Artless Bodger

On 24/05/2020 at 13:05, Sophia NSE said:

I'm on the lookout for a suitable tender as the few T9s that were allocated to the Eastern Section didn't have the watercart behind them as it made them too long for Kentish turntables

I think the T9s swapped with 700s in a complicated roundabout which gave the watercarts to other 4-4-0s, the released 6w tenders to the 700s and the ex 700 tenders to the T9s for Kent, see SEMG -http://www.semgonline.com/steam/700class_01.html

So a Hornby 700 tender should be ok. The tender bodies look similar 8w vs 6w except for length, so you might be able to shorten the watercart subject to getting a suitable tender chassis?  

Well, the turntable has progressed, and is now awaiting the painters. It works after a fashion, in that I can drive a loco on and off without too much finger pokery, but rotation is entirely digital .

in the meantime, as Head Gardener is digging for victory, the railway workshop has been turned over to 'munitions', turning unused 60 thou plastic sheet into desperately needed plant labels.

3 hours ago, Sophia NSE said:

Its the 5mm foamboard from art supply and craft shops. I used plenty of PVA and tape to hold it together

This section is 5.5 feet by 18 inches and I have another 4 foot by 18 inch section. The extra small piece is to house my controller and point switches eventually. I just need a couple more sheets for backscenes and cross bracing. Total cost so far is under £20 with absolutely zero carpentry skills required

Great! Thank you for these photos, they illustrate your methods clearly. The 5mm foamboard I can cope with and concur with your comment on woodworking skills. However hard I try with squares, G clamps etc, I can never get 2x1 sawn, drilled and screwed square. I made an error with foamboard - used for a high level road, I glued wet and dry for the road surface with Bostik All Purpose, the solvent permeated the card layer and dissolved the polystyrene core, hence the road developed bubbles and sags. PVA next time!

That T9 looks good too, in case you wanted something a bit different I think the preceeding Drummond 4-4-0 - LSWR C8 - had a shorter coupled wheelbase. 

On 11/05/2020 at 20:35, Sophia NSE said:

It'll be a little unorthodox as I've already built the baseboards out of foamboard

Sounds interesting, I'd be glad to see your methods. By foamboard do you mean the thick cellular stuff sold for cavity wall insulation - about 4cm thick? Or what I think of as foamboard - expanded polystyrene with a card layer each side about 5mm thick? I've heard of people using both types.

Any good tips you have will inform any new layout I build - something small and maybe narrow gauge (been watching too many Youtube videos of feldbahnen).

Though a bit OT, a few bonus shots from the archive.

The end of no 2 m/c. Rebuilt to make corrugating medium and limitation kraft liner in the mid-ish 70s it finally succumbed to being too narrow in the 90s, at only 4m deckle, when the corrugators moved to greater than 1800 mm webs regularly it was not economical to repulp the siderun paper, which is why no 6 at 6m deckle had been resurrected.

No 24. The machine running in its latter days, some of its rebuilt plant occupying the space vacated when no 1 was removed.

No 25. Last few cylinders of the original machine seen earlier being erected by Walmsley's staff. The white 'shed' beyond is the hood over the after dryers put in when the machine was rebuilt.

A10. Reed's had its own fire brigade, based in a fire station at the end of New Hythe Lane, seen here in an early photo (only 1 and 2 conveyors present out of an eventual 5). Kent Fire Brigade used some derelict parts of east mill in the early 80s to practise rescue procedures, both in a general sense in constricted environs and also to maintain knowledge of the mill layout, since in the case of a fire alarm on site the fire stations over a wide area were alerted. 

Photos below.  Note the Strood to Maidstone West line has now been converted to colour light signals. Entry to the west mill siding, known as Brookgate Siding, on the right beyond the platform, there was a sharp drop in gradient into the mill here. Used by oil trains in the 70s and 80s, then coal trains when the new boiler house was commisioned (c.1985), and some experiments with export paper traffic from Aylesford Newsprint via a dutch barn type building at the far end near Aylesford station.

First, taken from New Hythe station up platform showing the scaffolding under construction, it eventually reached the entire length of the building and up to the roof level, cantilevered out from under the machine floor level.

Second, the machine services corridor with the scaffolding foundations, the railway is the other side of the fence on the right. You can just see the remains of the old siding in the concrete floor.

Third, looking up the machine services corridor from the other direction, the sidings ran under hereone in the dirt where the cameraman is standing, the other beyond the line of columns - this was the track which entered the loading dock near the railway station, the left hand track ran along the roadway outside as in as previous picture. If you had passed the mill on a train in the 70s and early 80s it is under here that you would have caught a glimpse of the mill diesel shunter - Bounty (Ruston 88DS) and later also Hornblower (Ruston 165DE).

