Christleton Junction - 1986 - Gateway to North Wales

[DIRTY DIESEL]

48 minutes ago, 61656 said:

 

An additional block section should actually be quite straightforward, at least in theory. 

I was on the LDC meeting that put the old IB in when No2 box went in 1990 to reduce the headway, and we informed the powers that be that this was likely to happen if they took it away in 2018, but no one listened, I was even sent on a meeting to explained what might happen after my concerns were brought up with the planners. 
I have a wry smile when I see follow late on TRUST when they loose 1/2 minutes at busy times...

 

Stu

[St Enodoc]

11 hours ago, 61656 said:

I can’t believe any passenger saw it as a positive. 

The alternative would have been no trains at all.

[61656]

9 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

The alternative would have been no trains at all.

I accept the sprinters were a necessary evil, but they could have been a lot nicer inside. We seem to have lost our way with the interior on trains. Modern european stock is often significantly nicer, and that’s not a cost thing, just better design. 
 

[61656]

Despite being serially distracted, not least by the sunshine, I have managed to get the woodwork for the bridge cut. I believe the cool kids are referring to this as a scenic break!

 

 

Hopefully I can have buildings at each end of the bridge to help hide the awkward road / sky interface. 

[mallaig1983]

Ah, you did better than me today. I’m afraid the girlfriend texting to ask if I wanted to meet her at the beach met with little or no resistance. It has however earned me a days detention in the attic tomorrow. 
 

Good work with the bridge. It’s going to look impressive when completed with the trains sweeping in under it from the rest of the network. A bridge makes the ideal scenic break coz it’s got a darn good reason to be there. What material will it be made of? (Brick, concrete or steel as opposed to plasticard sections and sheet I mean)

[61656]

1 hour ago, mallaig1983 said:

What material will it be made of? (Brick, concrete or steel as opposed to plasticard sections and sheet I mean)

Like pretty much everything else on the layout it will be brick. Possibly dark engineering bricks. 
 

Whilst my location is “not quite” Chester, my inspiration is Deansgate to Oxford Road. 

[mallaig1983]

Should really look the part.

[61656]

With the sky painted in undercoat (B&Q infinite universe), a class 85 arrives on a Bristol to Edinburgh service, whilst 40122 waits the right away on a railtour working to the West Midlands. 
 

 

Meanwhile at the North end, classic 80’s trans-pennine action sees a large logo 47 bringing in a Scarborough to Bangor service. Normally rostered for a 45, it seems Toton are waiting to see how the Heljan 45/1 looks before making any commitments. 
 

[61656]

Now here’s a photo with some issues. At first glance we see a 45/0 on a Saltley to Holyhead liner taking the through road passing a 25/1 on parcels. 
 

Then you look closely. The 45/0 has ETH. The sealed beam peaks use to be like rocking horse dung and I bought this for a steal some time ago. It came in a 45/1 non-sound fitted split box green liveried box; presumably the previous owner did a simple body swap... looks like this may be an easy (ish) conversion to a 45/1 - just the body step plates to smooth out?

 

Then you look again and you’ll see the 25/1 is missing a water tank between the bogies. I don’t think any 25/1s had them removed. I could swap the body with my 25/2 to make a 25/3, but I don’t know if the bodies are identical (or close)? If they are I could then upgrade it to a 25/9. 
 

 

[cheesysmith]

Need a side on view of the other end of the peak to check, but a ETH peak would have no boiler exhaust or vents on the roof and need the bogie grease points (the holes in the bodysides) filling in.

[P.C.M]

Yep roof mod on the Peak. I am pretty sure you can swap the class 25 bodies. If not I am pretty sure the boiler is a push fit separate part as I removed one from one of my Bachmann rats. You could then make your 25/2  a 25/9. 

 

Cheers Peter.

[61656]

Work on the layout is temporarily paused whilst I wait for some bricks to be delivered, so I’ve been doing a bit more work on the rolling stock. 
 

