Whaley Shunt (Shallcross Yard)

[NHY 581]

Merry Christmas, Tortters. 

 

 

Rob

[41516]

1 hour ago, Tortuga said:

The location of the shunters cabin relative to the track was guesstimated using this photo from the WA Sutherland collection (Manchester Locomotive Society):

 

 

Ooh, a Butterley patent mineral, I've just started one of those...

 

[JustinDean]

Merry Xmas!

 

Jay

[Tortuga]

In keeping with my previous progress updates, the work described in the following paragraphs was actually carried out in the two weeks leading up to Christmas.
 

Once plotted out, the plan was cut out and  jiggled around on the triangular section of the baseboard surface until the best fit was achieved, then the baseboard was cut to form the trackbed. Where the retaining walls were either below or above track level, the cuts were angled to give the walls a batter of five degrees. Offcuts were attached using wood glue to “fill in” two missing sections; under the back edge of the shunters cabin and along the front edge next to the long siding.

 

Next to receive attention was the frame. My intention is to make the layout freestanding with the option of also just plonking it on a table or handy workbench to have a play, so I needed to incorporate legs that fold up into the structure of the board. The existing depth of the frame wouldn’t allow this, so I made up some new frame ends from some scrap 12mm ply I had lying around to bring the overall depth of the board to 130mm, this being made up of 9mm ply surface, 77mm for the existing frame and 42mm for the depth of the legs when folded up, leaving 2mm of wiggle room.

 

Now with a baseboard surface and a frame to fit it to, my attention turned to cutting the channel of the Randal Carr Brook, which passes under the tracks approximately halfway along the board then turns sharply to run along the back edge of the layout. I’d already plotted out the position of the bridge to clear the point motors, so I just had to mark out where the brook would cross the frame edge, one crossbeam and one of the new ends.

Since both the end piece and the crossbeam are 12mm ply, it wasn’t too much trouble to cut a channel without compromising their strength - although I did make the channel shallower in the end piece compared to the crossbeam to represent the fall of the brook.

The baseboard seen from the northern end. Hopefully the difference in depth of the channel for the brook is noticeable…

 

The channel in the frame edge was a different matter as it is made up of two pieces of 3.5mm ply with a gap between and has to incorporate a wider gap. I therefore decided to sacrifice part of the remaining baseboard surface to form the bed of the brook, in order to strengthen the centre of the board.

The baseboard seen from the front. The cut-out for the brook is obvious, while the position of the bridge is between the two lines marked “straight” on the trackbed.

 

Next step is to deepen the long edges of the frame and further strengthen the centre of the side around the cut-out of the brook.

[JustinDean]

Baseboards look great!

 

Jay

[Tortuga]

Thanks Jay!

As I said, work on this project is a little further along than I’ve posted so far, so it looks even better at the moment!

[Tortuga]

The work described in the following paragraphs was carried out over the festive period - whenever I managed to grab a spare hour or so!

Increasing the depth of the long edges of the frame was always going to be more difficult than the ends. Fortunately the sides are made up of 9mm ply blocks sandwiched between strips of 3.5mm ply, so gluing additional blocks of 9mm ply to support extra strips of 3.5mm ply isn’t too difficult and, as I will be adding a taller 3.5mm ply panel along the back and a 3.5mm ply facia that follows the shape of the landscape to the front, any resulting “messiness” will be disguised.

 

The screws holding the long edges of the frame were removed and the pieces taken to my workshop. The positions for additional ply blocks were marked out on each as follows: three narrow blocks equally spaced along the back edge; two narrow blocks 305mm from each end of the front edge and a wider block to strengthen around the cut-out for the brook. I also marked out the positions of 51mm diameter “lightening” holes, reasoning that I’d best cut these before deepening the sides of the frame.

Obviously, I completely forgot to mark out the positions for the ‘L’ shaped pieces I needed to add at each end of the long edges in order to carry the pivot for the legs, so four of the 51mm holes had to be redone once the ‘L’ pieces were glued in place.

 

The five narrow blocks were glued into position, followed by the strengthening block at the cut-out for the brook, which was then cut to match the profile already in place.

