Lancaster Green Ayre - The Barn Owls have returned.

[lofty.ian]

Hi Jamie,

It was great to see Green Ayre at Warley, having followed its progress on this thread. It has certainly progressed since I last saw it at Warley (2 years ago?).  It is impressive and captures the atmosphere of the area. I was wandering around there a couple of weeks ago, filling in time for a long connection to the Leeds train, and walked up the Castle branch. 

Glad I was passing the layout just when you needed an extra pair of hands to put the threaded rod back into the bridge board, and thanks for the chance to see the 'other' side.

Ian

[LNER4479]

I used to call Long preston 'The monster' now I'm not sure what to call Green Ayre.

'Humungous' I'd call it!

 

Jamie - as I was demo-ing I had precious little time to see much else at Warley but did make a point of stopping by for an all too brief few minutes on my way back from lunch yesterday. Unfortunately, I couldn't see anyone in a yellow sports top holding onto a bicycle so I assumed you were on your lunch break. But I was bowled over by the sheer size and scale of what you are creating. Even though I knew it was O gauge and you've posted various views on this thread the full thing put together is quite breath-taking (even in it's far-from-complete state) and such a fantastic recreation in the making of an earlier railway era.

 

I'll keep reading and 'liking' and look forward to seeing it again in the future and perhaps getting a chance to say 'hi'.

[jamie92208]

Thanks to both Ian and LNER4479 for the above comments.  The weekend was a fantastic experience for the team. 

 

We were very grateful to Paul Jones for the invitation to take an unfinished layout to Warley.   This gave us a great chance to see how the layout went on the road.  Even though I have put the layout up in the church several times I've always got to leave one or two boards off due to inconvenient pillars.  As mentioned above this was the first chance to see it as a full layout with all scenic items that exist and a nearly full compliment of stock.

 

For us the journey started over a week before the show as the stock arrived from the various owners.  This all had to be stored and moved.  The boards that we were working on at the clubrooms had to be brought home, 2 at a time in my car over 2 weeks then on the Thursday I spent most of the day assembling all the items at my church.  This made loading easier from one location.

 

Friday morning my daughter took me down to Leeds at 7am to pick up the lorry and thanks to the staff at Salford Van Hire who eventually found a 7.5 ton box van for me.   By 8am we were loading the stock and tools then the layout.  The extra space inside the van meant that we were able to manouver the boards safely.   We were on the road by 09.10 and got to the NEC for 11.30.   Traffic management was excellent and good humoured and as we were on the early access list we got into the hall by 11.40 after a long tour of the rear of the site.  

 

We unloaded and returned the lorry to the car park then had lunch.  Set up of the actual layout only took 4 of us an hour.  Matthew a 5th member arrived during the process and we then started adding backscenes, and scenic items then rolling stock and electrics.   We discovered early on that we need to get the scenic pieces on before the backscenes.   By 6.30 we had done all we could and tidied up the crate ends etc and then off to the hotel for some liquid refereshment and a good meal.

 

Saturday dawned  damp and after a good breakfast we walked to the hall and started to try and run trains.   Throughout the day we fixed a series of gremlins and gradually got trains to run on the down main.   The removable viaduct on the castle branch didn't fit correctly so we couldn't use the branch but were able to shuffle locos in the shed area.  The positive thing was that we found causes for each fault and were usually able to correct them.  As this was a first proper set up for the layout I was very pleased. 

 

The day passed in a blur and we were all surprised by how well the layout was received.  Many punters commented that it was great to see how layouts were created.  I also had one guy who pointed out the house that he was born in.

 

Saturday night was another chance to rehydrate and another good meal as a team.  Sunday morning we drove in and the day passed in a very similar way to Saturday except that we ran many more trains, fixed a few more gremlins and got chance to chat to a lot more of the visitors.   Two other team mebers had joined us by this time but unfortunately neither John Patrick, who made the station buildings and painted the backscenes, or Tony Bond who has built many of the Midland locos and detail parts were able to come for a variety of health related reasons.  Thanks have again to be given to Paul Jones who had arranged car park passes and entry for both John and Tony and the helpers who were to bring them.  I'm just sorry that they weren't able to attend.

