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Lancaster Green Ayre - The Barn Owls have returned.


jamie92208
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3 minutes ago, lezz01 said:

I picked up a 0-4-4T on ebay and it arrived today. It's part built and the chassis runs along well but it's been glued and it's 00. I mean who glues a NS chassis together? Luckily it has a complete fret as a spare and I have EM gauge axles for the romfords in stock. I'll be building the spare in EM and putting in a Mashima motor and a good gear box. It's the first step towards Tewkesbury shed so I'm very happy with it. 

Regards Lez.

Good luck with it Lez, pictures please. You are welcome to post on here if you wish.

 

Jamie

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Thanks for the kind offer Jamie.

I may well post one or two photos on here. However it is my intention to start my own thread very soon and kick it off with some track building and loco building/repainting of my  Craftsman 1f which is already to EM. I'm just finishing off the koi pond as I have a couple of things left to do before winter sets in. I can then devote some time to modeling with a clear conscience. It's only fitting a new switched double outdoor socket to the shed and installing a twin outlet air pump and air stones, nothing major. I'm just waiting for them both to arrive and then it's two hours work tops.

I've had a closer look at the 1P chassis and it's just a pig. It all needs to come apart and be rebuilt. I isn't square at all , although it does sit square on it's wheels. It has lots of epoxy glue all over the place. It's such a shame really but nothing that can't be sorted. I can break the bonds with a soldering iron and scrape it all off. Even if I can't I have another complete chassis fret and I'm good with soldering. I might even build both the chassis at the same time anyway. That way I'll have a head start if I manage to get hold of another 1P kit. I was after another one yesterday but it went too high for my liking. There will be others soon enough and I need other locos before I need another 1P.

Regards Lez.  

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It's two steps forward and one back today.   Yesterday I cut the con rods to length and trial fitted one.  I discovered that there wasn't enough free travel in the pistons to cope with the crankshaft throw.  Much shedding of dandruff whilst I scratched my head so I gave up and came in to sample some of my birthday whisky.  Inspiration this morning so this evening I set to work to unsolder the slidebars from the motion bracket.  I managed that.  Then spent an hour fettling the slidebars and making sure that the pistons had 16mm of free travel. Then reassembled the motion without the motion bracket and tested it.  After a bit of fettling all seemed to work.  The holes in the motion bracket were then filed out to fit the slidebars and I called it quits for the night.  This is where I'm at.

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Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to solder the motion bracket back on to the slidebars.  There is a bit of progress.

 

Jamie

 

Edited by jamie92208
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50 minutes ago, Florence Locomotive Works said:

“Doin a fine job” as they say down here Jamie. Is that an old piece of linoleum you’re working on? Or just a off cut of wood?
 

Douglas

An offcut of wood with a small vice on the end.

 

Jamie

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I got a bit further tonight. The motion bracket has been reattached to the slidebars.  I also drilled and tapped the second big end 14BA so i'm now able to refitvthe assembly to the frames and test it.  After that I need to measurecand solder the eccentric rods and work out a way of fitting the die blocks. It's getting a tad crowded in there.

 

Jamie

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23 hours ago, jamie92208 said:
Quote

a small vice

Would that be the occasional drop of your “birthday whisky”?

Edited by Regularity
Quotation went weird
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6 minutes ago, Regularity said:

Would that be the occasional drop of your “birthday whisky”?

 

That would be a nice vice. Since I quit smoking I have been avoiding drink. It hasn't been that hard what with the lockdown and all that. I don't drink by myself at home, because I see it as a social activity ( other opinions are available!) Miss Riding Hood doesn't drink other than perhaps a glass or two with a meal because if she does she "Tends to go completely mental then passes out" (I've seen it! ) Which is partly due to the meds she's on. I really enjoyed a couple of beers though when people could come round, stand in the garage and admire the latest pile of rust! :(

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I also don't tend to drink on my own. It's probably a relic of my upbringing as mynparents were staunch Methodistsxand teetotal. I am more than happy to drink in company.  However I am partial to a drop of Scittish medecine, usually one of the smooth Speysides.  In this I am only following the advice in the Slaters Compound Instructions, where the builder is advised to have "a stiff whisky", before taking a blow torch to the model to solder on the smokebox wrapper. In fact those words might even have been penned by our own Dave Hunt.

 

Jamie

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My folks were Methodist, but not strictly teetotal and I never got beaten over the head with religion. Certain Scottish medicines are far too enjoyable to last long. I find an open bottle of Jura too tempting.

I do like the idea of instructions telling you to have a drink, I would like them to tell you to prepare some "Task Appropriate Profanity" but my favourite that I have actually seen is in a motorcycle repair manual from the early thirties, The Book Of The Rudge "suggests that the reader might wish to fill a pipe with his favourite tobacco before starting to dismantle the gearbox" 

Terribly spiffing way to tell a chap that the job is going to be a @#£&!

