Blacker Lane D.P.

[03060]

BTW ... I was in 2ktechnologies model shop today, Hipperholme .... there's another 7 of the orange 'Hoveringham' lorries in there just waiting for redeployment to Hargreaves !! LoL.

[Ruston]

12099 at Blacker Lane.

 

 

 

[Dunalastair]

Nice viewpoint under that bridge - very believable.

[Ruston]

The Class 11 is my favourite loco. At least until the next new loco comes along...

 

I had a bit of a running and photo session, today, so no progress made on the barge.

 

 

 

 

[figworthy]

On 09/02/2024 at 19:20, Ruston said:

Thanks for the photo and info, Ian. It's all very helpful.

 

Flickr photos, by The KDH Archive. Not British Oak, and probably larger boats than the West Country types. On the Aire & Calder at Primrose Hill colliery.

 

 

 

Quite a bit bigger.  IIRC, built to the same basic design as Topsy :

 

https://www.nationalhistoricships.org.uk/register/2823/topsy

 

85' by 17'

 

The Cawoods barges supplied Skelton Grange Power Station (SE corner of Leeds).  When Skelton Grange closed, they were loaded onto a ship and sent off to work somewhere in Africa.

 

Adrian

[Ruston]

I tried to remove the front of the tipper house to alter it for the loading chute but it wouldn't come away in once piece and the house would have needed to come out to fix the resulting mess. Having to remove it from the baseboard in any case gave me the opportunity to try the British Oak-inspired staithe again.

I will finish it this time and install it for a couple of reasons. Firstly that it is more correct to the British Oak theme and secondly that it makes removing the fixed wagon loads easier. An enclosed tipper house was fine for the plan of actually tipping loose coal loads but with fixed loads that need to be removed by THOG it meant propelling a wagon in, stopping, pulling it out and then removing the load. I suppose it sounds silly either way you look at it but it just seems more natural to lift the load out when the wagon is in its unloading place and not after it has supposedly been unloaded.

 

It's back to 21-ton hoppers for the staithe run and the 1923 RCH minerals will now be joined by some Rapido/BRM 1907 RCH internal users for a landsales run.

[Ruston]

Well I never...

 

If you like this and the stuff I post here then, apparently, you can vote for it and me in this here poll.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfVprB4ALfO-BPO2zBXLSPI5UiSDDmfxfHLtR8rqfbj7DokOg/formResponse

[JShow]

2 hours ago, Ruston said:

Well I never...

 

If you like this and the stuff I post here then, apparently, you can vote for it and me in this here poll.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfVprB4ALfO-BPO2zBXLSPI5UiSDDmfxfHLtR8rqfbj7DokOg/formResponse

Well, since you asked nicely...

[Ruston]

When we were discussing the loading of the barges and the unloading of the hopper wagons, on page 15, I didn't appreciate the size of the chute under the staithe. Or that it seems to have been capable of acting as a storage hopper itself, so it wouldn't be simply a case of opening the doors on the wagon and the load discharging immediately and uncontrollably into the barge below. There appears to have been two hand-operated winches just in front of the buffer stop on the staithe; one for the hopper door and one to adjust the angle of the chute.

 

Now that I've looked at photos again it's obvious that there was a a door at the bottom of the hopper part of the 'chute, just before the adjustable open part.

 

I've been making the hopper and it's rather a more complex shape than I first thought.

I need to make the staircase, buffer stop, adjustable chute, winches and that strange tin hut thing. I guess that was just a shelter as I remember having a look inside and there was nothing in it at all; not even a stove or a chair.

[Ruston]

I should have this finished, weathered, and properly installed over the weekend.

I will also attempt to finish the barge.

[LBRJ]

On 12/02/2024 at 18:46, Ruston said:

Well I never...

 

If you like this and the stuff I post here then, apparently, you can vote for it and me in this here poll.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfVprB4ALfO-BPO2zBXLSPI5UiSDDmfxfHLtR8rqfbj7DokOg/formResponse

 

Think of it as my vote in a Lifetime Achievement Award....

All the way back to Rotherbrook in N :)

[Ruston]

On 16/02/2024 at 20:03, LBRJ said:

All the way back to Rotherbrook in N :)

Wow! That's going back some time! 2005/6?

 

I didn't accomplish all that I wanted to this weekend but the majority of the work on the staithe is now done.

It is fixed in place but there are some gaps around it that need to be filled and part of the sleeper retaining wall needs to be rebuilt at the front.

The hopper is a Parkside kit that I have been building on and off for months and I finished it today. It would have been complete with NCB lettering but the transfers that I used for the RCH internal users have gone AWOL. I've looked all over the shed for them and I just know that as soon as I order some replacements they'll turn up in a drawer or something! No progress has been made with the barge.

 

I've got some Hornby LNER 21-ton hoppers that I bought second hand, if I can find them, and have a brass kit for an MOT 21-ton hopper that I got from @Mark Saunders that I was about to start when I noticed that the destructions say that it's for EM/P4 only and that major surgery is required to the body to allow it to be built to OO, so that one won't be built now. If I'm going to spend a lot of time and hassle on a wagon it would be one of those Liverpool Corporation types (see pics of British Oak hoppers that have a large control wheel on the side for the hopper doors) but that would have to be a scratch build. I'll stick to LNER hoppers for the forseeable.

