Blacker Lane D.P.

[Respite]

On 16/02/2023 at 13:21, Ruston said:

The track bed beyond ran, via a zig-zag, in a cutting, to a pit named Victoria. From there it descended by a rope-worked line to Denby Grange colliery and then back up via another rope-worked incline to descend under the main Wakefield - Huddersfield road to Caphouse colliery (now the National Coalmining Museum for England), where locomotives took over again.

 

 

I attach a plan of the layout at Little London on the line from Caphouse  and Denby Grange Collieries  to Calder Grove. This would also make an excellent layout.

 

[Ruston]

I agree that it would make an excellent layout, as long as the shunting neck with the loco on was made more as it was in reality, i.e. longer. I'm sure someone would build that thinking it was only capable of holding a loco and two wagons. 😄 I have walked around the Little London area in an attempt to find the sandstone cutting but I didn't find it, or any trace of the tunnel.

[Ruston]

I haven't got that much done in terms of making stuff but I have been planning and thinking, particularly about point control and rolling stock.

 

I want to run HAA hoppers and wanted to buy a single wagon for gauging and setting the lengths of sidings etc. and started to look at what's available. I was in a model shop on Saturday and saw a Hornby HAA, which didn't look bad at all but, to be fair, I didn't have my specs on.

 

Now I've got my specs on and am looking on the internets. I have discovered said Hornby wagons.

https://uk.Hornby.com/products/haa-hopper-wagons-three-pack-br-railfreight-era-8-r60063?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI1Zz8ytz8_QIVMoBQBh2JygO4EAQYBCABEgK08_D_BwE

That's £10 more than a pack of Accurascale HAAs. Are the people at Hornby on hallucinogenic drugs?

 

Hornby v Accurascale - Hornby's seconds ought to throw in the towel before the first punch is even thrown.

I know who's getting my money when the time comes.

[Ruston]

Now we're getting somewhere.

 

I'm not a P-way expert and I'm sure that to those who are, these Peco Bullhead points have their faults and inaccuracies, but they are miles ahead of the old Code 75 stuff in appearance and in use. The frogs are dead, unless you want to wire them, and if they are wired it is only the actual frog that is dead or is wired and not the wing rails, as on the Code 75 stuff. This means there is no need to use insulating fishplates anywhere at all and with no hinge in the blades, which have their own power feed from the stock rails, there is no need to faff about adding extra wires before laying them. They are more expensive to buy, but it's not every day that you build a new layout, so it's worth using the best available, IMHO.

 

I've been mulling over the various possibilities for operating the points and have decided to go digital. Digital as in manumatic. Piano wire rods being pushed and pulled. It's worked just fine on the last three layouts that I've built. It's cheap, easy and has nothing to go wrong or wear out. The points at the entry to the FY may be power-operated but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

 

I have been able to run a couple of engines up and down as I now have a control system.

I have the same system on Charlie's Yard and the CVMR. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of some controllers, but I am used to how everything works and, above all, it's good value for money at £164. With it being Loconet compatible it can be used with other makes of handset and of course when I have visiting operators who don't have their own DCC handset, one of my others can be borrowed and plugged in to give an additional operator.

 

 

[Ruston]

I have a little more progress to report.

 

The top part of the baseboard face is in place, in parts. The manumatic point controllers are also in place for the screens area. These consist of a length of piano wire that has a 90 deg. bend in it, with one end in the operating hole of the tie bar and the other end protruding from the front face of the baseboard. An electrical connector block provides a stay that holds the rod up and prevents it from falling out of the tie bar and also prevents flexing on longer runs of wire. I found some nice solid brass knobs that were intended for kitchen units. They were free, so that's even better.

The hump, nearest camera, is the end of the embankment for the double track line that crosses the proper track and the lane.

 

The level crossings under construction.

