Harboro Stone Co.

[Sweet pea]

Fantastic looks and sounds great. 👍

[Ruston]

Today's job was to add a little more scenery.

 

The unmetalled road has gained some greenery and railings. I didn't like the look of any available proprietary items so I made my own. They're supposed to look like something made by a local blacksmith, rather than any kind of railway company fencing. The rails are brass wire and the posts are milled brass. I'll paint a dark grey around the hole where the posts enter the stones, as if it's lead that's been poured in to hold the posts in place.

[Ruston]

A bit of electrical work that I forgot to mention.

 

To assist in viewing the wagon loading I fitted an LED under the loader to illuminate the inside of the wagons. Although it's a bit of a gimmick, I also added a green LED and a flashing one. The green one is illuminated all the time the loader isn't in action. The loader motor gets its power from a digital decoder, which was selected on the DCC handset in the same way as a locomotive would be. It was also operated in the same way, i.e. opening and closing the throttle. I found this to be inconvenient because to get a proper fill of one wagon takes three movements of the loco. Selecting the loader, loading one heap, stopping the loader and then selecting the loco and so on. To make the loading operation easier I fitted a DPDT sprung switch. The loader is now selected on the DCC handset and the throttle opened to the required amount but the loader itself does not operate until the switch is held over. This allows the loader to be left with its throttle set throughout operation and saves selecting between loco and loader.

 

Running the loader takes only one side of the DPDT switch, so the other is given over to a lighting circuit that operates the LEDS described above. It is possible to run these from the loader's decoder and I asked here on RMweb about it but it went over my head. Instead the lights run by taking power from the DCC bus, through a rectifier and a voltage control. It's all looking like the triggering mechanism for a bomb!

 

I posted this picture in my workbench thread but it is here to show the dry stone wall that I added to the layout, last week. I had begun to make some from DAS but it wasn't working out as well as I would have liked. A friend told me about flexible stone walling and although the idea sounded naff, it's turned out well. It was in a brown shade and needed some paint to get it to suit the Peak District.

The steps are a modified kit that was meant for loco maintenance. They are here for inspecting the insides of wagons, especially minerals, to ensure there is no contamination from the previous load, which could have been scrap metal or coal.

Edited October 4, 2022 by Ruston

[Sweet pea]

Dave the stone wall does look very good indeed and I think the colours are spot on. 👍

[Ramblin Rich]

On 16/09/2022 at 19:16, Ruston said:

A lot, I would imagine. But then the sound of a stone crushing plant is quite different to the sound of a little motor buzzing, so it's something I'd rather not have.

 

The sound is tolerable and doesn't drown out the hissing sounds of a stationary steam engine.

 

The hopper.

It rests on foam mounts and is also insulated from the sides with foam. The motor is wired to a decoder so it can be operated from the same controller as the engines.

 

Dave, this is really clever design. Regarding the noise, could you have the sound of stone being dropped into wagons playing as the loader is being run? After all, a real loader does make a lot of noise and it might mask the buzz of the mechanism....

[Ruston]

1 hour ago, Ramblin Rich said:

Dave, this is really clever design. Regarding the noise, could you have the sound of stone being dropped into wagons playing as the loader is being run? After all, a real loader does make a lot of noise and it might mask the buzz of the mechanism....

That is a good idea. I'll give it some thought.

[Ruston]

Sunday's work on the layout.

 

If you look back at previous photos of the main building you will see that the support legs looked at bit wobbly. They were made of Evergreen styrene H-section and their connection to the ground was by small magnets that were stuck to the ends of the legs and fitted with corresponding magnets that were embedded in styrene blocks on the baseboard. The magnets were supposed to hold the legs to the baseboard without gaps. I hate to see gaps between buildings and baseboard.

 

Fixing flimsy plastic legs to the building was a bad idea. They weren't really strong enough to take the weight of the full hopper and never did work as planned, with regard to anchoring the thing to the ground without gaps, so the plastic legs have been chopped off and replaced with brass H section. The new legs, made from milled brass H-section, are firmly fixed to the baseboard, so there is no gap and the building sits on top of this framework with any gapping being hidden behind the corrugated cladding.

The brass was soldered together with a Resistance Soldering Unit, on a flat steel sheet and with the aid of squares and magnets, which makes it already look better than the plastic version, which was a bit out of square. Previously there was just one column at the front, between the tracks but this time there will be a whole row that will feature steps and a walkway that would be used for workers to get up on to and access the filling hatches on Covhops.

