Lancaster Green Ayre - The Barn Owls have returned.

[Dava]

Very much looking forward to seeing the progress and trains running at Nottingham

 

Dava

[jamie92208]

Back at the hotel. thirst quenched.   Trains are running and the layout is up.   We id manage to forget the M6 bolts which will arrive in the morning so we won't have the lighting rig up but the ambient lighting in the hall is excellent.   The bolts willarrive in the morning and the backscene will be erected.

 

Hope to see some of you over the weekend.

 

Jamie

[Dava]

It was nice to see the occasional train, steam railcar & light engine movement at Nottingham this afternoon!

 

Dava

[jamie92208]

Evening all from the hotel.   Dave and I are just browsing the interweb thing before going back downstairs for some liquid refreshment.

The day has gone remarkably quickly.  We started running trans this morning and then the three extra members arrived from Wakefield with the M6 bolts.  We split into two teams and one team got the backscenes on sharpish and the other team worked on getting triains running.

I spent most of the day snagging but the good thing was that I was able to find and remedy all but one of the snags, sometimes with a quick bit of soldering.  I even got chance to work on a few locos and get them running.  My Kirtley 2716 was a non runner but is a pig to take apart.  However they work better when both motor leads are soldered to the motor.  That was done, some wheel cleaning took place and it's now running.   Mike Watson also did some fettling and his little Whickham trolley whizzed all over the place.

We got the Castle Branch running and several trains have run up and d0wn but we had problems with a dead section of track at the handover point to the main line.  The cause of this was identified at the close of play tonight and will be sorted pdq in the morning.  (One loose lead on a relay).

 

Anyway here are some photos of the layout.  First of all the shed area with a stud of locos.

Then the back of the shed area with the mock up buildings.

Then the Royal Train shed with the royal coach poking out.   We need to trim the siding a bit to get it to sit properly.  Mark has done a good job on it.

The station approach and Tony's lovely posters.

The coal yard with mock up Sheds.

Flavio's Yard Office surrounded by OHLE gantries.

I also met some RMWebbers who were kind enough to introduce themselves and also was relieved of cash by the Midland Railway Society for a copy of the 1918 Passenger working timetable.

 

Jamie

Edited July 25, 2022 by jamie92208

[Mike Bellamy]

  

I also met some RMWebbers who were kind enough to introduce themselves

 

 

Good to meet you too - and to find out that you thought I was someone else . . . . . . !

 

Mike

 

.

[66C]

Hi Jamie

 

I have been following progress of this fascinating project and it's great to see the photos posted today.

 

In the last photo the entrance to the fiddle yard / storage area can be seen very clearly - so may I make a suggestion.  Instead of the view blocking strips being attached to the rear of the backscene, construct a short box tunnel with its interior painted matt black and put the view blocking strips at the end of that.  The short tunnel will reduce the light showing through the backscene and make the transition less obvious.

 

Best wishes.

[lezz01]

Hi there.

Its starting to come together very very well chaps.

Regards Lez.Z.

[jamie92208]

Hi Jamie

 

I have been following progress of this fascinating project and it's great to see the photos posted today.

 

In the last photo the entrance to the fiddle yard / storage area can be seen very clearly - so may I make a suggestion.  Instead of the view blocking strips being attached to the rear of the backscene, construct a short box tunnel with its interior painted matt black and put the view blocking strips at the end of that.  The short tunnel will reduce the light showing through the backscene and make the transition less obvious.

 

Best wishes.

Thanks for that it's a good idea.   I'll see if I can do it on the joint in the photo.  At the other end of the main line loop there is a nice bridge that's about the right depth but I've not done the interior walls etc yet. 

On the Castle branch there is already a structure that goes behind the backscene to support the end of the overhead and it might be possible to modify that but we need to be careful to allow the bolts on the traverser to be operated.   Howeve thanks very much for the suggestion.  I've plenty of spare plywood.

 

Jamie

[sir douglas]

https://www.flickr.com/photos/59562189@N03/albums/72157663547794994

 

a few of my pics of the weekend. should have taken more of other layouts as well

[Clive Mortimore]

Thanks Jamie for allowing me round the back. Well impressed with some of the MR locos, I liked the class 3 Belpaire. A class not often modelled but were more important to the MR on express work than the handful of compounds they had, and it isn't a MR layout without a compound. 

