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Lancaster Green Ayre - The Barn Owls have returned.


jamie92208
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As mentioned elsewhere we had a great weekend at Nottingham.  With only two of us and150321-3.jpg.03a440a6f1effbf05fedf8d7d4403505.jpg

On the great expanse of the layout it seemed OK to us.

I couldn't resist trying an atmospheric shot of the loco servicing area.

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Sunday morning we got in early and I decided to have a go at making foam mock ups of the smaller buildings between the SM house (!!) and the shed/water tower area.  After a couple of hours the area seemed to be looking 'busy' but the general impression looked OK.  There had been a lot of selective compression in this area.

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With the other buildings around it and the pillars that we had erected the layout around photography wasn't easy but my new telephoto lens came in handy.

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I'm pleased with the results.   I found some image of the sand drying furnace in the corner of a photo and it looked rather nice with a louvred top to the roof so I had to re adjust the area at the back of the shed to include it.  The mess room is obviously a later addition so I had a guess at that based on the 1908 2 chain plan. Someone said the chimney was too short so I showed them the photo.

The small building at the back of the SM house initially looked too high when compared with a photo that showed it so we chopped 40mm off the base and were happy with the result.

 

Meanwhile Dave got his head round the area at the top of the slipway on the Castle Branch.  This is an area that we'd left as it was 'difficult'

 

I did pose the steam railmotor on the viaduct.

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This is the area after Dave put a curved wall in in mounting board and then tried some DAS work.

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Overall we were very pleased with the way it is starting to look.

All in all a very good weekend and as promised we got help taking the layout down and putting it in the van, with the exhibition manager and treasurer helping.

 

Jamie

 

PS several edits due to Windows 8.1 problems.  I can only upload the photos and resize them using Internet explorer but can then only insert them into the post using firefox.

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Edited by jamie92208
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Phew, slept well last night.  Jamie has passed on his thanks to many people for helping at the w/e and I would like to add mine; we were well looked after by the Nottingham boys and girls,  Well fed and entertained, we both enjoyed the show very much.  I must, however, give a special thank you to Graeme King for the time he spent with me teaching me the the fiddly bits about resin casting; his infectious ethusiasm for his "pastime" has to be experienced to appreciate the depth of his pleasure with this discipline.

 

On Green Ayre, I enjoyed the DAS work which I have fought shy of for some time now.  It was great to work in the realtively high temperatures of the school - PVA went off in about 20 minutes (rather than the week it takes in our cold clubroom).  There are a few things which just cannot be attempted with only a couple of boards up.  Jamies' work on the buildings needed quite a lot of TLAR to complete successfully (ie to look reet) and the aspect we were able to get sighting along the length of the engine shed area helped so much as 'we' are interpreting the area and not just copy building.   Incidentally jamie the decision to not run anything was TACTICAL, ps see me after club and I will teach you the difference between TACTICAL and STRATEGIC.  Good to see a fair amount of stock in place, and the first attempts at the overhead wire suspension itself.  All in all a good w/e.  May I also say what a boost it is to have the support of the people who take the time to follow this thread, thank you all  Great to be home again.

Edited by supersonic
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Hi Jamie

Very nice rail motor and I just love the Kirtley. Is it an 800 class or the other 2-4-0? 

Its all comming along very well. More Kirtey pics please ;)

Regards Lez.Z.

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Hi Jamie

Very nice rail motor and I just love the Kirtley. Is it an 800 class or the other 2-4-0? 

Its all comming along very well. More Kirtey pics please ;)

Regards Lez.Z.

The railmotor is lovely built by the same guy who made the station buildings and painted the backscenes.  The Kirtley is I believe an 800 class No 14   built for me by another friend and the Kirtley 0-4-4T was built by the same guy as the railmotor.

 

Jamie

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Just got in from a good work night at the club. We started by deciding which boards to put up and after Nottingham Dave wanted to continue with putting DAS stone walling in the slipway area. That used up one spare leg on board C1. Then Tony wanted to start fitting sleeper built fencing to the station approach, that's board A3 that needs the other spare leg. I'd sieved some more black carp this afternoon and wanted to get that down n the coal yard so needed a4 up which also needs a spare leg. Unfortunately I've only got two spares. A bit of thinking out and we spun A4 round and bolted it to A3 (Fortunately the fixing holes are on a standard measure for all the boards.) Then used the 2nd spare leg on the end of A3 and everything worked. Tony managed to get in in his wheelchair and then transferred to a high bar chair for the evening and was able to make a good go at the fencing using pre made up units a couple of inches long.

