figworthy

could be anywhere I suppose.

 

was surprised to see the Severn bridge span being pulled down. thought they where all lifted out, could that have been one of the damaged ones?

severn bridge.JPG

The tall buildings in the background and the cranes could be those at Sharpness docks, the footage would have to have been taken from the west bank upstream of the bridge, somewhere like Purton.

Adrian

Nice to see you're back on the job again. Maybe you should join the Lunester community and we'll badger you so much you'll have finished the layout by yesterday!

 

Keep the posts coming!

 

Jeff

Thanks for the posting.

I've not been off the job, I try to get something done at the weekend, but weekday working is not an option at the moment (next month it might be), so progress will be slow.  As you can probably tell, the layout is in the loft (which has no heating) and it has been a bit cold up there, last weekend my hands went numb, which limited progress a bit.

I'm not working to a timescale (I get that during the day, this is supposed to be a change), It'll be done when its done.  If I've got Nether Blagdon station built by the end of the year, I'll be happy.  I'm enjoying the fiddling around.

Adrian

A little more progress over the last month.

The curve disappearing into the distance in the pictures above now has an almost complete pair of turnouts (the ties bars need fitting, and then motors setting up).

Because of the limited access to the underside of the board here, the motors will be mounted upside down.  As this will be behind a backscene, this shouldn't be a problem.  Given the relative ease of access to these motors, I'll be using the pair of tortoises that I've got lying around.

The right hand point will give access back to Nether Blagdon station, but before the track can be laid, a bridge needs to be built.  This will cross the silted up remains of Blagdon Creek.  Most of the last month has been spent building the bridge (hopefully another day will see that finished), then the abutments will need to be built up to support the deck.

The bridge is a plate girder bridge, currently the deck is not attached to the beams.

The beams have had a coat of Halford's finest primer, but how to finish them.

Adrian

Bit of context for the civil engineers: aerial shot off google, Hatfield/Stainforth station bottom left, and the M18 and Thorne Junction top right.

 

red splodge: the problem landslip, coming from the N side of the line

black arrow: a new-ish tip of some kind, already quite high (the owners must be a bit worried)

black line: room for potential realignment missing the problem areas

The "newish" tip is not new at all.  30 years ago it was the council tip, not sure what the ownership of it is these days.  It used to have several large machines crawling over it compacting the rubbish, so I suspect that it is quite firm.

Adrian

The whole area is run down, uncared for and suffering from vandalism. There seem to be "travellers" caravans and tethered horses and ponies all over the place.

We moved to Hatfield in 1977.  Sadly, that description could have applied then.

Adrian

Hatfield is part of Don Valley constituency represented by Caroline Flint.

Confusingly, Hatfield colliery is in Stainforth rather than Hatfield. It seems to have been a speciality of the area (Thorne colliery was at Moorends).

Adrian

 

In view of the amount of movement, plus the fact that there is clearly pressure behind it (and I wonder if there are any old watercourses underneath it?) I suspect that a very large amount of material will have to be removed and/or re-graded to produce even a short term solution. I've only come across the sort of bigger slips which need to be back-filled and they seem to take tremendous amounts of material as what goes in can vanish as quickly as it's tipped. Here it's that process in reverse with potentially a very large amount of material moving both visibly and beneath the surface.

 

The whole area is "wet". Up until the dutch coming in and drained it in the middle ages the easiest way to travel around there was by boat !. To be fair Stainforth (where the colliery is) was on the edge of the wet lands. I've probably still got some geological info at home. I might have a look at the weekend.

Up until 1986, I used to live in Hatfield (which is a mile and a half away), we could hear the trains shunting at the loader on an evening.

Adrian

The last month has not been wasted.

Firstly, I've built and installed an access route to the narrow gauge fiddle yard.  This is a narrow strip of ply shaped a bit like a reverse ? to allow a 90 degree bend.  This is suspended below the top level baseboard using M6 studing set into T prong nuts.

Doing that meant that the baseboard for the next side was largely fastened down, so I was able to make a start on track laying on there.  Templot templates were printed out, fastened together, and then fastened down.  Over the weekend I laid a couple of hundred sleepers, and 4 one metre lengths of track  (and a day out at Stafford show).

