Lapford in N gauge.

[Cowley 47521]

48 minutes ago, jcredfer said:

 

If the Anyrail "outline" is of use to you for playing with lengths, angles etc, I can send it to you, as is.  If it is any interest, just PM and I can mail it.

 

Julian

 

Thanks Julian, I’ve sent you a pm.

[Ramblin Rich]

2 hours ago, Cowley 47521 said:

Duly noted and changed thanks Rich.

 

I’ve seen that conveyor arrangement in photos before but I didn’t realise there was a pit as well.

 I think I’ve seen a kit for one in N gauge somewhere. Mind you try finding an N gauge Scania 82...

I went back & looked at the picture in the book again, it's not very clear but I'm sure it does go below rail level rather than just slid between the hopper and the rails, as the tube emerges from the ground beside the tracks. This site has a sketch showing the arrangement as I'm assuming, showing how planking would cover the pit

https://www.igg.org.uk/gansg/7-fops/fo-grain.htm

[treggyman]

Hi

 

I'm sure there was a pit....

Back in 1985 or so (we moved away from the  area in December 1987 so don't know when he stopped trading ) there used to be a coal merchant who sold "Canadian Coke' fuel for solid fuel central heating use.....Only place locally you could get it.....Probably sold coal as well but I only bought the coke.....based in the yard at Lapford.....I don't think the fuel was rail delivered.....

I don't remember it being a particularly large business but I'm sure I can remember the pit & asking the chap who served me what it was for & he said it was for unloading hopper wagons .I seem to remember him saying it was used by a local feed merchant .

 

There was a similar arrangement in Exmouth Junction Yard where the large coal merchant there used the pit & in this case I think a conveyor was used to unload coal wagons

 

Cheers Bill

[TomJ]

The covered pit is a great idea as it avoids the need for digging into the baseboard or complex carpentry. 
 

And of course in the model

world who’s to say the coal merchant didn’t get supplies by rail?

 

Although not sure if it’s a good idea to use the same pit or conveyor for coal and grain?? 

[slow8dirty]

10 minutes ago, TomJ said:

The covered pit is a great idea as it avoids the need for digging into the baseboard or complex carpentry. 
 

And of course in the model

world who’s to say the coal merchant didn’t get supplies by rail?

 

Although not sure if it’s a good idea to use the same pit or conveyor for coal and grain?? 

The traffic flows on the Barnstaple branch really lend themselves well to representation by a rolling time frame. I.e. The last of the China Clay rumbling past followed by a few years later timber and fertiliser, then the Ciba giegy(?) chemical tanks, maybe steel plate for Appledore at some stage. Who's to say the coal didn't predate the grain flow period, just don't park a polybulk next to a 16ton mineral. Scenically, one set of planks with coal dust and one set of planks with loose corn dusting. 

[Ramblin Rich]

Sadly all the domestic coal traffic was centralised on Exmouth Junction coal concentration depot from the end of 1967 so the good ol' 16t mineral was not part of the picture afterwards (except perhaps in other traffic....)

[treggyman]

Hi

 

Following my previous post I remembered taking some pictures of OTA's at Lapford.

I found them & here they are.....

 

 

 

 

 

As can be seen in my notes the pit is mentioned.

Also some details of the old Ambrosia building & yard clutter....

 

However I was also at the time assuming that the timber was being delivered to Lapford  for the Kronospan works near South Molton.

As far as I'm now aware the traffic went the other way being loaded at Lapford for delivery to...Consett ???....I've no idea where I got the info from but normally I would have been told by someone allegedly 'in the know'  & maybe misheard & got the flow the wrong way round.

 

Anyway the photo's do give an insight to the yard in March 1987....

Sadly it was the only time I took a camera with me to the station........

We did actually view Lapford & Eggesford stations with a view to purchase one or 'tother in the summer of '87 & while at Lapford witnessed the failure of the locao hauled train from Barnstaple.....

Anyway hope the above are of interest....