First on the workbench is resident 08, 08489, a Chester air only machine in 1986, so very much at home at Christleton. Every now and again I have a tinker with it to try to improve its running and it’s now at the stage where I’m happy enough to weather it. As I spend a few days each year cleaning the muck off an 08, I feel suitably qualified to apply the dirt!

 

 

I could do with some gloss black on the oiling points to prove I’ve been around with the oil can. 
 

The 08 makes an occasional trip working round to Chester with some fuel tanks, dropped off on the morning Speedlink service. I find weathering tanks quite a challenge, mainly because the real thing looks unconvincingly weathered!

 

Here we see three tanks on the bench. Left to right are box fresh, factory weathered and my second attempt at weathering a TTA. It needs a bit more touching up, mainly to cover the glare of the Esso logos. 
 

[mallaig1983]

Have you seen Tim at ‘The Scrapline’ YouTube channel weathering a TTA? It should be  really useful bit of viewing.

[61656]

Progress on the tank wagons...

 

 

And bricks being laid on the road bridge...

 

 

 

 

[mallaig1983]

Looking good.

[mallaig1983]

On 24/02/2021 at 10:34, 61656 said:

Phase 1 of the ballasting is complete, meaning we can now move on to phase 2. Phase 2 is predominantly about undoing most of the work from phase 1! Joviality aside, ballast is now down across most of the scenic section, as far as the North end crossovers where I haven't yet finalised the layouts into the fiddle yards. Generally the ballasting gets better the later it was put down, but even the early stuff cleans up quite nicely. I've made a start at removing the excess and filling the gaps.

 

First photo at the South end, with a 47 waiting at the possession marker boards. The electric stabling lines have been cleaned up, but the mainlines are still to do. The ballast is still slightly wet with new PVA in this shot.

 

 

Moving to the North end we see a general overview of the station throat. This hasn't been touched since first ballasting other than a quick vacuum. At this end of the job it is more topping up than chiselling.

 

 

My 7 year old son has declared the ballast too clean, and I should really get on with dirtying it, instead of sitting at my computer all day. Who am I to ignore such demands?

 

I'm hoping to get the track run-able again fairly quickly, and then I'll try to take some photos of a typical couple of hours at Christleton, to give a feel for how the railway works.

 

Sorry for dragging this up from a couple of months back but I'm slowly working through your thread and not rushing. As you know I'm a single track kinda guy but this makes me jealous! It's simply stunning. Hopefully we'll get a YouTube fix of a long take running through this trackwork. Markway points and your design would appear to be a winning combination. It's certainly convinced me that my Fort William flat bottom rail needs to be acquired from the same sources. Really convincing piece of work. Hats off sir.

Right I'll keep reading now. Thoroughly engrossing thread by the way. 

[61656]

9 hours ago, mallaig1983 said:

 

Sorry for dragging this up from a couple of months back but I'm slowly working through your thread and not rushing. As you know I'm a single track kinda guy but this makes me jealous! It's simply stunning. Hopefully we'll get a YouTube fix of a long take running through this trackwork. Markway points and your design would appear to be a winning combination. It's certainly convinced me that my Fort William flat bottom rail needs to be acquired from the same sources. Really convincing piece of work. Hats off sir.

Right I'll keep reading now. Thoroughly engrossing thread by the way. 

Thanks for the praise - definitely a motivating response! I do like a complex junction, although it does come with quite a significant amount of effort - the volume of wiring and difficulties in getting so many point motors aligned definitely causes a few headaches.

 

The flat bottom rail might be tricky to source at the moment. I seem to remember trying to buy some last year, but in the end had to resort to cleaning up salvaged rail from the first layout. Marcway are probably the best place to start - and definitely a phone call not an internet search.

