Green Lane Wharf - OO in a shoebox

[Calidore]

That's all rather nice @TechnicArrow. The mooring posts and the guard rail are both good lessons in how to make something from nothing -- great stuff.

 

Adam

[TechnicArrow]

It's boat time! 

I haven't been spending much time on this layout recently, but a few days over the past week have been used to assemble and paint this narrowboat. 

 

I built it from scratch using (as always!) cereal box card, following rough dimensions found around the internet. The cabin sides were produced digitally, along the lines of the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company's livery. Red and blue paint for the rest of the body was then mixed up to match the colours produced by the printer. It's far from an accurate model - it still needs all sorts of detailing especially around the cabin roof and deck areas, and some ropes to moor it to the quay. Overall though I'm pretty pleased with how it's turned out. 

 

I also printed details for the sides of the Lowfit, a simple card-deck-on-Dapol-chassis bodge. Again the printing has come out not quite the right colour, but it's better than plain brown. The load is an Oxford Diecast ferguson tractor, that really needs to be chained down properly. 

 

A little experimentation made it apparent that because there's no run-around loop, I can use larger engines on this layout - up to a Collet Goods. It doesn't fit on the headshunt with two wagons and the tender, but that can be extended easily enough. 

 

Finally, I did some coding this afternoon. 

As an alternative to shuffling cards with pictures of the wagons, I made a simple Scratch project that lets you enter wagon descriptions, then selects a number of them in a random order.

 

This can be used to produce a string of 5 wagons out of 8 for an inglenook, or to randomly allocate wagons to pre-numbered spots on the layout as I'm doing here. 

 

Scratch can be used on a mobile device, so it's quite easy to have it on my phone whilst I'm shuntibg. I would show a photo, but I use my phone for that too so I can't! If anyone wants to have a go, you can find it here: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/406428717/

[jimsmodeltrains]

I use a web based Waybills management application for managing where cars go to on my layouts, but using Scratch to build a app to do it would be as effective. I might have to try that myself!

[MR Chuffer]

4 hours ago, jimsmodeltrains said:

I might have to try that myself!

I just have, impressively simple and effective. Now if only I can import the spreadsheet listing of my ~80 freight wagons in....

[TechnicArrow]

4 hours ago, MR Chuffer said:

I just have, impressively simple and effective. Now if only I can import the spreadsheet listing of my ~80 freight wagons in....

 

In Scratch 3.0 (the current online version), you can import CSV files into lists by right-clicking on the list...

Edited June 21, 2020 by TechnicArrow

[MR Chuffer]

1 hour ago, TechnicArrow said:

you can import CSV files into lists by right-clicking on the list...

Sorry to trouble you, but I'm intrigued by what you said. I believe I'm using the latest version of Scatch because I only loaded it today and can't locate a version number after a cursory search, and right clicking anywhere , including the list, brings up my browser context menu with no import option (latest Chrome on W64).

 

Any pointers...?

 

TIA

 

 

[MR Chuffer]

Just now, MR Chuffer said:

Any pointers...?

Ah, forget it, went into the "code" part and there's the import function, great!

[TechnicArrow]

2 hours ago, JimRead said:

The little cameos are very good too; the guy on the first floor waiting for stuff to be thrown up to him and the guy on the narrowboat relaxing a bit while his boat is being filled.

 

Thanks, I'm glad you agree the scene 'works'! The cameos use plain old Bachmann figures, mostly from the steam/diesel loco driver packs. Only the man upstairs catching things from the winch is glued down - even the pallets and sacks are loose, so any scene can be set up and they can be used across multiple layouts. 

[TechnicArrow]

Finally, I've started on the roofs! 

 

First I painted an area of cereal box card with various shades of dar-bluish-grey paint. This was then cut into 5mm wide strips:

 

Some of those strips were then cut into roughly 5mm squares, put in a dish and shaken up. 

I then spread PVA over an area of the roof, and started to place these "tiles", overlapping and staggering each row over the one beneath. 

 

Overall, it seems to have worked - the roof has a good texture, and the tiles are fairly consistent but with a little randomness in colour and size as intened. 

 

The "Valley" where the roof pitches join was interesting though, and there's a lot of card-coloured edges visible. I'm not sure yet if I want to repeat the process for the larger roof of the other stone warehouse, but I've got the strips cut already so I might as well! 

[Keith Addenbrooke]

Just caught up with this thread.  Looking classy - having the Setrack inset into roadway / quayside seems to be an effective way of disguising the tight curves.

[Bo-Bo]

You have achieved to build a lovely OO gauge layout within a shoebox. The buildings, wharf and ground coverings are all nicely done. 

[HonestTom]

The slates look great!

