John Brenchley

27 minutes ago, gwr517 said:

John,

I love the layout of trees and undergrowth. Your 

views are really effective.

Doug.

 

26 minutes ago, Bluemonkey presents.... said:

Fantastic. Love it.

Thanks very much Doug and Matt.

It took quite a while and did get a bit tedious at times but it certainly changes the look of the layout.

Now I just need to smarten up the bushes behind the station building - repeated leaning over them has severely denuded them of leaves.

Best wishes

John

32 minutes ago, The Great Bear said:

This would be great to get this detail and accuracy in 4mm, but in 2mm - excellent modelling. The last picture is great.

Thanks Great Bear

I have to admit that as originally taken, that picture was rather dark.  Luckily, Photoshop has a feature to allow lightening of the shadows and darkening of highlights.

The camera was at the end of the baseboard, looking the whole length of the train shed.  The picture was then cropped to close in on the footbridge..

Other than changes to the shadows, cropping and occasionally adjustment of the white balance, I don't make any other adjustments to the pictures though my Olympus  camera does have a tendency to produce images that are a bit brighter than they should be.

Best wishes

John

4 hours ago, Caley Jim said:

Lovely job, John.

 

I have stacks of similar wire, my father was a physics teacher in the 1930's -early 50's!  The brown coating is varnish and the wire would indeed be for winding coils for the likes of motors or solenoids etc.

 

Jim

Thanks Jim

Its quite possible that my spool of wire goes back that far as well, though I don't know why my father had it as he wasn't into models or electronics. 

Best wishes

John

4 hours ago, David Bigcheeseplant said:

I have just picked up on this thread, fantastic work.

 

Just one thing I have picked up on is that the GWR type 5 signal boxes were generally built entirly in blue brick rather than red brick on your model. I had a look at colour photos of Tavistock and yes the box is in blue brick.

 

David

Hi David

Thanks for your comments on the thread.

Yes, you are correct about the Tavistock box being made of blue brick.

I cannot recall if I had the colour pictures in GWRJ No 17 at the time I built the model signal box.  The camera I have has a tendency to enhance colours a bit too much so in reality the bricks are a bit duller than the computer screen suggests - probably more like brown brick than red brick but I agree they could probably do with a bit more purple in them.

Best wishes

John

Christmas Greetings

Best wishes to everyone from Perth (the one down under)

Not a snow scene as its summer here in Australia and we don't get snow in Perth.

In fact its bright and sunny and we are heading for a high of 42C this afternoon - said to be the hottest Christmas day ever recorded in Perth (too hot for this Pom)

Best wishes

John

3 hours ago, Sithlord75 said:

Hi John, 

 

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3017588 N Scale GWR Cordon DD4 Gas Wagon Body by modelrailmusings - Thingiverse

 

I think it should be on a 12' chassis looking at The Book.

 

Cheers

Kevin

 

Thanks Kevin

Looking at that link, I am interpreting it correctly to mean that he is offering the file free for anyone to print from?  Just needs someone with a suitable printer?

Best wishes

John

Hi Kevin

An interesting and diverse collection.

Do you know where the 3D printed Cordon came from please?  Are they still available?

Thanks

Best wishes

John

The Yard Crane (4)

In the two weeks since the last update, the yard crane hasn’t progressed very much, other than to solder the sides to the base and to the other cross pieces nearer the top plus make some modifications to the base pieces.

As supplied, the etch comes with a sub floor that is designed to sit about 1.3 mm above the main floor and for the first crane, I installed this as per the instructions.

However, from looking more closely at Julia’s photographs it appears that this sub floor only existed at the front of the crane and stopped just behind the main pillar.  In fact, the photos also suggest that the main floor did not extend past the column either, but I drew the line at removing this part of the floor as I needed something substantial to keep the sides fixed together.

Also, there is a slight triangular extension of both the main and sub floors at the front of the crane, between which there is a heavy ring of metal.  I’ve no real understanding as to what this did and the kit does not make any provision for it.  However, for the second crane, I thought I would try to incorporate it.  The left and centre pictures below show this feature.

I used the exiting sub floor, turning it round 180 degrees so that there was spare metal at the front and filed the triangular shape that extends beyond the front of the crane.  I retained the position of the large etched hole near the front so that I could use the pillar to help locate it.  A small bit of spare etch filed into a triangle was also added to the front of the main floor and another piece of etch, bent into a ring was soldered in between.

Finally, the right-hand picture above shows that there was a vertical cross piece maybe a foot or so deep at the back of the crane, right at the bottom and this was replicated with another piece of spare etch as nothing was included in the kit for it.

The pictures below show the crane body soldered together and incorporating the extra bits described above

The next stage will be more interesting to do as it involves adding the various wheels and gears that make the crane body so distinctive.

Best wishes

John

On 16/12/2021 at 18:27, The Fatadder said:

Really enjoyed catching up on the build, absolutely stunning layout

Thanks very much - progress is slow but another update is just about ready.

