Bacup - Mills in the hills

[Oldddudders]

I understand that any day now we will see a new learned book on the bookstands - Psychoanalysis of 4mm Figures, by Dr Jason Sandside.

[coachmann]

Never mind Charles Atlas with his Brummy screwdriver, it was the wall that caught my attention as it is obvious a lot of work went into those individual stones. Great stuff.

[Jason T]

Funnily enough, that stonework is the first I painted and weathered, the goods shed. It came out a little less weathered than almost everything else and to an extent, I prefer it to later results. No idea what I did differently though.......

[Jason T]

I am beginning to realise why I put off fitting gutters and drainpipes for so long. Each one needs three or four brackets making up from twisted wire, a couple of minutes per bracket and a bit fiddly to say the least. Holes then need drilling into the building for them, plastic rod fed through and attaching, after the gutters have been made and fitted.

 

These are made from half round plastikard, with the back trimmed off to a right angle and glued to Microstrip, so they will glue to the buildings better, which also means removing a bit of paint from the wall so the Mek will take properly. Still, I am happy enough with the outcome so will persevere although I can see it being a job that I will come back to every now and again, for sanity's sake.

 

I have just finished fitting them to one of the first buildings I constructed for the layout, the four houses with the bay windows. When drilling the pilot holes, it pushed one of the windows into the building and I was unable to retrieve it so had no choice but to lift the roof and reattach it, as well as holding the others in place whilst drilling the other holes (I ended up just putting three brackets on them rather than four, to avoid further misdemeanours as the house has a floors built into it and I didn't want to remove those).

 

After a lot of swearing and messing around, they are all now fitted and the roof is back down. Hopefully this will be the hardest of the lot to do, I had a feeling it would be a swine.

 

Once painted up, I will pop a photo up.

[Worsdell forever]

Once painted up, I will pop a photo up.

 

So that will be, about, erm, March?...  

[Jason T]

Painting is the easy bit mate, just slop some enamel on and you're laughing.

 

Thing is, now tat some have water goods and others don't, it really shows up on those that haven't and will frustrate me all the more. Part of all this is what I like to call Article Envy; you are all getting your layouts in the mags and I am a long way off. I am hoping to get it in a magazine-photoshoot state by Christmas (hint hint) and then carry on with all the fine detailing and rolling stock stuff.

 

It may not seem like it but the layout has come on quite a bit recently, with the yard surface being a fair bit closer, ballast almost all down and other bits tidying up. The main stumbling block is the Signalbox but I have found the order form and details for the etched windows now so hopefully I can make a start on that pretty soon.

[Andrew P]

Hi Jason, I will look forward to seeing the pics of the professionals, its amazing just what a difference it makes, doing a write up is O.K. but re doing it 3 or 4 times without repeating yourself is almost impossible.

 

I an looking forward to more guttering and down pipe shots, impressive or what? :locomotive: :locomotive: :locomotive:

 

Bodgit

[Worsdell forever]

Hi Jason, I will look forward to seeing the pics of the professionals,

 

Ah, I was going to suggest Mr York and his 'Instamatic', oh well, need to think again...  

[Jason T]

Writing it up will be the easy bit I reckon; I've had an article published in a mountain biking mag before and used to write a mountain biking fanzine with a mate, which reached a certain level of notoriety due to the rather left field content.

[Jason T]

I was thinking of taking the photos myself in their usual blurry style and just advising people to drink heavily before viewing the article, so they wouldn't know whether it was crap photography or inebriation

[bluebottle]

Hi Jason, I will look forward to seeing the pics of the professionals ...

 

Me, too! I know we'll have to be patient yet, but it occurs to me, Jason, that having an accomplished photographer on the job must be an opportunity to learn a lot about the business of photographing a model railway. It would be interesting, when the time comes, to hear your thoughts on the process and what you feel you've gleaned from observing it. I think we've all gained from following the way you've honed your skills on Bacup, and passed on to us some of the benefit of your experiences on what I think will come to be regarded as a classic layout.

[black and decker boy]

 

And when painted, they look acceptable. The stinkpipe, etc., on the left are Langley ones. The residents of this house are lucky enough to have an inside toilet!!!

 

Jason, the pipe coming out from the bathroom should join into the tallest pipe on the left. The soil pipe always vents above the gutter (in the trade this is the soil water vent pipe) so all connections from bathrooms, kitchens etc must join this. The half height pipe with a hopper can only be surface (rain) water so should not have connections from inside. Thats not to say dodgy DIY has never done it but would be in trouble if caught by the water company.

 

The downpipes look spot on for cast \ ductile iron types found in the area and match those on my house in Rochdale very nicely.

[Alister_G]

Jason, the pipe coming out from the bathroom should join into the tallest pipe on the left. The soil pipe always vents above the gutter (in the trade this is the soil water vent pipe) so all connections from bathrooms, kitchens etc must join this. The half height pipe with a hopper can only be surface (rain) water so should not have connections from inside. Thats not to say dodgy DIY has never done it but would be in trouble if caught by the water company.

 

The downpipes look spot on for cast \ ductile iron types found in the area and match those on my house in Rochdale very nicely.

 

Well I thought the pipe that runs from under the window to the hopper was the waste for the sink, and that the connection from the toilet to the soil pipe was "imagined"

[BR(W)]

Hello, Jason, everyone.