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Not guilty on the Slater's Compound front Jamie. I always opposed the idea of the brass tube boiler when I was involved with the firm in favour of pre-rolling an etched one but was overruled, one of the reasons being that machining grooves in the tube for location of the boiler clothing bands would be beneficial. When I produced my own Pilgrim Models kits I provided a pre-rolled etching and patterns for cutting out tracing paper bands to be attached using dabs of glue at the ends then carefully floating varnish under the edges. That's the method I use on my scratch built locos and after forty years the bands are still firmly fixed in place. I have made a couple of Slater's kits for friends and have substituted rolled boilers and tracing paper bands for the heat resistant thick walled tube. Having said all that, it is quite possible that I did pen the instructions to which you refer as in those days it was one of the jobs I did, whether I thought the methods involved were good or not.

 

I too rarely, if ever, imbibe the demon drink unless in company as I really regard it as a social activity. That's not through any moral standpoint but I found very early in my drinking career that solo boozing didn't really give me much pleasure. Even if I have an evening snifter before bed time it's normally when  Jill is still up.

 

Dave

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I enjoy the odd rum before bed time just to unwind. I used to be a scotch man but it tends to make me a little fighty if you know what I mean so I don't go near the stuff anymore. I have quite a few Caribbean friends and they have got me into the rum. My folks were churchy, Dad was the minister and mum the Sunday school teacher of a Baptist church and didn't drink at all. My wife is teetotal so we don't go to pubs. I only really drink on holiday or if we have friends round. Since the "effing plague" started I have felt the need to unwind before bed so I take a little rum or have a Rakkie with ice but not every night and before Kimmy turns in. Nothing is sadder that drinking alone. 

Regards Lez.    

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1 hour ago, lezz01 said:

I used to be a scotch man but it tends to make me a little fighty if you know what I mean so I don't go near the stuff anymore.

My ex-wife is a psychiatrist, and when she was doing her drug and alcohol abuse training (dealing with: as a medical student she was very experienced at alcohol abuse!) told me that hardened alcoholics avoided (blended*) whisky as it made them belligerent...

 

* Single malt would be a waste of money, if the aim is to get p1ssed as cheaply as possible.

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Not a lot has happened  over the last month. The modelling mojo seems to have got up and gone but a lot of hard work has been done in the garden.  However  today that changed.  I found out some time ago that the main station board has warped and there is a dip of about 10mm in the middle of it which creates a sort of ski jump in the middle of the single slip at the west end. I need to put a piece of steel under it to sort it. This board was the first one I built and I tried two different methods of bracing under it. Obviously they didn't work well.  

 

I decided to take the board out to sort it but it is almost the most difficult board to extract. I was going to have a workday with 3 mates last month as half the pelmet and lighting rig have to be removed plus 3 backscene boards. Lockdown 2 put paid to that.  However this afternoon I decided to have a go.  First, all the shed area and station buildings were removed and carefully packed away. Then the 3 shed boards plus the first coal yard board, A1 to A4 were dismantled and made into crates. Then 6 pelmet boards came down and are now safely fastened in their carriers. Lastly the west end lighting units units came down.  That took two hours and everything came down safely.  One great advantage of an exhibition layout is that there are carrying frames/boxes etc for everything. Next time it's the backscenes and 3 lighting rig supports . All in all a good afternoon's work.

 

Jamie

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Two more sessions in the shed over the last couple of days in between taking tiles and tile cement off the bathroom floor and other minor tasks.  This was roughly what it looked like two days ago with boards A1 to A4 removed along with half the pelmet.

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The next task then was to take the various thing hanging off board B4 away.  3 backscenes, 2 backscene supports and two lighting ring supports.  These were stacked at the back against the fiddle yard.

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I decided that extracting the board safely was beyond my skills but by fortunate chance a friend called to drop something off the afternoon. He was pressganged and between us we managed to extract board B4 and lay it safely on the ground where it's crate ends were attached for safety.

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It still needs the display board to cover the top of it.

Anyway this is what the layout looks like now with a gap in it.

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One of the crates with A boards in to the right.

And this is the underside of B4 with the different styles of support.

PC060845_resize.JPG.f205e07ae6022aa5eb78c53cb2998173.JPG

I now need to do some careful measuring to work out where the warp has come from then decide how to fix it.  My first thoughts are to get a steel channel girder with end plates on that can then be placed under the board, clamps placed at either end to gently take the warp out, then insert bolts through the end planks to hold everything in place. Thought will come first.

 

Jamie

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Even though it's getting a tad cooler I decided to make a start today.  The board was placed carefully on it's side.

Here's what I started with

PC160852.JPG.9fa0362bcb481db18ad13adcecbce81d.JPG

And what it looks like tonight.