 

I think the British Oak-inspired staithe is a definite improvement over the fictional tipper house.

[Mol_PMB]

5 minutes ago, Ruston said:

 a brass kit for an MOT 21-ton hopper

Do you know the origins of this kit? This is a prototype I'd be keen to model in 7mm scale, but they have a lot of subtle differences from the normal LNER hoppers.

Cheers,

Mol

[Ruston]

7 minutes ago, Mol_PMB said:

Do you know the origins of this kit? This is a prototype I'd be keen to model in 7mm scale, but they have a lot of subtle differences from the normal LNER hoppers.

Cheers,

Mol

Dave Bradwell, IIRC.

[Barry O]

I take it you have some Judith Edge etches to make the 21T hoppers a bit better?

 

And, in Leeds there is a bar opposite what was the Poly main building which is a complete barge? It's a bar but it has impressive Hull shapes..

 

Baz

[Ruston]

3 hours ago, Barry O said:

I take it you have some Judith Edge etches to make the 21T hoppers a bit better?

 

And, in Leeds there is a bar opposite what was the Poly main building which is a complete barge? It's a bar but it has impressive Hull shapes..

 

Baz

I've seen that, yes.

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.8043352,-1.5480045,3a,75y,79.74h,91.08t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1spDYfZoPYzFsBSd5SvmbiHg!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DpDYfZoPYzFsBSd5SvmbiHg%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D97.8752%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu

 

I don't know anything about the etches. They're not on the JE UK model shops page.

[Barry O]

Mike has oodles of them.. he generally sells them at shows.. very handy! Give him a call.

 

And yes.. thats the dry Dock..  .one helluva high tide!!!

 

Baz

 

 

[2mmMark]

On 18/02/2024 at 19:24, Ruston said:

Wow! That's going back some time! 2005/6?

 

I didn't accomplish all that I wanted to this weekend but the majority of the work on the staithe is now done.

It is fixed in place but there are some gaps around it that need to be filled and part of the sleeper retaining wall needs to be rebuilt at the front.

The hopper is a Parkside kit that I have been building on and off for months and I finished it today. It would have been complete with NCB lettering but the transfers that I used for the RCH internal users have gone AWOL. I've looked all over the shed for them and I just know that as soon as I order some replacements they'll turn up in a drawer or something! No progress has been made with the barge.

 

I've got some Hornby LNER 21-ton hoppers that I bought second hand, if I can find them, and have a brass kit for an MOT 21-ton hopper that I got from @Mark Saunders that I was about to start when I noticed that the destructions say that it's for EM/P4 only and that major surgery is required to the body to allow it to be built to OO, so that one won't be built now. If I'm going to spend a lot of time and hassle on a wagon it would be one of those Liverpool Corporation types (see pics of British Oak hoppers that have a large control wheel on the side for the hopper doors) but that would have to be a scratch build. I'll stick to LNER hoppers for the forseeable.

 

I think the British Oak-inspired staithe is a definite improvement over the fictional tipper house.

I think so too and what you've done is to mirror history because the steel drop staithe replaced a wooden tippler staithe.

Interesting to read about the hoppers because my 2mm model of British Oak uses a quartet of finescaled Dapol 21T hoppers.  I'm planning to replace them with four made from etched brass kits so each one is subtly different.

Here's my "unloading" method.  The coal load is shaped black foam in which a steel pin is hidden.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KbKjQ01z-I

[Ruston]

I found the transfers. Picture taken this evening. I'll get some better ones with the proper camera.

It needs a barge under there now.

[Ruston]

The steering gear on the barge isn't all there but as it's going to spend most of the time parked facing this way it's not really noticeable, so I'll call it done. The Wills signalbox kit that I built umpteen pages ago came with a wheel for operating level crossing gates, which of course I didn't need so stuck it in the spares box. It made a pretty decent wheel for the barge and saved a lot of trouble in making one from scratch.

 

I could varnish around the barge to eliminate the gap but I may build another barge yet, so I'll leave it for now.

 

 

 

 

[Sweet pea]

Lovely pictures @Ruston. The weathering on the steel mineral wagons is excellent.👍

[Caledonian]

Tasty, tasty, very very tasty

[Ruston]

If you go down to the woods today...

D9513, Left, D9531, right. I think both of the prototypes ended up at Ashington and both are now preserved.

[Tortuga]

Only came across this topic yesterday and really enjoyed reading through its progress. I’ve read through several of your layout builds @Ruston and I think this one is possibly the best yet - it’s certainly the one that hits closest to home (although I’m a touch too young to properly remember the collieries round Yorkshire actually working).

 

I do remember cycling along the route of the Leeds, Castleford & Pontefract Junction Railway during the summer holidays of ‘92/‘93 and getting to where there were still railway tracks - somewhere south of Kippax and most likely Bowers Halt where the line ran to St. Aidans Opencast.

 

On 11/09/2023 at 15:50, Ruston said:

For some reason, I really like this shot: the line of decrepit wrecks awaiting attention, the wonky shed, the 4F and brake drifting back to the mainline…

I don’t know, it just works.

Edited February 27 by Tortuga
Clarity

[DanielB]

Good lord, Dave. Every layout you build is a work of art.

 

It's like my childhood come alive again.