Lancaster Green Ayre - The Barn Owls have returned.

[jamie92208]

Thanks for that Bill.   Yes it would be nice to do without but there aren't enough buildings to do that unfortunately.  It's tak4n 3 months to get all the bits sorted and 4 days to get it all put together.  We just need to get the pelmet painted in a nice shade of Midland Red.  I went down to a local manufacturer with a colour swatch which they scanned and they then mixed a tin of gloss for me.   Only 12 panels to paint though for some obscure reason the numbering goes up to 13 but only the operators will see that.

 

Jamie

[jamie92208]

A slightly quieter two days but plenty of progress.  On Friday I finished off a couple of minor joinery jobs on the pelmets and then took the layout down and tidied up the clubrooms.  One car load of assorted carp, backscenes, their supports and the lighting rig plus some buildings filled the car on the first trip.  I went back in the evening and much scenic work got done on three boards.   Then another crate of two boards came home.

Today two more trips to Wakefield and on each trip another crate came home.  I've also rearranged the back room so that we can continue the scenic work on Monday night.  Tonight I have had a gentle evening pre wiring connectors for the LED strips on the lighting rig.   The first batch of strip didn't stick to the UPVC guttering very well so I've bought some cleaner to try and get the surface really clean and will try again tomorrow.   Apparently the production process leaves traces of a very fine powder on the surface.

 

Jamie

[enginelane]

A slightly quieter two days but plenty of progress.  On Friday I finished off a couple of minor joinery jobs on the pelmets and then took the layout down and tidied up the clubrooms.  One car load of assorted carp, backscenes, their supports and the lighting rig plus some buildings filled the car on the first trip.  I went back in the evening and much scenic work got done on three boards.   Then another crate of two boards came home.

Today two more trips to Wakefield and on each trip another crate came home.  I've also rearranged the back room so that we can continue the scenic work on Monday night.  Tonight I have had a gentle evening pre wiring connectors for the LED strips on the lighting rig.   The first batch of strip didn't stick to the UPVC guttering very well so I've bought some cleaner to try and get the surface really clean and will try again tomorrow.   Apparently the production process leaves traces of a very fine powder on the surface.

 

When I used the same for a set design for school as well as cleaning up area also gave the area a light sanding to help the self adhesive strip grip

Jamie

[sharkey1]

Just seen your video posted on Facebook by virtual Lancaster and believe you are interested in displaying Green Ayre model in Lancaster.

 

We have various spaces available in Lancaster library-would this be of interest?

 

If so contact Stuart Reynolds email follmembers@gmail.com   I represent Friends of Lancaster library.

 

Best wishes with the project-it looks incredibly realistic. Back in the 70's I used to go to discos in one of the old sheds before it was demolished to make way for present Sainsburys.

 

Stuart

 

[jamie92208]

Just seen your video posted on Facebook by virtual Lancaster and believe you are interested in displaying Green Ayre model in Lancaster.

 

We have various spaces available in Lancaster library-would this be of interest?

 

If so contact Stuart Reynolds email follmembers@gmail.com   I represent Friends of Lancaster library.

 

Best wishes with the project-it looks incredibly realistic. Back in the 70's I used to go to discos in one of the old sheds before it was demolished to make way for present Sainsburys.

 

Stuart

 

Thanks very much for the offer Stuart.  I'll pass your message on to David Chandler as he is going to deal with the Lancaster end of this but the offer is much appreciated.  I would very much like to display the model in Lancaster so that local people can look at it and hopefully tell me details that we have missed or got wrong.  I'll send you a private message. (PM).

 

Jamie

Edited October 18, 2015 by jamie92208

[sir douglas]

note for future Sharkey, dont post email addresses you never know who looking and could use it to scam or spam only PM them

[jamie92208]

Managed to get some work done yesterday on the lighting units.   I'm waiting for more LED strip to finish them off but using Steve's tips above managed to get the first three unit complete.   The washing and light sanding seemed to work and I also used some thin  strips of ply to hold the ends of each strip near the connecting leads in place.  One thing that I did do was to be more careful in peeling off the cover from the elf adhesive strip.  I peeled it back slowly and made sure that the light strip was fully pressed don before doing the next bit.  The strips from the end of the rolls, that  are more tightly curled need plenty of pressing to straighten them out.  Hopefully I'll get some more done today and will try and post some photos.