Next job is to connect the droppers to the power bus, then I can test drive a loco on the track (a wagon seems to run round OK).

After that I need to build a bridge to carry the track away from the station, one that is done (it may take a bit of time), I can complete the track on that side, which will properly allow trains to run into the station.

Adrian

 

 

So, to replicate the burnt trackside would using burnt hanging basket liner give the right effect?  Or is there a better way?  Would the burnt effect still be around in December and was this also GWR practice?   And no, I'm not going to be adding snow or frost though I may include some icy puddles

If you know of any models on the website that have done this, can you please point me in the right direction?

Too many questions?  Too serious?  Off topic?   

 

Polly

There was an article in MRJ 217 (August last year) on "Fencehouses" that has a section of banking where there has been a fire.  Not sure if Fencehouses appears on here, but it might be worth a look.

Adrian

Evening Jeff,

Morning Adrian.
 
Good to see what you've been upto, following our earlier discussions on Cobalt motors and wiring. Keep the posts and photos coming - there's nothing more likely to inspire you to work faster than posting on here!!
 
Cheers,
 
Jeff

01:40 ! Up early or late to bed ?

Work has already started on the next stage (which in due course will provide the baseboard for the entry to the station), but I think it will be a little while before that produces anything photogenic. Once I've got that down, then I can put in the track that leads up to the station entrance, and then I'll be able to run something. Wagons pushed by hand work through all the track nicely, but I'll be happier once I've run some locos through, then I'll start on the more scenic aspects.

Happy new year to all.

Adrian

Progress through the autumn was rather slow for a variety of reasons, but I managed to make some progress over the holiday period. The station yard sidings have now been laid.

I've also been busy underneath

All the turnouts have their motors installed and tested, and a JMRI panel built to control the station.

Adrian

BSC vehicles would have been registered locally by the operating division they belonged to. The minerals division were mostly registered in Northants, not certain about the Tubes Division though, although the escort and Transit vans and Ford D Series tractor units were supplied by Wards of Wellingborough, and had Northants plates, there were a couple of Leyland Bison tippers which ended up on internal use in the tube works at Corby which had KY plates (Rotherham?), but it's possible they were transferred from outside.

KY (along with KU and KW) used to be Bradford, but I've seen suggestions that it was taken over by Sheffield in 1974.

Adrian

Hi All,

 

No picture of this one but it makes me smile when I think about it. We parked up next to (of all things) a sludge gulper drain cleaner ceptic tank emptying type truck when we pulled up to go into our local DIY store. It looked quite shiny and it had a number of special badges fixed to it. The manufacturer of said machine was obviously celebrating a quarter century in business and to do this in style, each of these badges had the following proudly displayed upon them:

 

Taking your cr*p for 25 years...

 

All the best,

 

Castle

Many years ago I was sat in a Friday evening traffic queue on the M1 behind a van. I forget the name of the company, but I was sat behind a van of a traffic management company. "Jam Makers since 1974"

Adrian

Not strictly related to the model, but the NRM Blog has a photo of the cutting some time back

http://nationalrailw...liverpool-1881/

Adrian

Fair enough Adrian. It never does any harm to ask a question - the recipient of the question can always choose not to answer!

 

You really made me think about what I'd done. I'm sure the key thing for me was not having too many soldered wires hanging around below the boards. There are enough wires as it is. Have you set up a layout thread? It'd be interesting to see what you end up doing. Good luck with your project.

 

Jeff

Hi Jeff,

I'm sorry to hear about your health problems, I was attacked by the lurgi last month which took a few days to shake off. Concentrate on getting better, the wiring can wait.

I did start a layout thread, but so far it only has one post on it. I've got a bit more time now, so hopefully I can get a bit more work done, and some more text and pictures (at which point I'll add a link to my sig block).

I (so far anyway) have managed to get all my soldering done on the bench. Measuring up how long bits of wire need to be, then cutting them to length and tinning the ends. Droppers can be done before the track is fastened down, and then connections made either to choc blocks or molex connectors, or in the case of the Cobalts directly to the motor (an attraction of them over Tortoises). The control is done using JMRI and the MERG CBUS hardware.

