Lancaster Green Ayre - The Barn Owls have returned.

[jamie92208]

Well the work week has now finished and the layout is all dismantled and the church set up for Sunday morning.   This morning I set to work to finish off sorting out the loco shed area and after an hour had the little iXION 0-6-0 running nicely round the whole shed layout.  Then John  arrived with his other half and we spent half an hour sorting out the persepctive on Skerton bridge.   That got sorted out and we think that the corner will work.  With the Castle branch and viaducts at one end, the station in the centre, the presence of the bridge and it's approaches at the east end adds visual balance to the whole layout.  The approaches that Paul has been working on are certainly bigger than we expected.

 

Then it was a steady tidy up and put the layout in the side room ready for putting away in the shed on Monday.  Tony and Dave arrived and we got things tidied up and also reflected on the week.   The general concensus is that an awful lot has been achieved and 2 of the 3 panels are now doing what they should.   I managed to prove that a lot of the inter panel signalling system is working so all three are talking to each other.  Now it is back to the task of finishing the wiring on the remaining 8 boards rerady for another work week in October.  

 

Anyway after fighting with You Tube I have managed to upload a bit of video of 14 coming down from Castle over the viaduct with a short freight.

 

 

Jamie

Edited February 23, 2013 by jamie92208

[supersonic]

Did we do al of that this week, looks good on the video, even starting to sound correct

[jamie92208]

Even though the work week is over there is still more to show. As SWMBO has now gone away for a week I have had chance to get some photos processed to upload, as well as bringing a baseboard and control panel into the house to sort out.

 

As mentioned above we managed to do quite a bit of work on Skerton Bridge at the east end of the layout. This is the main road bridge that now carries the souuthbound A6 and was built in the 18th Century. A carboard mock up was constructed last year and now we have had chance to do the real thing. It will be in 3 sections with one part fixed and the other 2 removable for transport.

It turned out rather larger than we expected. It has been suggested that we will have to apply for planning permission.

Hopefully these two pictures give some idea of the size. To give an idea of clearances an overhead gantry was propped against where the bridge opening is going to be. It stretches over 2 boards and now needs a lot of painting and detailing.

And just to finish off the week here's a photo of 14 coming out of the Castle Branch Fiddle yard.

 

Jamie

[supersonic]

now Jamie have you seen this video of the Green Ayre electrics running? go to - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6VvD9cGBCU

You can see directly the real train going thro' our scenic break on the Castle branch, looks like we have it a little TOO bucolic for reality.  Great detail on the overheads, even if in 1965. 

Edited March 13, 2013 by supersonic

[Ohmisterporter]

Interesting video. A couple of noticeable things in it were how close the sleeper spacing is when viewed from the cab, and the curve of the Greyhound bridge parapet is in short straight sections, not curves. Not sure if this makes it more, or less, difficult to model. Enjoying the progress.

[jamie92208]

Thanks for the link.  It looks like a clip from 'The Pioneer Line'  taken by Robert Jackson who was the vicar at Scale Hall.  

 

We certainly need to look at the scenic break.  Fortunately the straight section on Greyhound Bridge make it easier to model.  The ones for our section are in production in Normanton at the moment.

 

 

Jamie

Edited March 17, 2013 by jamie92208

[markc256]

It was good to talk to you today Jamie and thanks for the advice, I'll be giving a whirl tomorrow!

[jamie92208]

It's a while since I gave an update but things are still ongoing.  We are having fun wiring the fiddle yard.  This is built on 9mm exterior ply which turns out to be conductive.  (see this thread) . After advice from this forum and some testing we have decided to ignore the phenomenon.  Tony is starting to put all the bracing and rivet strips on the side pieces for Greyhound Bridge.    I've been fitting finials to the platform canopis and have got 7 out of 20 done.  They look good and hopefully I will be able to get three bays fitted and painted and then take some photos.  I still need to fit the gutters but have now decided that the plasticard trial ones that i fitted don't look right so I have designed some etched ones that will have to wait for my next etch.      The signals have now been started by Jon Fitness so there is plenty going on.

