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Coalorsdale - A shropshire Branchline - 1965 to 71


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I can sympathize with you there, when I was at university, longer ago than I care to admit, I sold all of my railway stuff to another student who was a member of the local model railway club. I think that my parents were secretly relieved that they could finally redecorate my old bedroom!

I just about managed to run my motorcycle, while everyone else seemed to be out every night and planning a two month summer vacation! 

I spent the summer of my first year working in a breakers yard so that I wouldn't be so skint the second year! 

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I spent every summer vacation working on a farm which kept the Morris 1000 going. Got me an impressive sun tan too and toned up the muscles nicely.

 

And a purchase of a K's Terrier kit. Which I never got working. Kits were awful in those days. The white metal body wasn't bad but the chassis - ugh. Punched brass frames 1/16" thick which didn't line up properly, wheels with D-shaped holes which were supposed to automatically quarter but didn't because the D-shape was not a good fit and the less said about the K's Mk1 motor the better.

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Labouring on the local steelworks for me.

last year as a student i went mad and did so much overtime i bought a decent stereo, cost me £150 including making my own boxes for my Wharfedale speaker kits.

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That model clock tower puts me in mind of the one on the works head office on Iain Rice's Tregarric layout from way back. That was one of the layouts which inspired me to move from trainset to model railway.

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5 hours ago, MrWolf said:

That model clock tower puts me in mind of the one on the works head office on Iain Rice's Tregarric layout from way back. That was one of the layouts which inspired me to move from trainset to model railway.

Hopefully it will look good once finished, need to make the works building too!! 

 

Here's a first print for one of the warehouse doors. Hopefully it looks less like a radiator once it's got a few layers of paint on it. 

 

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Got back home yesterday evening. Today I have unpacked everything and amongst other things I have gotten coalorsdale back up and running. 

 

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A few gremlins as always. 

- a short on the lighting bus, now fixed. 

 

- I had to rewire the choc blocks for the lenz system to match the new layouts standards. 

 

- I had to re install the dcc accessory decoder I had borrowed to set up the new layout. 

 

- the storage yard mimic board had fallen off of the wall and needed fixing. 

 

- a signal had been knocked over  when my parents showed a family friend the layout. 

 

All now resolved. 

 

I've also opened my new wagons from ebay. 8 mineral wagons with coal loads. One is still on the bench with a new coupling gluing up but the rest were perfect out of the box and run very well. 

 

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You used to get block coal trains to Buildwas power station back then. West Midlands up to the mid 50s, then CEGB. They turned off at Lightmoor and through Madeley  Junction to Wednesbury yard, usually powered by a 57xx. Later on it was MGR wagons behind a 47.

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3 hours ago, Northroader said:

You used to get block coal trains to Buildwas power station back then. West Midlands up to the mid 50s, then CEGB. They turned off at Lightmoor and through Madeley  Junction to Wednesbury yard, usually powered by a 57xx. Later on it was MGR wagons behind a 47.

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Thanks for the tip, I'm sure I'll buy some someday. 

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  • 6 months later...

Apologies for lack of posting, my summer was disrupted by some. Major personal events. Not much progress was made on coalorsdale before coming back to uni and not much progress was made over Christmas either. I will update this thread at some point with what little was accomplished but the bulk of the work I have done in recent months has been on West canal sidings. 

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Good afternoon all, 

 

This thread has been stagnant for a long time due mainly to me finally starting my career.  Meanwhile the shropshire branchline layout had to be dismantled as my parents retired to a bungalow. so no more layout for me. 

 

West canal sidings has seen a tiny bit of work but my main focus has been on collecting locos and rolling stock and making plans for the future.

 

I've settled into my job now and have slowly been working on designing a future layout (some of you will have seen this over in the design forum). The idea is to make a modular layout that incorparates all of the themes i am looking for. It will be built module by module and will use all of the buildings and alot of the scenery and track from the previous incarnation of the layout.  

 

The main scenes to be included are a traction maintenence depot with fuel exchange sidings, a countryside and viaduct scene and a branch line terminus raised over a very large storage yard. This design has been in the works for several months on and off and i have just finished discussing signalling over in the design forum. It is designed to be 12ft x 17ft and will eventually be installed in a large shed or double garage. Until such a time as i buy a house i will be building one module at a time either where i live at work, at my parents bungalow or at my partners parents house.

 

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currently I am building a micro layout which contains the main shed for the TMD and have just started the viaduct scene. 

 

The TMD micro layout can be seen in a rectangle in the top left corner of the above image. it is designed around the bachman maintenece depot and is built on a laser cut baseboard i designed and comissioned from flexxgenix. I used a west hill wagon works interior kit for the tmd and have started installing lcut retaining walls.  ill post more on this when  next work on it but here are some photos for now...

 

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standby for a post on the viaduct ...

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Having worked on the tmd micro layout for a few weeks my attentions have moved towrads and away from the hobby like usual until last week when sat on a sunbed in cyprus i decided it was time to start the first main module.  

 

I selected the viaduct board as it was one of my favourite scenes on the origional layout. It is also one of the more complex in construction and would provide me with some interesting challenges. I designed the board on my laptop whilst away and ordered all of the materials to arrive for this week whilst i am visiting my parents. This has the advantage of allowing me to use all of my fathers tools and paints. Moreover my current accomodation during the working week only just allows for my small tmd diorama and will certainly not accomodate a 4ft by 18" module.

 

The main board is constructed from a mix of 5.5mm  and 12mm plywood which is screwed glued and pinned together.  The backscene is removeable and there is a hidden raised section behind it to accomodate the incline that will form part of the blt branch on the final layout.

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The landscape was cut from 50mm foam sheets using a hotwire cutter and a wills kit was constructed for the viaduct. 

 

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Thanks for the kind words @MrWolf @TT100 Diesels.

 

 

Track gluing up on the viaduct. Trying out the peco bullhead range for this new layout. Glued down on 3mm Cork using wood glue and a lot of drinks cans for weight! Screenshot_20230830_214625_Gallery.jpg.27fd845115bafa307cfed5d3c0c49430.jpg

 

 

At the workbench I have repainted a noch boat and figures and added a faller dog. I thought the ensemble looked a bit plastic out of the box. I also did some surgery to remove the mans hat and reposition his rowing arms. 

 

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I've also made up and weathered some wills lineside cabinets to go next to an absolute aspects signal I have on order. Just grey primer, a black oil wash and some matt varnish. 

 

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David

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Today I added rock outcrops to the hills using dried bark, before covering the foam in sculptamold. I then ballasted the track with woodland scenics medium gray ballast. I'm hoping to add a coat of brown paint later this evening to get a headstart on the scenery, its my last full day visiting my parents tomorrow and there's no way I'm taking this diorama back on the train! Hope to get some grass and trees in tomorrow. 

 

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David 

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