Adrian

That's a good question Adrian. And there's no reason why I couldn't have done just that. I just wanted to have the wires organised onto the bottom of the board via the terminal block. Bearing in mind that the red and black droppers from the turnout needed connecting to the track bus and Cobalt inputs I went for a block connection here, rather than a bit of soldering. I like terminal block as it provides a good structural support for key connections, rather than having the soldered wires hanging down.

 

For anyone looking at this, there is no need to use a block connection - just a personal preference!

 

Jeff

 

Edit: Another comment: The red and black feed into the Cobalt is a combination of 2 wires - one from the Stock rail, one from the Switch rail. Getting these two into the hole provided on the bottom of the Cobalt was tricky - another reason I went through a block. I did use copper wire to bond the rails on about 3 of the turnouts - due to their awkward location. In those cases I'd have had just the single wire to fit to the Cobalt. Just another reason I went by this route.

 

Such a simple initial question, Adrian. I had to think hard as to why I used the method I did. Cheers!

Thanks for the detailed explanations. I'm also using Cobalts (and an identical colour scheme, but with an additional pair of wires to provide feedback on the state of the turnout), so I'm curious as to how other users get to use theirs.

Adrian

Having trawled through underboard pics taken over the last month, this one best shows the Cobalt connections alluded to in the diagram posts (2148 - 2149).

 

The DC supply is the Yellow lead (input 1) and Blue lead (input EIGHT - sorry, bl**dy stupid face if number 8 typed in!)

 

Black lead (input 2) from Black connections to Turnout Stock Rails and Switch Rail (point blades).

 

Read lead (input 3) from Red connections to Turnout Stock Rails and Switch Rail (point blades).

 

Green lead (input 4 = common on internal SPDT switch of Cobalt) to Turnout Frog.

 

The only connections not in place are those to the Track Bus - not yet fitted.

 

 

Ok, I'm going to shut up about this now - but fitting these blighters is all I've done for the last few days!!

 

Jeff

A question (certainly not a criticism). Why are you wiring the frogs via a connector rather than directly to the Cobalt ?

Adrian

There is a map of the area here if anyone interested:

 

http://www.flickr.co...157622824073616

That redirects me to a link to log into yahoo. Am I doing something wrong ?

Adrian

Actually the burnt grass does sound interesting. I can't recall ever seeing it modelled although it did happen rather frequently!

 

Regards

 

Bill

The last (no 217) edition of MRJ has an article on "Fencehouses", which has a section of burnt grass.

Adrian

Having spent months reading everyone elses layout threads, I thought I ought to start one of my own, although given my usual rate of progress, updates are likely to be a bit sporadic.

Figworthy has had a slow creation. I moved into a house with the space to create a small(ish) layout 11 years ago, and shortly afterwards inherited enough OO track and more than enough rolling stock and locos to get me started. But first the house was in need of much work. Whilst that was underway, I spent much time deciding what to build. I'd also got my hands on my father's old model books, amongst which was a copy of C. J. Freezer's "Plans for Larger Layouts", the smallest of which was slightly smaller than the space I had available, so I started to look at using that (a tail chaser with a branch line). The period 1945 - 1970 looked (to me) as an interesting period to use, giving me the options of steam (big 4 and BR), and diesel. The transistion from "green" to "blue" seemed to be a good cut off as that also largely marked the end of the rural branch line. Since the stuff I inherited had a definite western slant, it seemed sensible to stick with that area (although I reserve the right to invoke rule 1).

In the mean time, I started to visit the occasional exhibition to see what was possible, and what sort of "stuff" was available. I'd become aware of DCC, so decided from the start that I would use that (thus rendering all the locos I'd inherited unusable without modification). At Warley one year I came across the MERG stand and discovered CBus (which was just starting to come available), they pointed me in the direction of JMRI as a means of control. I decided early on that I would prefer to keep "signal box" and "footplate" operations separate, so loco control is being entrusted to NCE.