 

Cheers Bill

Edited July 2, 2020 by treggyman
To change PICTURES from PDF TO JPEG

[Ramblin Rich]

Those are great Bill, I know you've posted them before & we discussed the timber being felled locally & sent elsewhere. I think a lot of traffic happened after the 'great storm' in October 1987. There might be more info in the Railfreight books at home. It's good that you noted the pit (of doom?), a shame it's not obvious in the pictures.

Would have been interesting to have lived in one of the old stations

[jcredfer]

There were several miles of Forestry Commission Pine forests along the road, from Lapford towards Barnstaple and still are come to that.  There would have been much Pine log movement, as older trees were cut out, ready for planting new.  Strangely, I very seldom noted the traffic of the logs, either by rail or road and given the nature of the road / rail in the valley, it would have been rather obvious.

 

Julian 

[Cowley 47521]

7 hours ago, jcredfer said:

There were several miles of Forestry Commission Pine forests along the road, from Lapford towards Barnstaple and still are come to that.  There would have been much Pine log movement, as older trees were cut out, ready for planting new.  Strangely, I very seldom noted the traffic of the logs, either by rail or road and given the nature of the road / rail in the valley, it would have been rather obvious.

 

Julian 

I worked for BRS as an HGV apprentice mechanic when I left school in 1989 and we often used to go to breakdowns out that way, I do remember there being the odd log lorry around back then but I don’t remember seeing them in the yard at Lapford.

We always used to go out the same Leyland eight wheeler that belonged to a local grain company based in Copplestone last was driven by an old boy called Cedric or something similar.

God that thing used to break down everywhere, and it was always covered in wet cow dung and a mush of rancid cow cake!

[Cowley 47521]

Part the something
 

Evening everyone.

 

@treggyman - Your fascinating photos have just shown me a couple of mistakes that I’ve made but I’m not going to say what they are as I’m currently in denial!

 

 I think sometime around Christmas I made the board up out of 2x1 framing, 6mm ply, and 6mm cork on top. 
Literally everything in the process has been new to me as I’ve never:

 

Made anything in N gauge.

Wired point motors.

Made buildings.

Modelled a real place.

Used DCC.

Used electrofrog points. 

etc etc.

 

 I bought all the track from Dave in the model shop in Exeter and threw myself into it. 
I’ve helped my best friend Paul exhibit his little N gauge snowy GWR railway Tops Tor a few times this last couple of years and we’ve both learned much along the way (he’s got a new one in development at the moment that’ll hopefully be something a bit different too).

Here’s Paul’s layout after Peco had done a bit of photographic trickery:

 

Good fun and a bit different.

Paul and I have been best friends for 40 years now. I don’t know where the time’s gone really.

 

Here’s a shot of mine though once I started laying the track and after making the obligatory first timer mistake of making the holes for the point motors too big...

 

 

It’s all Peco code 55 track and electrofrog points, I made a busbar out of an old bit of track under the board and tried to separate the various circuits into different colours to make any faults traceable, and to be fair it all seems to work pretty well (I did a lot of testing before hitting the next stage).

So far so good...

[Cowley 47521]

Part the bit after the last part
 

Everything working now and the track sprayed with grime, so time to get going with the scenery (probably the bit I enjoy the most).

 I work on building sites frequently and managed to get hold of an off cut of blue insulation board which I cut into half thickness sections and then cut into the correct basic shapes.

After I’d fixed it down I shaped it all using a specialist tool (a cheese grater) and worked out where the roads/paths/buildings etc needed to be:

 

It felt like it was starting to become somewhere now.

 

Next I had to make the platform and fit it so that I could build the land over the top of it:

 

Once that was done I started cracking on with the plaster of Paris and filler etc.

This all looks like I did it in five minutes but actually it took me ages and it was only because I had a bit of time off work that I managed to get so far.

Here’s a picture of a bus on the bridge once the platform was in but before I started ballasting, I don’t know if anyone’s thought of putting a bus on a bridge before but you’re welcome to use the idea....

(actually I didn’t know that was a thing until I started reading about it on here)

 

Some ballasting then happened and also a little bit of detail around the ground frame and foot crossing:

 

 

Thanks for taking the time to read this and respond to it. I really do appreciate it.

