Blacker Lane D.P.

[doilum]

Silver birch are the usual go for trees on colliery reclamation sites. They require few nutrients from the soil and achieve a height of6metres in less than a decade. The bark appears to be inedible for any gob rabbits or girder puppets that escaped the underground workings.......

[figworthy]

2 hours ago, Ruston said:

I don't. I have thought about it before but I've never tried it. How well do those rubber tyres take being sanded? I presume that's how it would be done? How do you get them to bulge out at the sides, at the bottom, or is that not noticeable at all?

 

Caveat - I've not tried this myself.

 

I've seen suggestions that applying a hot surface to the base of the tyre will cause it to flatten slightly, with the displaced material forming the bulge.  I suspect that some experimentation would be needed to perfect the technique.

 

The bulges are more noticeable when loaded.

 

Adrian

[Victor Vectis]

4 hours ago, cctransuk said:

< snip >

I am thinking of what was visible at the time from the A1(M) Doncaster bypass.

On Brodsworth pit tip?

 

Had, ahem, fun at Brodsworth in early 1985 running away from thugs weilding trunchons.

[Dunalastair]

14 hours ago, Ruston said:

I don't. I have thought about it before but I've never tried it. How well do those rubber tyres take being sanded? I presume that's how it would be done? How do you get them to bulge out at the sides, at the bottom, or is that not noticeable at all?

 

I don't know about sanding rubber tyres (presumably depends on the material used), but I have trimmed the tyres in the design when I have been 3D printing vehicles, and it generally makes the vehicle appear to 'sit' better. I had not thought of it until I saw it suggested on the NGRM forum. The 'bulge' would probably only be apparent at larger scales, though I agree that it can be significant on a loaded wagon. There seem to be videos on youtube showing vehicle modellers customising commercial model tyres, and a search would likely find relevant forums e.g. https://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/19/t/52634.aspx . 

Edited January 23 by Dunalastair

[Ruston]

I've had a look at various photos of lorries and although some flattening of the bottom of the tyre would help, I'm not convinced about a bulge at the sides. I guess it all depends on the load and how much air is in the tyre. I certainly won't be having a go at melting them! If it all goes wrong then I don't think you can just buy a new set of tyres. It would mean a complete replacement lorry to rob them off.

 

There's not that much flattening or bulge on this Flickr photo of a Leyland Retriever.

 

Changing the subject, I found this photo, by Pete Wilcox, on Flickr of an ex-British Oak loco at Oxcroft D.P. in 1989. Oxcroft was in Derbyshire and was visible from the M1 motorway, southbound from south of Junction 30, not far off where you always got the smell of coal tar from the Coalite plant at Bolsover. 03037 is definitely ex-BO but the other in the photo is claimed to be HE 8979 but I'm not convinced that it is. It looks like 7410, which was also a BO loco but that yellow panel on the cab runs the full length of the cab. My photos of 7410 in 1988 and at BO in 1993 show it with a panel that stops short of the ends. Oxcroft did have a Hunslet of the same type, which was w/n 8979 but 8979 was painted green and had a different pattern of buffer beam stripes, so I don't know what this one is.

 

I visited Oxcroft once and nothing was happening at all but a security guard let me in to see a pair of GEC Traction 'Stephenson' type diesel-hydraulics that were parked outside the loco shed. I have a photo of them somewhere.

 

7410 at British Coal's Wentworth Stores, near Barnsley, in 1988. Smaller yellow panel and the HUNSLET plate at this end was missing. The narrow gauge flameproofed Ruston next to it was stored here until it could be sent to what is now the National Coalmining Museum For England.

 

Edited January 23 by Ruston

[Ruston]

I've bought a copy of this book that was produced by British Coal.

There isn't much about railways and little of it is directly relevant to my layout but it is interesting and there's some awesome plant in it, such as walking draglines and the biggest Scotch Derrick I've ever seen.

[Dunalastair]

I was admiring the dragline in your previous post. Big draglines also featured in the ironstone quarries in Northants where I used to live. It was a sad day when the last one was cut up. 

 

Some day I must visit 'Oddball' at Swillington, if it is still there. 

