Northroader

No trace of a railway in the centre of Radstock, but if you go just south of the town, you'll find a track still in place, all the way to the junction for the quarry. Trees growing up through rotting sleepers, and BULLHEAD rail. There's even a burnt out brakevan south of Mells Road, yobs from which end of the line?

Well, we've had a look at some cabooses, and had a cultural trip viewing art, so time to get back to find out what's been going on with the layout. You know when you've built a baseboard, laid track, wired up, got a test run going, then you realise you want to take the b/board out? Sort of " Nooooo....!!". You'll remember I needed a bit more width for the displaced depot, well, get on with it, so take everything off, and disconnect. Then retrieve the jig-saw from the son-in-law.. (Tooling off with your daughter is one thing, but your jig-saw!...Damme, sir!) and use it to cut a length of 2" x 1". Full width in the middle, curving round to a taper at both ends, sort of bow shaped. This was screwed along the top of the b/board at the back. I should explain that all my lines are characterised by having a strip of 3mm. hardboard, about 16" high, fixed behind to carry a scenic back-scene. This is supported on vertical wood battens which bolt to the board framing. Wood blocks were cut to support the bow shaped piece, and act as packing to go behind the battens. The bolts for the middle two were swapped for longer ones, and the scenic back fitted, luckily it could still fit over the bow. Putting the depot in, yes, much better for clearances. You'll appreciate I didn't want to hack the depot about. It's made mainly from thick cardboard, with some overlays of Evergreen vee groove sheet for vertical planking. The roof is made of card strips, cut to represent shingles. Getting the flow around the merging of the cone into the ridge roof was tricky, but worth trying. (I should acknowledge this is yer actual depot, but a much later picture on Jordan’s line, ta, matey) It was made from a drawing in "Bridges & Buildings for Model Railroads" Kalmbach, 1973 reprint. It's for South Lyon, Mich., where the Grand Trunk Western crossed the C&O. After you've seen a few photos you realise the building is typical for the Grand Trunk Railway, a line which served the more populated parts of Ontario and Quebec, and was quite prosperous. However, it sponsored the Grand Trunk Pacific, a line through the Western prairies and the Rockies to reach the Pacific at Prince Rupert, and in the process ruining the parent company, which was merged into the recently formed Canadian National. The GTW was a system from the parent company to reach Chicago, which was formed as an American company as required legally, but was actually the CNR wearing another hat.

At a guess, I would suggest heating oil for what looks like some staff amenity? underneath.

Yesterday I managed to get a trip in between Didcot and Oxford. Off the end of the station platforms there's an impressive row of masts which quickly fizzle out, plenty of activity on the down side as far as North Junction with bases, hardly anything on the yard side. Out into the country it becomes terribly patchy, a handful of bases here and there, some tubes dumped to go in, big gaps in between. This is the situation through Culham and Appleford. A previous post mentioned the bridge at Culham. There are two old Brunel overbridges either side of the station, besides the new bypass bridge. It doesn't look as if anything is happening with these, the thought occurs that possibly work has been done to improve clearances for large containers on this route, and this was sufficient for overhead clearance? Once over the Thames for the second time, things pick up. Loads of base tubes in on the upside, less on the down. The car park at Radley has a big stockpile of tubes ready and waiting. This situation is the same as far as Kennington Junction, where work comes to a full stop.it's hard to discern if the places for the bases have been marked out, no tubes, not even dumped ones, anywhere from there through Hinksey as far as the station! I haven't been this way for a time, and the only new thing to me was raised galvanised steel platforms spaced out, mainly on the upside. Presumably this is for new signalling equipment raised above the floodplain. All in all, I'd guess they're maybe halfway there with bases over the whole stretch, very slow progress. You would have thought that the emu's coming through, more priority would be given to getting a service to Oxford going? I suppose folks can't be in two places at once.

As Mike Stationmaster says, it's the wheelbase that mattered in getting the engine on the t/table. You could move a shorter loco up and down a bit, and it would 'rock' as it balanced, longer locos couldn't do this, and it was much more effort shoving them round. Best make sure you've got your biggest locos fully coaled up at the stage before trying to turn them! The tank seen at Southall, post 882, looks like a storage tank for diesel oil for the d.m.u's. I think there's still a similar one at the end of Cardiff Canton dmu.

