Stoker

There were to the best of my knowledge, no class 03s in the county. If there were, there were none in the Blazey clay area.

Also, class 22s were not "unreliable" as some have said; after they overcame their teething troubles in their first years of operation they became workhorses. The problem with them initially was steam engineers and steam repair shops looking after diesel hydraulics, and just a general lack of knowledge and information as well as tools, proper depth inspection pits, and so on. Once the bulk of the class had been moved to the Western Region, the Blazey shop crews became quite adept at keeping them in good condition and the class proved extremely reliable and perfect for the branch line working in Cornwall. What killed them was NBL ceasing parts support for the class when it closed down in 1962 - reliability had absolutely nothing to do with it. Classmates were cannibalised for parts, which is basically a slow death of the class. When the Warships and Westerns came to Cornwall, the BZ shop crews were already well versed in hydraulics, and were able to keep them running very well, which is the same story as elsewhere in the country, hence they were lauded as a "success". In reality, there probably isn't a diesel locomotive on the planet that would've been reliable back in the 50s when all the shop crews only knew steam.

But then people tend to like to remember the bad part. Particularly considering the dieselisation left a bitter taste in the mouth of people who saw them as symbolic of the death of steam. They wring their hands with glee when they can paint the "bad bad diesels who took away our steamers" in a bad light.

Other classes that were very popular through your selected period were the class 46 - the 44s and 45s to the best of my knowledge were all kept up north in the midlands. Of course there were also 37s, 47s, 50s, 42s, 52s, 08s. Passenger services on branches were often run by class 101s, class 121s, and class 117s.

Also, food for thought, have you considered a china clay loading wharf alongside your yard? A similar arrangement was used at Bugle, and was one of the very few stations where clay was loaded alongside passenger trains.

The wharf is to the right, a single clay wagon visible next to it.

Hi mullie

 

They are not upside down our kid! As Chalfytich pointed out, just switch them to the opposite posts ....SORTED! Anyhow you wouldn't believe the number of times I've seen (professional?) builders and an even greater multitude of modellers hang them like that!

 

My personal favorite is sash windows. I always fit them with the sliding/opening sash at the bottom because that's the way I remember them from my childhood in east Lancashire. Yet when I do I can almost guarantee that someone, somewhere will point out (usually with an adenoidal intonation) "Excuse me! You do know that's wrong don't you?"

 

Cie la vie!

 

Bill

The bottom sash should always be closest on the indoors side - if it were the other way around, the latch to lock the sashes would be outside!

A few corrections:

Levant has a cut down stack of what was originally the standard, two third granite one third brick construction. The engine house you linked to near Germoe - Wheal Grey - was actually a china clay works and also had a brick topped chimney, they are simply grey bricks.

Also:

What is missing from the Kernow model is any form of decoration or structural support on the stack - many had some form of thicker ring where stone met brick and / or near the very top.  Kernow's model has the very top missing so we might argue that it was originally all stone or the brick courses have not survived.

This is not "missing" as such; not every Cornish chimney had this feature, known as a "cornice". Sometimes the cornice was even constructed from brick rather than granite. Your mentioning of "structural support" is baffling, the chimney is a self supporting structure and decorative cornices were just that, decorative, and served no structural function. The iron bands we see on chimneys today were all a later addition due to the failure of the mortar pointing where storms had eroded it, causing bulging. A good Cornish chimney, whose masonry is well maintained, could easily stand for decades without the need for iron banding. Indeed, iron banding has often failed and fallen off of chimneys that have then stood for decades after without their support and no ill effects. A testament to their builders.

Also, no, we might not argue that the brick courses have not survived, because the height and width of the chimney do not indicate this. A chimney such as this can have only one possible permutation, and that is that of an all-granite construction. Chimneys that have lost their brick uppermost courses will appear wider at the top and less severely tapered. For this chimney to have a brick upper section, it's final width would be untenably narrow. Your assumptions and speculations in this regard run contrary to the reasoning behind the use of brick being to achieve a greater final height without sacrificing flue diameter, as brick walls could be constructed thinner than granite. Remaining with the facts will be of greater use to model makers than going on mere speculation - there is right and there is wrong, there is no "artistic license" to be had here.