 

We started taking stock off at 4pm and were joined by two junior members from our club who were there as visitors.  Will and Chris were immeadiately recruited as operators and spent a very happy half hour running the up and down mains. 

 

I got the lorry into the hall by 6.30 and we left at 7.30.  Unloading at the church was finished by 11pm and after taking the lorry back I got to bed about 1am.  Monday was spent taking the various bits of the layout back to their storage locations and I'm now recovering with some final tings to move today.

 

All in all it was a very good weekend and we learnt an awful loot of lessons that will be of use in the future.   It was good to speak to many RMWebbers over the course of the weekend and if I wasn't able to talk to any of you as you passed please forgive me as it did get a bit busy at times.  I spent quite a bit of the weekend under the layout with a head torch and a cricked neck due to varifocals, sorting gremlins.   A big thanks to the team who came.  The next planned outing is due to be the west end of the layout at Nottingham in March before the full layout appear at Wakefield next year.

 

Photos will follow when I've managed to download them from my camers.

 

Jamie

[supersonic]

may I add my thanks to those given by Jamie to all of you who came along to see us at Warley.  Here be the pics (or is that sea monsters?):

[roundhouse]

may I add my thanks to those given by Jamie to all of you who came along to see us at Warley.  Here be the pics (or is that sea monsters?):

They look a tad over exposed!!

 

Ie  - you have done what I often do and forgot to add them!!

 

 

I did enjoy looking at the progress since last seeing it in the flesh when parts of the layout were behind us two years ago at Warley. Its going to be superb when finished.

[lmsforever]

Enjoyed seeing the layout in the flesh on Sunday very impressive and your work so far is brilliant glad you had a good weekend operating and hope that all the gremlins will be ironed out.

[jamie92208]

They look a tad over exposed!!

 

Ie  - you have done what I often do and forgot to add them!!

 

 

I did enjoy looking at the progress since last seeing it in the flesh when parts of the layout were behind us two years ago at Warley. Its going to be superb when finished.

Thanks for that Ian.  Yes dave is getting a tad forgetful as the years advance.   See you on Friday.

 

 

Jamie

[edward66]

Hi Jamie,

As a Lancastrian born in a house overlooking New Zealand sidings I have followed the progress of this huge undertaking with great interest. I used to sit on Grandma's bedroom windowsill for hours watching the Lancaster Jinties go about their business, the birth of my lifetime interest in railways. It is good to see it [where are the photos?] making its first venture in the public arena and I can't wait to see it for myself when I am in England and it coincides with a show.

 

Congratulations on your success despite the odd gremlin and here's to the day when it is complete, that is if any layout is ever complete!

 

Edward

[jamie92208]

Hi Jamie,

As a Lancastrian born in a house overlooking New Zealand sidings I have followed the progress of this huge undertaking with great interest. I used to sit on Grandma's bedroom windowsill for hours watching the Lancaster Jinties go about their business, the birth of my lifetime interest in railways. It is good to see it [where are the photos?] making its first venture in the public arena and I can't wait to see it for myself when I am in England and it coincides with a show.

 

Congratulations on your success despite the odd gremlin and here's to the day when it is complete, that is if any layout is ever complete!

 

Edward

Thanks for that Edward.   I gather that you don't live over here any more but if you are over feel free to get in touch as you would be welcome to come and see whatever bits are up in the clubrooms at the time.   Thanks for the comments.   As to the photos I'm still struggling as somehtings gone wrong with my camera and I can't download the images.

 

Jamie

[jamie92208]

Thanks to some wizrd software that Roundhouse suggested I've been able to recover my photos from a screwed up camera card.   So I've no had chance to play with them and here they are.  They aren't brilliant but hopefully convey somethign of what we're trying to create.

It was great to see the loco shed approach roads full even if a 'Percy' lookalike called Jamie somehow appeared. We even lost one rather nice outside framed Kirtley 0-4-4T at the end of the show then found it inside the shed.