"If you don't get back from the edge of the platform, the train's going to suck you off!"

Going in two different directions at once, first the Norfolk light railway: I have made up a sentinel engine using a Lima motor bogie, as suggested by chrisN, the superstructure being entirely in plastikard, so it was quite a simple job, good for a "first attempt", as would a "tram" engine, both suitable for what you're doing? The only point to be careful with is finding a bogie that's a steady slow runner, mine's a bit "stop..go". Then the Brighton halt, shouldn't you keep the initial scheme simple, and the double track oval, (for the ATLANTIC!) can come a bit later?

Thanks for that, Poggy. I was worrying I'd see people crossing to the other side of the road when they saw me coming after I posted that coupling picture. They will be painted, I've got a thing about black, I don't go darker than charcoal grey.

You've been on about getting SNCF coaches. Is there an eagle perched watching these goings on?

How about D9005?

Enjoyed picking this one up. Watching with great interest. You're a jammy devil with those coaches!

Picking up on the radius question, some facts and figures, and problem solving. I used to enjoy seeing the Agenoria stand at GOG shows. There used to be a tiny oval at the base of the showcase, with an 0-4-0T chasing round, on its own. The radius must have been about 9". This set me thinking, and I built a pizza style circle 13" radius on a 30" square baseboard, O gauge. This showed me some of the problems, and at present the line is on ice, although I've got solutions and sometime hope to complete. Another time, another thread. Back to Washbourne, the points are made to a radius of 18", length 9.5". The picture compares them to a Peco medium radius point, radius 72", length 16". If I used these points with the same short train lengths, the overall length of the layout would go from 5'9" to 7'3". Argos says he's got 24" radius, and this can take an Ixion 0-6-0T, with gauge easing. Good idea, I've overlooked easing, everything was built to a 32mm roller gauge, but I think I'll try that. Going up from there, Marc Smith is using old Lima points, which an old GOG handbook says are around 30". I've up sized a Peco OO settrack point to O scale on the computer for my Englefield line, which also came out at 30". I can run an 0-6-0 through this. Perhaps when the much talked about Peco small radius point appears, it will be in this blockhole.(edit added, since doing this post I've come across the thread which gives 40.5" radius for the new Peco settrack point, although the length given don't look right) There are two considerations using small radius. First, loco wheelbases. Here, I'm talking scratchbuilding, commercial kits will need a lot of rebuilding to adapt them, and also we're looking at small tank engines. The bread and butter engines are all four coupled. 0-4-0T are plain sailing, and 2-4-0T and 0-4-2T just need the non- driving axle carried in a pony truck with plenty of sideplay. I make single driver tank engines as 2-2-0 with the axles rigid mounted, and a trailing pony truck. Weight is added for adhesion, and placed to keep the centre of gravity over the rigid wheelbase. 2-4-2T have pony trucks both ends with sideplay, and I have an 0-4-4T running, with a sprung trailing bogie. This needs a lot of traverse, and I've found platform clearances need a "mind the gap" situation. This just leaves 0-6-0T. This shows a chassis made for the 13" radius line. Special features are thin frame plates, short spacers, joggled frames and no pickup at leading end, thinned down faces on the bushes, and notably the side rods are in two portions overlapping on the centre crank pin. All the holes need opening out to very slack fits. So it can be done. The other problem is buffers and couplings. I've found it is best never to allow the buffer faces to get near each other by having a single long link, mounted in an oversize draw hook, which does pulling and pushing. The hook is profiled with a recess at the front and the back, so the link can engage at the rear of the hook for pushing movements. The link is long enough to just clear the rail when hanging free, and the other feature is a small cross piece at the free end. This is needed to stop the link riding through the draw hook when at an angle. Not a pretty sight!

Tell Mr Schwarzennicker "I'll be back". Yes, the 2-4-2T is a GSWR Ivatt, why don't more folks model this line? I'm afraid mine is 'standard' 32 MM. gauge, rather than mess round making another layout the right gauge, which is quite feasible now Slaters do wheels and axles.

I'm still pushing for an unrebuilt Patriot. "Unknown Warrior" could appear sometime and everybody will want one. Another 4-6-0 which would look great is an old ex LNWR Prince? For a visitor GWR Halls seemed to get everywhere, for a dash of green.

