Harboro Stone Co.

[Ruston]

2 hours ago, Giles said:

First class Dave!  You've made a rod for your own back now!

Yes, I think I have. The road overbridge at the FY entrance, and dry stone walls will all have to be built in the same way now.

 

The only other buildings are to be the main processing plant, the weighbridge and possibly a low-relief workshop building.

 

The plant will be built using card and corrugated sheet. I have used Wills plastic sheet in the past but this time I will be trying Goodwood Scenics corrugated aluminium foil. The Wills stuff is very difficult to use on large structures due to the small size of the sheets and the repeating pattern. With the foil I will be able to make individual sheets and so there's no limit on the placement of joints or the overall size of the structure. The first trial of this material will be the roof of the engine shed.

Since beginning this project I have not been able to settle on a particular time period. It was going to be anything from 1900 to 1980 but it has now been decided upon and will be the early 1960s.

I have chosen this because it still allows for the use of steam engines and some quite old and peculiar ones at that. It also means that some of my existing rolling stock can be used and a few interesting wagon types added to my collection, in particular, Presflos, which are a wagon that I have never owned before.

Rail Traffic inward - none. Coal for the engines would be delivered by road, as would any supplies such as oil or parts needed for anything on site.

Traffic outward - Crushed limestone for use as flux in iron-making and as roadstone. This will be carried in 13 and 22-ton hoppers and in 26 and 27-ton tipplers.

Powered limestone/limestone dust for various uses, including as fire prevention in coal mines. This will be carried in Presflos and Prestwins.

 

Internal Traffic - Stone, blasted from the quarry face and loaded by a stripping shovel, will be transported to the plant in some form of internal use wagons and will unload at the plant. I intend to make this a working operation but am not yet sure what type of wagons or how to automate the unloading. The height of the tunnel to the quarry is going to have an affect on the choice of wagons.

 

The idea with this low tunnel is that the distant quarry was formerly linked by a narrow gauge railway but this was replaced during WW1 with standard gauge, hence the low tunnel, tight loading gauge and the need for engines with cut-down cabs and dropped footplates. This part of the operation is due for replacement by conveyor belts but we will see it in its last days, with ancient steam engines in operation.

I may also add a lime kiln and this would require fuel but I'm not sure what that would be. I don't have siding space for coal so unless it could be oil then I probably won't add this. The lime kiln would give outward traffic in sheeted 16-ton minerals and possibly 13-ton Highs.

[Ramblin Rich]

I admire your work rate as always, Dave.

Could you get away with stone sheet on the inside of the shed, given the limited view?

[Ruston]

1 hour ago, Ramblin Rich said:

I admire your work rate as always, Dave.

Could you get away with stone sheet on the inside of the shed, given the limited view?

I think you're right, Rich, and I probably can. Part of the wall will be taken up with the forge and with the open shed door restricting the view even further, it should be OK. Perhaps not plastic sheet but a slab of DAS with the stones carved in as a quick fix that isn't as good as individual stones but isn't instantly recognisable as a proprietary plastic sheet would be.

[Ruston]

The cutting and other areas have required some sort of rock face effect. I have used a Woodland Scenics rubber mould  and found a small amount of casting powder that was originally bought for the same purpose when I built White Peak Limestone & Tarmacadam, but there wasn't enough to do all that is needed here.

 

It wouldn't have worked for the cutting in any case as I did make it very narrow and didn't consider how much more narrow it would become after being lined with rock face castings. No matter as I have a solution!

 

I found that DAS can be pressed into the mould and with a lot thinner wall than can be achieved with poured plaster-type materials. It can also be removed from the mould immediately and cut into useable strips. The definition of the rock face isn't as good as with plaster but it's good enough and so has been used in places where the plaster mouldings will not fit.

 

The zig-zag at the top of the cutting.

The entire point is embedded in DAS. I hope trains can still run through it; I haven't tested it yet!

 

The engine shed in the place it will eventually sit.

I have attempted to blend the broken pieces of moulding together with DAS and PVA glue.

 

I bought a pair of second hand Bachmann Presflo wagons. I can't believe how expensive these things are new. They tower over the Peckett., which has been cut down and will provide the template to build the tunnel around. The overbridge to the BR connection will be of a normal loading gauge.

 

[Ruston]

I have some ballast down and the beginnings of the overbridge and retaining wall.

