Lancaster Green Ayre - The Barn Owls have returned.

[jamie92208]

It's lovely Jamie. I'm looking forward to seeing it with a nice paint and lining job on it.

I've always used just basic red oxide primer and British Layland Damask red for midland locos it's a good match for oxide of lake in the Midland Style paint chart. You have to do it from a bit of a distance though with car rattle cans or it will go on too thick. 12 - 14 inches is good.

Regards Lez. 

Thanks Lez, that's the combination that I use and it works well.  I'm just waiting for the weather to warm up a bit before I start spraying.

 

Jamie

[jamie92208]

Whilst we've been off line I have actually managed to get a bit of work done.   Some casting that I was given arrived in the post and also I got a delivery of some more lovely bits of work from Laurie Griffin.   The Chimbley was attached and I couldn't resist putting the loco together to see how it looked.

Whilst Tempeste Gabrielle was raging it was better to stay in the house but I got over to the shed last night and spent an hour working on the handrails and ejector.   I got the parts for the offside dry fixed but did solder all the pieces of the ejector piping together.     It's starting to look OK and hopefully I'll get it fcxed on today.

I also fitted the sandbox fillers, which are on the footplate near to the clack valve pipes.    

 

Jamie

[lezz01]

Hi Jamie.

I love the Johnson 2-4-0 and 4-4-0's they are such pritiy  little locos.  If I may though, it might just be the angle of the photo but the cab roof looks like it's sloping down at the rear slightly maybe it needs a little tweak  upwards. As I said it might be the angle of the photo.

Regards Lez. 

[jamie92208]

34 minutes ago, lezz01 said:

Hi Jamie.

I love the Johnson 2-4-0 and 4-4-0's they are such pritiy  little locos.  If I may though, it might just be the angle of the photo but the cab roof looks like it's sloping down at the rear slightly maybe it needs a little tweak  upwards. As I said it might be the angle of the photo.

Regards Lez. 

Thanks Les, I'm just off to the shed so will have a look at it.

Jamie

 

[Dave Hunt]

On 1/28/2019 at 8:27 PM, Compound2632 said:

I have a treasured and much-thumbed copy of Midland Style. It doesn't have an "oxide of iron" swatch. p. 141-2: "From about 1900 these units [ballast wagons] were painted red oxide [...]. According to Henry Crocker, snow ploughs and companion vehicles such as ballast brakes were also painted red oxide." (Henry Crocker was an employee of the C&W Dept at Derby during the last years of the company.)

Many years ago when I was first researching the 15 ton Cowans Sheldon cranes, Peter Tatlow put me in touch with a Mr. Roscoe Turner who had worked at Plaistow in the 1920s and who was involved with breakdown trains. He told me that the ex-Midland cranes were locomotive crimson lake.

Like the way 216 is coming on Jamie.

Dave

Edited February 2, 2019 by Dave Hunt

[jamie92208]

We had a lovely sunny, but cool day here and I spent much of the afternoon in the hangar  shed starting to get things sorted in the workshop area mebtween the modelling toom and the layout,  However after all the discussion about breakdown trains and liveries etc I dug out the part built crane and put it on the layout along with the plough train.  

Here's the breakdown train with the match truck and two tool/brake vans.  The match truck and brake vans were all built by Ray Clasper.  The match truck used a Slater's underframe but everything else is scratch built.

The crane obviously needs it's transfers and some more detailing but is looking the part.  It has actually run on the layout and very few people commented on the unfinished state.  It certainly rides well.

Here is the match truck which needs a lot of tools/ladders etc adding to look authentic.

Here is one of the brake vans.   They were both built from photos but I can't remember which type this is.

Here is the plough train with the 6 wheel tool van in the centre and two locos, back to back which was the way they ran them. Ray built all these from scratch using drawings and parts that I supplied.   

This is one of the ploughs.  They also run well but as the wheels are hidden they are the devil to get on the track with 3 of the wheelsets hidden by the skirts. They probably need a little bit more weight adding but also run well.

Here's the 6 wheel tool van.

And finally one of the much modified Lima 4F's.  This is now a 3F.

All the vehicles are painted with Rover Damask Red as the main colour. However a couple of the photos look the wrong colour due to the glorious sunset colours that are streaming through the west facing windows behind me.

 

Jamie

 

Edited February 3, 2019 by jamie92208

[Dave Hunt]

Jamie,

I think that the vans on the breakdown train are those that were built from Kirtley tariff brakes. I like to see things like breakdown trains, snowploughs etc. on layouts rather than just 'standard' goods and passenger traffic.

