Northroader

Best not go there, Saint! (We’ll say dirt)

Theres these two camellias in pots either side of the front door step. What possesses such a delicate, tender flower to start blossoming in February, I’ve no idea, every evening we’re watching the weather forecast for overnight frost, and take them in the house, otherwise that lovely bloom will be turned to brown mush. This last week, they’ve stayed out all the time.

Back in November, I was putting together some strips of 10mm foamboard to make up a fiddle yard base, and was very disappointed to find the glue didn’t “take”, just staying wet and messy 24 hours later. It seems you have to store the stuff at over +5 C, so it’s lived with me on top of the chest in the bedroom for the last few months. Now it’s warming up, so mix a dollop with about three parts water and a few drops of washing up liquid, and go round the “Western Fringe” line ballast with an eye dropper. It’s now set rock hard.

Then dig out the foamboard, and try again… Result! That’s set nicely, so push on with the Washbourne fiddle yards.
 

So now we can definitely say its warming up, and we can celebrate Spring with Hilda.

Could be East/West…

There’s an 0 gauge line, Blackney, set in the Forest of Dean, terminus to fiddle yard set up, with a kickback siding into the fiddle, where he’s recently made the fiddle yard a scenic section. Works quite well, IMHO.

There’s no whitewash patches round the 13amp sockets to tell which one’s tripped, either?

Annie, when they first tried digging the Channel Tunnel in Victorian times, they found a coal seam, so this led to the development of coal mines in East Kent, and so it is possible to find NCB sidings on the Southern, if only limited. From a rail fan / modeller point of view, this led to the East Kent Railway, a Colonel Stephen’s job. So to Wingham Canterbury Road, my kind of station.

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/w/wingham_canterbury_road/

On the subject of iron bodied GWR wagons, there’s 31076, the number falling between blocks of the various 3 plank builds listed above. It’s pictured at Newquay Harbour, loaded with coal, presumably imported by sea from South Wales. Would it be one of the mentioned jobs, or just absorbed from the Cornwall Minerals Railway? The wagon next to it still has dumb buffers… then there’s the spring shoes, either they’re a very good fit, or there’s extensions down from the solebars? Flitched?

May I add that the article and drawing I was on about was in Railway Modeller No. 69.

Can’t find the reference now, I’m afraid, but way back, 1950s 60s sort of era, there was an article done in the Railway Modeller by Norman Eagles, (who created the “Sherwood Section”) He had gone to Burton shed and been given access to measure up one of these engines, and did a drawing for it. Sorry I’ve slung my clipping for this in a clearout a few months ago, just have the model left:

I think that you should be able to look at a layout with no trains being present, and get an impression of where it’s meant to be, so that scenery can give a geographical impression, and the buildings and infrastructure such as signals give a much firmer idea of the company involved. If you look at a bare board populated by D299 wagons, you’re left asking “where’s this?”

I’m sticking to the trademark name “Washbourne”, Don, but it’s got the capability of getting a Caledonian flavour by becoming “Washburn”, and if I can last long enough to do the NER, it’ll be “Washbeck”.

The loco. is trying to be a GNoS “E” class, LNER “J91”, but I’m afraid it’s an awful bodge. I used a spare chassis for a South Wales 0-6-0T (all my finished stock for South Wales went in the Great Clearout) but the wheelbase is about 18” too long. Then Things happened during the superstructure build, dimensionally and square wise. Jonathan did a comment over on another thread this week about how you get more meticulous as you grow older, I’m afraid I’ve gone the other way.

Over eight years and eighty three pages into this thread, and we’re still bumbling along, with every so often the new version, edition?, revision?, appearing, keeping to an 0 gauge, pregroup, representative, adaptable small layout concept. I’ve been looking at what there is from an operational, and an appearance, point of view, and just shifted things round a bit.
The main consideration is that I’ve moved from a terminus to fiddle yard approach, to a run through station with staging boards each end, mainly because there’s sufficient length available here. (Before the track exited at each end, but there was just a short pocket yard at the one end). This was discussed with examples back on page forty, although I’m afraid it’s a bit of a desert with the loss of pictures, and Tyn-y-Coedcae, just up above, is a good example.

The other change is that the siding has been moved to go in front, and lengthened a bit. I should be able to run through trains, mainly passenger, and do some simple shunt moves using the siding, and that’s all I really need. The main running line has a nice reverse curve to make it look more arty, not parallel with the baseboard front edge. Here’s the main board as it is now, waiting for the reception roads at each end to appear:

The dimensions are length 42.5”, 1080mm, and width 12”, 305mm.