 

The electrics are also done. I did this before ballasting and tested it with a loco. It all worked then but I still haven't tried it since ballasting.

The points are operated by push rods, made from piano wire and stayed using electrical connector blocks to prevent them from flexing too much. The top LH box is the DCC unit and the circuit board is the Hex Frog Juicer, which takes care of switching frog polarity on all six points and simplifies things by eliminating the need for microswitches.

[Ruston]

The weigh cabin under construction.

 

I have used parts of a Wills conservatory kit, card and DAS. I will put a slate roof on this one but I need to work out how to do that using card or paper.

 

[Ruston]

I reckoned that the bridge would need substantial blocks at its base, so the DAS sausage factory was tasked with producing thicker and squarer sausages, which were then chopped into blocks.

 

I didn't want to make very much in case it didn't work and so I haven't got very far but, to be honest, I would have given in due to the heat even if I had made more.

 

 

At last, a use for one of those crappy Bachmann LMS van bodies that are too short in height and width. They make a good glue pot if nothing else!

 

I did a small area of static grass as a test.

[Ruston]

Another day, another load of DAS blocks.

I have made the tunnel less restrictive than I initially planned it to be. As intended, I could run only the cut down Barclay and so the arch is a flatter one now and the height has been increased at the crown to allow a greater choice of engines to work the line. Even so, the fleet can only include engines with a low height. The Peckett pictured already has a dropped footplate and cut down chimney. The chimney will need to be lowered still further before it is anything like a realistic fit. It does fit but the clearance is paper thin.

 

The crew will still need to keep their limbs and heads inside the cab but this is supposed to be the 1960s and not the 2020s, and people weren't as stupid as they are now, so there's no need for a risk assessment, a big sign, bars across the cab entry and  hi-viz vests.

Edited July 20, 2022 by Ruston

[Ruston]

The stonework is almost done now and I have made some bridge pieces and added more grass.

 

 

The point in the cutting, that has been embedded in DAS, has been tested by running a train through it and all's well.

[Ruston]

I have done some work on the roof of the engine shed. I decided to have a slate roof after all. I have a plan to be able to operate the layout in an earlier period by changing the rolling stock and so having a later, replacement roof wouldn't fit with this plan.

It still needs a bit of work on the roof and some guttering to be added.

 

The weigh cabin has also advanced.

It too needs a bit more work before it is embedded into the ground.

[Ruston]

I made this internal use wagon, yesterday. It is to work between the quarry and the plant, through the low tunnel. It was built using a Bachmann slope-sided mineral underframe and a Manline 22-ton hopper that has had 4mm cut out of its length and has also been lowered by about 4mm to fit through the tunnel. I cut through the bottom of the underframe and hopper and fitted a bottom door. The door is held in the closed position by a pair of 1mm dia. magnets, which are strong enough to retain the door even when loaded. The small wheel can be pressed to release the door but this will be fiddly, so I'll probably just poke a length of wire into the load to release the door. Another magnet on the door is repelled by a lineside magnet to return the door to the closed position.

[Sweet pea]

Nice work on the hopper wagon.

[Ruston]

The overall picture as it stood yesterday evening.

[Ruston]

I made a start on the main building.

The brick effect is Wills plain bond brick sheet. The rest will be covered with corrugated iron and the parts that are currently floating in the air will be supported on H columns. I was going to use Plastruct but it's not very robust. I may use milled brass instead.

 

Then comes the difficult part of making it work, making it so wagons can actually be loaded. I have done that before but although it was electrically-operated, it required the operator to bend down and see the material flow into the wagon so it could be stopped before it flooded out all over the place. I want either a system that can only dispense a wagon load at a time and no more, or something that involves a tiny camera and watching the loading on a screen. Perhaps even on my mobile phone? I don't know but I guess anything's possible these days?

[Ruston]

Theoretical mechanical solution.

 

A tube that holds the same volume as would fill a wagon sits below a hopper.

A motor and gearbox rotates the tube so that a slot faces upwards.

Stone floods the tube.

Tube is rotated and closes off the hopper.

Tube rotates 180 degrees and the load discharges into the wagon, below, filling it in one shot with no need to observe it and with no chance of the flow continuing to overspill.

 

The problem lies in the grinding of stone against the hopper and the possibility of the tube jamming. A lot of it will depend on making it robust enough and having a power unit that is strong enough. There's also the problem of fitting all of this in the building and having enough hopper space so as to not need to keep on topping it up too often.