The view over Greyhound bridge is starting to look like we imagined it 3 years ago.

 

 

The station area is starting to look a little 'busy' with all the buildings.

 

 

The Cattle dock had been made by Tony only that week out of modified parts from Long Preston.  There are even some of Charles Shearn's trees on the pavement.  I also managed to find the cattle and sheep that haven't seen the light of day since Long Preston's last outing in 2010.

 

A close up of the cattle dock.

I didn't manage to get a photo of the yard office and Ladies Walk footbridge but I believe that Supersonic took one so will try and post it.

 

Hope you like them. 

 

Jamie

 

 

 

Edited July 23, 2022 by jamie92208

[lezz01]

Hi there.

Jamie! Now your just teazing me. You talk Kirtley 0-4-4T but you don't SHOW me Kirtley 0-4-4T..........   LOL

Seriously though its good to see the whole layout up and running you can see the whole layout in context its going to be an impressive feature at any show when you've done. Now let's talk about a nice little photo shoot involving the works of Matthew Kirtley.........

Regards Lez.Z.

[jamie92208]

A quick selection of some of Malcolm Braim's photos from Warley.  Thanks to Malcolm for giving permission to use them.

A nice view along the front of the layout showing the coal yard and cattle dock area together with the first few trees.

 

 

 

Ladies Walk Footbridge which looked rather nice I thought.

John Patrick's lovely model of a Midland Pullman car in push pull mode.

 

The goods shed and loco shed area.  This is going to be the subject of much work before Nottingham in March.

It was nice to see the fiddle yard with a decent amount of stock in it. Chris and our resident rolling stock engineer concentrating hard.

 

If anyone has any photos of the mock up of the Yard Office near to Ladies Walk footbridge please post them.  Il Dottore is interested to see how it looked in situ.

 

Jamie

Edited July 23, 2022 by jamie92208

[sir douglas]

that must have been nice, having talyllyn next door

[jamie92208]

that must have been nice, having talyllyn next door

Yes thanksw sam it was especially as one of the guys is a friend of mine from outside railway modelling.

 

Jamie

[jamie92208]

Evening all.   I've finally recovered from the effects of a weekend at Warley with Green Ayre followed by a weekend managing the Wakefield show.   Warley showed us just how much needs to be done before next year At Wakefield.  Now work has started again in earnest.

 

Three crates of boards are now back at the clubrooms and the Castle Branch/ Locos shed and Goods yard areas are now erected.  The main objectives area

1) To sort out how the viaduct on the castle branch fits so that we can run trains on it.

2) To get the scenics sorted out on the boards in question.

 

I spent Wednesday evening down at the club room with my laptop as well so that I could work out what ground cover to put in which area.   Then this  morning I took some parts of the lighting rig to a fabricator that I know and in a very short time he solved the problem of how to attach aluminum square tubes across the top of the mild steel uprights that are left over from Long Preston.   By this evening he'd delivered the 10 brackets and it looks like the lighting rig will be going together soon.

 

This evening Mark and Chris turned up along with John Patrick.  i took the laptop again and we had half an hour planning how to scenic the area near the goods shed.  This has seen quite a bit of 'compression' and a curve as been added that wasn't there in reality.   The solution that we came up with was to omit a 2 storey yard office and a mess room that we don't have photos for and put the weighbridge office near the yard entrance.   This still allows space for road vehicles to get to all the buildings.

 

Mark and I then spent time gluing thin closed cell foam down in various places now that we know the heights.

 

All in all a very useful evening.

 

Jamie

Edited December 13, 2014 by jamie92208

[jamie92208]

A good day here.   My traction motors for the two EMU's ahve finally arrived from abc.  Only 4 months later than promised but I've now got to dig out the etches for the motor bogies and start assembling them.   I'll upload some pictures when i get the various bits together.   I really must get my work table cleared.

 

Jamie

[Jon Fitness]

A good day here.   My traction motors for the two EMU's ahve finally arrived from abc.  Only 4 months later than promised but I've now got to dig out the etches for the motor bogies and start assembling them.   I'll upload some pictures when i get the various bits together.   I really must get my work table cleared.