[jamie92208]

Layout safely back home but not yet fully put away.    The day will be spent taking things out of the chapel and putting them in their various homes.

 

The weekend went well though as has been alluded to there were snags.  Fortunately most of these were discovered and sorted though some await attention.   One of the best parts of the weekend was the people that we met.   One old gent, who had been an electrical engineer for BR introduced himself.  From things that he told me he must have been in his mid 80's but was still very sharp. He told me stories of having ridden on the original electrics in 1944 and then returning as an engineering student to inspect the early 50Hz installations in the 1950's. He spent time explaining to me how the original AC motors had worked and why the 25Hz was chosen in 1907. He also told us that our modelling of the overhead gear was spot on.

 

On Sunday afternoon the cardboard loco modeller (yes cardboard) who's stand was opposite out gave two of their locos a run. It was lovely to see a Duchess in maroon and then a lovely 8F going round the circuit. I hope that someone will try and get one of the photos to me.

 

On Saturday night a running week at the church was planned and I've got to get that organised before Lancaster.

 

Jamie

Edited March 14, 2016 by jamie92208

[sir douglas]

ive got 2 photos of the duchess but not the 8f

 

DSCN0216 by Sam, on Flickr

 

DSCN0217 by Sam, on Flickr

[Jock67B]

Morning Jamie,

Just had a good look at the Nottingham images again, and with the excellent inclusion from sir douglas (I love the Duchess of Atholl!) and the whole affair looks so BIG! How many more weeks/months do you think it will take to reach the finishing stages as a matter of interest?

The people of Lancaster are no doubt looking forward to it with civic pride.

Kind regards,

Jock.

Edited March 16, 2016 by Jock67B

[jamie92208]

Morning Jamie,

Just had a good look at the Nottingham images again, and with the excellent inclusion from sir douglas (I love the Duchess of Atholl!) and the whole affair looks so BIG! How many more weeks/months do you think it will take to reach the finishing stages as a matter of interest?

The people of Lancaster are no doubt looking forward to it with civic pride.

Kind regards,

Jock.

Thanks for the kind words Jock. I really have no idea how long it will take to finish it, and the question is when is a layout ever finished. Perhaps with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight we hit the circuit a year too early. But that decision was taken nearly 5 years ago and various family things intervened to slow progress at various points.

 

I've just had good news that the church is available for the first week in April so the main line circuit, Caste Branch, Good Yard and Loco yard are going up for a week for test running. This is to iron out various snags in both the stock and the track. I have also dug out the train sequence and train plan that was started 3 years ago and the stock is now being sorted into train loads and then each train will be documented and packed in it's own stock tray. Plenty to do.

 

Jamie

[LNER4479]

... with the excellent inclusion from sir douglas (I love the Duchess of Atholl!) ...

When did that one run then? Loco in the pics looks a little bit like 46251 'City of Nottingham' to me - very appropriate, given the venue.

 

46231 never received the BR maroon livery (although that doesn't stop someone painting a model in that livery, of course!)

 

I trust you have a model of 46243 looked out for your next public appearance ... ?

[jamie92208]

When did that one run then? Loco in the pics looks a little bit like 46251 'City of Nottingham' to me - very appropriate, given the venue.

 

46231 never received the BR maroon livery (although that doesn't stop someone painting a model in that livery, of course!)

 

I trust you have a model of 46243 looked out for your next public appearance ... ?

Thanks Graham, I thought it looked good. I do have a photo of Sir William A Stanier FRS on shed which is a good excuse to build a Duchess. Best looking locos ever built. Unfortunately it wouldn't fit on the turntable.

 

Jamie

[45156]

When did that one run then? Loco in the pics looks a little bit like 46251 'City of Nottingham' to me - very appropriate, given the venue.

 

46231 never received the BR maroon livery (although that doesn't stop someone painting a model in that livery, of course!)

 

I trust you have a model of 46243 looked out for your next public appearance ... ?

I've offered mine, though it will not run on the layout as it's OO, not O

[jamie92208]

I've offered mine, though it will not run on the layout as it's OO, not O

It will be given running rights. Perhaps I cold put it on a warflat and have it running round as a scale model en route to the Ratty or somewhere from it's builders. After all Hudswell Clark did build those locos for the Pleasure beach and other lines.

