Stoker

Oh no! You let the magic smoke out! In all seriousness, would a mashima upgrade be a workable solution?

I'm pretty sure my grandmother used to have a 3 piece bathroom suite in the darker shade of brown... Just came across this: Completely forgot I had this photo, but it's one my Dad took on one of our trips up to Imperial dry, and it shows the brake van I was talking about earlier.

Definitely empathise with this and I'm sorry you're having to deal with it mate. I've had to take a 12 year break from the hobby, with only minor indulgences inbetween, because of similar struggles. But you know what's great about that? In the intervening years, the hobby has advanced tremendously. The fact that I now have a Sentinel, Cargowaggon, Polybulk, and PBA "tiger" hoppers, sat in boxes in my drawer, is more than I could've dreamed and it's opened a lot of doors. Added to that is the Hornby 08, Dapol class 22, various other clay wagons by DJ Models and Dapol, Hattons coming out with the definitive class 66, and Bachmann retooling their class 25. Winding the clock back 12 years, that stuff would've been a HELL of a lot of scratchbuilding, kitbuilding, and superdetailing! I like scratchbuilding, but not 98% of my fleet! If you can find the motivation to check him out, I can highly recommend the work of Dr Jordan B Peterson. Whether it be his book, 12 rules for life, his interviews on podcasts such as the Joe Rogan Experience, his youtube videos, or the online Self Authoring Suite... this guy has probably helped more people, particularly men, to get out of depression and get their life back on track, then any other psychologist at any time in history. Truly an extraordinary guy and his work has helped me immensely.

It's good to be finally building something after all these years. Actually you're partly to blame/thank for it. We moved house last November and that gave us cause to visit Ikea, where I noticed the "Lack" shelves. This of course prompted memories of "Coombe Junction", which caused me to visit RMweb for the first time in a long time. It also confused the wife as we started talking at crossed purposes about why certain shelving would be a "good candidate" - I only realised when I told her that I'm just not sure if I want to go N scale again... "...what does that have to do with my books?"... oh....

This looks great Pete. BR brake vans remind me of my first day in the scouts as a boy. Living in Penwithick at the time, my local scouts was in Stenalees, and on my first day we went on a group walk up the Goonbarrow branch from Goonbarrow refinery to Imperial dries. This was of course the former home of the CSLPS, who some years prior had moved out and set up at Bodmin General, but had left behind a few wagons including, as you may have guessed, a BR brake van. We spent about an hour or so running around the works and playing on the wagons. Pretty bloody good I reckoned. All the scout leaders were women, but they knew how to keep young Cornish boys entertained that's for sure! Sadly the wagons were all destroyed by arsonists before the society were able to move them up to Bodmin, so I never got to have a "reunion" when I volunteered on the B&W.

It's really old. It comes from ancient Germanic "hundred" which was translated in Latin to Centum, hence CWT for Centum Weight. A Germanic hundred was "six score", one score being 20, six scores being 120.

Here in Canada almost everything is Canadian themed. Walk into any model shop and it's wall to wall CN and CP, a little VIA rail, some Ontario Northland, some BC Rail, some SOO. If it hasn't been on Canadian rails they aren't interested. So I guess it's true anywhere. Having said that, exhibiting is a much more British thing... a "train show" here is more of a glorified swapmeet. As someone who has seen both British and American first hand, I'm inclined to agree with Jeff Smith that North American railways can be pretty uninteresting. The caveat to that is it really depends on where you live. My local area is a fairly dull place, but there are some interesting pockets and I'm sure railfans who live in those places get great enjoyment out of it. Sometimes I take a drive down to the CN rail yard here in London, ON just to see what they're up to, and occasionally will catch them doing some flat switching. London is a pretty busy thoroughfare between Detroit, Hogtown and Buffalo, so it gets a fair bit of traffic. I've also done the drive up to Ontario Southland Railway's shops in Salford (which is actually in the middle of bloody nowhere). Took a photo which I've attached below... not sure it was really worth the hour and a half, and however much gas the F250 drank on the way there and back, but at least I can say I've done it? I've still yet to catch their F units in action, which are sort of the holy grail of railfanning. I know they work the Ingersoll job, just not when... the wife absolutely loves F units so I'd like to go out to see them one day. Maybe I'll find time this summer. I have a friend who is a former CPR conductor, and he is buddies with the owners of OSR, so might be able to hook up with something, perhaps a tour of the shop and if I'm very lucky maybe even a ride along. If you're curious and you want to see what US railroading is really all about, I cannot recommend strongly enough the Delay In Block Productions YouTube channel. Very good stuff.