 

Dave got on with the DAS work and Mark got all three coal yard sidings ballasted in black carp. I managed to fit Sktrex buffer stops to the same sidings. All in all a good evenings work. We also had a visit by members of the Keighley club that included Robin Taylor who is our O Gauge Guild area rep. They brought some lovely locos with them that ran on the test track.

 

Jamie

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I've been busy over the last few days soldering up the last support structure for Greyhound Bridge.  I've decided to make a major push on this board to try and get the bride finished.  Many of the parts are quite large and awkward to store and carry around safely with the layout for demos.  If I get them all installed it will mean two less crates of carp to carry around.  I'm therefore starting from the bottom up.

 

The first job is to finish the three sets of piers.  I got the second one done for Nottingham and after 4 hours of soldering I now have the basic structure of the third one done with just 6 more 'X' girders to solder on.

 

The next step will be the 6 pier caps which are etched but not folded/bent  and assembled.

 

Step three will be to finish the main bridge girders.

 

Then paint all the components before installing them on the board.

 

The last job will be to finish ballasting the track up to ballast walls and then add the overhead line girders betweent he curved gantries that are on the main girders.

 

Hopefully there should be somehthing to see at Upton on 11th April even if I'm doing the assembly there.

 

Hopefully some pictures over the next couple of days.

 

This is in addition to the work that is ongoing at the clubrooms.  There we are trying to get each board covered with various forms of carp and basic scenery as well as at least a mock up of each building.  Then we will move onto the next board.

 

Jamie

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Another couple of hours of soldering and choking on phosphoric acid fumes as well as the smell of gently roasting pitch pine, I've got the third bridge support finished and here are the three of them.

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I then started to add the riveted strips that run down the outside of the caissons. An hour later the first one was done and I had coughed enough.

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They still need a lot of cleaning up but the end is in sight. I just need to find all the etches for the caisson caps.

 

Jamie

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Got back in after a good evening at the club and getting Tony plus wheelchair back home. Much work got done.

 

I took Tony some lengths of spruce on Tuesday in between hospital visits and chemo sessions he has been busy chopping them into sleeper lengths and making them up into panels about 50mm in length.

These are then glued into place. he's even used thread to represent the wire that tied them together. This style f fencing was used because there were piles of timber to one side of the station approach and piles of coal on the other side.

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The weights were removed once the glue was dry.

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Paul has been using Balsa strip to make another sleeper wall that holds up an ash pile near the coaling stage. This has been discovered on an aerial photo and makes sense as it provides a platform from where loaded barrows of ash could be easily tipped into empty coal wagons once they had been run though the coaling stage.

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There are some wires and reinforcements to add and the foam will be covered in ash in due course.

 

I spent more time putting black sand down in the coal yard area. It's looking very different from how it looked at Warley in November.

Here is the area at Warley when we were all dismayed by the acres of bare plywood.

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Compared to tonight.

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Still a lot of small buildings and also many piles of coal plus about 30 static wagons and up to 20 coal merchants carts and drays.

 

Still a good evenings work.

 

Jamie

Edited by jamie92208
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The next bit I needed to make was the caps for the 6 caissons that support Greyhound Bridge. I designed the etches well over a year ago but hadn't actually made one.

This is the effect that I want to create.

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There are also some castings that form the bearings that the bridge girders rest on. They show here.

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I started by laying out the various parts that I have found.

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The first assembly proved that the little fold over tabs for the wrapper were more of a hindrance than a help so these were removed and then the 3 square riveted plates were soldered over the etched witness marks.

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The ring was then rolled round a bottle cap then soldered together.

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The ring was then evened out and soldered to the cap and then the four jointing plates were sweated on with gaps for the girder seats which will be different for each Caisson with the way the angles work.

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Three of the six were completed before I had had enough.

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I then took two downstairs to try on the large X girder where Gavin inspected it.

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That's another part that was worrying me worked out. I just need to sort out the girder seats and then start fastening it all together. Hopefully I will be able to install them at the Upton exhibition this coming Saturday (the 11th) where we will be taking three boards to their little church hall show. Just off the A638 between Wakefield and Doncaster.

 

Jamie

Edited by jamie92208
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Another nice sunny day so this afternoon I set up shop on the drive to do the fitting for the supports for greyhound bridge.