The rectangle, drawn in marker pen, is where the weighbridge will be located. I want to have a weighbridge that properly looks the part, with a proper cast pattern and manufacturer's name in it, but there doesn't seem to be anything available as a kit at all. What weighbridges are available all seem to be for road vehicles and very short ones at that. This needs to be able to take a wheelbase of 80mm in order to accomodate HAA hoppers.

[skipepsi]

On 08/03/2023 at 12:17, Ruston said:

That is superb, but I couldn't use the same technique of cladding the structure in thousands of individual pieces of DAS because the prototype I want to build is made from brick.

It wasn't the stonework as such more about how he built the wooden formers and then you could make the curved brick mouldings from DAS to stick to your choice of brick sheet.

[5944]

On 06/04/2023 at 19:38, Ruston said:

I have a little more progress to report.

 

The top part of the baseboard face is in place, in parts. The manumatic point controllers are also in place for the screens area. These consist of a length of piano wire that has a 90 deg. bend in it, with one end in the operating hole of the tie bar and the other end protruding from the front face of the baseboard. An electrical connector block provides a stay that holds the rod up and prevents it from falling out of the tie bar and also prevents flexing on longer runs of wire. I found some nice solid brass knobs that were intended for kitchen units. They were free, so that's even better.

The hump, nearest camera, is the end of the embankment for the double track line that crosses the proper track and the lane.

 

The level crossings under construction.

The rectangle, drawn in marker pen, is where the weighbridge will be located. I want to have a weighbridge that properly looks the part, with a proper cast pattern and manufacturer's name in it, but there doesn't seem to be anything available as a kit at all. What weighbridges are available all seem to be for road vehicles and very short ones at that. This needs to be able to take a wheelbase of 80mm in order to accomodate HAA hoppers.

What about trying something in O gauge? 

 

https://severnmodels.com/epages/eshop1179816.mobile/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/eshop1179816/Products/O21&Locale=en_GB

 

Would probably have to be a cut and shut job, but might be an ok starting point.

[Ruston]

19 hours ago, 5944 said:

What about trying something in O gauge? 

 

https://severnmodels.com/epages/eshop1179816.mobile/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/eshop1179816/Products/O21&Locale=en_GB

 

Would probably have to be a cut and shut job, but might be an ok starting point.

I could bodge something up from scratch, which would at least be of the right size, but I want a proper job. I have found someone who says he can 3D-print a weighbridge for me.

Edited April 13, 2023 by Ruston

[Ruston]

Slow progress.

 

I did some landscaping, using corrugated card, masking tape, newspaper and lots of PVA glue to create a stream, part of the embankment for the over-bridge and a bit of a valley side. A big mistake was to slather a load of gloss paint over it as it's taking ages to dry and is holding up further progress.

 

The AEC dump truck is standing on what will be the haul road from the screens to the waste tip.

[Ruston]

Attempting to make a railway in the landscape, rather than just sticking track and buildings to a flat baseboard, is a lot of work! A mix of corrugated cardboard, masking tape, newspaper, PVA glue and now insulation foam and plaster bandage have got to this:

Here we see the meandering Blacker beck and the trackbeds that will have bridges added before the track is laid. The paint will dry matt.

 

Looking the other way and the embankment and the beginnings of the bridge abutments are in place. The beck disappears into a culvert.

I still haven't got a weighbridge, so can't lay the track across the lane.

[Ruston]

I am attempting to work out the size of the viaduct arches and piers. I walked the width of an arch by putting toe to heel and then measuring the length of my shoe. This came out at around 45ft. To gauge the width of the piers I took some photos and reckoned it could be worked out by counting bricks, but I didn't have a rule to measure the bricks with!

 

What are we doing here again? Where are the squirrels?

 

 

 

I see no squirrels. Why didn't you bring a tape measure, you idiot?

[Barclay]

9" is pretty standard for a brick, though I think that includes the width of a mortar course too. 

[Ruston]

A mock-up of the viaduct. Space restrictions preclude making it to anything like the height of the prototype and the placing of the track bases and their curvature make it impossible to produce true scale arch sizes, pier widths and track width. I reckon it's not badly propotioned though, even if part of one of the piers will have to be cut out to allow for the inner curve. With it being at the back of the viaduct, and some strategically-placed trees at the front, it won't be noticeable from normal viewing heights and angles.