Looking around at exhibitions and various sites online, I was drawn to the idea of building my own track (thus rendering a large stock of second hand code 100 redundant), so I got hold of a copy to Templot and started to play. It soon became apparent that the plan I was looking at using (a 10x7 plan) wouldn't easily scale up to 10x9.5 as it seemed to be based on tight curves and short points, whereas I was after something a bit more realistic looking. Much head scratching ensued, and in the end I came up with what I have started to build, two BLTs for the price of 2. Each side of the rectangle will host a terminus, but there will be a loop running right around the outside (off scene) which means that I can send a train from one terminus to the other, but not have it arrive straight away, or it can leave one terminus, allow the loco to run round, and then come back again. This has the advantage that I can have an opening section that isn't landscaped, meaning that I don't have to crawl to get into the middle.

One of the termini (Figworthy) is based on the terminus in the original CJF plan, whereas the other (Nether Blagdon) is based on that of Blagdon (Somerset), but is a slightly compressed mirror image, in no way is it meant to be a reproduction, hence the name.

What the history books don't tell you, is that the route was built by the West of England Railway Company (an independent company, but linked to the GWR). Being a relatively late addition, it was built in standard gauge from the outset. Their route was a little unusual as it had two ends, and connected to the rest of the world somewhere in between. Nether Blagdon was always intended to be a terminus, but Figworthy was intended as a through station. Like so many companies, their ambitions outstripped their finances (and economic reality), so eventually the route finished at Figworthy, with the ongoing route having a short life serving one of the quarries in the area (and being closed and lifted some in the 1920s).

This however was not the first railway into the Figworthy area, much earlier a horse drawn plateway had been built to take stone from the quarries down to the coast, at some point this was upgraded to a narrow gauge steam hauled route, which has a connection with the standard gauge route in the station yard at Figworthy.

Enough of the wittering I hear you cry, what have you built. Well work at the moment is underway on Nether Blagdon. Part of the outside loop has been laid, as has the main area of the station (the yard will follow when I've bought the components needed). Attached are some (probably not very good) pictures taken from the buffer end. Motors have been fitted and I've started to wire those back to the CBus CAN-ACC5 and CAN-ACE8C boards.

Adrian

Not quite Black Country, of course, but I recall being on the Erewash and our prop found some rebar grid (proper name not known to me) which stalled the drive. Unfortunately, comma, this was as we were entering a lock, and the chap at the helm was thus unable to "brake" by using reverse thrust, and we collided with the further pair of lock doors. The fourth member of the team was in the galley at the time, and emerged after the bump wearing rather a lot of tomato soup.....

At least you stopped. I was up the River Lee once when we came across a stoppage. A boat going downstream forgot to stop when it entered a lock, and managed to turn the bottom gates inside out (I've got a picture of the aftermath somewhere). I would imagine that would be an "interesting" experience.

Adrian

Last month Michael Delamar posted a picture of the real thing that (to me) looked just like a model. I think the give away was the background which was just a bit too realistic to be photoshopped in. On the 16 ton minterals thread

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/36891-16t-minerals/page__st__375

first picture on post 377.

Adrian

And one I watched yesterday

Press for time - Norman wisdom nice shot of a green DMU and a green 08 on a short freight both look as if they've been cleaned. Does anyone know where the fictitious town of Tinmouth was filmed?

 

According to http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060857/ Tinmouth is Teignmouth

Adrian

Having got through most of what dantimmy started me off with I wonder if any of those who have expressed an interest in this subject would like me to expand it a bit to look at such things as, say, junction signalling and single lines - ideally continuing it in a GWR vein (unless someone would liek to see it widened)?

Can I make a late expression of interest, and say "Yes please" ?

Adrian

Saw on a layout about... four-five years ago was a little squat grey van on the very edge of the layout complete with rotating radar bar. Complete with "Rivet Counter Detector Van".

 

Friend of mine decided to take the mick a bit and walked up to the owner and said (In a Top Gear Adanoids voice) "That's the wrong kind of grey for a detector van." and run off.

The Kirby Stephen layout at Warley this year had one.

Adrian