Fourth, inside the remains of the machine house, the outside wall to the annexe which is the wall you see in the first view above and the previous boundary photos. Steel braces have been fixed to stabilise the wall during demolition. This is the machine floor at 32' OD.

Fifth, a view from the basement level at 16'OD showing the braced outer wall and digger on the m/c floor level.

Some views of the railway aspect of East Mill.

Nos 01, 02, 03 taken from West Mill side on Mill Hall road, where the cranes stood for the roof replacement. The lefthand bricked up window in 01 is where I hung out over the then extant steam pipe to take the pictures of the oil train leaving on the APM Railway Traffic thread. 

No 04 is taken from New Hythe station footbridge, the cream building on the left is the loading dock, originally one siding entered from under no 6 electrical annexe (later called the services corridor) and a parallel one along the roadway outside between New Hythe station embankment and the loading dock, visible in 05. The concreted over part at the bottom left was where New Hythe Sump was dug to intercept the drains here (they originally flowed direct to the river. The New Hythe Sump pump pit was tucked virtually under the down platform of New Hythe station. Visible in the distance beyond the end of the siding is the road bridge installed to avoid New Hythe Lane level crossing, when Blackhorse site was developed for warehousing. The crossing then closed, and when the line was resignalled with colour lights, New Hythe signal box closed.

First a couple of views of the cranes working on replacing no 6 m/c house roof. The other one shows how the south gable had been pushed out of vertical. The first thing  the staff knew of this was finding holes in the paper on 6m/c from sheared rivets dropping from the ceiling and roof of the machine house. After propping the gable substantially, the whole roof was stripped of slates and woodwork, the steel work repaired and a new roof and ceiling installed. One theory was that the roof had been weakened by wartime bomb damage. The day view shows the cranes ranged along Mill Hall road to work on the roof by reaching over BR tracks, the proximity of the buildings to the railway boundary is clear. In the night shot taken from the end of the foot and pipe bridge over the Medway, you can see the cranes at work.

Looking for the demolition photos and found this! Best shot of one of the locos so far. Is that a re-railing beam along the solebar?

1 hour ago, Ohmisterporter said:

The detail in most of these photographs is excellent.

Judging from the blurred motion in some, they were taken on quite slow film and probably full plate. What is a shame is that there were none from later phases of the construction, 3 & 4 machines which were built subsequently, almost a repeat of 1 & 2 (3 was the same width as 2, 4 wider again), then the 'upstairs' machines 5, 6, 7 and 8 right up to the railway boundary. When the mill was demolished there were very strict controls demanded by Network Rail due to the proximity. Somewhere on the old hard drive are some photos of the prep for that demolition, also a couple taken when the roof of 6 m/c house started to collapse, and it had to be rebuilt mainly by cranes reaching across the mainline tracks, but only at night after services had stopped. Cost a fortune in crane hire. I'll post if anyone's interested. 

I'm coming to the end of the ones with railway interest.

No 80. No 2 m/c being erected. The standard gauge temporary track is visible across the far end of the machine house. The NG snaking along over the pipe tunnel* under the floor (you can just see the arch of it in the extreme foreground) with the workmen unloading concrete for laying the machine house floor. To the right is No 1 m/c dryer pit, soleplates and the drain gulley down the front side of the machine (paper machines have a front (or tending) side and a back (or drive) side. A load of dryer frame components on the floor - probably for no 1, and a drying cylinder on the floor at the far end ready to be lifted and installed.

*It was tidied up and cleaned when no 1 was taken out and no 2 rebuilt in around 1975/6, but was still a squalid hole in the early 80s, but not as bad as no 3 next door which had been rebuilt many years earlier. I never saw the rats reputed to live down there but the cockroaches, living on leaked starch, were legion and crunched under foot. The far end under the driers was known as Piccadilly Circus on account of the multitude of pipes traversing the space.

No 82. Water Tower. Looking towards the river where the big steam crane is at work excavating the river bank. The track in the foreground is either the siding connection from the mainline, or parallel to it. Referring back to the 'modern' photo taken from Hornblower's cab above, looking back towards the mill, the later water tower (6 legs, tall) was built just to the right of the original 8 legged one in photo 82, so gives some idea of the relationship between the tracks.

No 85. Fitting the drying cylinders. The SG temporary siding is seen, complete with the trolley seen in other photos (might have been more than 1). The 'shed' on it looks very much like the hoist cabin for the pulp conveyor (see photos 106, 107) what it is doing here is unclear since it cannot fit through the doorway out into the boilerhouse and wharf area (where it might have been moved along and lifted up onto the conveyor rails). It may well be here having been lifted off a railway wagon by the machine house crane, prior to being hauled back round to the conveyor. 