[Ruston]

I forgot this. An extension to the engine shed. Like the main shed, it is held down by magnets and the roof is also removable and held in place with magnets.

As far as the layout itself is concerned, it's just about done. This was the last building needed and there are no more to be built. I still need to build more internal use wagons, and devise an automatic unloading system for them, and details and people need to be added to the layout, but that's all.

 

All apart from the dreaded wood butchery involved in making ends and backscene and 'proscenium arch' to make it an Iain Rice-style cameo layout. And lighting, of course.

 

Who am I kidding? There's still a load to do.

[Barclay]

Looking great. Let us know if it goes in the RM, as I don't usually buy it but would make an exception !

[Ruston]

11 hours ago, Barclay said:

Looking great. Let us know if it goes in the RM, as I don't usually buy it but would make an exception !

Thanks! I don't buy it anymore. Haven't done for years. As my last two layouts appeared in BRM it'll be there, if anywhere, that it will be in.

[Ruston]

One thing that I intended to do, and which was mentioned before I started adding scenery to the baseboard, was to have wagons from the quarry line tip their loads. The original idea was for contractors' type wagons but there are problems with using those and I changed to hopper wagons but I have not been able to come up with a satisfactory method of automating the opening and closing of the hopper doors, so I'm back to thinking about this again.

 

I had thought about ironstone dump cars. The same type were used in at least one UK stone quarry but there is no kit available. RT Models has intentions to produce one but it still hasn't appeared 8 years on. There is also the problem of making them tip, even if the kit has been designed to work in that way.

 

The latest idea is for a rotary tippler. I have made the usual type of tippler before and they have worked successfully but they take up a lot of space, which I don't have here. There's also the fact that the first wagon must be uncoupled before tipping and coupled up again before the next wagon can be moved onto the tippler. After that then two uncouplings/couplings must be done for other vehicles in the train. With the unloading point being at the rear of the layout, and access for uncoupling also being made difficult at one end by the crusher building, this isn't an option.

 

A rotary tippler, where the wagon turns on an axis through the centre line of the coupling, would mean the train can be shunted in, tipped, and shunted out again with no intervention. The problems here are designing it and powering it. Prototype rotary tipplers are worked by man power in the case of narrow gauge, or with a huge ring gear engaging with a gearbox, on standard gauge. I don't have the know how or machine tools to produce such a thing and I can't think of any other way of powering it.

 

This is the sort of thing.

Edited October 22, 2022 by Ruston

[Ruston]

The tippler is on hold. It would be a huge amount of work to build and so I'm looking at alternatives that will be easier and less work.

 

These Bachmann On30 narrow gauge dump cars could be converted to standard gauge dump cars similar to those built by Metropolitan Carriage & Wagon for use in ironstone quarries. The gauge is already right for OO and the chassis look about right. The conversion work will be mainly centred on the bodies, which are far too wide and also rather tall.

[w124bob]

What about the RT models version ?

[Ruston]

29 minutes ago, w124bob said:

What about the RT models version ?

It doesn't exist as a kit that is actually available to buy.

[Ruston]

I haven't abandoned the idea of working hoppers and will hopefully end up with both hoppers and dump cars as it would be nice to have the option of changing things around in terms of rolling stock.

 

The hopper that I pictured previously got as far as having a bottom door fitted. I had an idea to somehow operate the door by magnets but I couldn't get it to work. It was a single door that when open would hang between the rails and would need to be closed before the wagon could move off the unloading area, which was another aspect of the magnet design that wasn't working.

 

I realised that if two doors were used then they would keep clear of the rails and the wagon could still be moved with them open, so closing them automatically wasn't vital as they could of course be closed manually in the FY before refilling. Another issue was that the door was made from plasticard but the hinge was brass and gluing the two together along such a small surface area meant a weak joint that was bound to cause trouble sooner or later.

 

This time it's all made of brass and the door hinges are soldered to a frame that in turn is glued to the hopper but with a large surface area overall for the glue to grab. A pivoted arm and a piece of brass with stops built in forms the catch. A length of brass wire will hang down from the arm and come into contact with an angled trip that will move the catch. It works on the bench but has yet to be tested in situ and with a locomotive pushing the wagon against the trip.

[Ruston]

The Bachmann dump cars are huge! They are supposed to be narrow gauge so that's to be expected. The underframes however are no wider over the axleboxes than any other British wagon in 4mm and the wheelbase scales at 6ft. as opposed to the 6ft. 6in. of the prototypes that were built by Metropolitan.