 

Just to prove I’m not perfect at this wood butchery game, I somehow managed to get the back long edge the wrong way up when fitting the additional blocks and had to redrill all the holes for the screws! So much for reusing a readymade frame!Annoying, but, since I enjoy woodworking (and have the tools and the space to build my own boards), I’d still choose making my own boards over buying a ready made one!

 

1220mm long 44mm wide strips of 3.5mm ply were cut and glued to the new blocks below the lower edge of the original frame.   Where the ends of the strips would overlap the ends, they were trimmed to fit. The various parts were then screwed back together to form the completed frame.

Overview of the completed frame and trackbed. The cut-out for the brook is in the centre.

The completed baseboard looking north along the line of the brook.

 

I’ve got a few choices as to what to do next, but I’ve decided to mark out the track and lay cork and give the woodwork a rest for a bit!

[JustinDean]

Nice bit of work there!

 

Jay

[Tortuga]

Cheers Jay!

It looks a bit hotpotch and piebald at the moment, but once I get the facia on it’ll look a lot better. That’s a looooooong way off though - I’ll probably have the extension boards completed before the facia gets fitted!

[JustinDean]

1 minute ago, Tortuga said:

Cheers Jay!

It looks a bit hotpotch and piebald at the moment, but once I get the facia on it’ll look a lot better. That’s a looooooong way off though - I’ll probably have the extension boards completed before the facia gets fitted!

I think it looks tidy! I’ve used a similar type of sandwich beam construction on Middleton Top and it’s made some quite large baseboards light enough to be moved easily. 
 

Extension boards? Where are they going?

 

Jay

[Tortuga]

Eventually, a 3’ section to extend the yard including the goods shed and the crossover of the loop and a 1’ section beyond the overbridge to act as a fiddle siding.

 

I want to get the inglenook section finished first though.

[Tortuga]

The work described in this post was carried out in January and February, but I didn’t get chance to photograph the end result until recently!

 

 

The C&HPR ballasted it’s track up to the top of the sleepers and, judging by all the photos I had available Shallcross Yard was no exception with the “ballast” being pretty much flat across the yard and level with the sleeper tops.

I remember @Alister_G using the “DAS ballast” technique on ‘Cromford Wharf’ and describing his reasons for choosing a different method to achieve this on ‘Ladmanlow’. After reading Al’s account, I decided I couldn’t face cutting out tiny rectangles of cork to interlock with the sleepers on PECO track, but I didn’t want to buy any DAS clay or use loads of ballast to replicate the almost buried sleepers of the real thing.

(In case anyone thinks I’m not staying true to my intentions of this being a test bed for techniques to be used on Alsop, the running lines were apparently ballasted normally, while the yard - one siding - appears to have been a combination of almost buried sleepers on one side and a distinct shoulder on the other. In this case, I’ll be trialling a method for Alsop on Alsop!)

So I went with a different option. To hopefully retain some sound deadening, I cut strips of cork to lay either side of the track centres. All by the book so far? Not quite.

 

Track centres were marked out by placing the Templot plan onto the board and sticking track pins into the ply surface through the centres of the sleepers.

 

The plan was then removed (carefully!) leaving the pins in place. This was done in stages as it turned out I didn’t have enough pins for marking out the whole thing in one go, but this meant I could leave the process partway through and move the board without losing the centres already marked - an important consideration with limited time and two small children roaming the house!

The southern end of the yard marked out with the plan removed. Due to the lack of pins, the entrance to the yard and the long siding already have cork stuck in place.

 

I used 1.5mm thick cork cut into strips half the width of PECO sleepers (15mm wide), stuck down with good old PVA, effectively recreating the track plan in cork on the baseboard surface (which had been treated to a coat of PVA really early on in the project, based on prior experience of cork, plywood and normal PVA not wanting to form any kind of permanent bond)

 

The plan was then cut up to form templates of the areas either side of the track. These were then used to cut out 3mm thick cork shapes that were then stuck down where they fitted around the 1.5mm thick cork “track plan” so the track itself sits in a “trough” rather than a raised bed.

 

Next: track laying!

