THE RAMCHESTER CHRONICLES

[railwayrod]

Thank you gentlemen for the above comments. My models may not be strictly accurate but I hope they capture the essence of the real thing. Like you John I do remember the racket they made when they were pulled along. I lived in Rugby then and there were always several of these parked along the platform under the overall Victorian LNWR roof and when in use they were deafening. Paul I to used to sit on them during my train spotting days until asked to shift when they were required. Phil you are correct in saying that they were always parked with the handle up to keep the brakes on and when there was a line of them they reminded me of some sort of Sentinels guarding the platform. Ah happy days!

 

Rod 

[railwayrod]

Forgot to post some pictures which I have to download from my camera so these will have to wait for next time.

 

Rod

[railwayrod]

Just to bring you up to date here are a couple of photos of the relaid goods yard surface. The rails are now proud of the yards surface which look better to me and they are easier to clean.

From the buffer stop end. I apologise for the blurred image - I did not notice that my camera was not on A priority which would have given me a greater depth of field.

 Looking across the yard. Please note the banana vans still have to be fitted with Bachman couplings and then weathered.

 

All for now.

 

Rod

 

 

 

 

 

[John R Smith]

All looking good, Rod. I like that little blue lorry - what make and model is it?

 

Best wishes, John

[pwr]

Rod

 

Did you have any issues with the quality control on your Dapol bananas. I have seven of them now and two arrived with couplings not fitted (which is a job and a half to rectify), one has a missing wheel bearing that Dapol promised to send me and haven't and a fourth had one of the brake hangers detached which was easily glued back. The packaging is OK that said.

 

Paul R

[railwayrod]

Hi John and Paul.

 

John. The blue lorry was a Ragstone Models kit (I think) but I have just looked at their website and it is nowhere to be seen. I purchased it some years ago at Guildex and built it as per the instructions. I believe it is an AEC vehicle but again I am not sure. If this sounds a bit vague please accept my apologies but it was a long time ago and at my age memory is not what it used to be.

 

Paul. I have three Dapol banana vans and all appear to be OK except that on one of them the 3 link couplings had been wrongly assembled with two links on one. This was a simple thing to rectify but if there had been any major issues such as the ones you describe they would have gone straight back to where I purchased them from (Hattons in this instance) for replacement. I realize that this does not help you but I would return them to where you purchased them from (or Dapol) for replacement.

 

Thank you both for your continued support in following Ramchester it is appreciated.

 

Rod

[pwr]

HI Rod

 

I think I can fix mine without the need to send back. Posting them to be honest is a hassle and in fairness because they came from three different retailers I can't now tell which came from whom!!

 

I heard from Dapol this morning and they are popping a bearing in the post which should be an easy fix.

 

As you can see from my thread I am building three different vans to complement the Dapol versions. The Parkside SR Steam Banana and two LMS versions, one Parkside and one Freightman. Both are the same diagram sadly which I did not realise till I bought the additional Parkside version.

 

Just at transfer stage on the SR van! I'll post some new photos soon

 

Keep up the good work - you have a superb layout

 

Paul R

 

 

[railwayrod]

I have been clearing my workbench this afternoon and came across the box for the blue lorry. I have given you the wrong information (inadvertently) for which I apologise. The lorry was a Radley Models kit not a Ragstone Models kit and is an AEC vehicle. The kit went together fairly well and it looks fine in the goods yard awaiting its load. I do apologise for my error and I trust this has not caused any offense. 

 

Rod

[John R Smith]

No apologies needed Rod, thank you very much for the info. I will check out the Radley Models website!

 

I love your Ramchester layout because you have resisted the temptation to cram loads of stuff into your available space. So the station looks very convincing because it is relatively uncluttered, just like the real thing. I think we all underestimate just how much space the rural railway occupied, when land was cheap and trains were long! I remember at Totnes how long it took me to walk from up distant to down distant with my lamps, and climbing all the signals in between. It was pretty much a full shift to do the job (especially when it was cold and raining).

 

All best wishes, John

 

 

[Hal Nail]

On 26/06/2020 at 11:46, railwayrod said:

Thank you both for your continued support in following Ramchester it is appreciated.

 

I seldom comment but always keep an eye on proceedings as I'm sure many others do!

Keep the updates coming please

[railwayrod]

For some time now Howard and I have been unhappy about one small section of the back scene. The area in question is to the right of the station building and is a 2D drawing of a house and a tapering street. The perspective never seemed to be correct so the other day we decided that this bit had to be removed form the scene. This had to be done very carefully as the offending street had been glued directly onto the back scene so had to be wetted and very carefully scraped off without doing major damage to the scene.

I am pleased to say that Howard managed it with only minor damage to the back scene which he has since rectified. What is going to replace it?

 

Rod 

 

[Barnaby]

That's something I've been giving some thought to too.  I've decided to set my back scene buildings at an angle off the back scene board.  I've been playing with my Kellogg box factories and station buildings and will have to add some roofing but 30D or 45D angle looks quite promising it does fool the eye more than flat 2D on the back scene. 

I'll not be having all buildings in the same line or even the same amount of depth but that is easily done by roof length adjustment.