 

Jamie

Looking forward to seeing those Jamie!

JF

[jamie92208]

On 18/12/2014 at 19:14, Jon Fitness said:

Looking forward to seeing those Jamie!

JF

Your wish is my command Jon.  Unfortunately my camera is away for repair so it's just my phone but here are two piccys of this afternoons efforts.

 

This is the first trial assembly of the bogie etches with the motors just placed in the frames.  I'm rather happy with the result. 

I obviously need to tidy it up, wire the motors and pick ups and most importantly sort out some sort of nose to hold the inner end of the motors in the correct place.

 

 

It was worth the wait and I'm looking forward to getting it running.  One small problem is that the extended axles don't fit into standard Slater's bearings and I can't find my calipers to measure them but that will be sorted out in due course.

 

Jamie

[

Edited July 23, 2022 by jamie92208

[jamie92208]

Looking forward to seeing those Jamie!

JF

Your wish is my command Jon.  Unfortunately my camera is away for repair so it's just my phone but here are two piccys of this afternoons efforts.

 

This is the first trial assembly of the bogie etches with the motors just placed in the frames.  I'm rather happy with the result. 

I obviously need to tidy it up, wire the motors and pick ups and most importantly sort out some sort of nose of the motors to be kept in place by. 

 

It was worth the wait and I'm looking forward to getting it running.  One small problem is that the extended axles don't fit into standard Slaters bearings and I can't find my calipers to measure them but that will be sorted out n due course.

 

Jamie

 

Edited December 19, 2014 by jamie92208

[Jon Fitness]

Your wish is my command Jon.  Unfortunately my camera is away for repair so it's just my phone but here are two piccys of this afternoons efforts.

IMG-20141219-00262.jpg

IMG-20141219-00263.jpg

 

This is the first trial assembly of the bogie etches with the motors just placed in the frames.  I'm rather happy with the result. 

I obviously need to tidy it up, wire the motors and pick ups and most importantly sort out some sort of nose of the motors to be kept in place by. 

 

It was worth the wait and I'm looking forward to getting it running.  One small problem is that the extended axles don't fit into standard Slaters bearings and I can't find my calipers to measure them but that will be sorted out n due course.

 

Jamie

 

Ooh they look neat  . No intrusion into the bodyshell and both axles powered. Superb.

JF

[jamie92208]

Ooh they look neat  . No intrusion into the bodyshell and both axles powered. Superb.

JF

They run nicely as well we powered them up on the club test track tonight.   Where they go on the motor cars a normal motor would have shown above the longditudiinal seating.  They aren't cheap but have been worth waiting for.   I've dorted the bearings out tonight and have an idea in my head for the retainer for the motors that will hang from the bolster.

 

Jamie

[sir douglas]

double post Jamie.

 

a motor per axle, interesting

[jamie92208]

double post Jamie.

 

a motor per axle, interesting

Yes they are small motors and their is only 1 motor bogie on a 3 car set that's got to climb a i in 70 gradient up the Castle Branch so I've gone for 2 per motor bogie.  It also solves pick up problems as they pick up on 1 wheel only.  Thus with two motors you get a proper pick up.

 

Jamie

[hammer73]

looks rather impressive Jamie when its all up,we look great when finished.

[jamie92208]

Just two of us working on the layout last night but Mark and I managed to get ballast on nearly all of board b1 (mainly the goods yard )   This was seived smokebox char(from the Midland 4F of course) and we went through a container of it.  I now have to wait for a dry day to seive some more.   After tea we spent time painting rails on part of the loco shed area.   Mark is continuing to build sheds and last night I gave him the drawings and photos for another small building, the awning for the horse dock.

 

The overwhelming impression to me at Warley was of a large area of bare base board that needed to be covered.  Well after a few evening work that look is already changing and the scenic work is well underway.  I've also managed to arrange a session in the church to put the main ,ine circuit up at half term to test run it.

 

Lots to do over the holiday period and hopefully my camera will be returned from repair so I can post some pictures.

 

Jamie

Edited December 23, 2014 by jamie92208