muchfiddling

I have almost exclusively Marcway turnouts and Colbalt digital motors. I use 1mm piano wire from Eileen's Emporium.

The weekends consignment of beer passes through Malago Rd.

An unbelievable clean picket "Beast" shunts new customer wagons at Liberty Pit.

Memory Lane is complete. It obviously need pavement, walls, fitting and street lights, plus a good scattering of people to bring it to life. But I can now move on to my next task a batch of 7 plank wagons for the Colliery.

Memory Lane is almost complete, just one small cottage to complete. This is the white Lion

I'm still plodding long with Memory lane.

I've started work on Petite Properties Memory Lane

A merry Christmas to our readers The winding house is now reunited with the layout perhaps tomorrow between cooking the Turkey I might just string the cable between the sheaves and winding house

The winding house is now complete. It needs placing on the layout and the cable fixed between the winding house and the sheaved placed in position.

No it doesn't Nod, it's constructed from foamex, like most of the items on the layout. I'm the only one who nods here I've spent the last few days putting together a whole heap of miners and associated folks, and painting them. It looks like some labour unrest could be brewing on Liberty Pit. This scene will look a lot better once I've added some cinder ground cover, I also intend to paint a water colour back ground scene. Trouble at mill "no it's at the pit"

the screen for my pit have now been positioned. These feature and internal hopper to enable empty wagon to be filled with coal. ( A simple slide is fitted to the rear where they are out of sight). In a dire emergency a loco can get underneath. I'll be adding mining tub, miners to make it more convincing as I finish them.

this week things I've been working on the screens for my mine. This features a removable roof, so I can load the loose coal into a hopper. This will be used to fill the empty wagons (if everything goes to plan.) The main body of the screen is 9mm ply, the internal hopper is fabricated from foamex, and sleeted with Slaters corrugated sheets. The stanchions came from Cornwall boats, and great value for money at £2.95 a packet of 10. I'm really look forward to moving on to something else. But I still have a few week work on the mine.

Yes Liberty Colliery was well closed by 1900. I presume it was sited in what now is Liberty lane in the area close to Ashton Gate. I read somewhere it was a rich seam of coal, extending out are far as Dundry which must be 5 or 6 miles. ( The Malgo society put out a very intresting news letter featuring many local intrest stoires). Of course in my senario the colliery is still working in the late 1940's / early 1950''s. At that time if you sat in Victoria Park (close to Bedminster station you witness the multitude of stock movements between Temple meads and Malago Vale. Plus of course the normal passenger traffic and freight movement on the by-pass line via St Phillips. regards Rich

At last the pump house is off my work bench. it still needs some finishing touches.

The pumphouse is comming together.

I'm back & running sort of last night I cobbled together the pit pumping house this is currently drying having had a spray of dark grey on the inside. This will be followed by a coat of Das. More Foamex has been order to construct the visable portions of the Beam engine. (that's going to be a fun job).

the room is 18ft x12ft. my minum radius is somewhere between 4ft and 5ft.. The option of getting a 6ft radius while great for most loco's would stop the use of most low relief structures, and most of your turnout would need to be curved. my base boards are 30" to 36" wide and this gives me a fare amount of room for sidings.If I was to start all over I would opt for SMP track to match the majority of my turnouts (Marcway). Even so sidings tend to curved which look good but cause problems with magnetic uncoupling. I tried Dingham couplings but they simply are not robust enough. So in the end I opted for Spratt & Winkle on all wagons and on my auto coach. The 4 wheel passenger stock is on three links. I stil have two major areas to develop, I have a large area in which I'm going to squeeze a Bonded store with associated sidings, these type of structures I can cobble together using foamex which is my favourate modelling material. (Trent Plastics if your intrested). Most of my windows and doors come from York Model making they have a wonderful range. The second area might be a casting and machining factory, being a major user of coal from my mine. I think in my tiny space it's unlikely that I will ever have more than 10 - 12 loco's on display. so my restricted loco shed should cope. I'll post some pictures of both area's next time, this might take a few days as I'm recoverying from surgery.

I've been pressing on with some of the pit buildings a boiler room/Winding house

being between Jobs and waiting for parts my attention was drawn to a nicely finished Dapol guards van. "It looked a bit too new".

Just out of intrest has anyone tried the open wagons from Smallbrook Studio. http://smallbrookstudio.co.uk/kits-parts/4569521214/7mm-scale-7---plank-open-mineral-waggon-kit/11178272

a bit more progress on the colliery sidings.

The over bridge, retaining wall and station approach are all fabricated out of foamex. My current project is a colliery. This is fabricated out of Sruce strip wood cut on my Proxon saw using photos to give me an approximate layout. The wood is stained with Indian Ink. The sheave wheels I obtained from Shapeways. The colliery structures will be scratch built from foamex with suitable embossed brick paper or embossed plasti card - what ever I have to hand. I obtained the three way Marcway turnout from Rod of Ramchester fame thanks Rod it's working well The track work looks a bit tight which it is, but I'm determined to fit it all in with the screens, winding house and boiler room, and hopefully a working coal loader sometime in the future. The coal hoppers will run on 00 track in the screens.