 

Jamie

Edited October 19, 2015 by jamie92208

[45156]

NIce to see that you've been offered the chance of using the Library as a venue.  There is a large room upstairs which also has full disabled access, and which would house the layout, I think.  It would be great just to walk up the town to see the layout.  The library is right in the city centre, and is next door to the museum.

[jamie92208]

Thanks for the reply Stewart.  The library have been in touch, in fact the gentleman has joined this august forum to contact me.   I'm leaving the organising to David Chandler who is getting on with it.  I've got the minor detail of getting  a rather large layout ready for a show.

 

Today I got some time this afternoon to continue adding LED strip to the lighting units.   I used the side room at church today as that meant an easier life and have now got 6 of the 11 lengths done.

 

One thing that I was concerned about was how to secure the ends of the strips so that gravity doesn't pull them away especially when they are being plugged and unplugged.   This is my solution.

That's an end with a short plug lead to the next unit.

For the ones that have to have longer leads this  was the solution as it provides an element of cable clamping.

 

Anyway after an hours work this was the result.

Units 6, 6A and 7 laid out as they will be in practice over the station and the start of the locos shed and castle branch.

 

Tonight we had a good team at the clubrooms.  I collected Tony and he trial fitted the cattle dock after various minor modifications.   A lot of scenic work was done on the approach to Skerton bridge.   Hopefully I'll get more done on Wednesday and Friday.   At least an expanse of bare plywood has now been covered with foam and hydrocal.

 

Jamie

 

Edited July 24, 2022 by jamie92208

[Jock67B]

Jamie,

Superb workmanship as always, most impressive and I'm pleased to hear that Tony has been able to play a part - it must really give him a lift,

Kind regards,

Jock.

[jamie92208]

Jamie,

Superb workmanship as always, most impressive and I'm pleased to hear that Tony has been able to play a part - it must really give him a lift,

Kind regards,

Jock.

Thanks for that Jock, yes it did give him a lift even though I had to tell him that he'd drilled holes for fence posts in the wrong piece of sea wall as I'd given him the wrong bit by mistake.   Hopefully he'll be down again Wednesday evening and be able to do the right bit.

 

Jamie

[jamie92208]

Evening all, just got back from a successful evening at the clubroom.  

This afternoon I finished off the last little jobs on the lighting units and tidied up the room.  I then assisted one of the ladies from church to cover the new display board with maroon looped nylon.  This is the one that started out as a jig for the awnings and is now the east end of the lighting rig.   Alison made short work of fitting the fabric neatly for me to hold in place with staples.  It looks good.

 

Then it was down to the clubrooms with Tony and John joined us.   I put up the two easternmost scenic boards and here they are.

Tony is busy installing the last bit of fencing and John  is surveying the rather garish green hydrocal.

I started by laying the foam that Il Dottorre's yard office will sit in.

It's starting to look good.

 

Tony finished the fence posts.

 

And I managed to spread grey hydrocal over large parts of board C4, John also toned down the green.

 

Some other work was done in the back room by John and I and all in all we had a good evening.

 

Jamie

Edited July 24, 2022 by jamie92208

[Jock67B]

Jamie,

Lovely long prototypical curves are very impressive. I can see that there isn't much wrong with Tony's eyesight from those fence posts!

Kind regards,

Jock.

[jamie92208]

On 22/10/2015 at 01:29, Jock67B said:

Jamie,

Lovely long prototypical curves are very impressive. I can see that there isn't much wrong with Tony's eyesight from those fence posts!

Kind regards,

Jock.

 

Thanks Jock,   The curves are down to Templot.  The second board was never meant to be scenic but as the electric units are going to reverse there and the points on the curve don't spread too much we decided to make most of it scenic which is where the need for the yard office and a footbridge that has yet to be installed come from.    Tony's eyesight is good especially for close work.   The stanchions are etches that I did having measured up a surviving fencepost that's actually on the stretch that Tony did last night.