I could sell that as modern art ^

 

[Nick C]

another solution could be to have multiple 'cells' each containing enough stone for one wagon - then just open one at a time - either mechanically or with a cheapo servo. No need to worry about closing against the weight of stone then.

[Ruston]

On 09/08/2022 at 13:37, Nick C said:

another solution could be to have multiple 'cells' each containing enough stone for one wagon - then just open one at a time - either mechanically or with a cheapo servo. No need to worry about closing against the weight of stone then.

That could work but it seems that it would be quite complex to build, with a lot of moving parts. It would also be a faff to refill.

I need to do something else now because my last idea didn't work. I made the tube part and constructed a test hopper, all powered by an N20 gearmotor. As the tube rotated and opened the inlet port, the stone dropped into the tube as designed but as the tube rotated further to the point where it would close off the hopper, the stones got stuck at the edge and preveted the tube from rotating further.

 

I was using a very coarse stone, which I think was from Peco and appears to be actual crushed limestone, so I tried a very fine Woodland Scenics ballast. That was a disaster! It leaked around the tube and got into the gearbox. Fortunately I had lubricated it with graphite and not oil so was able to, eventually, clear the ballast from the gears and restore it to working order. Another trial, using Woodland Scenics coarse ballast, didn't leak but the thing fared no better, so it's back to the drawing board.

[Nick C]

11 minutes ago, Ruston said:

That could work but it seems that it would be quite complex to build, with a lot of moving parts. It would also be a faff to refill.

Please excuse the rather crude MSPaint design - obviously not to scale!

One door at the bottom of each cell, connected to a servo, which opens it and allows all the contents to fall out before closing. To refill, close them all, dump in a bagful of stone, then slide a flat thing over the top to level out each cell, brushing the excess into the overflow hopper and back into the bag to use again. The linkages go through holes in the hopper, but they're blocked by the doors when open, so shouldn't leak.

 

Hope that makes some kind of sense!

[03060]

1 hour ago, Nick C said:

Please excuse the rather crude MSPaint design - obviously not to scale!

One door at the bottom of each cell, connected to a servo, which opens it and allows all the contents to fall out before closing. To refill, close them all, dump in a bagful of stone, then slide a flat thing over the top to level out each cell, brushing the excess into the overflow hopper and back into the bag to use again. The linkages go through holes in the hopper, but they're blocked by the doors when open, so shouldn't leak.

 

Hope that makes some kind of sense!

 

As the loader is (I think) at the baseboard edge would a simpler solution but utilising @Nick C's hopper idea be to use a stiff sllding strip at the bottom of the cells (where Nick's red line is) which could be manually pulled out in the direction of the overflow cell (away from the baseboard.) If this sliding strip was slightly wider than the cell then all of the 'stone' would fall out of the cell and so wouldn't (shouldn't) restrict the slider being pushed back in for refilling. The slider could be marked with divisions to tell the operator when a cell was fully open (or closed.)

 

Just a thought.

 

Regards,

Ian.

Edited August 11, 2022 by 03060
More waffle added.

[Ruston]

2 hours ago, Nick C said:

Please excuse the rather crude MSPaint design - obviously not to scale!

One door at the bottom of each cell, connected to a servo, which opens it and allows all the contents to fall out before closing. To refill, close them all, dump in a bagful of stone, then slide a flat thing over the top to level out each cell, brushing the excess into the overflow hopper and back into the bag to use again. The linkages go through holes in the hopper, but they're blocked by the doors when open, so shouldn't leak.

 

Hope that makes some kind of sense!

It's a brilliant idea for someone with enough space but if it was all drawn to scale it would show up how little space there is inside the building. I could start the building again but there are parameters due to the available space. From experimenting with the rotating tube, I already know the overall size and internal volume of a wagon, and the dimensions that each cell would need to be made to. As each cell would also need a servo, the number of cells that can be fitted in would be quite limited.

The loader that I made on White Peak Limestone & Tarmacadam could load 12 wagons before it needed to be refilled and so that's the minimum I'm aiming for with this one.

 

There is a problem with any loader that delivers a fixed amount of material that I hadn't considered them until I was experimenting and working out volumes, namely that all wagons need to be of the same type to avoid over or under-filling one or more types. I like to have variety in my wagon stock so this won't do.