When I designed the board some 5 years ago I made a few errors in calculation of heights and we hadn't decided what state of the tide to model. As a result we have had to sink the piers into the lower part of the baseboard then support them below the board.

 

I spent Monday night at the clubroom working out how and where the 8 side girders fitted and connected with the piers. Today I set to work to cut 44 mm diameter holes through the lower board. First find my hole saw. The saw was found but not the arbor to hold it so it was off to Screwfix to buy an arbor. The new arbor wouldn't fit the saw so a new hole saw had to be bought as well.

 

Anyway the new saw made short work of drilling the holes.

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I then had to put 3mm thick packing pieces under the holes to get the required height.

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Finally 6 ply strips were screwed on that will keep the piers at the right height.

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This seemed to be OK .

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Though this may seem long winded it was easier tan trimming the piers.

The decision to go for low tide was so that the whole structure of the bridge pier was visible.

 

Anyway the board is now back in the car and I'm going to work on some of the side girders then hopefully try and fit them at Upton on Saturday. One minor problem one of the girders has had a whole load of araldite adhesive leak over it in the crate. This obviously hasn't set without the hardener but is horribly sticky and gets everywhere. It's now soaking in hot water and washing up liquid so that I can get it cleaned up to start soldering bits to it.

 

Jamie

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Hi Jamie

 

Have you seen the article on the electrification in Tramway & Railway World of June 1908? It has all the usual photos plus a few details of the trains that I haven't seen before, including a roof shot and an interior with the motor hatches lifted. May be useful for your EMU build?

 

I can't post them here unfortunately as I'm not sure of the copyright/usage restrictions of the archive where I found it.

Edited by sparks
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Hi Jamie

 

Have you seen the article on the electrification in Tramway & Railway World of June 1908? It has all the usual photos plus a few details of the trains that I haven't seen before, including a roof shot and an interior with the motor hatches lifted. May be useful for your EMU build

I can't post them here unfortunately as I'm not sure of the copyright/usage restrictions of the archive where I found it.

Thanks for that.  I'm not sure if I've seen that one but will check.   Any info is useful.

 

Jamie

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Thanks for that.  I'm not sure if I've seen that one but will check.   Any info is useful.

 

Jamie

 

Not a problem. If you pm me your email address I can send you a copy (too large to attach to a pm)

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12%, 3 baseboards, set p at Upton. I'm gong to spend the day soldering various parts of Greyhound Bridge. Dave is going to be using his little milling machine producing a master for casting the columns for the station footbridge. Should be a good day. if anyone wants to come along, several good layouts including Woodfield Road making it's first outing since Dave Woodward sold it.

 

Just off the A 638 half way between Doncaster and Wakefield in the Methodist church on the main street.

 

Jamie

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We had a good day at Upton. I got two more caisson caps completed and Dave got more of the bracing pieces put on the bridge girders and we had some good chats with the public.

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Greyhound bridge looks nice with all three supports under it.

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Even with a bit of stock the station/loco yard area looked good. By chance I had selected a tray of coal wagons that represented local pits which caused much conversation.

 

Jamie

Edited by jamie92208
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After last Saturday's work at Upton and putting everything away I finally got my act together yesterday and started serious work on the bridge girders for Greyhound Bridge. These were made over a year ago but still need a lot of detail adding to them. mainly various T shaped strengthening beams on the sides. The originals were in two types, one that went at a joint between two plates and the other that was an intermediate one along each length of plate.l The plates (rolled in 1911, were 6'high and usually in 9' or 6' lengths. This produces a regular pattern of T girders. Tony and I have christened them Wide and narrow T's for shorthand.

 

The 8 girders are all different lengths to suit the geometry of the bridge and thus the layout of T girders is different on each one.

 

Anyway Dave got one finished at Upton. I then set to work yesterday and got all the wide T's done on all 8 girders. Today I set to work to do the narrow ones. 4 hours of soldering later I've had enough but now have 5 girders finished 3 of them with the OHLE masts on them.

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Before lunch I counted up how many narrow T's I needed and found I was 16 short. I thought how I could manage then looked at the scrap and spare etches that I have lying around in the modelling room. When I did the first etch 4 years ago I came up with a design of T girder that Tony then trial assembled. it didn't work very well but it left me with 20 spare bits per sheet that made up one side of a narrow T. I realised that if I put two back to back and soldered them up without punching the rivets out on the vertical rib they should look OK.

This is the result.