 

If anyone is interested we will have 6 or so boards of the layout up at Upton Methodist Church Hall on Saturday 6th April as part of a small show along with some other layouts.  It's just off the A638 between Wakefield and Doncaster.  We should ahve trains running in the station and the shed area.

 

 

Jamie

Edited March 23, 2013 by jamie92208

[jamie92208]

Just got back from a great day out at Upton. We took 7 boards and set up the station, goods yard, the loco servicing yard and the Castle branch, John Patrick brough the latest backscenes. (He's now painted 7 of them and when we got them all set up it looked great.

Here is a veiw looking acros Greyhound bridge.

Before running trains we made sure that the tracks were clear of snow.

It was good to see the good yard full of stock for the first time. Even if I hadn't had time to sort out the correct vehicles.

As we had now proved the electrics we were able to run trains

and had four light engines shuttling round the loco yard.

The best bit for me was when I sat at a table to have my lunch and was able to look along the platforms with the sunlight shining through the awnings. Most of these now have finials and 15 of them are actually glued in place. The shadows underneath looked very evocative.

Unfortunately my camera battery then ran out (My fault for not charging it.) but I hope that these give a flavour of what it's starting to look like.

 

Jamie

[Jon Fitness]

Thats starting to look really nice Jamie! Should have a couple of colourful signals to add to it soon!

Jon F.

[jamie92208]

It may seem to have gone quiet at the moment but things haven't ground to a halt. We are busy wiring the fiddle yard and now the good weather has arrived I'll be able to make a start on the carpentry for he Fiddle yard control panel.(My daughters stuff is now taking over the only bit of the garage where I can work indoors so i have to work outside.) There are only just over 4 boards left to wire so the end is nearly in sight. Away from the clubrooms the first two signals have been constructed and I've spent a lot of the last couple of months working on artwork for another batch of etches.

One part of this was for the main lattice girder gantry over the station throat at the west end, gantry 20.

This is quite complex and spans four tracks so will be about 18" long altogether.

More etches are needed for other areas. Tony who is building Greyhound bridge had tried to assemble some of the first etches that I drew (2 years ago) and found them impossible to assemble so I've redrawn the etch for some T girders that go on the side of the main bridge girders.

At the east end of the layout there needs to be a scenic break at the entrance to the fiddle yard and we decided to move it nearly to the back of the layout in order to avoid a large expanse of nearly bare boards. I needed some form of scenic break and happened to find a drawing of a lattice girder footbridge that used to span the goods yard but about 1/4 mile further east towards Leeds. By chance this had been lengthened during WW1 when a new siding ws installed so a new drawing was made which I happen to have all beautifully colour washed and on linen.

It may not be very clear but is a work of art and has all the constructional details on. I have therefore had to knuckle down and try to reduce it to a 2D scheme that can be etched and then folded up. The bridge will be over 500mm long and will span 5 tracks with the two stairs at either side and will be positioned a short distance in front of the backscene to provide the scenic break. After discussion with the artistic authorities it was decided that I would have to model the whole bridge , not just have it in half relief.

The end result is that I needed 1 1/2 sheets of artwork which will go to the etchers this coming week.

This is the main etch with the parts for gantry 20 at the top and down the left. There are also the stair treads and stair girders and handrails (in a block). I just hope that they etch as finely as I hope they will.

This has the lattice parts for the bridge along with the new T girders for greyhound bridge.
I can't wait for the new etches to arrive and then get the soldering iron out, though it always seems a shame to cut into a sheet of etch.

I've also drawn the bridge pillars for the footbridge and the plan is to have 2 brass masters made and then get them cast in resin.

Things are happening!
.

Jamie

Edited July 22, 2022 by jamie92208

[edward66]

I remember this bridge very well from my childhood. For some reason it was known locally as Bacon Bridge, who knows why. My Mum used to take me there to watch the shunting in Ladies Walk sidings and the big thrill was to stand above one of the Jinties as it passed underneath and get the smell of the steam and smoke as it was blasted through the cracks between the boards.

We lived on Newton Estate where I got a great view of operations in L.W. sidings and New Zealand sidings from my Grandma's bedroom, that's where my lifelong interest in railways started, aparently at the age of three I would watch the trains for hours. The Jinties had LMS on their tanks then, I must be getting old!