This is industrial engineering, the realm of truth, the last bastion of physical honesty.

That's a great example Scott. One thing to note ( which I mentioned quite early on in this thread ) is the thickness of the bob wall compared to the left-hand wall.

 

I also think it's a matter of perspective. Many remaining engine houses are relatively remote from other buildings, so when viewed from ground level have nothing nearby for comparison and thus seem very big. The chimneys are also very tall.

When the model is viewed from our normal birds-eye perspective, they become compressed into the landscape, rather than being seen against the sky.

There are two faults with the model that I can see.

1. The bob wall is not thick enough for the size of the engine house.

2. The chimney stack is completely constructed of granite. Roughly the upper third (but sometimes less) of the stack should be brick.

These would both be pretty easy to correct. Use stone wall textured sheets to extend the thickness of the bob wall internally, and cut the chimney stack off just above the point where it exceeds the height of the engine house (the side wall, not the gable apex) and glue on an appopriate length and diameter brick chimney.

While you're there you could even add a few extra little details, such as the cast iron bob loadings, cylinder bolts, and the crumbled walls of the condenser cistern or the boiler house.

I had seen a suggestion elsewhere that the model is too small. Those who know that end of Cornwall better than I do seem pleased, so I suspect the model is dimensionally fine?

I just want to clarify what appears to be some confusion on this subject. An engine house formed part of the engine. Beam engines would typically range from 20" cylinder to 80" with a few 90" engines and one 100". The cylinder size would dictate the house and bob size. I've seen tiny winding engine houses measuring 15' x 18' in footprint. I've built several engine houses in 4mm and 2mm, and they all scaled out quite nicely for fitting on your average layout. They were by no means massive, towering structures. Three storeys tall with a basement isn't exactly a skyscraper.

The 50" Goonvean engine removed recently was pretty much the maximum for the china clay industry. The bob for this engine was 30' in length and weighed around 20 tonnes. Here is a drawing for your consideration:

As you can see, this building was roughly 30 feet wide on it's longest side. In 4mm scale that would be 12cm. Hardly breaking the bank in terms of real estate.

Hope this helps.

Scott.

I've had the same with Penhayle Bay . The lucky few can see it in person but it's still just a model sitting outside the house and nowhere near Cornwall.

My old favourite was directing tourists to "Porthemmet beach" when I was a kid. We used to send them up to Kernick mica dam! At least there was sand, of sorts.

Thank you I may well be in touch. I am considering getting one 3D printed. So wall thickness should be okay.

That might not be tremendously practical due to cost and the difficulty achieving the texture and detail of Cornish granite stonework using 3D modelling software.

I've used a number of techniques but I found the easiest was to use Will's "coarse stone" sheets for 4mm scale models. You can also scribe styrene sheet, or use plaster and scribe it while it's setting. My abandoned engine house sadly got destroyed, but it was made using balsa wood coated in a thin layer of plaster.

HTH.

Scott.

Here are the aforementioned drawings.

I'm something of a Cornish engine house specialist, and have built several models myself in various scales. So if you need any advice in the design and construction of a unique engine house, please let me know.

I've also got a few more drawings, one in particular of a 60" cylinder pumping engine's house that you might find useful if you are modelling large tin mine pumping houses.

The best single piece of advice I can give you for your abandoned engine house is to keep in mind wall thicknesses. The wall that supported the bob could be as much as 6 feet thick, with all other walls being around 2 feet in thickness on average. The boilerhouse walls would be signficantly more ruinous than the engine house due to their average 1.5 foot thickness and lighter construction. Most ironwork would be scrapped, the slate and timbers would sometimes be robbed, but in many cases the boiler got left behind due to excessive deterioration. This would be stripped of fittings like valves, cocks, dials, etc.

One other useful rule of thumb for building an engine house is that Cornish chimney stacks are usually two thirds granite, one third brick.

Hope this helps,

Best,

Scott.