Castle Aching

[BlueLightning]

The track looks good. Better than most of the soldering I do. Well done.

 

Gary

[runs as required]

Well! Well!

Look away for a moment (grandchildren from Rugby currently distracting us during half term) and half a league of West Norfolk monorail suddenly gets posted up.

James I am really full of admiration for you doing in public what I only ever dare do locked away up in my room. The advantage of your full exposure approach is the valuable feedback you attract (and which readers of your thread also benefit from)..

 

Interesting about no need for tinning the copper sleepers, just shining them up and using liquid flux. Since your are modelling flat bottomed rail spiked down to the sleeper, could you be embarrassed by solder blobs looking like chairs?

I can remember my old RAF guru (I told you about) using his track gauge and drawing pins to hold the rail in the correct position while he soldered a few sleeper positions. then he went on to soldering all the intervening anchor joints, rolling his gauge all the while.

 

I will PM you to negotiate another agreeable Teesdale Bunberrying afternoon.

 

dh

[Nearholmer]

Edwardian

 

Don't know if you spotted, but there is a tutorial thread running here http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/2178-copperclad-turnout-construction/

 

K

[Edwardian]

Edwardian

 

Don't know if you spotted, but there is a tutorial thread running here http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/2178-copperclad-turnout-construction/

 

K

 

I hadn't; that is extremely helpful, Kevin, thanks

[johnarcher]

The track is looking good, especially for a first time.

May I make a couple of small suggestions (having made PCB flat-bottomed track (for 00n3) in the past).

I always sanded the sleepers first (mediumish grade) which gives an initial clean, and if always done lengthways, maybe a suggestion of wood grain.

I never found tinning needed, if all (rail included) is clean, and good flux used, a little solder on the iron will spread smoothly.

It may be easier to make the gap a saw slit only, then it can later be filled and sanded over  more easily.

 

The toughest bit may be making the track look as good as the attractive buildings.

[Northroader]

Don't recommend a saw cut across the sleeper, it will be a "stress raiser" and weaken them. Just use the back of a half round file until you're through the copper, and you have a smoother surface and a stronger job.

[johnarcher]

Sorry, you're right. I meant a saw cut only through the copper, cleaned out with a fine triangular file  perhaps. The idea being just that the narrower the cut the easier it is to fill, sand and disguise.

[Donw]

Sorry, you're right. I meant a saw cut only through the copper, cleaned out with a fine triangular file  perhaps. The idea being just that the narrower the cut the easier it is to fill, sand and disguise.

 

It is much easier to leave the odd whisker on a narrow cut which may cause a short. You must check for short before filling any cuts the half round file leaves a depression rather than a groove.

Don

[Edwardian]

Thanks again, all.  Some sound advice to follow.

 

On reflection I might deconstruct the track so far, so as to remove the tinning from the sleepers, which will otherwise compromise the appearance of the finished article.

 

This is not so bad as it seems, because thanks to Edwardian's Patent Wonda-Jig, reattaching the rail should be but the work of moments. Need to order more PCB sleepers in order to produce a further length of track, however.

 

At least now I know why people don't tin the sleepers.  BTW, I was fooled into doing this by one of the track ranges I had considered, DCC Concepts, who market pre-tinned sleepers!

 

I am quite sanguine.  I never expected to be soldering anything or attempting to build track.  In fact, I suspect that most modellers would be allowed to use Ready-To-Lay track on their first attempt to build a model railway.  Not according to you lot, obviously!

 

Thanks to the exhortations of Simon and others and the calming tutorial of RAR David, who proved that I could attach one piece of metal to another without my head exploding, I have already come further than I expected.  

 

More excitement is on the way in the meantime, however.  I don't think I have made it out to a model railway exhibition since autumn 2014, but this weekend I have obtained an exeat as the Memsahib is off helping at a charity clay shoot over the border in Yorkshire.

 

So, this Sunday, 5 June, I will be attending the show at Shildon.  If any of you happen to be there, please do make yourselves known to me.  I will, of course, be easily identifiable as the chap in the top-hat and frock coat.   On the other hand, if I choose to pass incognito, I will be the portly bewildered looking chap with one or two children in tow, including a diminutive, but deadly, little girl with gingery hair.  

Edited June 1, 2016 by Edwardian

[Nearholmer]

Well, Edwardian, my advice would be to maximise your exhibition visit, by setting-off well before daybreak.

 

A window in my son's hectic footballing schedule allowed me a similar day out on the Saturday just gone, and, simply by leaving later than intended, I got trapped into spending a total of five hours (yes, you read that correctly) on motorways, and one hour discussing the trivia of ancient toy trains with those that I'd arranged to meet.

 

I now intend to build a full working model of the M25 in 1:32 scale, using vast amounts of Scalextric track, then smash it to a trillion tiny pieces with the biggest hammer I can lift, then pour petrol over it, and burn the lot to dust.

 

Kevin

[Stubby47]

Can you use the words 'M25' and 'fully working' in the same sentence ?

[BlueLightning]

Hope you have a good day. Wish I could make it but I think SHildon is a bit far to travel since I am sitting in my office about 200 yards from the English Channel. I did take the kids to London on Monday and saw "The Rocket" up close

 

Gary

[Caley Jim]

Can you use the words 'M25' and 'fully working' in the same sentence ?

I thought the M25 was a big car park!

Jim

[johnarcher]

I thought the M25 was a big car park!

Jim

No, nothing like it. Some people drive quite quickly in a car park.