 

https://www.28dayslater.co.uk/threads/oddball-dragline-swillington-yorkshire-october-2019.120343/

 

My walk on Sunday at Broseley near Telford was diverted due to the remains of opencast workings, now partly landscaped. It seems odd to think of the 18th and 19th century miners toiling for generations underground to remove perhaps 50% of the coal, only for opencast machines like this to untop the shallow seams and remove the remainder in a matter of months. A friend at university went on to do a coal-related geology PhD at Durham, and he described seeing tunnels from 200 year old mines (often with rails) being sectioned as the opencast pit face advanced.

 

Edited January 24 by Dunalastair

[Ruston]

I had a look around and inside Oddball around 10 years ago. They have open days occasionally. It featured in an episode of Abandoned Engieering, on the Yesterday channel a few years ago. 

 

The jib in the photo of the Hunslet at Wentworth is actually a Scotch Derrick that was used to lift things on site. 

[mac1960]

Big Geordie was the big UK  dragline I remember in the UK but if you really want to see epic engineering have a look at the German Lignite Opencast which are on a totally different scale .  I fly over them coming home to Manchester from Frankfurt and it is mining on an epic scale. 

 

[Nick C]

15 hours ago, mac1960 said:

Big Geordie was the big UK  dragline I remember in the UK but if you really want to see epic engineering have a look at the German Lignite Opencast which are on a totally different scale .  I fly over them coming home to Manchester from Frankfurt and it is mining on an epic scale. 

 

Like this, for example: https://youtu.be/3SQVIZxUrDg?si=GO3bieFpH6Xo8T7i

 

[Ruston]

Fat Alan poses with his steed in between trips to and from Bullcliffe opencast site.

 

Alan and Vera, the lass from the transport office.

 

Trespass shot from the bridge.

 

 

 

 

[Dunalastair]

Looks good - but would Fat Alan get through the cab door of that loco? Either strong perspective or too many pies ...

[mac1960]

10 hours ago, Nick C said:

Like this, for example: https://youtu.be/3SQVIZxUrDg?si=GO3bieFpH6Xo8T7i

 

Yes that is the one.

 

Cheers

Mac

[mac1960]

3 hours ago, Dunalastair said:

Looks good - but would Fat Alan get through the cab door of that loco? Either strong perspective or too many pies ...

Dunalastair

Big Pie Country back then. 
 

Cheers

Mac

[4630]

3 hours ago, Dunalastair said:

Looks good - but would Fat Alan get through the cab door of that loco? Either strong perspective or too many pies ...

 

18 minutes ago, mac1960 said:

Dunalastair

Big Pie Country back then. 
 

Cheers

Mac

 

…and no doubt Fat Alan was looking forward to his evening later at the WMC and a pint or three from what at that time would have been Barnsley Brewery.

I guess Vera would be at the bingo.  

[kryten65]

On 16/01/2024 at 12:35, Ruston said:

This looks like it's going to be a bit of a challenge to say the least!

It's a cast resin kit, from Milicast, for a Caterpillar D7 dozer. It is to go on the waste tip. It's probably a bit too old as a prototype for the later period of the site but it's suitable for the 1950s and perhaps even the 60s. Ideally I wanted a D8, as I have driven one of those, but this seems to be as near and as large a dozer as I can find. There does seem to be a lack of earth moving plant in 4mm.

 

Langley do a Drott B125, which is certainly suitable for the 70s and 80s, so I will also get one of those at some point.

This is sold as as 1 :72 D8 https://sandsmodels.com/product/d8-bulldozer-open-rear-ripper-blade/ haven't seen one in the flesh but it certainly has the air of a 70's D8 about it!

 

 

[Ruston]

14 hours ago, 4630 said:

 

 

…and no doubt Fat Alan was looking forward to his evening later at the WMC and a pint or three from what at that time would have been Barnsley Brewery.

I guess Vera would be at the bingo.  

If he was like my Grandad it would be John Smiths, or like my Dad Tetleys.

 

4 hours ago, kryten65 said:

This is sold as as 1 :72 D8 https://sandsmodels.com/product/d8-bulldozer-open-rear-ripper-blade/ haven't seen one in the flesh but it certainly has the air of a 70's D8 about it!

 

 

Thanks. Shame it's out of stock.

[mac1960]

I was a Lager drinker back then and can say I don’t remember any of the stuff in the pubs we we went to post shift in the mines in West Yorkshire back then.
 

