Charlie Strong Metals (and Watery Lane Sidings)

[Ruston]

Plenty of metal to cut up in this one.  Dapol (exAirfix) kit with the addition of Lanarkshire Models buffers.

 

[Ruston]

Another 16-tonner added to the fleet. I would like to say that I've got enough now, especially as I have enough stock to cover every inch of track but you can never have enough 16-tonners. This latest one is a second hand Bachmann RTR, repainted/weathered.

[37114]

2 hours ago, Ruston said:

Another 16-tonner added to the fleet. I would like to say that I've got enough now, especially as I have enough stock to cover every inch of track but you can never have enough 16-tonners. This latest one is a second hand Bachmann RTR, repainted/weathered.

Very nice Dave, the layout is looking excellent. Your pic has reminded me I need to make some similar loads for the 7mm 16-tonners I bought from you.

[Ruston]

1 minute ago, 37114 said:

Very nice Dave, the layout is looking excellent. Your pic has reminded me I need to make some similar loads for the 7mm 16-tonners I bought from you.

Which I guess means that you can have enough 16-tonners, otherwise I wouldn't have sold any to you.

[Ruston]

Many pages back I posted some pics of 16-tonners that I had converted to vac-fitted. I was never really happy with how thet looked and had also made some basic errors with the orientation of the brake gear and vac cylinders. The two that I converted to clasp brakes were terrible and completely wrong!

 

I've gone over them all and the Morton-braked ones are re-worked now, with two vac cylinders each, the brakes corrected and the paint/weathering improved.

 

Rebodied, no top door and body reversed.

 

 

Another more recently rebodied, no top door and the body reversed.

 

Original body, with top flap. Plated.

 

Original body, with top flap.

 

 

 

 

Edited August 24, 2020 by Ruston

[Sandhole]

On 04/03/2020 at 19:13, Ruston said:

I have just found another figure from the old layout. He used to be part of a BR track gang but he's now got a job in the scrap yard.

 

Just trying the lorry, that I built a few pages back, for size.

 

More recycling.  This 13-t steel high wagon was bought for an EM project that never took off. I regauged it to EM and have now put it back to OO, weathered it and painted the rough white lettering on as something that's come to be cut up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The wagon reminds me of my wagon from 2003.
She  was a vacuum tanker, six wheeler, with that cab.
She was the last of her kind, because the legend SCAMMELL was emblazoned where Leyland is on yours.
Sadly, a family emergency meant that our aquaintance was all too brief.

Edited August 24, 2020 by Sandhole

[Ruston]

Another one. This was one of my greatest wagon cock-ups of all time. I stuck this Airfix body on a Hornby 27t tippler chassis, added some extra brake shoes and called it a clasp-braked, vac-fitred16-tonner. Yes, I know!

 

I have reunited the body with the Airfix chassis and have rebuilt it with Morton brakes and extra detailing, plus a complete repaint and renumber.

 

 

 

 

[simonmcp]

37 minutes ago, Ruston said:

Another one. This was one of my greatest wagon cock-ups of all time. I stuck this Airfix body on a Hornby 27t tippler chassis, added some extra brake shoes and called it a clasp-braked, vac-fitred16-tonner. Yes, I know!

 

I have reunited the body with the Airfix chassis and have rebuilt it with Morton brakes and extra detailing, plus a complete repaint and renumber.

 

 

 

 

Wow that show's just how small the Pecket is. Simon

[Ruston]

When I built the fiddle yard for this layout I built it to an odd shape to clear my second laptop, which sits on my printer, which is in turn on my desk. The resulting shape was, to my mind, something that could have been a dockside and that's what I had ideas of turning it into so I would have two layouts in one.

 

The fiddle yard is shorter than it could be due to clearing the laptop but if I build a shelf for the printer I can put the laptop on the desk and build a longer fiddle yard. That also opens up the possibility of filling a corner and having an even more interesting fiddle yard/layout. So why not go one further and extend the layout onto the adjacent wall?

 

That's now the plan. The existing fiddle yard will become a corner layout, an extension to Charlie's yard, and a completely new fiddle yard will be fitted to the wall. I need to move some pictures from the wall first, and build the printer shelf, but I should have more than double the scenic area and a longer fiddle yard.

 

Well, I do need somewhere to put all these wagons that I keep building...

[Gibbo675]

4 minutes ago, Ruston said:

When I built the fiddle yard for this layout I built it to an odd shape to clear my second laptop, which sits on my printer, which is in turn on my desk. The resulting shape was, to my mind, something that could have been a dockside and that's what I had ideas of turning it into so I would have two layouts in one.