Am I reading this right? They want to run a regular passenger service from Bodmin General? If so that will be a huge boon for Bodmin. It's a nice little town but very rough in places, and somewhat down on it's luck for the last couple decades.

It really depends on the type. Lime mortar, as used in older buildings, has a different (more yellow-white) colour to Portland cement, which is more grey. Age and the type of sand used are also a factor - the older cement pointing is the darker it will go, also the sides of a building more exposed to the prevailing weather will have darker pointing than those which do not. In mid-Cornwall there's a type of concrete that seems to leach out a pinky red colour; at least, I'm assuming it's leached, and this can sometimes be found in pointing. Ultimately your best approach is likely to be working from photographs. Using just a single colour across a whole model is never a great idea as it will look too uniform.

It's actually not illegal or "counterfeiting" or any of those things to produce exact replicas of a model you already own. You can make molds and cast copies in resin, as much as your heart desires, so long as you don't sell what you make. This has been settled in courts countless times. From the issue of "intellectual property" (ie Union Pacific demanding royalties from model makers who use their logo), to the use of locomotive and wagon manufacturer designs to make a model product, down to cloning for home use. All these cases have been heard, and the verdict is; none of it is illegal if it isn't in direct competition. What that means is, Union Pacific isn't in the business of selling model locomotives, so someone using their brand on a derivative work such as a model does not interfere with their railway business. The real question is; is it ethical? Maybe, it certainly doesn't help the manufacturer who obviously would be thrilled to sell more units, but I suspect if they had the choice between selling "one or none" if that "one" meant their product would be used to make copies, they'd choose selling one all day long. It certainly isn't "free" either, you have to take the effort to make the mold, buy the materials, cast your copies, then build them into something on your own. People who have the skill and the means to do this are offset by people who do not, or who have no desire to do so, and for those people they'll take advantage of the convenience of buying what they want ready to go out of the box. Then you have the fact that, in all honesty, resin isn't much fun to work with - it warps, it's brittle, you have to use non-solvent adhesives which aren't as good... plastic is most often the far superior material, and manufacturing in plastic is not something people can do at home.

http://www.healeyhero.co.uk/rescue/individual/Bob_Bradley/Bk-6/B6-1994-P2.html Came across this, which includes a photo of an identical locomotive, and confirms that B21C is in fact former Butterley number 21, built 1907. You also weren't kidding about the mine being politically left wing... company provided houses were "inspected" regularly by a company "policeman" and you'd get fired if you didn't keep it tidy! You'd also be fined if you walked on your own front lawn. Stalin would've been proud. EDIT: I was just reading what Graces guide has to say about Butterley, apparently they manufactured a batch of locomotives for their own use, and this matches the 1907 date. So I think what we're looking at here is most likely a Butterley engine. https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Butterley_Co

Yet another case of the desire to make money overcoming the desire to further the hobby. Shame.

That looks like fairly standard 4"x4" post fencing with livestock mesh and a single wire (probably barbed) at the top. You'd be best off scratch building that with 1.3mm square rod styrene, and some of this: https://www.themeshcompany.com/products/-12-Mesh---1.757mm-Aperture---0.36mm-Wire-Diameter---Mild-Steel-Plain-Steel---Woven-Wire-Mesh-140.html Insert the posts into your landscape, then glue strips of mesh to the posts using superglue, and finally glue your top wire to the posts.

The laboratory block at Blackpool was a fairly generic looking prefab structure, with a shallow pitched roof. The only photo I have of it is this incidental shot of the truck silos where it's peeking out from behind the large blue bin. The frontage was made up of 6 precast concrete wall segments that were roughly 9' x 9', and the gable ends were made up of 3 such panels, giving a roughly 60' x 30' footprint.