 

Jamie

[jamie92208]

Had a pleasant hour sorting freight stock this afternoon.  The freight stock has not been sorted properly since Long Preston was last exhibited at Wakefield in 2010.   The trays were to put it bluntly in a mess.  I've been checking each vehicle then weighing them.  This has brought on the wrath of SWMBO when she found me using her kitchen scales for the task.  Anyway for crates with a total of 9 trays in them have now been sorted.  1 tray is all cripples that need repair or in two cases are to go on ebay as they are not correct for Green Ayre.   The others are to some extent sorted by train type so when we have our running week in the church in early April we can build some fixed train formations and check them all for running etc, then record them.

 

The process also revealed all sorts of odds and ends that had found their way to the bottom pf the crates over the intervening years.  These include a motor gearbox, and several etches that have dropped off part completed scenic items.  This will enable me to get on with the foot bridge on Ladies Walk which was missing two rather vital etches.   Not a bad afternoons work.

 

Jamie

[sir douglas]

just finished scaling the new lever panel artwork to replace the current one which Jamie says was just a stop gap until he got a better one made. it annoyed me slightly while at Nottingham that i couldnt read off the panel to find which lever to pull because the artwork was inadequate, so i decided that i would make the new one.

 

current panel

 DSCN0214 (2) by Sam, on Flickr

 

new artwork done on MS paint to printout

LGA (2) by Sam, on Flickr

[jamie92208]

just finished scaling the new lever panel artwork to replace the current one which Jamie says was just a stop gap until he got a better one made. it annoyed me slightly while at Nottingham that i couldnt read off the panel to find which lever to pull because the artwork was inadequate, so i decided that i would make the new one.

 

current panel

 DSCN0214 (2) by Sam, on Flickr

 

new artwork done on MS paint to printout

LGA (2) by Sam, on Flickr

 

That Looks great Sam.   I look forward to seeing it on the panel next week.  Just for anyone else watching the diagram is conveying what the panel does along with other information about section switching.  The multi-coloured section over the single slip is supplied by either the Up main or the Down Main depending on whether lever 15 or 16 is pulled.  There are obviously points that wouldn't be controlled from the box but by hand levers but on the layout have to have a lever allocated such as lever 10.   The point controlled by lever 11 didn't exist when the interlocking was designed so took the spare Lever 11.

 

Thanks again

 

Jamie

[newbryford]

just finished scaling the new lever panel artwork to replace the current one which Jamie says was just a stop gap until he got a better one made. it annoyed me slightly while at Nottingham that i couldnt read off the panel to find which lever to pull because the artwork was inadequate, so i decided that i would make the new one.

 

 

 

Minor observation.

There's an "a" in Morecambe......

 

Cheers,

Mick

[5BarVT]

I hope you haven't gone to print yet as I have a few minor comments too, mainly to do with the lever leads (the box with the details of what the lever does).

 

Levers 6 and 9: the 7 should be on the next row down (like the 5 on lever 4)

Lever 13 is led by 12

Lever 14 is led by 15 and 17

Lever 18 is led by 16 as well as 17

Signals 20 and 21 would be better as a mirror image i.e. the post on the right furthest from the line.

 

It really looks good and I'm hoping to get to Lancaster to see it in the flesh. My Dad went to school in Lancaster in the 30s and would have loved to see it too.

 

Thanks, Paul.

[jamie92208]

I hope you haven't gone to print yet as I have a few minor comments too, mainly to do with the lever leads (the box with the details of what the lever does).

 

Levers 6 and 9: the 7 should be on the next row down (like the 5 on lever 4)

Lever 13 is led by 12

Lever 14 is led by 15 and 17

Lever 18 is led by 16 as well as 17

Signals 20 and 21 would be better as a mirror image i.e. the post on the right furthest from the line.

 

It really looks good and I'm hoping to get to Lancaster to see it in the flesh. My Dad went to school in Lancaster in the 30s and would have loved to see it too.

 

Thanks, Paul.

 

Thanks very much for those corrections Paul.   Most of them can be done.   There are a few odd links in the interlocking but I will check them and add the lead No's that can actually be done.  If you do make it to Lancaster please come and introduce yourself.  

 

Jamie

[sir douglas]

the typo is fixed.

 

as for the lever order, i can print this out and put it on, and then if the lever order is changed i just modify the drawing and print it again