PC160853.JPG.c0188d1846778e32734cf90f4e4bd571.JPG

I've done a lot of measuring and there is an 8mm dip in the board in the area between the two point motors.  I've done a drawing for a piece of U channel with end plates on it that will run roughly under the trackbed. I need to take that up to the fabricators at the top of the village.

 

I've also had a look at what needs to be done next on the 4F.  I'm hoping to get the tender painted and the numbers applied.

 

Jamie

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It's been a fine day with not a lot going on so I finally got going on trying to straighten out the board.

The first thing was to cut and position a new piece of 2 by 1 across the underside of the station.  It took of bit of doing and measuring but It went in but got done.  I will have to repair some of the ground cover where a G cramp made quite a large impression.   Then I cut another piece of 2 by 1 to run longitudinally.  This was then clamped up with some other pieces of 2 by 1 to spread the load on the rails.

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A quick bit of measuring with the spare 2 by 1 you can see showed that not all the dip had been taken out. This was the sight that greeted me underneath.

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I had put some packing under the new cross beam to give extra uplift but as you can see the longitudinal bent along it's length.   I may well have to go with my original idea of a piece of steel.   However I will leave it under tension overnight to see what happens.

 

Jamie

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19 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

It's been a fine day with not a lot going on so I finally got going on trying to straighten out the board.

The first thing was to cut and position a new piece of 2 by 1 across the underside of the station.  It took of bit of doing and measuring but It went in but got done.  I will have to repair some of the ground cover where a G cramp made quite a large impression.   Then I cut another piece of 2 by 1 to run longitudinally.  This was then clamped up with some other pieces of 2 by 1 to spread the load on the rails.

PC200874_resize.JPG.174e6785db8c8ccdcfad92d77ded7bb7.JPG

A quick bit of measuring with the spare 2 by 1 you can see showed that not all the dip had been taken out. This was the sight that greeted me underneath.

PC200875_resize.JPG.d69ac3323172e5c82433bbc984be99d3.JPG

I had put some packing under the new cross beam to give extra uplift but as you can see the longitudinal bent along it's length.   I may well have to go with my original idea of a piece of steel.   However I will leave it under tension overnight to see what happens.

 

Jamie

Possibly better with a piece of 3/4" ply cut to specifically fit the area. That way it touches the entire area to be supported. You could then fasten it at each end after jacking it in position to take out the dip.

JF

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The stiffest (in respect of resisting bending) will be the rib with the tallest section possible i.e. instead of 2 x 1 a piece of 4 x ½ would be much better in resisting the bend / sag.  Forget the steel (unless it's very deep) and perhaps try a 6" or 9" strip of 9 m.m. ply.  I have used board sides of 4 m.m. ply around 9" deep for boards 4' to 5' long and they don't bend longitudinally.  Diagonal bracing (also 4 m.m. thick) resists twisting and supports the 6 m.m. track base.  The sides and braces have a small flange 10 m.m. x 4 m.m. along the bottom edge to keep them straight.
Steve

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48 minutes ago, steve4rosegrove said:

The stiffest (in respect of resisting bending) will be the rib with the tallest section possible i.e. instead of 2 x 1 a piece of 4 x ½ would be much better in resisting the bend / sag.  Forget the steel (unless it's very deep) and perhaps try a 6" or 9" strip of 9 m.m. ply.  I have used board sides of 4 m.m. ply around 9" deep for boards 4' to 5' long and they don't bend longitudinally.  Diagonal bracing (also 4 m.m. thick) resists twisting and supports the 6 m.m. track base.  The sides and braces have a small flange 10 m.m. x 4 m.m. along the bottom edge to keep them straight.
Steve

Thanks for that Steve. I will certainly think about your suggestions. I checked the board today and the track is now level from the west end to the new cross member. There is still a 5 to 6mm dip over the central cross piece. I am thinking about using two pices of 6mm ply with some woodcbetween them. One problem is thatvI dare not disturb the awnings on the top.  I might well try putting a packing piece under the central cross piece and kepp the pressure on. Once i've got it level I'll work out a way of putting in a permanent stiffenning piece without damaging the awning supports.

 

Jamie

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Some real success today.  As I went into the shed on another errand I got distracted and ended up under board B4. Some brain cells must have collided and produced a spark.  The end result I hammered three offcuts of 6mm ply between the centre cross member and the longitudinal. A quick measure and then a check by eye and the rails appeared to be level all the way through.  A wagon was run and didn't seem to go up and down so that's success.   

 

I've had a think about the suggestions from yesterday. I found a sheet of good quality 12mm ply that I was given some time ago which will provide two strips that I can make a girder from them. The rest of the sheet is earmarked as the base for a new sink in the kitchen.   I just need to get it into place without the trackbed sinking. I did check underneath and the three crossmember all line up so I'm happy that we are progressing.

 

Jamie

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