one 50mph contraflow in 5th, I timed it as taking 29s to get to 70.  My own 1.4 306, in the same situation, managed it in about 12s.  I wondered whether that Corsa was actually in very poor tune, but a few years later had another and it was very much the same.

[37114]

32 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

I've never owned a Renault; my parents had two Scenics - which they've liked - and once had an R21 as a hack for a couple of years with little trouble

You were lucky. In my time owning the Renault 21 I became well acquainted with the local garages (I tried a couple to work out whether it was the car or garage that was the problem) and the local RAC guy as well as carrying a sizeable tool kit and get you home bits and bobs. To be fair I got rid of it with 200k on the clock but since then have stuck to Fords and have found them to be perfect for my needs. My first company Mondeo is still on the road with over 300k miles on the clock which was amazing as it experienced a reasonably hard life when I had it.

[sb67]

Love the shed Dave, it fit's in with the scene really well and looks just like it's been built using reclaimed materials, great stuff! 

[Barry O]

Date, what is next for the layout? It looks great.. are you having "operating" sessions?

Baz

[Ruston]

3 hours ago, Barry O said:

Date, what is next for the layout? It looks great.. are you having "operating" sessions?

Baz

A scrap train is run almost every day. Having a layout in the house makes operating much nicer and easier than in a freezing garage or shed.

 

And all this talk about Renaults, Fords and Vauxhalls - can we give it a rest, please? I'm not used to mixing with plebs who drive that sort of thing cos I've got a Jaaag.

 

In other news, I came home to find the postie had been and on the doormat was an envelope from SnM Stuff. Ooh, kinky!, I thought, and then opened it to find weathering powders that I ordered from ebay.

[5050]

2 hours ago, Ruston said:

 I'm not used to mixing with plebs who drive that sort of thing cos I've got a Jaaag.

But what about the slightly foxed white van with the broken seats that's parked outside your country seat?

[Ruston]

5 hours ago, 5050 said:

But what about the slightly foxed white van with the broken seats that's parked outside your country seat?

That is for taking the hound out and for runs to the drive-thru chippy, in Outwood. When one owns a car of quality, one doesn't want the leather seats covering in dog hair, or it ponging of fish and chips. It is also for travelling to model railway exhibitions where parking requires bumping up kerbs and leaving the motor in less salubrious areas than one is used to.

 

Back to the trains.

 

I have three Hornby 48DS Rustons and three of the pointless runner wagons that came with them. I wouldn't have minded if the things had a decent underframe and proper BR lettering but they have neither. The only part worth salvaging is the body and so that's what I am doing. This is the first one and has had a Red Panda underframe fitted, plus 13-inch head OLEO buffers from Lanarkshire Model Supplies. These wagons will be used on the Metal Box traffic as they were used on this in reality, up until the mid 1970s. I have some transfers on order from Fox that will do the Conflat wagons and the Bachmann containers that come as a set of three but two of which are in BR crimson and without the flying crate. I will be using BD type containers

 

[Ruston]

Tu tut. No one's mentioned the obvious errors in the model, which I have only just realised one and learned of another myself.

 

Not enough chain rings on the side and the curb rail doesn't have the lower section between the innermost rings. Hornby really were pushing the boat out when the foisted this one upon we poor unsuspecting Ruston buyers - not. Out with the file and some etched rings ordered from RT Models. What started as a means of using up old tat has quickly turned into a far more time-consuming and expensive project than intended.

[37079]

The conflat body is actually a reasonably accurate representation of late GWR/early BR production. Can be improved with a Morton 4 shoe under frame. The Bachmann RTR version and the Parkside kit both represent the later BR production which has the extra rings and the lowered curb rail.

 

I love this layout by the way: it is genuinely inspirational.

 

Mike

[AlfaZagato]

I had no idea the idler flat with the Ruston was so terribly incorrect.

[Ruston]

Charlie Strong was also a machinery and locomotive dealer. This Peckett came from a cement works in Kent and was resold to White Peak Limestone & Tarmacadam Ltd. near Matlock.

[Ruston]

Another Peckett that worked at Charlie Strong's yard was this one that came from Smallheath gasworks.

 

I've just finished fitting it with sound and have had another serious operating session play with the trainset. This one weighs 25g more than a standard out of the box Hornby Peckett and it really shows in its tractive effort on the curve on the layout extension.

Edited January 9, 2021 by Ruston