 

Edward

[jamie92208]

I remember this bridge very well from my childhood. For some reason it was known locally as Bacon Bridge, who knows why. My Mum used to take me there to watch the shunting in Ladies Walk sidings and the big thrill was to stand above one of the Jinties as it passed underneath and get the smell of the steam and smoke as it was blasted through the cracks between the boards.

We lived on Newton Estate where I got a great view of operations in L.W. sidings and New Zealand sidings from my Grandma's bedroom, that's where my lifelong interest in railways started, aparently at the age of three I would watch the trains for hours. The Jinties had LMS on their tanks then, I must be getting old!

 

Edward

That's nice to hear Edward.  Likewise i have railway memories from the age of 3 but not of Lancaster.  I hope that the finished bridge bears some resemblance to your memories.  I'm having to make both sets of stairs come off at right angles to the bridge but it will hopefully look something like.   The plan shows that it was extended 10' in 1916 and the eastern staircase was moved 10' further east to accommodate an aditional siding, I believe it was due to wartime traffic from a shell filling factory.

Most of the plan is wonderfully precise except one area where the height of a column is given as "approximately 10 feet ". The Cumbrian Railway Association have two photos of the bridge taken just after it was rebuilt.

 

Jamie

Edited May 5, 2013 by jamie92208

[edward66]

Hi Jamie,

 

The bridge was painted with that grey paint with a kind of silvery sheen to it, rather coarse and grainy, common on bridges etc. The building to the east was a shell filling facility during WW1, some of it originally the Lancaster Carriage and Wagon works, one of their coaches from 1865 survives on the Talyllyn Railway. Later it became a textile dyeing and printing works, Standfast, which still exists.

 

Your Green Ayre station is impressive, the view under the roof is very realistic and naustalgic for me, Mum used to take us kids on the electric line to Morecambe Prom. station for an afternoon on the beach. It is sad that the Wennington  - Carnforth line was chosen to survive rather than the line through Caton to Green Ayre but I think Lancaster City was desperate for a second crossing of the Lune for road traffic and Greyhound Bridge was ideal which could have been the reason for the choice.

 

Edward

[nip]

Hi Jamie 

 

I have a feeling that Bacon bridge was moved from Green Ayre to Steam Town at Carnforth could be wrong.

 

Regards

 

nip

[jamie92208]

Hi Jamie,

 

The bridge was painted with that grey paint with a kind of silvery sheen to it, rather coarse and grainy, common on bridges etc. The building to the east was a shell filling facility during WW1, some of it originally the Lancaster Carriage and Wagon works, one of their coaches from 1865 survives on the Talyllyn Railway. Later it became a textile dyeing and printing works, Standfast, which still exists.

 

Your Green Ayre station is impressive, the view under the roof is very realistic and naustalgic for me, Mum used to take us kids on the electric line to Morecambe Prom. station for an afternoon on the beach. It is sad that the Wennington  - Carnforth line was chosen to survive rather than the line through Caton to Green Ayre but I think Lancaster City was desperate for a second crossing of the Lune for road traffic and Greyhound Bridge was ideal which could have been the reason for the choice.

 

Edward

Hi Edward,  Thanks for that.  I was aware that the work was due to an extra siding for traffic connected with a shell filling factory but didn't realise that it was the Carriage and Wagon Works.  These feature in the photo that I've got of the bridge after the work was completed but can't post for copyright reasons.  

 

Thanks for your copmments about the station.  It's great to see it progresing and when it was at Upton and the sun shone the shadows under the awning made it look good.  We've gotr to get the station footbridge finished (Supersonic of this parish is building that) and then get it fixed in place and the girders for teh overhead supports to connect the two sets of awnings.   The platforms are being altered at the moment as we are having to re edge them due to them fouling the outside cranked kocos which sort of walked along the edge.  Once they are sorted and reinstalled then we can fix the awnings and do the cross girders.

 

As to Bacon bridge I can't wait to get the etches back and make a start on them.  I real;ised that I've virtually created a bridge kit, the rouble is I can't get away with blamin ghte kit designer when i can't build it.