 

Jamie

Edited July 24, 2022 by jamie92208

[45156]

A neighbour mentioned to me that the local paper had a picture of a model railway in this week's edition, and indeed there was (this one, of course), with a very short article, so your fame is spreading now Jamie.

[jamie92208]

A neighbour mentioned to me that the local paper had a picture of a model railway in this week's edition, and indeed there was (this one, of course), with a very short article, so your fame is spreading now Jamie.

 

Thanks Stewart, yes it's on Facebook as well.  Look for Jamie Guest with a bright yellow cycling top and a boxcar in the background. 

Even though no actual work has been done today progress has been made.  I've been struggling to fit a stepper motor to the turntable and wanted to have it working for the show.   A few days ago my wife had me up in the loft finding things to go to the house in France and I spied in the distance a piece of ironmongery that I built over 30 years ago at night school when I was into ship modelling.  It was a drop in mechanism for  a proposed battleship model that held the four motors and three motor gearboxes for powering the gun turrets. These units have lovely swiss Maxon motors and run on 12 volts.   I've dismantled part of the assembly and freed one of the gearboxes/motor units.   Tonight Tony and I inspected the table mounting at the clubrooms and have come up with a plan to fit the motor on Wednesday.  It will initially be powered by a Gaugemaster W unit and manually operated with alignment by eye.   Hopefully this will allow us to have the table working at the show.

 

Jamie

[Jock67B]

Jamie,

This really is a gargantuan project, and it is truly touching to read how often you manage to involve Tony which must enrich his life, living with illness as he does. The turntable plan sounds very interesting so hopefully you'll find time to post some images?

Kind regards,

Jock.

[jamie92208]

Evening all after a good work evening at the club.   The day started off (in modelling terms) with soldering L girders onto the OHLE supports for Greyhound Bridge.  Four of them now have over length Angle girders fitted. Tomorrow I plan to screw them down to the bridge, trim the girders to length then solder everything up to give some strength.

Then I spent some time working on the Loco shed control panel installing the turntable wiring.

 

Following Jock's comments above here is a photo of the unit that I built for my part built battleship model.   I was doing HMS Conqueror in 1:96 and this was intended as a drop in unit.

 

There were three turret drive units, A and B with chain drive to slave them together from one motor unit, Q  then X and Y which were the same idea as A & B.   The four 540 motors were mounted on 4 lengths of studding so that they could be aligned with their respective prop shafts.  The motors were held in place by brass collars.  I enjoyed making this at night school and learned a lot.  We weren't taught metalwork at our school, it was beneath them

This is the Q turret mechanism

I believe the motor/gearbox units  came out of some farm machinery.  They seem to have survived 33 years in the loft and work fine.

 

Anyway tonight a motley crew assembled at the clubrooms.  Tony carried on making fencing.  John Patrick installed some walling that is the retaining wall for the Ladies Walk headshunt. Steve Foster continued with scenic work and Mike Smith and I worked on the turntable.   With a bit of work a Meccano coupler was modified to join a 1/8" motor out-put shaft to a 3/16" turntable pivot and the spindle was cut to the correct length.

We then managed to connect it up to it's control panel  and powered it up and lo and behold it turned though there are some tight spots that need freeing.

I've now got to wire up the power supply to the deck and sort the tight spots out. It's all coming together slowly and this is the next bit of scenic work.

 

Goodnight all.

 

Jamie

Edited July 24, 2022 by jamie92208

[45156]

All looking good there, and it's always good to see a layout coming together as this one is now.  The sheer scale of this one is hard to imagine, but at 40'x20' it's an amazing project.

 

I'm really looking forward to seeing it at some stage.

[iL Dottore]

Evening all, just got back from a successful evening at the clubroom.  

This afternoon I finished off the last little jobs on the lighting units and tidied up the room.  I then assisted one of the ladies from church to cover the new display board with maroon looped nylon.  This is the one that started out as a jig for the awnings and is now the east end of the lighting rig.   Alison made short work of fitting the fabric neatly for me to hold in place with staples.  It looks good.

 

Then it was down to the clubrooms with Tony and John joined us.   I put up the two easternmost scenic boards and here they are.

