Chris Densham

So last year's Christmas present becomes this years?!

I've just had exactly the same with a sheet of Slaters 4mm brick. This has been stored in a cupboard so not exposed to light, and from memory is about 3 years old. Very brittle, if you try to bend it then it just snaps in two. Fortunately it's the last sheet I've got. All the plain plasticard seems fine.

I couldn't understand why I had problems with the Peco switches when they are such a simple arrangement. Suffice to say I found that simply unclipping them (taking them apart) and bending the copper connector to a greater degree of bend ( technical term!) and clipping back together solved the problem. 

Another very satisfied customer. Ordered a gear box that arrived very swiftly. Then I managed to crush one of the axle bushes trying to get too snug a fit. I emailed High Level and a replacement (plus spare, they know me too well) arrived the next day FOC. Thank you for outstanding service. 

Once again superb service. Wizard is now my "go to" for supplies. Ordered on Bank Holiday Monday and order arrived on Wednesday. Outstanding!

7 hours ago, mikemeg said:

Chris,

 

That huge pile on the photo! I'm not sure where this photo was taken, nor when. Certainly, in mid 1950 this loco was allocated to 50D - Starbeck in Harrogate  and was one of eight D20's allocated there at this time, along with twelve D49's and thirteen J39's. That said, this photo seems to show the loco carrying a 50C - Selby - shedplate; so was the photo taken in Selby shed or anywhere else that this loco may have got to, at that time?

 

At this time, mid 1950, Starbeck's total allocation was some forty five locomotives. I only have very scant records of the layout of this shed, at this time (mid 1950), so cannot elicit whether the shed had a mechanical coaler or the older North Eastern coaling stage. Selby did have a mechanical coaler. In both cases it's reasonable to assume that loco coal would arrive and be stored in dedicated loco coal wagons.

 

If the photo were taken in either Selby or Starbeck, my guess would be that the visible pile wasn't loco coal, just piled up alongside one of the shed roads. My guess would be that was an accumulation of ash, clinker and muck, rather than loco coal.

 

I've seen photographs taken in Selby shed (50C) and a number of other ex North Eastern sheds, around this time, and great piles of muck, ash, clinker seem to be quite common. 

 

If nothing else, the photo illustrates one of the problems associated with running and servicing steam locos, much as we loved them; they generated loads of muck!!

 

Regards

 

Mike

 

Thanks Mike. 

On 28/02/2021 at 11:19, mikemeg said:

The Isinglass Drawing No 404, showing the tank fitted to the GCR tenders, shows the overall dimensions to be the same as those of the NER 4125 gallon tank. However, the front curves on the tender coping plates of this GCR tender replacement are noticeably different in profile to the front curves of the tender shown in the photo below, so not a direct match.

 

 Thanks to Arthur, we have now identified and located the actual LNER drawing for these D20 tender rebuilds residing in the NRM archives. This drawing is a different date and number from No 16964, referenced above, and appears to precede it. So, once a copy of this drawing is sourced, then this should answer most of the questions and should allow a 4 mm drawing and model to be made.

 

I did check the footplate width of the D20 locomotive, which is 8' 0". If I enlarge the photo of 62343, shown below, it appears that the tender drag beam is slightly wider than the loco footplate, which would suggest that the tender drag beam and footplate may have been 8' 6"; we shall see!

 

Thanks also to 'Pebbles' who has provided much valuable input.

 

Cheers

 

Mike

 

Great photograph! A question not to do with the locomotive but the general scene. The huge pile on the left hand side, is that coal? If so, for the loco?

Another thumbs up to Wizard. Ordered on Tuesday and delivered today. Now all I've got to do is put it all together!

I'm looking for a couple of large containers of Carrs Ash Ballast. Anyone got any left over from a project?!

I remember reading Peter Denny in RM say that he rarely had a full day off each week with the different duties the job required. But within most days there's  was an odd hour or two here and there which he could devote to the railway. He concluded that he felt he acheieved more this way than devoting a whole day to Buckingham.

I am not at all sure that cassette type fiddle yards had been invented when Minories was first drawn.

 

When I built my version, I used points in the fiddle yard. They were all as short as possible to save space, so they were either Y points or in one case a 3 way. The trick was to make the first one join the two running lines together into a single track and start your fan of sidings there.

 

I also incorporated a dummy line each side of the fan of the sidings, one on the up side and one on the down. This wasn't used for storing trains but allowed one to be shunted in or out at the same time as another train was arriving or departing. This was done by utilising the curve in to the Y point that joins the lines together to insert a further Y with the blades at the station end of the fiddle yard, Mine was quite a long Minories, with trains of up to 7 carriages (admittedly shorter pre-grouping ones) but with platforms around 7ft long. The station was in total 12' long and the fiddle yard 8' It would be possible to do the same fiddle yard for 4' long trains in around 6' for the fiddle yard length.

 

A fiddle yard with points is always going to need to be longer than a traverser or cassettes but I find it much more pleasurable operating, being able to set 5 trains up, run them in and out, without having to do any more in the fiddle yard than change a point or two. When all 5 trains are facing the end of the fiddle yard, I go and change them all round at the same time. With a cassette or a traverser the fiddle yard needs almost as much attention as the station.

Thanks, some really interesting ideas here. I'm sure there were no cassettes around when it was first drawn. I'll have to do some measuring up and see what the possibilities might be. I'm looking at a total max available length of about 17 feet, with 10 feet set aside for the scenic part, which will allow for an occasional six coach train but mainly 5 coach suburban with tank engines/small tender engines, with an available engine in the spur to take the coaches out as the next train. (As described by CJF). I'm not keen on three way points, got one on the current BLT and vowed never to use one again. Most of the time it works ok with most of the stock, but even with a lot of tweaking I'm not really confident in it which is a great shame as it's a great space saver.

Gentlemen, thanks for your replies. I'm planning steam age, LNER just prior to WW2. As David says using a traverser is complicated by the positioning of the tracks being on the far side of the baseboard not in the middle. As the layout will be against the wall this is a no-go, as is a train turntable. Looks like I'll stick with the cassettes.

I'm planning to build a version of the classic CJ Freezer Minories plan (the one with the good facilities) in the near future. I'm currently building/modifying/purchasing the necessary stock. I followed recent threads on this topic with interest but I'm still slightly confused by the fiddle yard arrangements. The plans and some of the excellent layouts around the theme have a standard ladder arrangement of tracks, i.e. both tracks leaving the scenic section are split into a number of tracks via some points. If, as I assume, the tracks arriving in the station have the lower one as arrival and the upper departure and are not bi-directional how do you use the fiddleyard? To put it another way, any train leaving the station from whichever platform can via the crossovers, depart on the "correct" line. The train will then arrive in the upper set of tracks in the fiddleyard. In order to return to the station on the correct line it needs to be in the lower set of tracks. Unless you have yet further crossovers at the start of the fiddle yard you will have to manually transfer the whole train to the lower set of tracks. Am I missing something here. I'd rather have a standard ladder arrangement but could use cassettes as do on my current BLT?