I vaguely remember Kestral, Hoffmeister , and something called Ayingerbrau which was I think John Smiths. I have to say all were supremely unmemorable and switched to Cider for awhile. 
 

Mac

 

Edited January 27 by mac1960

[Victor Vectis]

39 minutes ago, mac1960 said:

I was a Larger drinker back then and can say I don’t remember any of the stuff in the pubs we we went to post shift in the mines in West Yorkshire back the.
 

Mac

 

 

Have you shrunk since?

😀

[5050]

1 hour ago, Victor Vectis said:

 

Have you shrunk since?

😀

Alan appears to be a Larger drinker😄

 

Tetleys, Websters, John Smiths, Taylors, Sam Smiths all bitters available in Dave's time frame.  A lot of them gone now - in their original form anyway.  I  was a Wrexham Lager drinker in my youth (mid 60's).  In town it was priced the same as bitter, around 1/6 - 2/0 a pint at most.  On holiday in Somerset with my mate Ray we went to a pub in Glastonbury and asked for 2 pints of Harp lager.  The barman said (in broad Somerset accent) - 'you sure you wants pints?'  We responded 'why?'.  He replied 'cos its 3'6 a pint'.  We had 2 halves😁.

[Ruston]

Speaking of beer and pubs...

 

Blue Bedford HA van, PUB167G  was my Grandad's van. Apart from his main job as an ambulance driver, he made dartboards in a workshop that joined on to the meat market, in Brook Street, Wakefield. He supplied pubs all over Yorkshire and I remember often being left with him in the workshop whilst my mother went shopping. I can still remember the smell of freshly sawn wood, the dye to blacken the wood and a general workshop smell, plus some SS daggers that he'd taken from dead Nazis during the war and some rather saucy postcards on the wall that weren't really suitable for a junior school-age boy to be seeing!

 

Here's his van on the way to deliver a dartboard to the British Oak having already been to the Bingley Arms in Horbury Bridge.

 

[LBRJ]

I like that picture, and the story of the dartboards.

My mate had a HA van that was pretty much the same colour as the Renault 4 in the picture, at least on the outside - and the same colour as the  nearby road sign on the inside.

I assume it had been a BT van at some point. 

[Victor Vectis]

To continue on an off topic, but beer and coal related, theme......

 

Back in 1970 something I recall skiving orf from Markham Main pit, Armthorpe, to the nearest pub.

It was a Darleys, of Thorne, house. The beer, real by CAMRA's definition, was served through an electric pump. (Invincible Sphereon? A plastic cube containing a half pint sphere to meter the beer)

It was served in a 24oz glass and the sparkler on the pump was done up tight.

I was served with a pint of froth!

And as a callow youth from that there London I was not used to such things.

 

[Victor Vectis]

3 hours ago, Ruston said:

Speaking of beer and pubs...

 

Blue Bedford HA van, PUB167G  was my Grandad's van. Apart from his main job as an ambulance driver, he made dartboards in a workshop that joined on to the meat market, in Brook Street, Wakefield. He supplied pubs all over Yorkshire and I remember often being left with him in the workshop whilst my mother went shopping. I can still remember the smell of freshly sawn wood, the dye to blacken the wood and a general workshop smell, plus some SS daggers that he'd taken from dead Nazis during the war and some rather saucy postcards on the wall that weren't really suitable for a junior school-age boy to be seeing!

 

Here's his van on the way to deliver a dartboard to the British Oak having already been to the Bingley Arms in Horbury Bridge.

 

Your Grandad sounds like a good bloke!

[03060]

I discovered last year in a petrol station near Wombwell that you could still get Stones's Bitter .... but now in cans and brewed in Burton-upon-Trent like everything else .... and it didn't give you a headache like it used to ("Great Guns !!!") .... unfortunately it seems that the taste buds of South Yorkshire folk must have changed in the last 35 years as this Wessie was the only one buying it .... they stopped getting any more in after about 6 months and I then found cans of Leffe in it's place .... I bought 4 cans to try but at £12 didn't bother again .... and neither did anybody else !!! 

 

Bring back the 80's .... when proper blokes didn't need their beer 'flavouring' with stuff that stops you from getting scurvy !!

Edited January 27 by 03060
Correction.