5 hours ago, bécasse said:

It is perhaps worth pointing out that as well as etch scrap as has been used (very successfully) here, staples of various sizes can be a very useful source of suitable material, particularly as they bend (and straighten) easily and hold the shapes well - most will take solder readily but it is worth checking first as some may need lacquer to be removed.

A useful recommendation thanks Becasse. It's something I must try to remember next time I can't find the right size strip of scrap metal.

Best wishes

John

The Yard Crane (3)

An aspect of the crane body that I thought quite prominent was the covers that existed on the inside of the body, presumably to protect the internal gears and wheels. Two of Julia’s pictures below show that they existed on both sides of the body.

They are quite noticeable on the pictures of Julia’s model, but the etched kit did not include any way of representing them and without them, I thought the inside of the body would look a bit too open.

Not really knowing the dimensions, it was all a bit of a guess, but I found the edges from left over wagon chassis etches were a bit over 1mm wide, so I used these to bend up suitable shapes as below.  Where the gaps were too wide to fill in with solder, I pushed in bits of brass rod and soldered round them as well.

The above pictures show one of the covers soldered up for the first crane. As I had already soldered together the body sides, base and cross members for this crane, it was a bit tricky to install the covers and be sure they were in the correct places but its all a bit out of sight once the crane is finished so didn’t seem too important.

With the benefit of hindsight, the covers have been fitted to the sides of the second crane before they are soldered into the box shape as this makes them much easier to locate in place. I did try including a spare etched wheel in one of them, not very successfully so decided it wasn’t worth doing on the others, being almost invisible from most viewing angles.

The shape of  one of the covers on the right hand side isn't quite right as the hole isn't in the centre of the cover but it will be impossible to tell once all the other bits and pieces are added to the crane. And yes, one of the covers did overlap the sides slightly in real life – its not a soldering error!

Best wishes

John

14 hours ago, Caley Jim said:

Looks like whoever designed the kit for N-brass (and I don't mean Julia) didn't build a trial etch to check out the artwork.

 

Jim

I suspect you may be right Jim

It's a shame as this mars what is on the whole a very good etch

Best wishes

John

The Yard Crane (2)

Before commencing on construction of the crane body, I had one main concern that had arisen from reading two reviews that had been written up in N Scale Society magazines by modellers who had built the kit.

In both reviews, the comment was made that they could not get the ends of the jib to fit outside the body of the crane. If one modeller had had this problem, I might have put it down to an error in construction but for two people to have the same issue, was cause for concern.

I went back to the drawings in GWRJ and found an inside dimension for the crane body of 2’ 10 ¾”. Allowing for the thickness of the metal sides, an approximate dimension of 3’ seemed likely i.e. 6mm in our scale. Measuring between the end of the jib that I had already put together came out at about 6.15mm so I was happy enough that this had been built correctly.

The etch is designed for the floor and sides to fold up into a U shape from a single piece but when I did this, I found that the external width measured about 8.2mm, clearly 2mm too wide.

Looking at the pictures on Julia’s website, her crane body looked to have the correct proportions, but it could also be seen that her sides were soldered to a separate floor piece, not folded from a single etch. I haven’t asked her, but my suspicion is that she did not etch these parts but cut them separately from sheet metal so when N Brass Locos wanted to market a complete kit, they had to add a crane body to the etch but somehow drew it 2mm too wide.

The left-hand picture below shows the relative width of the body compared with the jib ends

I definitely wanted the jib ends to fit outside the crane body, so my only option was to break the U shape apart, narrow the floor by 2mm and then solder the separate parts together. On the right is a picture I took at this stage in construction of the first crane. All the other etched cross members also had to be reduced by 2mm – it was much harder to hold it all together and solder squarely but worth it in the end.

I’m now about to repeat this process with the second crane so will post further pictures in due course.

Best wishes

John

The Yard Crane

As mentioned in my recent post on the finished water tank, I have now built one of the two GWR 6-ton yard cranes that existed at one time in the Tavistock goods yard, just needing to sort out a suitable size chain before painting it.

The evidence for there being two cranes is very clear from the aerial photograph from the Britain From Above website which is dated 1928.  Later photographs perhaps only show one crane, but as the model is set sometime in the mid to late 1930’s, I decided that two cranes were still appropriate.

The kits are sold by N Brass Locos and include a beautifully delicate piece of etch, various thicknesses of wire plus two brass castings for the main support column and for the cable winding drum.

My understanding is that the etch is based on one originally designed by Julia Adams for her model Highcleres. A couple of pictures of her crane can be seen via this link. https://modelopolis.blogspot.com/2013/01

I suspect that some changes were made to Julia’s design as the N Brass Locos etch includes one or two extra elements not apparent on her model but also excludes some parts and at the same time it appears to have introduced some errors, mostly minor but some more significant.

Julia also sent me several pictures she had taken of the crane at Fawley, and they have been invaluable in helping me understand what the completed model should look like. Hopefully she won’t mind if I include on or two of them to help illustrate this post.