 

Nick

[NittenDormer]

Keep up the commentary, including the wee throwaway gems. Nice modelling too. Not so fast though, you're putting me to shame. 

[Cowley 47521]

35 minutes ago, NittenDormer said:

Keep up the commentary, including the wee throwaway gems. Nice modelling too. Not so fast though, you're putting me to shame. 

Haha, thanks for that. 
I was encouraged to do this because I’d posted a couple of photos of the more or less finished layout on a different thread.

It looks like I’m doing it really quickly but actually it was at least a year and a half’s worth of work but I’m cramming it into a few posts here.

I’ll slow down in a Devon style soon though, promise.

[DLT]

Lovely project, and nice to see the North Devon Line being modelled.

All the best, Dave.

[TomJ]

10 hours ago, Cowley 47521 said:

 

Here’s a picture of a bus on the bridge once the platform was in but before I started ballasting, I don’t know if anyone’s thought of putting a bus on a bridge before but you’re welcome to use the idea....

(actually I didn’t know that was a thing until I started reading about it on here)

 

 

 

I hope that's the correct bus for the location and period! People do get very upset about that kind of thing!

 

I mean did you know that in 1986 the 377 bus service was diverted to Lapford village, and no longer called at the station. And that bus had its rear tyres changed in 1987 so is clearly totally wrong for the scene. I mean don't people do even basic research these days...….

 

Tongue in check obviously. Its a great looking layout and I like seeing how it all came together

[Cowley 47521]

5 hours ago, TomJ said:

 

I hope that's the correct bus for the location and period! People do get very upset about that kind of thing!

 

I mean did you know that in 1986 the 377 bus service was diverted to Lapford village, and no longer called at the station. And that bus had its rear tyres changed in 1987 so is clearly totally wrong for the scene. I mean don't people do even basic research these days...….

 

Tongue in check obviously. Its a great looking layout and I like seeing how it all came together

Thank you for that . I’ll renumber and change the tyres on the bus at some point before diverting it down a different route entirely. 

[Cowley 47521]

Part this is where things are coming together now

 

More from me.

I cut the river into the cork and although it looks ok enough it could have done with being a little bit deeper really. Actually I wish now that I’d raised the trackbed up slightly when I started but what’s done is done and it is what it is.

 

 

You can see also that I’ve made the roads out of thick card and also the other bridges over the river.

My other half made the Metcalfe garage for me as it was nearest thing I could find to the actual BP garage that was there at the time. 
I also bought a load of road markings off eBay and spent an enjoyable day doing that, I think we were in lockdown at this point so things were getting done more quickly than I’d have expected. Oh and I’d painted the scenery brown at this point as a base coat. It suddenly started to feel somewhere once I’d done that.

 

(That bus again)

 

This is the little Peco bungalow that was going to form a cameo in the top corner of a place some travellers had bought on the cheap. I wanted to get it looking properly rough with peeling paint and debris all around it eventually.

 

 

This is the heap of sand being made and also the dismantled points from the sidings that originally went to the loading dock.

(the high bits of ballast have magnets under them but I’m having a few problems with them and may have to dig them out again unfortunately as the don’t work properly)

 

So yes, getting to the point of doing the static grass now (something else I’d never tried before).

It’s probably worth me saying that I learnt so much stuff that I needed to learn from reading about it on here and also asking the odd question when I needed to.

 I might do a little write up on some of the stock I have at some point because I went for it after Christmas somewhat!

 

[Cowley 47521]

Part the greenery time
 

During lockdown I took five weeks off work (I’m a self employed painter and decorator) and used the time to do a load of house renovations. This meant doing the top floor of the house up and moving the kids from one room to another meaning that eventually I had a decorated (extremely professionally I’ll have you know) spare bedroom that I could put the railway in for a while until I move it into a new cabin in the garden.

 

 I’m sure most people on here have moved a railway or two but I found it fairly terrifying (although probably not as terrifying as one of the boys who I’d roped in to help. DON’T KNOCK IT!!).