 

And hey presto! A new, nearer scale, body takes shape. The height scales at around 8ft. instead of 7ft. 6in. of the prototype but it'll do for me as I'm not building them as exact prototypes. There were at least four UK manufacturers who built this type of wagon in various gauges, including Robert Hudson and J&F Howard.

The rods are there just to hold the doors in place but these will be hinged properly once the remainder of the door struts are added.

Reinforcing angles, rivets and the like will be added to prettify it once the basics are done.

Edited October 29, 2022 by Ruston

[Ruston]

I was quite wrong about the height. I thought that it looked too tall but now it's obvious. A 16-ton mineral is 8ft. 9in. tall, which makes the dump car around 8ft. 6in. or so. I tested the tip angle, yesterday and it would tip far enough but couldn't be lowered due to the body hitting the top of the lower links in the door mechanism that were still in situ on the Bachmann underframe. The eyes in the links are massively overscale, even for the narrow gauge prototype, so I chopped them off. This revealed that the pivot point of the body can now be lowered and the body can still tip to the required angle. Bringing the body nearer to the "backbone" of the underframe will result in the entire thing being lower by about 3mm.

 

The Bachmann pivots are made from plastic and cutting them down and then attempting to glue them back on to the metal backbone didn't seem such a good idea, so I made new ones from brass. The picture shows the end pivots in place but the intermediate pair are yet to be fitted.

 

The other hinge arms are now in place.

[John Besley]

Very nice Dave, who stocks yhe Bachman 0n30 items as I on a hunt for 0n30 arch bar trucks 

[Ruston]

On 30/10/2022 at 22:09, John Besley said:

Very nice Dave, who stocks yhe Bachman 0n30 items as I on a hunt for 0n30 arch bar trucks 

I don't know, John. I got these second hand, on ebay.

 

[Ruston]

 

[Ruston]

It may have looked good in the video but the angle of tip was not enough to allow the full load to discharge once it had been painted. It's amazing how much friction paint causes.

 

I made a modification to increase the angle of of tip, which did allow the entire load to discharge but now, without intervention, the body will not return to centre and of course the door will not close. I filed the mounts in case something was sticking, and also oiled them, but it has not cured the problem. It is very difficult to determine if the cause is something sticking slightly, or of those extra few degrees of tip have swung the balance so that it cannot return to centre now in any case. Until that problem is solved then there's little point in thinking about how to make it tip remotely, i.e. without a big hand from the sky.

 

 

I'm getting bogged down with this stuff now and it's becoming boring. I'm thinking of binning the idea of trains of quarried stone being tipped and having the line through the tunnel being used for large lumps of stone that would be used for architectural purposes. There is a prototype for this as I have seen photos of huge lumps of limestone being carried from Wirksworth on BR Plate wagons.

[LBRJ]

Talking of huge lumps of limestone.

Darley Dale was another location.

https://www.andrewsgen.com/photo/derbyshire/darley_quarry_stancliffe.htm

[Ruston]

35 minutes ago, LBRJ said:

Talking of huge lumps of limestone.

Darley Dale was another location.

https://www.andrewsgen.com/photo/derbyshire/darley_quarry_stancliffe.htm

Interesting but rather earlier than the period of the layout. This is the sort of thing that I meant.

https://mikemorant.smugmug.com/keyword/black hawthorn/i-tfXLgK9

[Ruston]

Making the mechanism to tip the dump cars.

 

I found a plastic-bodied gearbox with a built-in 3v motor that I purchased from Squires at an exhibition, years ago. Just for this sort of thing, I should imagine but I must have stashed it away and forgotten all about it. I made a fitting to go onto the output shaft and soldered a length of brass channel to it. A slot was filed into the channel and the operating rod slides inside the channel. The lower end of the operating rod has a pair of plastic beads glued over a narrowed area and the channel engages with these. I jury-rigged the motor/gearbox and it works. At the moment the up stroke is terminated by the bead hitting the guide tube that goes through the baseboard and the down stroke by the wire around the end of the slot in the channel catching the gap between the beads and stalling the motor, but I will probably fit microswitches to cut the power. If I was really clever, which I'm not, I would arrange microswitches in such a way that a single push of a button would set the motor on the up stroke and return it to its start point at the end of the down stroke, ready to go again when the next car is positioned. It's by no means elegant but it does work and who cares what it looks like when it's on the underside of the baseboard?

 

And as for righting the car bodies? The tipping will take place under a canopy and at the end of this will be a wire trip suspended from a gantry. This will engage with the high corner of the body and push it down as the car is propelled forward by the locomotive positioning the next car.

[Ruston]