Dave 

[Compound2632]

Many thanks for those photos - I have the D&S kit for the 15 ton crane in 4 mm scale and am contemplating building a breakdown train. Dave Hunt's Midland Record articles are invaluable for this. For the Birmingham area, I don't think I need snowploughs!

[Dave Hunt]

I have had one of the D&S 7mm kits for the last twenty years (my wife bought it for me for my 50th birthday) but still haven't built it! That is all about to change, though, as I have got back into railway modelling properly after a break of too many years and once I have finished making a couple of industrial 0-4-0s that I started about eight years ago (originally for a brewery layout that a friend was going to build but never got off the ground) I am going to start on a S7 layout of a Midland MPD loosely based on Hellifield. As part of the project I'll be making the crane and obviously I'll be doing the match wagon as well and like Jamie I'll want a couple of the rebuilt Kirtley tariff brakes. Jamie collaborated with Fox transfers to produce 7mm transfers for the MR 15 tonners and I've bought a set so all I need to do now is get some Slaters wheels and it's game on. Unfortunately the Hellifield ploughs are slightly after my timescale, which is about 1906/7 - an interesting time for modelling the Midland as it was going through livery changes and locomotive renumbering.

 

Dave

[jamie92208]

One of these days I will do a couple of tender cab locos for the plough train.  The ex Lima 4F's have done well so far but the info about the tender cabs is around in Midland Record.  The other one I would like to do is one of the fast 0-6-0's with 6' diameter wheels.  The one I would do would be 3333 that's pictured at Lancaster in one of the Midland Record articles. It will cost me a fortune in transfers.

 

Jamie

[Dave Hunt]

On ‎02‎/‎02‎/‎2019 at 00:34, Dave Hunt said:

Many years ago when I was first researching the 15 ton Cowans Sheldon cranes, Peter Tatlow put me in touch with a Mr. Roscoe Turner who had worked at Plaistow in the 1920s and who was involved with breakdown trains. He told me that the ex-Midland cranes were locomotive crimson lake.

Like the way 216 is coming on Jamie.

Dave

I made a mistake in the above post - Roscoe Turner worked at Bescot.

Dave 

[jamie92208]

The problem of 216's wobbly crank axle has not gone away.   On Tuesday I went over to meet some model railway friends (Yes I do have some) and we convened a brains trust whilst watching HO swiss trains running round. Various solutions were proposed, including drilling and tapping for 16BA bolts.  However after much thought I decided to try and replace the axle and silver solder the cranks before cutting the new axle.

 

Taking the old axle out wasn't easy and I had to unsolder the coupling rod big end straps and the 4 eccentric rods.  Then I started drilling into the ends of the axle with a 3.6mm drill.    I was able to go straight through and eventually after some filing and a bit of work got the pieces of axle out.

 

After a little more work with the file I was able to insert a spare axle as a test.   

Despite the drill wandering a bit, where it hit pins that I had put there it did reassemble.   You can see two of the pieces of the old axle beside the assembly.  I now need to source some silver solder paste and a blowtorch.   

 

Jamie

[Dave Hunt]

Looking good so far Jamie. Some silver solder, lots of heat in the right place and bingo!

Best of luck.

 

Dave

[jamie92208]

Things have been ticking along in the background.   Silver solder has been ordered and will be arriving with a friend from the UK in the first week in March, Apparently the post office aren't too happy about the flux being posted across borders.   Also a long awaited sheet of LNWR transfers has arrived.   I did a survey of what LNWR stock I need to letter and find that I have 9 vehicles of which 5 are built and one of the unbuilt ones is actually a twin bolster so I 5 actual vehicles to build and I think 7 to letter.   I did consider having a go at one of the wagons, which are all ABS white metal kits, whilst waiting for the silver solder, but I had been doing research as to how to finish the tender on 216.   I couldn't find a photo that showed the tender top and whether or not it had a big square overflow cap over the water pick up.   Dave Hunt did his best to tell me how to work out if I needed one but the phot I had wasn't detailed enough. Then I had a light bulb moment whilst washing up.   I looked at the only photo that I've got of 216, again, and lo and behold the fireman is standing with his hand resting on the handle for winding the pick up gear up and down.  Problem solved.

 

Then it was over to the shed and out with the soldering iron. Soon the overflow cap was attached and at the same time I moved the toolbox to the back of the tender.

