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    • 23 March 2024 10:00 Until 15:00
      0  
      Interested in becoming a member or just want to see what we do?
      Then come along to one of our open days!
      23rd March
       
      There will be this going on. Like how to fit coach lighting, light weathering and repairing / maintenance of loco's.
       
      The hours for each open day will be 10am – 3pm
      We have layouts in the major gauges, which will be operational during our open days.
      Light refreshments will be available.
       
      The Address for our open day is North House, 1 Bond Avenue, Bletchley, Milton Keynes, MK1 1SW
       
      Free Admission









    • 23 March 2024 10:00 Until 16:30
      0  
      Latest here http://bwwmrc.co.uk/exhibitions/24Mar/index.shtml
       
      From the website (check above link for the latest);
       
       NEW BIGGER VENUE - Beckenham & West Wickham MRC are proud to announce we are moving to bigger venue which will allow us to bring you more layouts (up to 12) from the Golden Age of Toy and Model Railway. Hornby, Hornby Dublo, Bassett-Lowke, Marklin, Triang, Chad Valley and much more. Plus Specialist Traders, the renowned Club Shop and light refreshments. The new venue is Forest Hill Boys School - Only 15mins walk from Forest Hill & Sydenham Stations which has 9 local bus routes give you better connections.  £10.00 per Adult, Children (up to 16) accompanied by an adult free. Early Bird Entry for Adults from 09:30am £15
    • 06 April 2024 Until 07 April 2024
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      6&7 April 2024 
      Sat 10am - 4.30PM
      Sun 11.30 am - 4.00PM
      St Mary's Church Hall
      Dalmahoy Edinburgh
      EH27 8EB
      Adults £4.00
      Children (5-15) £1.00
      8 layouts and 4 trade stands, refreshments full accessible venue, onsite parking, frequent bus service to Edinburgh and Livingston 
      We are also opening 30 mins prior to the published times for wheel chair users and people with sensory conditions to allow them to enjoy the show in a calmer and quieter environment 
       
    • 06 April 2024 09:00 Until 14:00
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      Hillingdon Railway Modellers - Test Track Open Day – Saturday 6th April 2024
      Yiewsley Baptist Church Hall (side entrance), 74 Colham Avenue, Yiewsley, Hillingdon, London UB7 8HF. 
      Entrance £6. 
      Open 10.00 – 15.00hrs.
      Bring your O, OO, or N gauge locos and trains to run on our club’s three test tracks. 
      DC and DCC is available, but sorry no “live steam”.
      Our Test Track Open Day is not an exhibition, but a chance to meet fellow modellers and try out your models.
      Expert help is on hand from knowledgeable club members if you have any problems with your models, and we very much welcome new members should you wish to join the club.
      Refreshments will be available all day.
      Nearest station: West Drayton (12 minutes’ walk).  Local bus services 222, 350, U1, U3 & U5. Website http://www.hillingdonrailwaymodellers.co.uk or phone Peter on 020 8368 4090.
    • 07 April 2024
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      HRCA to celebrate 55th anniversary by opening its doors to non-members in Newark
       

       
      The Hornby Railway Collectors' Association (HRCA) was formed in 1969 and in 2024, celebrates its 55th Anniversary. It will be hosting a special exhibition which will be open to non-members on Sunday 7th April 2024. HRCA events are normally members only but an exception has been made for this event, which brings together the products from the former Meccano factory in Binns Road, Liverpool which produced Hornby O Gauge, Hornby Dublo, Dinky Toys and associated ranges including Meccano itself.  Whilst the name Hornby is still very much part of the current model railway scene, today’s models are far removed from those that were built in the Liverpool factory up until 1964 when production ceased. 
       

       
      The 55th anniversary exhibition is being held at the Lady Eastwood Hall at Newark Showground, Lincoln Road, Newark, Nottinghamshire, NG24 2NY and will include some 22 operating layouts plus 12 displays and extensive trade support for those who wish to expand their own collections or start their own model railway journey.
       
      The HRCA has around 2,400 members who receive ten copies of the HRCA Journal each year and have access to a wide range of supporting services. For operators of this much-loved range, the HRCA which was formed in 1969 has ensured that the trains have kept running and have been gaining in popularity with regular appearances at model railway club exhibitions throughout the world. HRCA members can join local groups which meet in halls to provide running facilities for members to operate their trains at regular intervals.
       