151021-1.jpg

Tony is busy installing the last bit of fencing and John  is surveying the rather garish green hydrocal.

I started by laying the foam that Il Dottorre's yard office will sit in.

151021-2.jpg

It's starting to look good.

 

Tony finished the fence posts.

151021-3.jpg

 

And I managed to spread grey hydrocal over large parts of board C4, John also toned down the green.

151021-4.jpg

Some other work was done in the back room by John and I and all in all we had a good evening.

 

Jamie

It's good to see the building in situ and I'm really looking forward to seeing it hidden framed by vegetation and other scenic work. The layout is proceeding very nicely and it will be awe inspiring once completed.

 

iD

[jamie92208]

Earlier than yesterdays post but some good progress.  I took the Greyhound Bridge  board up to church so I coulduse the bench in the side room.

The first job was to screw the girders that I had soldered onto the west side of the bridge.

Then the East side girders were screwed one by one and the L girders were marked for their correct length.

These were then trimmed to length with a cutting disc and soldered together.

The first two girders went quickly.  In fact it was much quicker than putting the L girders on the West side girders yesterday as everything was held rigidly.

The third girder proved a little bit trickier as once I'd soldered it up it immediately looked wrong.  I'd put the upright on the east girder in the wrong place.  It had to be taken off and the upright swapped to the correct position.  Not too easy as everything had been sprayed grey.

The last one went on easily and these show the end result.

That's a good way to celebrate a birthday. There are still several finishing task to do.

a)  Ballast walls and then finish the ballasting.

b)  Mark and solder on the insulator pts and registration arms.

c)  Finish and paint the supporting piers.

d) Work out how I'm going to do the river.

Despite that it looks good.  I got the plans 4 years ago so I've not been in a hurry.

 

Jamie

 

Edited July 24, 2022 by jamie92208

[enginelane]

It's good to see the building in situ and I'm really looking forward to seeing it hidden framed by vegetation and other scenic work. The layout is proceeding very nicely and it will be awe inspiring once completed.

 

iD

Ah, yes I had forgotten this is your building. Will take very special care in scenic work in that area!

[Jock67B]

Evening Jamie,

Only one word springs to mind - stunning! 'O' gauge engineering does look so realistic, but such a result only comes from a lot of hard work, and of course nota little skill. Very well done indeed,

Kind regards,

Jock.

[jamie92208]

I've just remembered that I found a photo taken on Greyhound Bridge when the track had been lifted on farcebook.  It shows the effect that I'm trying to create rather well.  It also shows me the surface of the footpaths that ran along the tops of the girders.  I think I'm going to use tile cement with black sand surface dressing.

Anyway here's the photo.

This is where we are.

I'd also like ideas as to a suitable colour to cover the river bed in as a temporary measure so that the bare plywood doesn't show.   The river is usually a muddy brown with small ripples on it.

This gives an idea of the colour.   If anyone can suggest a suitable emulsion colour I would be grateful.  I'm going to need a couple of litres of it so modelling colours are no good.  It's just to cover the plywood at this stage.  We need to put mudbanks, grasses and ripples in when it's done properly.

 

Jamie

Edited July 24, 2022 by jamie92208

[enginelane]

I've just remembered that I found a photo taken on Greyhound Bridge when the track had been lifted on farcebook.  It shows the effect that I'm trying to create rather well.  It also shows me the surface of the footpaths that ran along the tops of the girders.  I think I'm going to use tile cement with black sand surface dressing.

Anyway here's the photo.

Trackbed after tracklifting.jpg

This is where we are.

151029-5.jpg

I'd also like ideas as to a suitable colour to cover the river bed in as a temporary measure so that the bare plywood doesn't show.   The river is usually a muddy brown with small ripples on it.

Caisson.jpg

This gives an idea of the colour.   If anyone can suggest a suitable emulsion colour I would be grateful.  I'm going to need a couple of litres of it so modelling colours are no good.  It's just to cover the plywood at this stage.  We need to put mudbanks, grasses and ripples in when it's done properly.

 

Jamie

You can get acrylic sheets similar to this that would create little ripples or you could do it the menasha way and use two incompatable varnishes and let the surface spilt itself!