 

Jamie

[jamie92208]

Things continue to move.   After a week of emailing backwards and forwards the etches are finally in production so I should get them in a fortnight.   At the clubrooms we are progressing well with the wiring and board E3 b(The middle of the Fiddle yard) is nearly done.  Just 3 more boards to go!.

the main platforms have now been cut back and new edge tiles glued on so we are now in the process of reinstalling them.  At the same time we are starting to add more scenic details and last night glued the strips of platform edge walling on.  These were airbrushed by malcolm Stuart some time ago and look good.   As we've test run trains over that board we could even ballast it which would look good.

Also last night we started looking at the Goods shed area at the west end.  This had been roughly laid out on templot so John Patrick, who has volunteered to build it, and I tried to work out where everything should go.  When we plotted it up and sketched in the office that goes on one end a problem cropped up.  The goods shed had a lean to extension alongside it and this needs to have road access.  Our first attempt meant that only cartsa scale 1' wide would be able to get in let alone turn round.   This morning I spent a bit of time playing with templot.  The main buildings have been created using the 'shove timbers' function and thiugh they show up as a large area of yellow are in fact one very large sleeper.  The beauty of this is that they are ties to the piece of track that they belong to so when you move them the footprint of the building follows the curves of the track.  I shifted the goods shed by 120mm and everything dropped into place.  I've now printed out the relavent tempot sheets and glued them together.  These will then be stuck to a piece of plywood on which the goods shed will be built.   the plan is to make the main goods shed removable and the 'lean to' will be fixed to the board.   I've also started work on the fiddle yard control panel and Dave is getting on with the footbridge so lots is happenning.

 

Jamie

[jamie92208]

Yesterday the next batch of etches arrived coutesy of Grainge and Hodder. 4 sheets 18 by 12 and 4 12 by 9. The problem now is to sort out which piece is which.

 

As you will see things are very tightly packed to save cost. As a result many of the pieces don't have their mreference numbers on them. When I did the etches. I worked out how many of which piece I needed and then used a small spreadsheet to keep track of how many to put on each sheet and the most economical method for me. On these I've got three main sets. A complete kit for the large Gantry that spans four tacks (Gantry 20), a complete kit for the Ladies Walk footbridge (aka Bacon bridge as mentioned above.) plus parts for Greyhound Bridge as wll as other small stuff such as the opening windows for the Loco Shed and spare bits for the overhead equipment.

 

Now I've had to print put crib sheets of the bridge and gantry parts so that I can ID all the pieces as I cut them off the etch. I've still got several thousand rivets to punch out on the Greyhound Bridge parts. However after all the work I can't wait to start assembling Bacon Bridge and the gantry. If all goes well they should both be on the bits of the layout at Warley in November.

 

Meanwhile the wiring on the 25th board (E2)is nearly finished only 2 more to go,(E1 and D2) and John Patrick has made a start on the goods shed. After much discussion this had been reduced in length by 1 bay which takes it down to 600 mm long rther than 900 but it will still be a substantial structure. If we had kept it at it's full length it would have had to curve to fit the track plan, but as that area of the layout has been compressed it should still look OK.

 

Jamie

Edited July 22, 2022 by jamie92208

[LNER4479]

Hi Jamie,

 

I've been 'lurking' for a while, enjoying reading your updates and seeing progress on the layout, so just to say I admire the obvious determination and effort that is going into creating a layout that is a bit 'different' (perhaps a lot different!) in terms of scale, era and interesting choice of prototype. I look forward to further updates.

[jamie92208]

Thanks for your kind comments LNER 4479.  As we've now been wiring for nearly 18 months soemtimes a bit of positive feedback helps.

 

Well after posting yesterday i set to work to identify the various parts and sort them into different boxes and by the end of the evening had managed to sort and cut up 4 large sheets.  The half sheets will have to wait until the rivets are punched out.

 

One of the small items that i did was the opening parts of the loco shed windows.  On Etch 1 I carefully included the window frames with the opening casements attached.  When I came to try and assemble them I realised that I hadn't reduced the casements in size the fit into the frame.  On Etch 4 I redid the casements and this morning did a trial fit onto one of the frames.