       
      HRCA Chairman Don Gatiss said “ it will have been five years since we have assembled such a large display of Hornby O gauge, Hornby Dublo OO trains, other Meccano brands including Dinky Toys, Meccano and the Bayko building system. Members are attending from across the world and we are delighted to be able to provide non-members with the chance to come along and meet us, hopefully encouraging them to keep these trains operating for many years to come. It is over 100 years since Frank Hornby launched his first clockwork train set and we have come a long way since then. Such was the engineering prowess of the Meccano factory, that keeping these old models operating is not as difficult as people imagine, thanks to a comprehensive supply chain producing spare and replacement parts”.
       
      Sunday admission charges will be £5 (accompanied children free) with opening times being from 1000 until 1600. 
       
      Further information about the HRCA can be found on their website www.hrca.net 
       

       
  • Recent Blog entries

    1. eldavo
      Latest Entry

      Some while back as part of the work on the Winchester Railway Modellers Redbridge Wharf layout we decided to add smoke and steam effects to a model of a TID tug.  After a bit of research we harked upon cheapo piezo electric mister units as used in humidifiers.  These can be obtained in various sizes and with various control boards from all the normal sources.

       

      The unit we settled on was a 16mm disc connected to a control board that takes a 5v input.

       

      20240317_165817.jpg.3a62d8a12e7654b148212313d0878aa2.jpg

       

      This was rigged in in an old plastic bottle, fed by a wick and supported by a 3D printed contraption underneath the baseboard.

       

      20221118_173635.jpg.657419b31863388769f661c7a6a10e6e.jpg

       

      Fed with 5 volts from the layout and set on it's random setting it gives a quite pleasing effect and certainly catches the attention at exhibitions.

       

       

      Of course it was never going to stop there!  Would it be possible to do something in a loco?  Others have done it so it had to be done.  I happened to be respraying a model of the A4 Mallard to create a model of Sir Nigel Gresley as running in 1967.  An obvious candidate for running on a model of the ex-LSWR mainline to Weymouth!

       

      Quite a lot of space in the smoke box of an A4 so with a bit 3D printing a mounting and water tank was produced and all I had to do was figure out the electrickery bits.  It's currently very much a prototype but it seems to work...

       

       

       

      The loco is fitted with an ESU loksound micro decoder but that isn't man enough to drive the mister circuit which needs 150+ mA.  To get round that I've rigged up a rectifier and voltage regulator to provide enough 5volt oomph.  That feeds the supplied control board but with a slight twist.  

       

      Giles of this parish produced a chuffing narrow gauge radio controlled loco and poked around in the control board mechanism.  He found that in order to get the mister to chuff reliably you need to trickle 2 volts or so to it all the time then when you give it a squirt of 5 volts it responds immediately.  Very very useful info.

       

      In my case I have a solid state relay controlled by Aux 1 on the DCC decoder.  This function output is turned on by function 4 and is defined to trigger on every sound chuff.  The relay effectively switches the power supply to the mister control board from 2 volts to 5 volts.

       

      The problem at the moment is that all the control gear takes up rather a lot of space...

       

      20240317_161535.jpg.040062db4c499a0da74e271cbe7086b8.jpg20240317_161551.jpg.c0e0873dae55d689735db3884ff39279.jpg

       

      I have my work cutout to miniaturise all this.

       

      Cheers

      Dave

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      Recent Entries

      Curlew
      Latest Entry

      I have long been fascinated by colonial and other offshore railways like the Jersey Eastern and British-run companies in Latin America. This will be a small, experimental project, a bit of fun, to model something of the happy-go-lucky style of the more eccentric type, free from the attentions of the British Board of Trade and its successors.

       

      You have to imagine a pier with trains and trams. The train part will be loosely based on the trackplan of Shrewsbury Abbey station, formerly part of the Shropshire & Montgomeryshire Railway.

       

      MR2.jpg.5c59b06a47740bcea096c69c0a7242c8.jpg

       

      The main difference is that the left-hand goods siding becomes a line to the dockside. I have added a tramway with a loop, which also leads to the docks, shown here on the plan below.

      MR1.jpg.adc7f03ee913361c904e75a6a9a89ed9.jpg

      Above the railway in this plan will be a sea wall. To the left bottom, the tramway and the railway combine for the short distance to the dockside, off-scene. To the right, both the tramway and the railway pass through a ceremonial arch into the fiddle yard, something like this...