 

Suitably inspired into a false sense of ability, I filmed the morning trans-pennines this morning. It's one of my favourite moves, seeing two trains arrive in parallel. First of all a 47 comes off shed and goes for fuel, ready to take over one of the incoming services. First train in is the morning Holyhead to Newcastle, closely followed by peak hauled York to Llandudno. The large logo 47 shuffles from the fuel road to pull the Llandudno and release the peak to work the Newcastle service back over the pennines. This releases a generator 47 which goes to the loco holding road before setting back on shed. We've previously talked about the advantages of sharing warts and all, and the last move is no exception as the 47 hits a wart right at the end!

 

8 minutes of video, featuring one middle age male trying to play the role of 3 drivers, signaller and cameraman. It could have gone worse...

 

 

[mallaig1983]

I think it went very well and what an enjoyable way to start the day. I didn’t want to spoil the viewing by watching on my phone so searched on YouTube on the telly. Really enjoyable sequence and I certainly got my wish of seeing a long train snaking through the point work. It works perfectly, it really does, so smooth with no carriage ends showing during the transition. A 4mm scale me would confidently walk through the corridor connections! I wouldn’t have noticed the wart moment if you hadn’t of said anything. I’ll look forward to the next video instalment. Thanks for filming and sharing.

Fortunately I’m not in a great hurry for track as I will need to build boards for my FW section first. I started laying my Peco bullhead a year ago and that proved difficult to find at the time. Fortunately I had bought the points previously at Warley when they were released. Potentially if I had left it any longer the last years progress wouldn’t of happened. A sobering thought. I will be keeping an eye on the marketplace but I won’t stress if it’s a while before it’s available. I’ve got plenty to do on the current section. Thanks.

[5BarVT]

Sez who middle aged males can’t multi task!

Very nice way to spend 8 mins of my Friday morning.

Paul.

[61656]

57 minutes ago, 5BarVT said:

Sez who middle aged males can’t multi task!

Very nice way to spend 8 mins of my Friday morning.

Paul.

I guess most of the readers of this are disproving the theory by viewing the video whilst on the loo...

[mallaig1983]

14 minutes ago, 61656 said:

I guess most of the readers of this are disproving the theory by viewing the video whilst on the loo...

classic 

[61656]

A short video showing some arrivals and departures at the South end. 40122 arrives on a relief service from the West Midlands for the coast, a 108 departs for Crewe, filling in for a non-existent 304 and the lack of wires. Finally a grubby Bescot 31 brings in parcels stock for shunting later. 

 

 

 

[61656]

A bit of progress today on the road bridge at the scenic break. I’m quite pleased with how it’s looking, which is to say I haven’t messed it up yet. 
 

I think there’ll be a factory on the far side of it, to help hide the link to the backscene. On the right I’m planning on a small station entrance for parcels only, with a lift shaft and a cluster of BRUTEs on the platform below. 

 

I also managed to swap the underframes around on the class 25s. It never ceases to amaze me the differences that manufactures manage to create between basically the same loco. I also managed to fit the unbelievable sounding Legomanbiffo sound, with a midi speaker in the fuel tank. Video to follow when I’ve renumbered it. 

[61656]

With its epic new sound unit, Kingmoor shedded 25/3 moves off Bluebeck towards Chester. Very happy with the sound quality on this one.  
 

Larry Goddard’s equally epic Colour of the North Wales Coast provided photos of 25/1 25035 and watertank-less 25/3 (were they all NB?) 25278 both in action on the Coast in 1986. A spot of renumbering and a light touch of weathering for both and the backbone of the light freight fleet is ready for service. The 31 will also move across to light freight duties pending arrival of more type 4s. 
 

As I progress with the scenery, I want to work on the coaching stock and weather the remaining passenger locos (including converting a 45/1). I have another GUV to sort out and I want to have a go at converting the Bachmann RBs to RBRs. There are a small number of speedlink wagons still to be added and a few to be weathered. 
 

But obviously my mind is now beginning to think about the heavy freight. Oil, steel, coal and sorting out the freightliner. 47/3, 20s and a 56 to be thought about next. 
 

 

[mallaig1983]

Sounds great