[franciswilliamwebb]

Small world.  I was looking at Shallcross Yard in one of the Foxline books a couple of days ago, thinking it'd make a great layout, and then I see this thread👍

[JustinDean]

Personally I think DAS is the way for ash ballast. Al did really struggle with it and I don’t think using the terra-cotta coloured stuff helped. There’s a decent stone color DAS avaiable from The Range. The key is to make it manageable and I find the way to do this is by rolling it into 1mm thick flat sheets, cut into strips then press firmly in between sleepers. 
 

 

Left of the trackwork is fresh DAS and the colour it dries to. I then use pastels scraped with a scalpel to form powder to weather this. 

Good to see an update - I was wondering what was happening with Shallcross!

 

Jay 

[Tortuga]

Hmm… I’m still undecided on the DAS or not. I’d like to give it a go and at least I don’t have vast swathes of baseboard to cover with it now!

 

Next step is turning the mangled points into working ones once again, which is pretty much the reason for a total lack of progress on Shallcross - and if I’m honest, Alsop as well. I need a good uninterrupted run at the points of both layouts and, at the moment, I can’t get the length of time I need.

[Tortuga]

1 hour ago, franciswilliamwebb said:

Small world.  I was looking at Shallcross Yard in one of the Foxline books a couple of days ago, thinking it'd make a great layout, and then I see this thread👍

Obviously a case of great minds! Which of the Foxline books out of interest?

 

I first came across it in the ‘Whaley Bridge to Friden’ one, but there’s some good pictures in ‘The Buxton Extension’. Lots of opportunities for different “takes” on the prototype although a fully finescale version would be something to see!

[franciswilliamwebb]

41 minutes ago, Tortuga said:

I first came across it in the ‘Whaley Bridge to Friden’ one

 

Yep, that's the one!

[Tortuga]

I blame that book for my fascination with the Buxton to Ashbourne Line.

Indirectly at any rate.

[Fishplate]

Just come across this very nice topic and added to follow list .

[Tortuga]

Thanks very much and welcome on board!

[Graham T]

On 15/04/2023 at 09:37, Fishplate said:

Just come across this very nice topic and added to follow list .

 

What John said 🙂

 

[Tortuga]

On 18/08/2023 at 10:26, Graham T said:

 

What John said 🙂

 

Welcome aboard!  Progress on here is very sporadic, I’m afraid!

 

Having said that…

[Enterprisingwestern]

15 minutes ago, Tortuga said:

Welcome aboard!  Progress on here is very sporadic, I’m afraid!

 

Having said that…

 

Now you've said that I've become a follower, the pressure is on, so don't be a very naughty boy!

 

Mike.

[Tortuga]

…some progress occurred today!

 

Before I can lay any track on ‘Whaley Shunt’, I need to repair the PECO tandem point that I recovered from ‘Gibbs Sidings’. I’d previously attempted to modify this by removing the locking spring mechanism, the oddly shaped timbers and thinning down the tie bars and, while I was partially successful, one tie bar has snapped, the tags that hold the point blades in place have broken off and two of the frog dropper wires have parted company leaving me with this collection of bits:

 

Holes were drilled to accommodate the frog droppers and, having carried out a minor soldering job to reattach one loose dropper, the point could be positioned (minus its blades and tie bars).

 

I decided to tackle the tie bars (or more correctly, the leading stretcher bars) first as I need an easy, reliable and realistic method for making these for the points on Alsop. I felt the best solution was to have a hidden operating bar beneath the point to give the whole thing a bit of rigidity and to that end, cut out a patch of the cork

to accept a ‘fake base’ with a slot in it through which an extra deep stretcher bar will fit

 

I’ve made the base long enough to accept extensions to the existing timbers for hand point levers. Also in the above photo is the point operating bar, which will fit under the fake base and support the extra deep stretcher bar.

 

…and that’s all I had time for!

[Tortuga]

Via a link from the Buxton Line and Railways of the High Peak Facebook group, I’ve found a photo showing the underbridge carrying Shawcross Yard over Randall Carr Brook.

 

Unfortunately, not being sure of the copyright, I can’t post it here.  Fortunately it has confirmed that the bridge was a stone built structure with quite a flattened arch.