      MR4.jpg.b0300726172d7b4f1d85d042558bdd10.jpg

      ...though the railway arch will have to be modified to allow trains to pass through. The tramway will pass through the central arch, along with a road.

       

      Before finalising the trackplan. I am building an overall roof for the station - necessary to shade passengers and trains from the intense sunshine and add a unique character to the scene. This will enable me to judge better how far apart the tracks should be, platform width etc. I am combining four Ratio station train shed roofs to make this.

       

      MR3.jpg.e275e745bd61b461055ccf7edbbf1300.jpg

       

      I am strengthening the structure by adding extra crossbeams along the full width of the structure. The next step on this roof is to add more crossbeams and detailed girders. I have also started work on fabricating a station building. I shall give a more detailed description of both in another blog entry, in due course.

       

    2. Background

       

      Almost 10 years ago, I made a model of a lime kiln as a ‘scenic accessory’ on my North Leigh layout. For some reason, I never wrote a blog post about its construction but did write a short article for ‘Railway Modeller’, published in November 2015.

       

      I have, however, described how my model was based on the kiln at Fawler that originally had a siding from the Oxford Worcester & Wolverhampton Railway. Fawler is close to the real North Leigh, on which my pre-grouping layout is based

       

      My starting point for the kiln was the ‘Wills’ ref.8838 kit of a cattle creep, which provided suitable arches set into walls of stone blocks. To make my model, I placed the two arches from the kit side by side and set them into a hillside, behind my railway, as part of the back-scene.

       

      LimeKilns2800x600.jpg.327d0a5f6b52b54245bd77e956fd9c97.jpg
      Model Lime Kiln on my North Leigh layout

       

      West Drayton Coke Ovens

       

      Now, I have realised that kilns (or ovens) for a different purpose but of a generally similar design played a significant role in the early development of railways. Because of Parliamentary Acts that required locomotive engines to ‘consume their own smoke’, the early engines burned coke as a ‘smokeless’ fuel. It wasn’t until the adoption of the brick-arch in the firebox, around 1860, that coal could be used as a fuel, without emitting large amounts of soot from the chimney.

       

      MacDermot, in his ‘History of the GWR*, states that the principal railway companies made their own coke and, for this purpose, the Great Western established coke ovens at West Drayton.  Whishaw, writing in 1842, reported that “the coke-ovens are situate at West Drayton, about half a mile to the east of the station ; and are very similar to those of the north of England and Scotland, being without a lofty chimney, which adds so greatly to the cost. They are conveniently placed on the level of the railway, which saves much labour in filling the wagons.”

       

      *NB MacDermot Vol.1 is now available as a PDF Download from the ‘Internet Archive’ https://archive.org/details/historyofgreatwe0001etma

       

      I found a little more information in an article by the Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society , which states that there were fourteen coke ovens, built in 1839-40, which produced 440 cwt of coke per day, using coal brought along the Grand Junction Canal from Brentford. Initially, a daily coke train ran from West Drayton to Paddington. Once the GWR main line reached Bristol, however, forty coke ovens were built there, so that by 1850 the West Drayton coke ovens were discontinued. The site is clearly marked on the 25 inch OS map, which can be viewed on the National Library of Scotland website , although the ovens must have been out of use by the time the map was made. I show an extract below:

       

      CokeOvens_OS25annot.jpg.9ca601c10469d8bcad2e1efb752c126d.jpg
      West Drayton coke ovens – OS 25” second edition

       

      Operation of Coke Ovens

       

      I found it difficult to determine how the site actually appeared when operational but found illustrations of various sites in the North of England, which are said to have been similar. The coke was produced in a ‘coke battery’ comprising rows of ovens into which coal was loaded. The coking process involved heating coking coal to around 1000-1100ºC in the absence of oxygen, to drive off the volatile compounds. The process took from 12-36 hours in the coke ovens. The coal charge did not fill the oven. Space was left above the charge in which the gas liberated from the coal was burned. At first, no attempt was made to recover any of the gas, tar or other by-products, which were driven off from the coal when it was heated. In later designs, the gas was led through openings in the upper part of the walls into flues where it could be burned out of contact with coal and add its heat to the charge through the oven wall.

       

      There are two paintings by Wheldon, dated 1845, which show coke ovens associated with a colliery in North-East England. They include two views, apparently from opposite sides of a row of coke ovens in process of being fired. I have extracted the sections that show the coke ovens.