Detailed drawings of the crane were published in the preview issue of Great Western Railway Journal, and these have also been really helpful.

I decided to start with the jib and was delighted to find that holding the parts against a photocopy of the drawing reduced to 2mm scale gave a perfect match for size and angle.

As can be seen from the picture of the etch above, the sides and top of the jib come attached by a couple of tiny tabs, with the base being a separate piece. The instructions suggest that the sides can be bent up and then soldered to the top but in practice, I found the tabs were so flimsy that even one bend caused the parts to separate. In practice, this was a good thing as it enabled me to solder the sides slightly inset on the top, allowing creation of the outward facing L shaped framework which would not otherwise have been possible.

The light is reflecting rather strongly in the above picture, but I think it should still be possible to see the L shape in places.

One error in the instructions is that they say to cut off the lower ends of both the top and bottom pieces where they extend past the lowest cross bar. This would have the effect of removing the webbing from the L where it is fixed to the outside of the crane base but from Julia’s pictures below it is clear that it should only be removed from the top layer of the jib, not the bottom. In the picture above, I forgot to remove the ends from the top but have done so later on.

Another error that is apparent from the above pictures is that the lowest cross pieces are etched too near the base of the jib and prevent it fitting sufficiently far overlapped over the base of the crane. Also missing is the lowest crisscross framing on the base piece of the jib.

I therefore removed both the top and bottom cross bars, replacing the lower one with a thin strip of 5 thou nickel silver fitted higher up and also adding two more strips to form the crisscross. They are a little thicker than those of the etch but will be so low down on the jib that this shouldn’t be too apparent.

The finished version of the jib for the second crane is below. I still need to add the pully wheels and the chain protection bracket.

I’ll take picture as progress continues with the base of the second crane and post later on.

Best wishes

John

Thanks Jim

I might try that and see how I get on, but the length I need might be too long if its likely to break.

 I also thought of twisting rather than knotting the wire between each loop so can try that as well.

Best wishes

John

Thanks Jim

This time difference is a nuisance - I'd gone to bed without seeing your reply - no chance of a sensible question and answer conversation.

Can you clarify what you mean by a "thumb knot" please ( is it like the first of the two knots in a reef knot?) and how you used the drill - was it a case of twisting/knotting the wire round the drill, then moving the drill along and twisting again, ie making one loop at a time?

Thanks

John

Thanks for the helpful comments Izzy, Jim and Jan

That small bit of chain looks very good Jim.

Jan - I also Google the Sinnet style but it looks a bit complicated and I wonder how easy it would be particularly if the wire was a bit stiff like phosphor bronze.

Was the wire you used softer Jim and what thickness was it?

Best wishes

John

13 hours ago, Izzy said:

Having struggled to get suitable fine wire for the two cranes I’ve made you have my sympathy. Chain finer than 42 links seems unavailable but it does seem a bit too heavy for what is required. I’d persevere with the braided wire some more. I found a boat site where for 1/700 scale it was said to be better than alternatives such as etching. Apparently 4 strands of enamelled wire. Not sure how it’s done, around pins etc. Can’t seem to post a link I’m afraid. I just searched for 70 link per inch chain. 

Thanks Izzy

Is that the Ship Model Forum?

I found that and a modeler there (David Griffith) refers to the braided wire technique as described in his book - unfortunately not much help without the book and he doesn't expand on the method in the forum posts.

Best wishes

John

11 hours ago, kitpw said:

This link (no pun intended) takes you to a site listing 45 and 50 links-per-inch chain at $6 per metre:  I came across it whilst looking for something else.  I've never ordered from them and it is in US but it's the smallest chain I've seen anywhere:  https://floatingdrydock.com/more.htm.  Might be worth a try as the model is looking really good and a finer chain would be the finishing touch!  Great model altogether, I've been enjoying looking in from time to time, it's hard to believe it's 2mm/ft.

 

Kit PW

Swan Hill - https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blogs/blog/2502-swan-hill/

Thanks Kit PW

I've had a look at the site you mention, but suspect the chain may be very similar in size to that which I already have - the finest they list has a link length of 1.1mm which seems to be about the same - still likely to look overscale.  I think I model in too small a scale to get suitable chain for this type of crane.

Best wishes

John

6 hours ago, richbrummitt said:

N brass locos list chain at 48links/in. I think it is very similar to some that Fleetline used to market. I’ve used the Fleetline stuff for securing chains on a number of wagons and think it looks okay. 
 

 

Thanks Richard

I actually bought the N Brass chain at the same time as I bought the crane kits from them.  I also bought some chain that I found advertised on the internet as 1:700 anchor chain.  This came from China and seems marginally thinner than the N Brass chain but has the same number of links per inch.  I think I mistyped 40 per inch in an earlier post  - either way, the chain is still over scale.

Best wishes

John

An interesting idea Tim

In the meantime, do you have any thoughts on whether I should stick with the overscale chain or replace it?

John