Here's a tip, Google "Terence Cuneo" and then click on "images". You can have a very happy time, and come away loaded with ideas. As is the thing with Google, some other non Cuneo stuff creeps in, but you'll find several foreign, whoops, aboriginal native thingys, included. If you've got a taste for whimsy, look out for the "mouse" railways, any takers? they're crying out to be modelled. Not me, I'm trying to do too much already! There are beautiful paintings on the Guild of Railway Artists site, - more googling and images, but to me Cuneo is the daddy.

Looking at my copy of Bradley's book for the RCTS, which is my bible for all LBSC matters, the two petrol railcars were built by Dick Kerr with frames, wheels, and body, but Daimlers supplied the power equipment, being two 35hp engines, each driving a gearbox through a clutch. It seems they weren't liked, due to vibration, fumes, and low power. Daimlers supplied skilled mechanics, who had to give frequent attention, pushing operating costs up. They had new engines with more power fitted, but were transferred to service stock around WW1. Surprisingly, they didn't go up in flames, which always seems to happen when you put a petrol engine in a rail vehicle.

I've got this baseboard, which was left over from another scheme that didn't come off. It had a ply fascia strip glued to front and back, so I cut it down the middle and added new crosspieces and back longitudes. Then it was strengthened by battens underneath mainly for the join. Then after more design and drawing I wasn't happy with it, so it became thought of as a main unit which was widened, and a fiddle yard, which was shortened. I hope you aren't losing the will to live reading all this, it just me and my baseboard have become quite attached.You may say "but you're fitting a layout to a board? that's totally.... backwards" Sorree. Suffice to say the boards are conventional softwood frames, main station is 40.5" x 14.5" (1030 x 370) and fiddle yard is 28" x 12.25" (715 x 310). Station has 12mm chipboard top, fiddle yard 3.5mm hardboard top, and there's a 6mm ply strip along the front to finish it, and stop stuff dropping off. Incidentally it's not tailor made to fit anywhere, I just wanted to do a really small O layout. It was then a case of seeing what would go on the board. Two parallel lines, with a runround crossover, platform behind, and a siding in front. I considered a bay into the platform, but I think there's a balance to reach of what proportion of the baseboard is covered by track against the rest. I placed a loco and coaches on the board with a building to size it all up. This told me what was left for the points I needed. I put a Peco OO settrack point in the copier, blew it up to 175%, (4mm to 7mm), then worked out how much it needed to be shortened by to fit in, which I did on photoshop. The printouts are fitted in in the picture above. I then built the points to this drawing, using 6mm copper clad glass fibre sleeper strip and code 124 flat bottom nickel silver rail, all from Marcway of Sheffield. The rail is on the hefty side for pregroup, it was leftover from an American line I was doing. This shows the finished point work, and the main thing about it is the tight curvature. I've put in a standard Peco point with it as a comparison. I think I'd best stop here and discuss all the implications in the next post.

I'm struggling to find the mouse which Cuneo always included, it must be there somewhere. He did do several overseas, I can think of two French ones besides.

Just for the fun of it, I've knocked up a little diorama using your poster. It's on my new line, which is why there's no ballast and the platform is a bit rudimentary, also the printer decided to band the colours, on an A3 sheet, which gives you an idea of the size, I hope. You might have to change the thread to "new improved engine green is the new black", as the setting is about 30 years before yours! Then it's O gauge, which should please our mate with all that lovely tinplate. Hope you're well soon, sir!

At STJ, that's SJ with T in the middle, you'll understand, the yard pilots were all fitted with radio, and everybody got told off for using it to place bets. Perhaps RBC was the primitive form of this?

Really beautiful job, it looks great.

Here's a picture of what a real winter looks like, a Cuneo painting of the CNR. As the old folks used to say to us kids, " Yow don't know yow bin born!"

I think you can be too slavish to picking a definite place, and everything has to conform to there. Take the elements you like, and there are any number of examples on this page, and do a simple setting working all of those in, although you may have to strike a tricky balance with some of the items, and not to get too overcrowded. Just to say, I don't go much on the tin shed approach when there are such good looking older styles around!

Me. Don't worry, you'll get the track well sorted.

Haven't used it for years, but don't you put the foam around the track, it sort of stretches and envelops it, and then lay the two together? Then I used to pin the track down, which might not suit modern tastes.