 

Best

[railwayrod]

Some of Ramchesters building are in low relief where we had space for them. This was disguised by view blockers and worked, I think, quite well. However because we wanted give the station an aire of spaciousness and to keep the baseboard width down the station building is right up to the back scene leaving no space at all for any sort of 3D buildings behind. This is what Howard was faced with and he came up with the idea of printing buildings on his computer and sticking them onto the pre painted back scene. To help fool the eye he then painted foliage overlapping the buildings and also in places sticking on greenery to blend the whole lot in. The one bit that neither of us were happy with was the building directly to the right of the station building and if I can find a picture of this in my collection I will post it so you can see what I mean. Work is currently going on in this area and pictures will appear in due course.

The offending building is the white one tapering into the background on the extreme right of the picture. I hope this illustrates the problem but because I was always aware of the error I tended to avoid taking photographs Straight on or I edited the building out by cropping. Hence the above photo is about the only one I have showing this building.

 

Rod  

[John R Smith]

The problem with any sort of perspective work on the backscene is that it will only work from one fixed viewpoint. So if you move to left or right of this ideal viewing position, then it just falls apart. Geoff Williams did some nice vanishing point perspective on his backscene for Aylesbury, but he managed for the most part to avoid photos from the "bad" angles, and put buildings in the way of the worst views. Jack Newton did some very clever LNWR dioramas in full perspective, but he constrained the viewing position by constructing a "letter box" viewing port. On my current small diorama I have been forced to have a 2D backscene because I only have 6 inches of depth, but I have avoided any use of perspective. Even then, things look strange from acute angles.

 

Best wishes, John

[railwayrod]

Hi John.

 

I think you mean Jack Nelson who did a far bit of work in 3.5mm/ft of LNWR scenes. I have used one of his books for details of LNWR buildings and fittings etc and have found this a very useful source of information. I agree wholeheartedly with you on backscenes which are notoriously difficult to get right. Ramchesters back scene looks OK when operating but when getting down to track level  for photography it does not always look right. Still I am satisfied with it generally speaking but the white printed house and street just did not look right so it has gone.........

 

Thanks for your comments above.

 

Rod

[gismorail]

Good morning Ramchester and I like the back scene modification its often these little bits of detail that makes such a big difference .....more importantly its great to see the dynamic duo meeting up again excellent 

[railwayrod]

Hello again.

 

Here is a quick preview of my latest project. The kit is again by Skytrex and looks very easy to put together. I would like to replace the handles with something finer but feel that my eyesight will not allow me to do so. Still on Ramchesters platform at the back of the layout such detail hopefully will not be too noticeable - I hope.

 

Rod

[gismorail]

Well this morning I have taken delivery of a Dapol banana van and I'm so glad that I had read others comments on this thread about bits being loose in the packaging. As soon as I removed the foam on the top of the box i realised that something was amiss. Both sets of wheels where beneath the buffers so I was able to very carefully open the clear plastic shelves and found all four of the 'bearing cups' which where rattling at the bottom of the packaging. Pheeeew  I think me's been lucky and once carefully reassembled everything runs nice a smoothly. I can only think that they must work loose when in transit when there's no weight on them but it does seem to be a common problem.... thankyou for pointing it out so i was forewarned..

[railwayrod]

Glad you found all the bits Gismorail. I cannot understand how Dapol have let these pass their quality control. I am happy with my three banana vans and the coupling mis-assembly has been put right. Really speaking us customers should not have to put matters like this to rights.

 

Rod

[gismorail]

1 minute ago, railwayrod said:

Glad you found all the bits Gismorail. I cannot understand how Dapol have let these pass their quality control. I am happy with my three banana vans and the coupling mis-assembly has been put right. Really speaking us customers should not have to put matters like this to rights.

 

Rod

I think it's happens in transit but Dapol must been aware of it by now I suppose we the customers are now Quality Control at the end of the day.... 

[pwr]

Dapol sent me a replacement bearing but because its a pinpoint and they sellotaped it to a compliments slip it pierced the envelope in transit and was lost! They are not sure they have anymore!

 

I think I should check the boxes as you did - it might still be in the packaging.

 

Anyone know why they chose to use three links rather than instanters when they already have them tooled up?

 

Paul r

[gismorail]

On 02/07/2020 at 18:08, pwr said:

Dapol sent me a replacement bearing but because its a pinpoint and they sellotaped it to a compliments slip it pierced the envelope in transit and was lost! They are not sure they have anymore!

Not the sharpest knives in the draw then 

[HSB]

This is what I'm planning to replace the bit of backscene I removed with. The row of shops is actually from just up the coast in Siloth. I've had to do quite a bit of work on it, backdating the windows and extending the hedges to hide some modern cars. The trees were bare so I've added some leaves (it's always summer in Ramchester!). The war memorial and the stone walls came from other photos.

 

I decided to make one of the shops a newspaper office :-

[railwayrod]

Howards idea is brilliant. The backscene does need more dwellings of some sort to make Ramchester look more like a town. At present the station end looks as though it is way out in the country and a bit too rural to justify the intensive service that I have in mind. The next bit to be looked at will be rather difficult as the baseboard width makes it very hard to reach across. Still I have great faith in Howard's skills and I am sure he will overcome this problem in due course.

 

Rod

[pwr]

Looking forward to seeing this in place

 

Paul R