[Donw]

Any bits of track where the soldering is not up to your satisfaction could be used in a goods yard buried in gunge as goods yards often were. Have a nice day at the show. You may find a lot of layouts using ready made track however these will not match the standard of your buildings. It is the high standard of these buildings that we feel deserve a bit of effort on the track.

Don

[BG John]

The beauty of Victorian/Edwardian railways is that they were often ballasted over the sleepers, something I'll be exploiting on some of my layouts!

[uax6]

Talking of track, have you thought about what the ballast will be? I would say it won't be Granite, but something cheaper and more readily available, maybe local gravels?

 

And how is the formation actually ballasted? Is it flush with the top of the sleepers, over the top, or do the sleepers sit on top of a light layer? Or do they still do that odd pre-grouping method of over two sleepers, and then the third is open, or with humps under the ends and the middle as a ditch?

 

All very tempting to try and help to get the feel of a 'lesser' railway...

 

Andy G

[Caley Jim]

The CR used crushed slag on the main lines and ash on lesser lines and sidings. Both being readily available 'waste' products. Even up to the 1960's a lot of ballast used in Scotland was slag.

Jim

[wagonman]

Talking of track, have you thought about what the ballast will be? I would say it won't be Granite, but something cheaper and more readily available, maybe local gravels?

 

And how is the formation actually ballasted? Is it flush with the top of the sleepers, over the top, or do the sleepers sit on top of a light layer? Or do they still do that odd pre-grouping method of over two sleepers, and then the third is open, or with humps under the ends and the middle as a ditch?

 

All very tempting to try and help to get the feel of a 'lesser' railway...

 

Andy G

 

 

The M&GN used gravel in places as there were a couple of ballast pits near to Holt station in Norfolk working gravel deposits. The gravel would have been glacial in origin as the Holt-Cromer ridge formed part of the terminal moraine of the North Sea ice-sheet. Whoever said Norfolk was flat?

 

PS: there is still sand (and gravel?) extraction at Middleton, near King's Lynn.

Edited June 1, 2016 by wagonman

[uax6]

Don't I know about the sand extraction at Middleton! We've had 5000tonnes of it go past the box today.

 

As far as I know there isn't any gravel extraction from there, there are pit closer to Downham for that.

 

Andy G

[Donw]

The CR used crushed slag on the main lines and ash on lesser lines and sidings. Both being readily available 'waste' products. Even up to the 1960's a lot of ballast used in Scotland was slag.

Jim

 

Are you meaning slag as in iron/steel works slag not something I would expect in Norfolk. Coarse gravel dredged from the channnels in the wash or dug from Beaches seem more likely. As time went by the Ash from the engines would have been added as would that from coal fires. 

Don

[Nearholmer]

In a rural area, I doubt that ash from domestic fires was thrown away. Wood ash was composted direct, and coal ash was given to the chickens to "dust bath" in, gathered-up with the straw and droppings from the chicken coop, then composted.

 

This was standard practice among the sort of old boys who had "all vegetables; no lawns and flowers" when I was a boy, and, to my amazement, there is an absolutely ancient guy, living a few hundred yards from me, who still operates to that routine now, including the chickens, and a washboard hanging-up! I will see if I can get some photos of his garden, because it is a good example of how old-style gardens were seriously different from modern ones, and might help if/when cottage gardens are needed at Castle Aching.

 

K

 

PS: I just googled around, and there is a lot of advice saying "don't put coal ash in compost" ......... But, I used to watch these old guys do it!

Edited June 1, 2016 by Nearholmer

[Edwardian]

This was standard practice among the sort of old boys who had "all vegetables; no lawns and flowers" when I was a boy, and, to my amazement, there is an absolutely ancient guy, living a few hundred yards from me, who still operates to that routine now, including the chickens, and a washboard hanging-up! I will see if I can get some photos of his garden, because it is a good example of how old-style gardens were seriously different from modern ones, and might help if/when cottage gardens are needed at Castle Aching.

 

 

 

Yes, it would.  I have 6 cottage gardens that need to be Edwardian and productive.

[Nearholmer]

If you have the works of Beatrix Potter about your house, they contain some good Edwardian garden pictures. See for instance Mr McGregor, active with hoe (modern American readers should look away) in "Peter Rabbit". None of yer mIssus Jekyll 'ere.

 

K

[Donw]

I wasn't thinking of domestic fires. There could well have been a coal fire in the waiting room, the stationmasters office, and possibly the engine shed if there was maintenance done in there. I assume the ash from these fires would have be added to the ash pit used for the engines. When the pit was emptied I assume in would be used to fill in any holes or dips in the yard.

 

I cannot remember my Grandfather using the ash for Chicken dust baths perhaps because they had a large run. Vegetable peelings and scraps would be made up with a mash to feed the hens. When we had a chicken it would be hung over the bath which was at the end of the kitchen. The wood ash from the bonfire went along the fruit bushes. Grandad was not one to waste anything.

Several of our houses have dated from around the 1850s and included a washhouse where there was an iron pot built in over a fire to heat the washing. One had a Pigscott stone built (as was the house) with a low slate roof. and an outer space. Keeping a pig was quite normal for country folk.

One of the oddest things was at one place where there was a row of semis built by the local estate each pair were in different styles our was fairly normal but the ones either side both shared a window for the small bedrooms. The wall tapered to the central upright of the window each side opended you could shake hands with your neighbour through the open window.

Don