Then I set to work on the brake standard and the stand for the pick up control handle.   These were built up from etched quadrants and some brass wire. I also attached the hand holds above the front steps.   All in all a good hours work.

The usual cleaning up needed then I need to find and fit the handles to the brake column and the pick up gear.   After that it will be sorting pick ups for the tender and brake gear.

 

Jamie

[sir douglas]

are the top of the hand rails the wrong way round?  should the end that sticks out to the left be attached to the tender body?

Edited February 11, 2019 by sir douglas

[Dave Hunt]

17 minutes ago, sir douglas said:

are the top of the hand rails the wrong way round?  should the end that sticks out to the left be attached to the tender body?

Correct Holmes. Jamie, see me after school!

 

Dave

 

Edited February 11, 2019 by Dave Hunt

[jamie92208]

Not a huge amount of modelling has been done lately as other tasks have got in the way.  However I did turn the brake column supports round on 216's tender.    However in view of the warm weather this week I've been able to do some work on the layout.   Mid March the Charente Maritime Railway Group are coming to visit so I wanted to get the layout into a better state to be shown.   On Tuesday one of the group , Andy, came over and we spent two hours putting up all the backscenes and most of the lighting rig supports.  It's starting to look better already.

This is the view looking North and looking the other way it looks like this.

When I got all the poles up I realised that, not only were many of the fasteners far too long and of several different styles but that 4 of the poles needed drilling and tapping to make it possible to secure the holders for the alloy crossbars.   I therefor managed to find my M6 taps and a 5mm tapping drill, but was bale to mark and drill the 4 poles before tapping them M6.  I had bought some 20mm M4 bolts this morning and these are now fitted on all the poles.   This is a job that I knew I had to do but had never got the chance to get done before the last shows.

Here is what I'm talking about.

They look an awful lot neater.   The next task this afternoon was to sort out the pelmet units and bolt them up into pairs. Please forgive the sideways picture the software does funny things.

Friday, Andy plus two other group members, Richard and Paul are coming over and we hope to put the lighting rig up and fit the pelmet.  This will make the whole layout a lot more presentable.   Before then I need to overhaul the lighting units as several wires have come adrift.  Here they all are against the rather warm, west wall of the shed waiting for me to do the work tomorrow in time for Friday.

I might even get the station totem mounted on the wall if I can find a method of fixing it.

 

Jamie

 

Edited February 27, 2019 by jamie92208

[Mike Storey]

Outstanding Jamie - that is really beginning to look more "complete". Look forward to seeing it, if I may (after we get back from elsewhere) later this spring.

 

[jamie92208]

8 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

Outstanding Jamie - that is really beginning to look more "complete". Look forward to seeing it, if I may (after we get back from elsewhere) later this spring.

 

As you know Mike you are very welcome to pop over any time.   If you get chance Friday afternoon come and join in.

 

Jamie

[Dave Hunt]

Great stuff as usual Jamie. One of these days I'd love to see it in the flesh as the only times I've ever seen it for real were at Warley when it was in part finished form. From the sound of it you have quite a group of ex-pat modellers there to join in the action.

 

Dave

[enginelane]

Looking good in its new home 

[Mike Storey]

3 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

As you know Mike you are very welcome to pop over any time.   If you get chance Friday afternoon come and join in.

 

Jamie

 

Would love to Jamie but regret I am tied up with other matters at the mo. But count me in from late April.

 

[Joseph_Pestell]

14 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

 

 

 

 

 

I might even get the station totem mounted on the wall if I can find a method of fixing it.

 

Jamie

 

 

Assuming that you are referring to the Giggleswick nameboard, it should be easy enough. French DIY stores keep a good selection of timber mouldings including right-angle section. So two thin battens fixed to the wall and then the L-section fixed to them, should provide you with a frame that you can slide the board into.

[jamie92208]

58 minutes ago, Mike Storey said:

 

Would love to Jamie but regret I am tied up with other matters at the mo. But count me in from late April.

 

It will have to be mid June then due to other commitments at this end.

 

All the best

 

Jamie

[jamie92208]

Some more work done in the shed today.  The lighting units were all tested and necessary repairs made.   Somewhere in the move one of the three power supplies has gone AWOL so another has been ordered and should be here before the due day.   I also managed to get all the bolts out between the front and rear rows of boards and they have been separated by an inch or two.   Thus everything is ready for tomorrow.   

 

Jamie.