[Ruston]

[Ruston]

I had to rework the abutments as I had forgotten the sticky out bits that the bridge ends sit on.

 

With mocked up bridge.

It's not goingto be an exact scale replica of the real one but then I'm not claiming that the layout is British Oak.

 

I'll use Wills varigirder kits to make the bridge. The panels are square in the kit and they are rectangular on the real bridge, but I don't fancy scratchbuilding something and having to stick all those rivet an bolt heads on every panel.

 

The Midland viaduct is to be made from laser-cut card. I have a friend who owns an engineering works, can drive a computer with a CAD program and has a laser cutter. The laser beam (I wanted to type frikkin laser beam there, as in Doctor Evil and "sharks with frikkin laser beams attached to their heads".) is 0.3mm wide, which is of course how wide the mortar courses will be, which is of course about 7/8ths of an inch and much too wide in scale. To compensate for this, the bricks will have to be done overscale so as not to have it look as if the bricks are tiny in massive mortar courses.

[Ruston]

A little more track laid. None ballasted yet though.

[doilum]

15 hours ago, Ruston said:

A little more track laid. None ballasted yet though.

Starting to get there. Love the beck.

[Ruston]

The 3D-printed weighbridge in its raw state.

[Ruston]

The sound decoder arrived for my Kerr, Stuart Victory. Just a few seconds of video here but I spent ages running the thing back and forth and made no progress with the layout at all. At least with the fitting of the weighbridge, the run-round loop is complete and all of the track in the screens area is now laid.

Building up Blacker Lane's level crossing will have to begin soon.

[Ruston]

The bridge is starting to look better and the weighbridge is in place.

 

On the O gauge layout that this one replaces there was a cottage that was built from a laser-cut MDF kit, from Petite Properties. As a nod to the old layout, I bought the same kit but in 4mm and have placed it very close to where the old one was.

[Ruston]

The bridge is coming along nicely and I have begun to make Blacker Lane itself, at the level crossing.

[Ruston]

I still have an entire baseboard that is nothing more than a pile of bits of wood, but I am progressing the scenery on this particular section to keep me going and maintain interest. After all, there's no fun in wood butchery and faffing with cardboard and newspaper isn't much better.

 

I've been putting kerb stones in and have made up one section of fencing, made from old rail. At the moment there is also some ballast in this area and it is drying as I type. To satisfy my long neglected interest in blue diesels, I will run the occasional BR locomotive into the yard and so have purchased a Class 24. I doubt these ever worked into British Oak, but the ancient Bachmann Peak that I have from when I last modelled main line railways, in the 1990s, couldn't even pull itself around the curve that will go behind the viaduct.

[Ruston]

Ballast.

 

We took a walk along the trackbed at British Oak, this morning. Despite the way being cleared there are still a few rotten sleepers under the dirt and piles of ballast that has been pushed aside can be found here and there. Some of it is clearly newer and is small limestone, but there is also foundry slag. There is also shale that would have been waste and the odd lump of coal to be found.

 

Coal, shale, slag and beach sand. Smashed and ground up to produce ballast.

[Ruston]

More D.I.Y

 

Obviously, you can buy Sea Moss to make trees, but I reckoned it would be cheaper to grow my own. £15 for a box of 20, or £1.49 for 700 seeds?

 

Teloxys Aristata.

 

And...

I've also been saving grape stalks to make trees from.

[Ruston]

Building the haul road.

Cork sheet, as used as track underlay. I'll paint and weather it as concrete.

 

Weigh cabin under construction.

Scratchbuild, using Wills and SE Finecast brick sheet, with plywood door. The roof will be a slab of concrete, which will again be cork sheet. This is pretty much the same design and methods that I used to build the weigh cabin on the O gauge but he window frames will have to be built from scratch on this one.