 

Before we moved it I did pretty much all the static grass in the front room as it didn’t matter what happened in there as it was due for the renovation treatment.

 I bought a really cheap applicator off eBay, watched a few YouTube clips and dived in with the grass fibres I’d also bought off eBay.

Here’s a bit of the action in progress:

 

 

I tried to mix the colours up a bit but ended up with some of the grass being too long for N gauge which is where my beard trimmer came in rather useful...

Again, I spent a lot of time looking at tips (and reading some quite funny arguments) on here before jumping in.

 

 

[jcredfer]

Quote

This is the little Peco bungalow that was going to form a cameo in the top corner of a place some travellers had bought on the cheap. I wanted to get it looking properly rough with peeling paint and debris all around it eventually.

 

There's posh for you...   Travellers paying for paying for occupying a property.....  Things have really moved on since I was last there.

 

Did you get to see the Umberleigh Ghost?  That's a must for the road [there's a clue there.]

 

Julian

 

Edited July 4, 2020 by jcredfer

[Cowley 47521]

2 minutes ago, jcredfer said:

This is the little Peco bungalow that was going to form a cameo in the top corner of a place some travellers had bought on the cheap. I wanted to get it looking properly rough with peeling paint and debris all around it eventually.

There's posh for you...   Travellers paying for paying for occupying a property.....  Things have really moved on since I was last there.

 

Did you get to see the Umberleigh Ghost?  That's a must for the road [there's a clue there.]

 

Julian

 

I might need to know more about the Umberleigh Ghost Julian as I must admit that I don’t know anything about it?

[TomJ]

Apparently Lapford is haunted by a former vicar (who murdered his curate) in revenge for not being buried in the churchyard. And one a year the ghost of Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Beckett visits the village 

[jcredfer]

11 minutes ago, TomJ said:

Apparently Lapford is haunted by a former vicar (who murdered his curate) in revenge for not being buried in the churchyard. And one a year the ghost of Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Beckett visits the village 

 

Indeed so and rightly too, that's the Lapford Ghost......        Ooohh, errr!   Now there's two of them!!!    

 

I saw the Umberleigh Ghost one night, pitch black, driving up to Woolacombe to see my girlfriend, drove round a corner and there it was, hovering above the road.  There are few people who  can say they have seen that and less that tasted live human heart, but I can advise that the combination with adrenaline is not 100% pleasant!  There it was, as real and true as I am typing this.....

 

Answers on postcards, addressed to Lapford Stationmaster's House.

 

Clues {good pun, this} are Telegraph and Times.  Answers, as always, in tomorrow's issue.

 

Julian

[mudmagnet]

There  was an old caravan further up the road tucked in behind a hedge where an old couple lived. The tale goes that after the old man died, he could be seen hitchhiking along the road.

The caravan was left to rot and believe gone now.

[Cowley 47521]

Part the still banging on about it
 

I’m doing this in bite sized chunks tonight as it’s getting near where I am now (thanks for taking the time to read it by the way).

 I made many many trees out of fine jewellery. This is some of them after a coat of primer:

 

I also made about a hundred of the things for my friend Paul’s railway...

 

Here’s some trees and bushes starting to appear at the north end of the site. I’m going for full Devon summer greenery because it’s always like that down here right?

There’s also a shot of the station garden coming together.

 I forgot to say that when I moved the railway upstairs I took the opportunity to fit a lighting circuit and put lights in the buildings.

 
 

Around this time I gathered as much spare track and wood that was available and managed to knock up a return loop with a storage loop around the back of the layout so I could finally run trains! This felt like a big achievement and I spent a good few days running trains through the station.

One of the many good things about modelling Lapford is that it’s got natural breaks at each end of the site with the way the bridges are positioned so I didn’t have to fabricate some kind of tunnel etc.

 

Here’s a bit of log train action as a nod to some of the posts earlier:

And the cardboard BP garage...

(What is it with that bus?)

Thanks for reading. You’ve shown extreme amounts of patience.