 

The fiddle yard is shorter than it could be due to clearing the laptop but if I build a shelf for the printer I can put the laptop on the desk and build a longer fiddle yard. That also opens up the possibility of filling a corner and having an even more interesting fiddle yard/layout. So why not go one further and extend the layout onto the adjacent wall?

 

That's now the plan. The existing fiddle yard will become a corner layout, an extension to Charlie's yard, and a completely new fiddle yard will be fitted to the wall. I need to move some pictures from the wall first, and build the printer shelf, but I should have more than double the scenic area and a longer fiddle yard.

 

Well, I do need somewhere to put all these wagons that I keep building...

Hi Dave,

 

Have you perchance been indulging in a spot of, "over thinking" ?

 

Gibbo.

 

PS. It takes one to know one.

[AlfaZagato]

Keep on this train-of-thought, and you'll have the Manchester Ship Canal system, complete with your prints coming out of a Clyde Puffer.

[Ruston]

Can you have enough 16-ton minerals? Probably, by the time I've worked my way through this lot.

Even after buying wheels and brake parts they work out a lot cheaper than Bachmann RTR and they are easier to modify.

 

A clasp-braked one on the way to completion. The under gubbins may not be 100% correct but you wouldn't notice riding by on a galloping horse. Besides, if I see it like this anywhere but the workbench then something's gone seriously awry.

 

The right way up and with base coat of rustification in place.

 

Edited August 27, 2020 by Ruston

[Tullygrainey]

That's very fine indeed! Where do you source your various detailing bits and pieces Dave?

 

Alan

[Ruston]

10 minutes ago, Tullygrainey said:

That's very fine indeed! Where do you source your various detailing bits and pieces Dave?

 

Alan

Buffers are from Lanarkshire Models, the brake blocks/hangers are Wizard/51L, as are the yokes and the vac pipes. Everything else, including the couplings, are home-made.

 

Edited to add that the brake lever ends and guides are chopped from spare parts from Parkside kits.

 

 

Edited August 27, 2020 by Ruston

[Ruston]

[Ruston]

I've got a production line going.

[Northmoor]

1 hour ago, Ruston said:

I've got a production line going.

 

There's a lot to be said for this, as you tend to be consistent with paint etc.  Although, with 16 tonners, perhaps the less consistent, the better!

 

I think I have, in various stages of completion - from unmade kits to various examples from job lots best described as "spares or repair" - about twenty of them.  The Kitmaster/Airfix/Dapol 16t mineral must be the highest production model railway kit ever made.

[Enterprisingwestern]

11 hours ago, Ruston said:

I've got a production line going.

 

Good to see another exponent of the 2L method of wagon body building!

 

Mike.

[Ruston]

The production line idea seemed good but it was boring. After I had separated all the parts from their sprues, sanded off the pips and sanded off the huge hinges, I built the bodies up and that was as far as that Idea was going. I picked out a set of parts and, this morning, I set about building a wagon. It was an easier build, being unfitted.

 

 

Six hours later and it's done. Some of the paint isn't quite dry yet though.

 

Edited August 31, 2020 by Ruston

[sb67]

I'm finding these wagon builds really inspiring, seems like there's so many things you can do with a plain ole' 16 ton wagon. I must build up a supply of scrap too! 

Apologies if I've missed it but are your wagon loads removable?  

[Ruston]

3 hours ago, sb67 said:

I'm finding these wagon builds really inspiring, seems like there's so many things you can do with a plain ole' 16 ton wagon. I must build up a supply of scrap too! 

Apologies if I've missed it but are your wagon loads removable?  

Yes, they are removable. Rectangles of plasticard or card, supported on smaller rectangles as a base for the "scrap". I never fix loads in wagons. I can't see any reason to do that - after all, mineral wagons spent at least half their lives empty.  By not fixing them, the same wagon can be used for other loads. These will also be used on the Calder Grove layout, if and when I build it, but will have coal in them.

[Crisis Rail]

Sometimes you stumble upon some really good threads.

 

Ian

[Crisis Rail]

.....although Colour film was invented  any chance of trying some B&W images?

 

Ian

[Corbs]

Just for a bit of fun, reproduced from 'Charlie Strong - a lifetime as an honest businessman' by Wild Goose Publishing.

Edited September 2, 2020 by Corbs

[Regularity]

1 hour ago, Corbs said:

Wild Goose Publishing

Famous for their felt book covers...