With apologies for the poor quality photo, here is the result.  It gives the effect that I wanted as all the photos show the casements slightly open at a shallow angle.  I will have to solder them up then paint and glaze them but I'm happy with the result.

 

Alongside the window are the first of some 70 plus gutter sections to compete the awnings.  These will be bent up (3 folds to each section) in the bending bars and then soldered together to give the impression of overlap joints and then araldited to the edge of the plywood frame on the awnings.  The originals were cast iron.  We tried various other methods including plasticard but it didn't look right so hopefully this will give the right result.  

 

Jamie

Edited July 22, 2022 by jamie92208

[Xerces Fobe2]

Great to see your amazing layout progressing  - I look forward to seeing the EMUs!

 

Nigel

[jamie92208]

Great to see your amazing layout progressing  - I look forward to seeing the EMUs!

 

Nigel

Thanks Nigel.  My main priority at the moment is the wiring and I've got the Fiddle yard control panel to build then It will be time for scenic and stock work at last.

 

Jamie

[jamie92208]

Well after a good day at the O Gauge Guild show at Cleckheaton yesterday. I've borrowed the rivet punch and as SWMBO ws off listening to Cliff Richard, had the house to myself for an evening of bonking out rivets in the new etches.

The etches contain everal items aas mentioned. Atthe moment I've done the rivetting on part of the footbridge that wil become bacon bridge at the east end of the layout. This is a lattice bridge and I managed to design it so that it's made up of 7 identical panels with modified ones at each end. The first one looked like this after rivetting

2 of them were then test folded and laid on top of each other to produce a unit.

I realised then that i need to modify my bending bars and ut some slots in one bar so that I can bend all four sides of the etch evenly.

The end etches look like this.

At the joins between each unit there is a curved outrigger to give strength. This will be of two pieces

The inner part loos like this.

On the right is the etch this is then folded to rpoduce the finished part on the left. A plate will then be soldered round the edge to make a T girder.

The ends are supported by columns and between the tops of the colums are what look like castings but the etch looks like this.

The staircases had very fine handrails of about an inch diamtere but the etch has come out well.

Below the handrails (Which will be rather delicate is one of the side girders with witness marks for teh stair treads to be soldered into. These will have tops and bottoms run along them to produce a form of H girder.

The treada come in a fold up batch that makes about 12 treads at one go after being folded.

Again I have much to learn as I hadn't got my allowands correct for the bends so the long length of treads gete progressively more out of alignment with the witness marks. It looks like I will have to take a bit of each tread with tin snips and solder them on individually. (Life is a learning curve, sometimes steeper than other times.)

 

As well as the footbridge I redid some parts for Greyhound Bridge that hadn't worked on an earlier etch. They form a T gider with a plate reinforcing it. these come at the joints between the 6' high by 9 or 12 ' long plates that the bridge webs were made from. The etch looks like this after the rivets were punched out.

(I've only got about 64 of these to punch. 24 are done)

This is then folded up to rpoduce the T girder effect.

.

I made a mistake in the length of the intermediate web but that can be taken off with a file.

[jamie92208]

Work is still ongoing, despite holidays and other things going on. John Patrick has now started work on the goods shed and last night brought it to the clubrooms to try it on the board.

This shows the office at the west end whichis nearly finished.

These show the truncated goods shed on the board. It is still over 2' long but is starting to look rather nice. It's not quite in it's correct position as it will move about 8" east to allow a roadway around the office to the extension lean to that has to be built betwen the shed and the viaduct.

 

In the meantime we are now on the penultimate boad with the wiring and I've made start on gantry 20.

 

Jamie

Edited June 21, 2013 by jamie92208

[jamie92208]

No we haven't all gone on holiday, though I've been away. Anyway the good shed is now nearly complete and has been trial fitted. Last night we finished wiring baseboard E1 so only have D2 to do which was half done by the end of the night. Tonight, once it had started to cool down I made a start on the Fidle yard Control panel and got 6 out the 8 dovetails cut so next time I should be able to finish the carcass and make a start on the lid.

 

 

Jamie