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The close spaced pair on the right are my manufactured ones, the one on the left is what they should look like. I'm quite happy with the result of an hours rivet punching, bending and soldering. It shows that I'm correct in my motto to never throw anything away even though my wife doesn't agree.

 

Jamie

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Evening all. A good night was had at the club last night with more station approach fencing installed by Tony and a lot of DAS walling done by Dave. Keith painted some buffer stops and fencing and I surfaced more of the coal yard with a mixture of sand and smokebox soot. Board A4 is nearly all surfaced now.

 

This morning I managed to solder the narrow T's onto another one and a half girders and finished them off tonight. I've now got to add the OHLE stanchions, the rear Half height T's and the handrail stanchions. I've also made a start on cleaning the girders up with Cif and some hot water. I'll find my solder scrapers tomorrow and see how the test one comes up.

 

Jamie

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Still steadily soldering up the girders for Greyhound Bridge. I've now got six of the eight finished front and back with just the two shortest ones to go. I've also done another of the overhead gantry supports which are the most distinctive feature.

 

Much perusing of photos is ongoing a we decide what buildings to make for the coal yard. All the old photos are being looked at again and all sorts of detail are emerging such as the styles of gates (No that's not an intended pun) and the types of dividers between the cells of the various stacks of coal. One photo showed at least six sets of coal merchants scales so I'll have to talk to Duncan Models.

 

Jamie

Edited by jamie92208
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The perusing of photos is producing results but throwing up other thoughts.  I've now started a drawing for a large building in the coal yard that is labelled as 'stores' on the plan.   However in looking at the aerial photo that gives details of the roof and frontage, (another one shows the side elevation) I counted the wagons in the goods yard, coal yard and shed areas.  The total is approx. 50 vans outside the goods shed and in the yard, and at least 49 coal trucks in the coal yard plus another 10 or so around the coaling stage.   I know some of my sidings have been compressed but I will have to get some more wagons bought. Not to mention at least 2 dozen coal carts.

 

Jamie

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Back from a good evening at the club.  However this afternoon I carried on soldering and got most of the riveted strips fitted to the sides of the caissons on the bridge.  Last night I had fitted the bearing pads under the ends of the main girders,  I needed to fire up my 120 watt iron to sweat them on.

 

Tonight however Tony and John joined me.   Tony carried on installing fencing on the station approach.  This is looking rather nice now.

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John spent time painting the rails in the coal yard.  They don't show very well here but it is also coming on.

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John also brought the Royal Coach down and I used it as a template for making a mock up of the building in which it was maintained by Waring and Gillow's craftsmen.  This building used to be the loco shed for the original 'little' North Western Railway.This will give Mark a good idea as to how to build it.

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I had taken all the parts of Greyhound Bridge down and spent some time screwing it all together. I only had 6 of the girders with me but the results exceeded expectations.   We used the Royal Coach (Scratchbuilt by John) to test clearances.

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I added a couple of catenary poles with blu tak.

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We were all very pleased with the result after so many years work.  Still more to do such as walkways, handrails , overhead and painting but very happy bunnies tonight.

 

When I stacked the board in the back room it gave us an even better view of the bridge.

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All in all a good evenings work.

 

Jamie

 

Edited for typos at a more reasonable hour.

Edited by jamie92208
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Thanks for that Tony.   It will hopefully look a lot better when it's got it's handrails and the OLE supports on.  Then it all has to be cleaned up and painted but I'm very pleased with how it's starting to look.  At Warley when I had some side girders fitted in a temporary way there were some clearance problems but last night with all the right screws in place it worked fine.  The Royal coach is a 60 footer and thus a good test vehicle for clearances.

 

Jamie

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I've been following this fantastic project as a Lancaster resident for a while. It's probably not much use now, and perhaps it was already posted, but I came across a PDF on an archive of the Lancashire County Council web site today about the opening of Greyhound Bridge as a road bridge in 1972 and perhaps some of the information in it might be of interest? 

 

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Thanks very much for that John. Someone else did send me a link to that one a few years ago but it' good to have the leaflet posted here. It was this that eventually lead me to the plans for the bridge. The leaflet mentions the consulting engineers that devised the scheme to re use the bridge. I found that the firm was still in existence and for the next 2 years badgered them and eventually Lancashire County until someone got fed up of my phone calls and sent me the original plans. I had kept digging as I knew that they must exist as the bridge still carries a trunk road.

 

Jamie

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