       

       

      Cokeovens_W-Wheldon.jpg.01fd5d21c75664d644b2ec39762b485b.jpg

      Cokeovens2_W-Wheldon.jpg.85626ca6a75474ff7fbb909799051f7c.jpg
      Two Extracts from oil paintings by W.Wheldon of a NE Colliery and Coke Kilns

       

      In these paintings, there appear to be two rows of ‘beehive’-shaped ovens, with access doors arranged in a line alongside a railway track. There is a raised platform at the top for charging the ovens, or kilns, with coal. The second painting appears to show a person pushing a wagon along a track above the kilns, presumably carrying coal to be fed into the tops of the kilns.

       

      The first painting also depicts a ‘Hackworth’ type of locomotive in the foreground

       

      Taken together, I feel that these illustrations provide a fair idea of what once existed on the West Drayton site. The map suggests that there was probably a single row of 14 kilns, with the discharge doors adjacent to the railway, while coal was supplied to the kilns from a wharf on the Grand Union Canal.

       

      Designing a Model

       

      Although I couldn’t find much detailed information about coke ovens in Britain, I found plenty about similar beehive kilns that were used in the early 19th century around Birmingham, Alabama. There is a chapter in Peele’s ‘Mining Engineers Handbook’ Published 1918 that contains diagrams and detailed description of the operation of ‘beehive’ kilns

       

      CokeOvensection.jpg.ec182ab41b561567fab4fd4ad52b3e9b.jpg
      Dimensioned Sketch from Peele’s ‘Mining Engineers Handbook’

       

      There have even been HO-scale railway models distributed by ‘Walthers’ (US) but I didn’t find anything that is currently available

       

      AmericanHOModels.jpg.9c3a890396e9cd6c6bcf9ca7b85356ce.jpg
      US models of Beehive Coke Ovens

       

      Nevertheless, these resources provided me with plenty of guidance on how to design a plausible model.

       

      From the map of West Drayton, the complete ‘battery’ of kilns extended for 675 feet – a little over 200 m – but the complete array seems to be divided into five individual groups, so I decided to start by modelling a single oven, which could be extended into ‘batteries’ depending on the space available.

       

      Brickwork

       

      Since the ovens were close to the clay pits and brick works that were scattered around the West Drayton area, it seems most likely that the ovens were constructed from bricks, rather than stone as in my previous model of the Fawler lime kiln.

       

      Of course, I could have used pre-printed sheets of brick-effect card but I decided to experiment with creating my own brickwork, by means of 3D printing. I soon found it was easy enough to produce a wall of ‘stretcher bond’ by drawing a single brick and then using the ‘rectangular pattern’ tool in ‘Fusion 360’ to produce a regular array of bricks.

       

      A photo of a surviving battery of ovens in the North East, said to be similar to those at West Drayton, showed that the facing was laid in ‘English Bond’ with alternating rows of ‘headers’ and ‘stretchers’.

       

      CokeOvens_Whinfield.jpg.803eb2cef04e3743a4370647da577424.jpg
      Remains of the last working beehive coke ovens in the country.
      Built in 1861 and worked until 1958

       

      So, as often happens in railway modelling, when additional skills are needed, I had to give myself a crash course in the art of brick-laying. I found a very helpful YouTube video that got me started – thank you Rodian.

       

      I started by creating a row of four ‘stretcher’ bricks, leaving suitable gaps for mortar. I then created a row of nine ‘header’ bricks, which needed to be carefully aligned so that the joints fell neatly between those in the row of ‘stretchers’. Once I had two rows, I could use the ‘rectangular pattern’ tool in ‘Fusion 360’ to repeat the initial pair of layers, to create a wall.

       

      There is one twist, which I learned from my course on brick-laying, and that is the use of ‘queen closers’ to produce a straight end to the wall. I decided to create three sections of wall, one cut square at both ends, so that several panels could be joined together to make a longer wall, and two others with left and right ‘queen closures’, as shown below:

       

      3D-modelEnglishBond.jpg.fcffa98de708fe47883b586b5ffc2aad.jpg

      Steps in creating English Bond Brick Wall

       

      The symmetrical ‘centre’ section can be extended as necessary to create longer walls:

       

      EnglishBond.jpg.c966cabf9a0bc876c40438941043567b.jpg

      Multiples of ‘centre’ wall section.