Polish Air Force:

or, French Stop signal:

Brighton has a seafront terminus. Trouble is, the line don’t go very far.

Highly impressive line up. Carriages to the left of ‘em, carriages to the right of ‘em.

No more progress to report, but just thought I’d show how I got to the design of that loco. Going back over seventy years ago, I got on my bike one day and went out past Pontesbury in Shropshire, to where the Snailbeach District Railway was still functioning. By then it was just taking crushed road stone from a quarry down to where road lorries could be loaded, using gravity working for hopper wagons, and hauling them back up with an ordinary Fordson tractor. Very enjoyable outing, and I progressed beyond the quarry, on to the abandoned stretch past the Snailbeach lead mine, where the quartz tips gave a “mountains of the moon” effect, up to the terminus at Crowsnest, where there was nothing much at all. Not long after the quarry laid an access road for lorries, and the line was abandoned. Anyway, the Crowsnest end became a peg for a talented modeller, Roy Link, to hang his idea of a small mineral line on. He tried various layouts in various developments and scales, all made in fabulous detail, detailed in his book “Crowsnest Chronicles”.

In this book there was a drawing of a small narrow gauge Bagnall 0-4-0, which I’ve pinched and adapted.

it gave me a good idea of the general assembly, and then it just got an overlay for a Hornby 00 chassis, and a person to the right scale. Doing an Emett adaptation, the length gets foreshortened, and the height, particularly boiler mountings, gets increased, although in doing this, you still need to keep the cab big enough to take a person, which will change the proportions a bit. Then the details get done to try and look more like a prototype you want. I’ve made the superstructure soldered up from nickel silver sheet, but plastikard would do just as well.

The Pop Up kits are in unpainted ply with laser etched detail, so if you want a stone built station, you can face it with “stone” plastikard glued on, once you’ve smoothed the projecting locating tabs off.
The Glasgow show sounds great, pity it’s too far for me. Tallindalloch is news to me, have you spotted Rosehearty, a GNS based branch in 0 gauge, also it has a P4  version.

https://www.westernthunder.co.uk/threads/rosehearty-gnsr-new-aberdour-branch.8035/

Don’t forget Acker Bilk….

I think you’ll have difficulty getting much of a station building on that platform width. Here’s a Pop Up Designs kit I’m using on a GNoS line that’s taking shape. (It has needed a bit of tailoring to be fully suitable)

It’s in 0 scale, and the board width is 10”, so equivalent to about 6” in 00.  Your goods siding and shed has required over half your board width, so there isn’t really enough left to get what you want. You might make do with the front half of a Colonel Stephens type building, perhaps in wood rather than corrugated iron, otherwise add a few inches on the back of the layout?

I'm enjoying the build, it is looking promising.

May I bring a layout that’s taking shape to your attention, as it’s on a club blog that possibly you aren’t following. It’s small and simple, in 0 scale, with a quality finish. The club is Newport (Gwent) MRC and Rodney Hall is heading the team. He has produced Llanastr in the past, (featured on page 8 of this thread),which should be sufficient recommendation.

https://newportmrs.wales/members-layouts/tyn-y-coedcae/

What’s the glue/s you’re using, please?

You, sir, are starting to reveal yourself as a person with emerging good taste and perspicacity. I like the new signal box,too.

Thanks for that, Dana, it’s a fascinating read. I was on the last year of my apprenticeship when we had the two locos, Locomotion and Derwent, into the works from off their plinths at Bank Top station. At the time the erecting shop had just had a rebuild of one half of one of the bays to take in main line diesels. All the pits had been filled in and a smooth concrete surface applied, then painted over green with lines, so that it looked almost like a tennis court. The first occupants were these two locos plonked down in the middle, looking very incongruous.

A lot of the woodwork was replaced, and there was one story of replacement bolts being needed for some work. They thought a rather antique finish was needed, so the job was given to one blacksmith well known for his rough work, without telling him what they were for. The later careful archaeological approach wasn’t at that time being applied, it was more just tittivating the engines up.

I do like it! As to the coupling rods, the centres of the axles are quite get attable, could you not just gauge it from them? (Taking the picture I had to have the gauge slightly away, so it doesn’t line up looking at it)

Hope you and your wife are fully recovered from the lurgy, best wishes.