[TechnicArrow]

This wharf layout has recieved a few minor additions recently. First off, a thin strip of backscene has been added behind the end warehouse, which really helps to tidy up the scene.

 

Secondly, the collection of loose cargo has grown to what you see below. These are used across all my layouts, hence why many have threads attached to allow them to be moved by working cranes.

 

They certainly make the layout look busy!

 

And last but not least - I've finally made a video! It took most of the morning to shoot it, and features several craftily-timed cuts to hide the appalling running quality of my very-second-hand trackwork. But it came out well in the end, so I hope you enjoy it!

 

 

[TechnicArrow]

Merry Christmas!

 

This isn't news related to this layout exactly, but I decided to post in this topic since I'm using the layout as a backdrop.

I gave myself a little gift this Christmas - a Corgi Coles mobile crane. 

 

 

I bought it earlier this month, since it's been discontinued for a while and can be difficult to find.

The intention is, of course, to bodge it onto the crane mechanism, in place of the HO scale German Fuchs crane that's been there for the past year and a half. The thing is the Coles's superstructure is hollow and supported from inside by a column from the pivot to the top, rather than built up from a plate at the bottom - so this could be tricky. Watch this space!

[Sweet pea]

Love the crane it looks great.

[TechnicArrow]

Thanks @Kevin Johnson, I agree it's a nice model.

 

Which is why I took it to the garage and set about it with Dad's tools this morning!

 

First up, let's see what we're working with. There are two halves to the die-cast chassis which easily separate after a screw is undone, and that lets you access another screw to remove the superstructure. Most of the superstructure is also diecast, but hollow and with a black plastic insert that forms the bottom. The superstructure has a column at it's centre which protrudes through the hole in the chassis to accept the screw.

 

Unfortunately, by definition that 'column' is exactly where I want to put the concentric-tube mechanism that will operate the boom - so it had to go. The easiest way to access it was to drill out the two rivet/pin fixings that hold the boom mounting bracket to the rest of the diecast superstructure, resulting in two components like so:

 

Before I looked at the column I wanted to remove the boom, in order to turn the friction fit that allows the boom to be posed into a loose fit so it can be raised and lowered by string. This simply needed the pin to be hammered out from the brackets; the plastic boom could then be filed a little to loosen the joint.

 

Then the column was hacksawed off the boom mount, and whilst the boom was still off a pair of holes was drilled - one in line with the back of the boom, and one under the hinge point. The boom was then returned to the bracket and the pin hammered back in.

 

Finally the bracket was pushed back onto what remains of the drilled-out rivets, which still have just enough material to hold the thing in place. 

 

Barely any difference, other than the boom is floppy and the superstructure is only sitting loosely on the chassis. The next job is to install the crane onto it's mechanism, as well as putting some more bits inside it.

[Sweet pea]

This crane is going to look great with a working mechanism.

[TechnicArrow]

And 'tis done!

 

Of course, it looks much the same as it did before - but that's the point...

It was a fairly simple process, involving replacing the concentric tubes from the mechanism to the superstructure and threading a few strings. Unfortunately the model does have a slight lean towards the cab; I need to put some more weight in the rear, and should probably re-seat it on it's bearing. But the important thing is that it works; I'm going back to Uni on Thursday, so I'll be able to reinstall it on Arrow Paints and should be able to make a short video.

[Sweet pea]

Nice work on the mechanism. It will be great to see a little video of the crane operating.

[6990WitherslackHall]

It's clever what you've done with the crane. I'm looking forward to seeing it in action!

[andyram]

This really is a very good little layout. I have enjoyed reading through the progress. The chain shunting adds something different and the use of the pins an ingenious way of including this element. I cannot wait to see more.

[TechnicArrow]

On 22/02/2021 at 13:58, 6990WitherslackHall said:

It's clever what you've done with the crane. I'm looking forward to seeing it in action!

 

Thank you! It was fun to build and I still enjoy operating it. A short while back I filmed a video of it operating on it's home layout, Arrow Paints, but for completeness I should probably post it here too.

 

 

14 hours ago, andyram said:

This really is a very good little layout. I have enjoyed reading through the progress. The chain shunting adds something different and the use of the pins an ingenious way of including this element. I cannot wait to see more.

 

Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it! I think the chain shunting works quite well, it certainly gets you as an operator much more involved with the action as both driver and shunter. I don't think I can claim originality over the pin-bollards, but they do work very well (if a little over-scale).

Unfortunately there won't be much more on this layout since it's still at home, and I'm 150 miles away at University - but I've got Arrow Paints with me instead, so there's often progress over there because I'm never happy with everything! See my signature for a link to it's thread.