 

I'll have to look at designing the building so that loading is viewable and then keep it simple. Unless anyone can say for sure that spy cameras such as these can focus down to just a couple of inches and broadcast direct to a mobile phone? https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/185526770903

[Nick C]

14 hours ago, Ruston said:

I'll have to look at designing the building so that loading is viewable and then keep it simple. Unless anyone can say for sure that spy cameras such as these can focus down to just a couple of inches and broadcast direct to a mobile phone? https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/185526770903

You might want to look at endoscope cameras (designed for looking into pipes, behind walls, etc, rather than medical type ones!) or macro cameras - I think the miniature spy cameras will have a really wide angle lens designed to show a whole room.

[SirBud]

Could you develop a system that uses the wagons themselves?  To start, fill a wagon then tip its contents into an identical empty wagon under the loading chute.  That full wagon eventual makes it off scene and the train brings in the empty wagon and places it under the chute, full wagon tipped into the loader and so on.  You would need two wagons of each type to do this and the loads would match the wagon capacities.  Could be semi automated using something like the locomotive coaling stages that lifted and tipped coal wagons, or manually tip a wagon over a hopper.

An alternative would be a series of containers, one for each wagon type, which when filled and levelled hold the correct amount of stone.  Then tip the contained into a hopper with the matching wagon below.

[NHY 581]

On 06/08/2022 at 15:54, Ruston said:

The overall picture as it stood yesterday evening.

 

 

Morning Dave. 

 

Just catching up with this. That's looking very nice. I do like the variation on the original track plan and in particular, the difference on levels. Top stuff. 

 

I've finally started to exhibit Sheep Dip now. Though completed in early 2020, it had it's first public outing last month and I must admit, I thoroughly enjoyed it. More than I expected.  It's at the Cardiff show on 20th/21st Aug in case anyone's popping in.

 

There's a lot to be said for a small, self contained industrial layout. 

[Ruston]

5 hours ago, NHY 581 said:

 

 

Morning Dave. 

 

Just catching up with this. That's looking very nice. I do like the variation on the original track plan and in particular, the difference on levels. Top stuff. 

 

I've finally started to exhibit Sheep Dip now. Though completed in early 2020, it had it's first public outing last month and I must admit, I thoroughly enjoyed it. More than I expected.  It's at the Cardiff show on 20th/21st Aug in case anyone's popping in.

 

There's a lot to be said for a small, self contained industrial layout. 

Thanks. It was to have been virtually a copy of Sheep Dip but then nothing ever turns out as planned. 😁

 

I'm still messing about with the loader. Most of the problem regarding viewing the loading process was down to wanting the loading to take place on the road furthest from the near baseboard edge. I was going to have the Presflo loading on the near road and that would obscure the view of the tipplers and hoppers being loaded. It seemed logical that the more processed stone would travel further through the plant and so the stone would be done with first and be loaded on the far road. I have decided to go against this and load stone on the near road, where it can be viewed more easily. With the side of the building being raised somewhat, and lighting underneath the hopper, I should be able to see the wagons being loaded.

 

The White Peak loader had a stone hopper inside the building and a sliding valve, operated by a servo motor. Move a DPDT switch one way to open the valve and the other to close it. The problem was that it was possible to let go of the switch whilst the valve was open, which resulted in an overloaded wagon and stone spilling out.

 

I have built a hopper that holds 11 wagon loads. I said that 12 was the minimum that I was aiming for and as two of these will be fitted into the building that is almost double that.

 

The mechanism is still a work-in-progress. For something that appears so simple, there's far more to it than meets the eye. I need to play about with the length of stroke of the door, the cam timing and the voltage to the motor (speed of rotation) until I'm happy with it and it is reliable. The reason for the cam and microswitch is so that a press of a button will give one rotation and always stop with the door in the closed position. I am using the same gearmotor as in the previous experiment and it needs a fair bit of voltage to overcome the weight of a full hopper pressing down on the door runners and as there is no worm gear involved it tends to run on after the microswitch cuts the power.

The solid con rod will have to be replaced by one made from brass wire with an omega loop. Currently, the door sometimes jams with trapped stones as it closes, which necessitates reversing the motor. 

 

[Ruston]

I got bored with making it work and have turned to the cosmetics of the loader building. Making and fitting individual pieces of corrugated aluminium. It's looking a bit rough but I'm hoping it will come good in the end.