I forgot to mention, regarding Kernick clay store I actually took measurements of that particular building and used those to build a 3D model as a reference for future projects. It does indeed have a roof pitch of 35 degrees or 1 in 1 and a half.

Slurry tanks don't have to be bunded because kaolin is inert. What the sites are required to do though is to have a site effluent system which traps surface drainage and brings it to a settling tank before it's discharged. The effluent from that is required to be periodically tested, and they will sometimes add sodium carbonate to balance out the pH. I've attached a photo I took of Blackpool slurry tanks while the site was still active that shows them just sitting on a raised foundation without any bunding. Slurry plant sites also have large acid storage tanks, and these do have a low wall around them, but since they are sited within an area that has an effluent system, they do not have the same 110% requirement. Instead the wall is there as part of the overfill protection system, and the area inside the wall is drained immediately to the catchment tank where it can be chemically neutralized or pumped out. If you're interested in reading more about these procedures, Imerys were recently fined for failing to follow them, and there's a lot of detail in this article about the incident: http://watery-news.co.uk/imerys-minerals-fined-100000-hazardous-chemicals-enter-st-austell-river/ Fuel tanks however must always have a 110% bund regardless of the drainage system where they are sited, because it is a flammable liquid. This bund must also drain to it's own separate holding tank, usually a below ground cistern, which allows rainwater to escape the bund. That has to be tested prior to each flush. In the case of Blackpool, they had an onsite laboratory block where all of this testing was done, as well as product testing for QC and spec control. Perhaps another structure you could add to the scene?

JTT scenery makes corrugated embossed styrene. One pack gets you 4 sheets and they're a little smaller than A4, so lots of coverage. In my opinion it's the best product for corrugated roofing. To simulate overlapping sheets I glue a 0.25mm strip above each row, so that the bottom edge of next row will sit 0.25mm above the one below it which gives just enough of a height difference to see the lap without looking too thick.

Based on what I've seen the sleeper spacing looks weird when it's mixed with C&L as the C&L stuff is technically closer to 00 standards, while the bullhead is closer to EM standards (apart from gauge, obviously). My vote would be to either wait for Peco to make more stuff (probably not too far off now) or have a bash at hand laying.

This is looking really good, Bill. Definitely think you're going in the right direction, the overall scale of the works feels right. Since you asked for constructive criticism there's a couple of things I've noticed: First, no idea if it's too late to be bringing this up, but the roof on your clay store looks a little too steeply pitched. If you can alter it, I'd recommend 1 foot rise for every 2 foot run. For future reference, I like to use 1 in 1 and a half for pre-1930s buildings, 1 in 1 and two thirds for post 1930s to mid 50s, and 1 in 2 or slightly shallower for everything after that. That's based on an average of the many real life buildings that I've measured and it seems pretty consistent across the board. Second, you may already know this, but your fuel tank needs to be bunded. In case you (or others) don't know a bunding is a low wall surrounding the tank on all sides, and the area within the walls should be enough to contain 110% of the contents of the tank. This is a regulatory requirement that dates to I think around the 1950s, so for any time period later than that fuel tanks should have one. That's all for now. Looking forward to seeing this one develop further.

Well if you need any advice or suggestions just let me know.

Hmm, maybe it was just coincidence then. The real life Trevanney dry (also called Central Cornwall dry) was about half way between Treffry viaduct and Pontsmill, and was accessed from the siding that diverged from Pontsmill ground frame to the china stone works. It was worked by a simplex locomotive. One small suggestion I'd have for your layout would be to put one or two orange LED's under the covered loading area to represent the low pressure sodium lighting that was used at these plants.

You mention propelling from St Blazey, there was a similarly named kiln not far from Pontsmill called "Trevanney Dry". Would this be where "Trevanna" gets it's name?

Delabole actually had a quarry Hunslet, there's a photo of it in Maurice Dart's "Cornwall Narrow Gauge". Alas I've never really had any interest in either Delabole or Penlee. Might start out with a micro-layout of the little known Hendra Tramway at the loading wharf along Quarry Close siding on the Parkandillack branch. In reality it was worked by an ex-war department Simplex, but that's what modellers license is for.

Interesting how far backward the hobby had to go before it moved forward again. All thanks to "train sets".