 

I reckon that, given 'all mod cons', there would be four connections to worry about:

 

On the first floor would be the WC pan to the large diameter, vertical soil stack which vents a minimum distance above the eaves (say three feet or so). This would generally be a short, downward-angled connection of the same diameter pipe as the soil stack;

 

The second, still on the first floor, would be the 1.5 inch outlet from the wash-hand basin, discharging into the hopper head;

 

The third would be a similar connection from the kitchen sink on the ground floor;

 

The fourth, in a household where tin baths are but a memory (unless for the purposes of forcing rhubarb, cleaning motorcycle parts, etc.), would be a 1.75 inch outlet from the bath, most probably on the first floor and discharging into the same hopper head as the wash-hand basin.

 

And that, apart from rainwater goods (with a possible take-off to a barrel to water the aforementioned rhubarb), and assuming the household draws the line at a bidet, is it, I think!

 

But your modelling is so convincing, that the above doesn't really seem to matter.

 

Cheers,

 

BR(W).

[Jason T]

I have to admit that I just used the Langley pipes for the bathrooms and assumed they were right. As only a handful of the houses are deemed to have inside facilities, I can (or should I say will) live with it but I appreciate the feedback.

 

As for the kitchen waste pipe, the one at my old house drained as I have depicted, as does my Mum's one (council house built in the early 50's). To be honest, I am just chuffed that I have finally got around to adding any water goods at all as I put it off for so long

[L&Y]

Just discovered this thread... Not had a lot of time since a house move to look on here. Let alone do any modeling. But just have to applaud your work. Your building my dream layout here. Great stuff. Keep at it. Still a bit bog eyed after reading this thread most of last night into the morning.... Amazing stuff.

[Jason T]

In the continuing saga of the drainpipes, I am about halfway through the houses now and have run out of both wire and semi-circular rodding for the gutters so attention has instead turned to one of the mills, namely the one behind the station that has a number of pitched roofs. As such, for the mid-sections, there are no gutters required but there needs to be some method of getting the water off the roof.

 

So, I set about making hoppers to collect the water and then adding the downpipes from these. As I have no wire and wanting to try something different (and taking inspiration from the Wills guttering / downpipes packs), I have fashioned brackets to mount the downpipes to the wall, to which I may add further detail later using the finest Microstrip I can muster from the 'Microstrip Box' (a fancy name for the old shoebox I keep my Microstrip in)

 

Anyway, here are a few photos to show what I did, along with some text.

 

First, the building in question, on the workbench.

 

An invaluable tool that enables plastikard, wood, etc., to be cut to the same measurements and angles consistently. I picked this up at Midland Railex the other week (after Chris 2ManySpans showed me the one he'd just bought) and this is the second time I've used it - first being to trim some C&L sleepers the other week.

 

The hoppers are made from two pieces of Plastikard trimmed to have 60 degree angled sides. A recess is cut out of the rear piece and then the front and back are joined with sections of .030 x .060 Microstrip and when the glue has set, trimmed and filed. The small hole in the base is opened up with a round file until the drainpipe fits into it.

 

The brackets are formed from .040 x .125 Microstrip. A length of about 2 inches was cut off and a lines scored down the centre, opened up slightly with a scriber and then a small round file rubbed along it to make sure it was partly curved (to take the drainpipe better). Then, using the chopping tool, 1.5mm wide strips were cut off widthways, placed next to a steel rule (both to check the spacing and to ensure alignment) and the drainpipe (.060 rod) glued to sit in the filed out groove. Once all of the required brackets were added, the drainpipe was slotted into the hopper and glued. The result being that I now have six downpipes with consistent brackets, etc., that can be glued to the building (once painted, etc).

[coachmann]

They look like chopped up knitting needles....Now there's a thought!

[Jason T]

Next step, wrap 0.010 x 0.020 around the pipe and onto the brackets. This bit is taking a while (and it'll be unnoticeable)

 

I also constructed something very important and very handy the other day, wish I had done so a long time ago. Yep, a Mek bottle holder, including brush holder. I'm sure we've all knocked one over at some point

[Worsdell forever]

Yep, done that, somewhere in a landfill there is a piece of MDF with one side of an LNER cattle wagon permanently fixed to it...

[Jason T]

I wonder if anyone has ever knocked the bottle of Mek over whilst building the bottle holder?

[Worsdell forever]

One of those times when 'You should have made one of those years ago...' would be appropriate.

[2ManySpams]

Yep, done that, somewhere in a landfill there is a piece of MDF with one side of an LNER cattle wagon permanently fixed to it...

 

Phew, at least it wasn't a proper (Southern) wagon that you damaged. 

 

PS I'm blaming you for one of my Telford purchases....

[2ManySpams]

I wonder if anyone has ever knocked the bottle of Mek over whilst building the bottle holder?

 

I knocked one over on to a pile of microstrip that I'd spent ages cutting to size (before NW Chopper days). It was like having a pile of soggy (expensive) spaghetti!

[Worsdell forever]

Phew, at least it wasn't a proper (Southern) wagon that you damaged. 

 

 

If it was a Southern one I wouldn't have been so bothered and wouldn't have a story to tell...

 

PS I'm blaming you for one of my Telford purchases....

 

 

Oh dear...