       

      I created the mortar (or ‘muck’ as the professionals call it) by extruding a rectangle from the back of the wall to a suitable depth below the front face. I then used the ‘Combine’ tool in ‘Fusion 360’ to make each section of wall into a single body.

       

      Creating the Doorway Arch

       

      I made the door and its arched frame as a separate body, creating the pattern of the arch from a single brick, followed by use of the ‘pattern on path’ tool in ‘Fusion 360’. The ‘lessons learned’ from creating the brick wall proved very useful and I found this to be an easier task than I had expected. I added a second inner ring of bricks as a door frame and then extruded a flat panel from the back to create the door. I used the 'Combine' tool in ‘Fusion 360’ to bind together all the bricks and the door into a single body. As before I show the series of steps in a group of screen-shots from ‘Fusion 360’:

       

      3D-modelDoorArch.jpg.3143188934844f1f1bd303d5857d72a2.jpg

      Steps in creating the arched door

       

      One useful aspect of working in the ‘virtual’ world is that solid bodies can slide through one another, so I could set the door into the brick wall without having to cut an aperture in the wall.

       

      Creating the Dome

       

      Having solved that first construction exercise, I turned my attention to the domed top of the oven, which was also made from brick-work, as shown in another photo of the Gateshead ovens.

       

      CokeOvens_Gateshead.jpg.9f6f501e2421ba4fc4aab37e3e624f1f.jpg

      Top domes of the last working beehive coke ovens in the country.
      Built in 1861 and worked until 1958

       

      My approach to creating this structure in ‘Fusion 360’ was to start from a profile view of the dome. I then created notches in the slope of this profile to represent the gaps between the brick courses. I also create the aperture in the top, for products of combustion to escape and be burned off.

       

      Once I had a domed top, with rings for brick courses, I sketched a narrow rectangle to extrude a gap between bricks in each course. I then used the ‘circular pattern’ tool in ‘Fusion 360’ to create a ring of bricks around the central axis of the dome. I repeated this process for each ring of bricks, varying the numbers in the patterns as appropriate for the longer courses, lower down on the dome. My procedure is illustrated below:

       

       

      3D-modelOvenDome.jpg.1b110fe5f7a0b8a1851c40e3924aeac4.jpg
      Steps in creating brickwork dome

       

       

      Printing the Components

       

      The front face, with the arched doorway and the domed top of the oven are the only parts needing specialised design. I assembled these around a simple box structure, to show the overall layout of a single oven, rendered in ‘Fusion 360’

       

      completecokeoven.jpg.2e58effbf894afe31552746bf8401674.jpg

      My 3D-model of a ‘beehive’ coke oven

       

      All that remained was to transfer the design files to my ‘Cura’ slicer software and then to my 3D printer. I had been a little apprehensive as to whether the mortar courses would be discernible in the prints but need not have worried. Surface indentations usually print more reliably than small raised features, such as rivet heads, which easily disappear if the limits of the FDM printer are exceeded

       

      This is the dome, still on the printer bed, with no fettling having been applied. The time to print was 24 minutes.

       

      3D-printedDome.jpg.940a064cc07d4f0fc713a3c1ef8e97e3.jpg
      My 3D-printed oven dome, still on Printer bed

       

      The brick courses have also printed cleanly on the central panel of the front of the Coke Oven:

       

      3D-printedFront-fine.jpg.def48f94ed247ed2025550975d04a106.jpg
      My 3D-printed arched door, still on Printer bed

       

      Both these prints were made from Gcode files prepared by ‘Cura’ software when using its ‘Fine’ resolution setting. For detailed finishes, such as these bricks that are only a few millimetres long in 4mm scale, there is a significant advantage over the ‘Normal’ resolution, with a small penalty in terms of print time, using my Geeetech E180 printer.

       

      Cura-resolution.jpg.adff72dfa98e6f626fec1f81e1c6655b.jpg

      Detail Comparison between prints made at ‘normal’ and ‘fine’ resolution settings

       

      The following print times are those estimated by the ‘Cura’ software for :

       

      • normal 1h 13m
      • fine 1h 40m
      • extra fine 3h 24m

       

      I have not tested the ‘Extra Fine’ setting but, for this model, I felt the time penalty was excessive and that the ‘Fine’ resolution print is adequate.

       

      I’ve enjoyed making something ‘different’ with my 3D printer.

       

      Now I need to create an embankment, into which I can insert a row on ovens, once I have designed a layout 🙂

       

      Mike

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