Johndc120

Really happy with the way my GWR 6T yard crane has come out, just finished assembly and ready for painting. These were fairly common beasts in yards all over the GWR network but sadly nobody does a decent kit of one, so it’s nice to have something fairly unique on the layout

sorry to invigorate an Old thread as it’s probably a touch useless now but I also struggled to find a source of a decent 6T crane this has been the results of my own 3D printing to produce one

As well as the pad for the weir we also have managed to set in the pads for the bridge abutments

Hi Scott Thank you, yes I know what you mean, for the size of layout there’s not a great deal of track on it and is generally not very spaced out. It’s only really a small terminus station but spaced out across 16’ x 2’ so we can really try and get the railway into a scene. I used to do all my buildings out of white plasticard and then clad them in brick so the 3D printing was an obvious next step, it means you can design and print a building out within a few hours and you know that it’ll be spot on for size and squareness this is the current progress with the weir. thanks John

Another good night of progress, before turning the layout we placed in some mounting pads for the bridge abutments and the weir, the height is really critical for the weir as that sets the water levels for both upstream and down. once they were in place, we turned the layout and finished off the plaster cloth

sadly at 10 hours per print, It’s not really feasible to do any mass production

Plaster cloth applied to the majority of the layout, we’ll turn the layout round next week and do the last bits Note the amount of plaster on the cork, this is why we don’t lay the track before this stage

Well we’ve had a fantastic weekend. Thank you to everyone who stopped by to have a look at the layout and a massive thank you for all the nice comments people have said to us over the weekend. As much as we build layouts for our own enjoyment, it’s also nice to see other people enjoying watching the layout, so you really have made all the hard work (and the drive up here) worth while!

What a fantastic weekend! Thank you to everyone who stopped by to have a look at the layout and a massive thank you for all the nice comments people have said to us over the weekend. As much as we build layouts for our own enjoyment, it’s also nice to see other people enjoying watching the layout, so you really have made all the hard work worth while!

After setting off at 10am yesterday and a relaxed journey up, we arrived at the venue at 4pm. Set up takes an hour including running a loco round to ensure it all works. we’re ready and excited for the day ahead now

5 days to the Festival of British Railway modelling in Doncaster. The team is now all fired up ready and everything prepped for the weekend. Please do come and say hello to us, we are a friendly bunch and love a good natter. Looking forward to seeing you all there. (Stand 1) The Team (Nick, Richard and John) Photos courtesy of Chris Nevard

A little bit of history! This diagram is produced to the style of Cooke's books, it's shows the development and more recently the decline of Shwt

One of the last things to tick off prior to Doncaster has been a decent storage and transport case for the 22-RB crane and the 2 lorries. These are the only Items which aren’t attached to the layout

It’ll do it either way, if you power up with the loco on the track then it shuts down and also if the loco is on the cassette and you plug the cassette in it shuts down too. the capacitors are 6800uf so they are pretty big. I’m wondering if I need to up the size of the resistor to restrict the inrush current

Some help required. Subject - problems with sprog and stay alive decoders I have fitted several locos with TCS chips and large capacity stay alive. I use a digitrax zephyr to test my stock and they all run correctly and the capacitance keeps the locos going for a decent length of time. On the exhibition layout we have a sprog permanently attached to the layout. It runs other locos with no trouble however as soon as you put a loco with a large stay alive on the track the sprog shuts down (detects short) Has anyone else had a similar experience and is there anyway around this without reducing the capacity of the stay alive? TIA John Chivers

Hi Ian, a lot of what you say is true, it would be more common to see single type loads in open wagons. However from the research I’ve done, if the loads were delivered to a railway goods shed for a small branch line destination, they would have an allocated vehicle to be dropped off. So they would have generally packed it all in the 1 wagon to do the journey. Also if the loader was a wholesaler sending produce or building supplies etc out to places then 1 complete order may have been loaded into 1 vehicle. thank you very much, glad you like it John

Loads for the open wagons now finished.

Anticipation is building up on ‘Shwt’ before Doncaster, this guy has even started looking out for trains! A Couple of weeks early I think!

Ticking off this list of jobs ready for Doncaster model railway show at the start of next month. Last night’s task was the back scene which we originally wanted to leave in plain sky grey. After seeing people’s reactions and especially one person who asked ‘when are you going to finish the backscene?’ We thought we better had do something about it. I’m not that keen on photographic scenes as they can look great from some angles and then others look really false as you change your perspective. We gone for a fairly simple shaded scene which adds a little depth to the layout hopefully without detracting from it. None of us are artists but it seems to have come out okay If you are coming to Doncaster make sure you come and say hi to us on Stand 1 next to the BRM stand.

Last night we completed all of the carving and sculpting of the foam. Now we can see the finished design of the layout complete with all of it’s undulations

I use smiths Tarps https://www.hamodels.net/roger-smith-4mm-tarpaulins.html the afvise I had which seemed to work well is scrunch it up first and then flatten it back out, it’s gives a well worn look to the tarp. Then just superglue in place

Not much has happened on Shwt over the last few months as it's been in storage, although it came out briefly for the EM gauge Society's AGM event which was local. How ever with Doncaster model railway show coming up it's time o get on with loading some of our open wagons A sheet over the high fit made for a quick job Brass tubes placed in the tube wagon, these will be painted in red oxide. The open wagon behind I have got crates coming to fill it Mixed goods in the Medfit wagon, more sacks to be fitted when they arrive More barrels and pallets for the Ale Van, all to be painted once complete

More carving done last night, we have now finished board the boards 1 to 3 leaving only the most complicated board 4. Having reassembled the boards it does make for an interesting comparison showing before and after carving. Here are some more shots showing the boards which are now sculpted, hopefully we’re are going to get some sort of farm on the land above the engine shed but as always there’s less room than anticipated we have also cut in around the water tower to give the look of it being cut into the hill side

progress over the last couple of weeks on the layout has mainly been focused on the river bridge. The handrails are now all in place and we've soldered in brass Ballast strips to the inside of the girders, this makes a trough for the ballast to sit into. On the abutments, string courses have been added to complete them. With the bridge sides complete we could now test fit the decks and and try it in place. this also meant we had to do a fair bit of carving of the scenic foam to get i to fit in. (Please excuse the Flat bottom concrete track, it will be Bull head on wood when our C&L order arrives) Once we started sculpting the foam we continued up the front of the layout and started to shape the firs part of the cuttings

Over night last night we let the printer do it's thing with the crane print file. 10 hours later this is the result, still a lot of cleaning up to do where the supports were attached. We're really happy with the outcome and will give us a very unusual bu very typical GWR yard crane.