Nos 106, 107. Views of the conveyor area, showing the cabin in place and sundry NG track and wagons.

That's about it, hope you enjoyed them. 

Something I tried years ago, read it in a magazine, was to stick some clear sticky tape to a piece of glass (lightly so you can peel it easily later), paint it the required colour, then cut it into strips with a scalpel and steel ruler. Carefully peel the strips of tape off and apply them to the model. I used it to replicate lined out panelling on an old Farish OO coach, trying for LBSCR umber and white. It was fiddly and you had to be careful not to stretch the tape or the paint film cracked. That would have been with the old cellulose based tape, modern polypropylene tapes might not take the paint so well. Only works for straight lines though so wouldn't help much for splashers.

No 111. The river bank has been cut back, the concrete surface of the wharf is under construction complete with the inset rails for the eventual dockside cranes. A large steam crane has appeared, this may be the one later used at the coal tip in the south part of the site, but isn't the Smith, Rodley crane we had still in the 70s. Two standard gauge wagons present - I'm inclined to guess the steam cranes were used to shunt them into position. Narrow gauge poking out from under the end of the Lancashire boiler house and along the front of the coal bunkers. The big brackets along the top front of the bunkers support the trolley wires for the dockside cranes. 

No 112. Not much of railway interest, but included for the dodgy work practice of two ladders roped together. Looking towards the river, the stack in the background looks like pulp bales, but not stacked in the pulp yard under the conveyor, so a bit of a mystery.

No 75. The wharf road and coal bunkers at an earlier stage, bloke leaning on a skip in the distance. Wonderful bit of tracklaying.

There is a British Pathe News film of electricians fitting lighting to the Clifton Suspension Bridge. It is the bit where the bloke slides through the little gap in the tower cap and down the suspension chain that churns my stomach. I find it hard just to walk across the bridge! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6lp0KAEHOM

There were enough blokes in the mill when I worked there in the 70s - 80s who had finger joints missing etc from ingoing nip accidents. We often measured drying cylinder temperatures by poking a long handle mounting a thermocouple in between the rotating dryer cylinders - no 2 had 68 cylinders by then, at 2-3 mins per cylinder it was an afternoon's work. There was not much clear gap bewteen the cylinders at up to 130 deg C, moving paper at 300 m/min, carrier ropes etc. On one occasion the carrier rope came off  and snagged a bearing cover lifting it up and through the dryer hood - it was quite a big bit of cast metal and made quite a thump when it landed! since around 2000 you couldn't even get near the cylinders - 1.6m high guard fences all round.

Crews were dead scared of anything 'acid' but handled caustic soda prill with insouciance - when I challenged the lack of eye protection one said 'but it's only like washing soda.'

A tip from one H&S professional - if you want to test or demonstrate the hazards of a nip - use baby carrots, they're just about the same size as a finger.

Another photo with a loco visible - No 88. The loco appears to be shunting a couple of empty skips to receive material excavated from the river bank. This photo also shows how far the river bank was cut back to make berths for unloading lighters carrying pulp bales. The river piers of the conveyor cranes were (I'm fairly sure) constructed in pits on 'dry' land. In other pictures the width of the wharf from the coal bunkers to the river seems much wider than it was in my time, showing the excavation of the bank was carried further north to accommodate coal barges. 

No 89. A bit further to the left, the loco and steam crane visible and loaded skips being pushed by 2 men each further down the wharf. Bearing in mind Nearholmer's observations about the strength of the skips, perhaps the loco was only used to move rakes of empties?

Evidence of any motive power is scanty in these photos, however:

Nos 98 and 99, taken from the water tower show a small petrol loco - possibly a Simplex 20HP. 

No 108. A similar view, note the standard gauge temporary track in 98/99 has been moved to the further door into the turbine house in the interim period.

No 109. The water tower, with the standard gauge siding off the main line on the left and the temporary connections curving off to the turbine house and the far end of the machine house visible. On the main line embankment to the left a white post may be the signal protecting New Hythe Lane level crossing, and also just visible what looks like a gantry arrangement seen in photo no 97. My interpretation of this is that machinery could be transferred from main line wagons to the 4 wheel trolleys for internal use, and moved on the temporary track to their location, thus obviating the need for a standard gauge shunting loco. The trolleys might be moved with winches - several are visible in the series of photos. The sparse sleepering of the temporary track into the turbine house wouldn't have supported much weight.

No 49. Looking roughly south east, the mainline is behind the cameraman, the sidings visible are standard gauge, with the ramp up to the side of the machine house, where the machine parts were brought in.

No 50. Looking roughly south east, mainline behind the photographer but further south than 49 (the tent like edifice in both photos), std gauge in the foreground on the alignment of the later (1930s) permanent siding that ran under the kraft beaterfloor, no 6 electrical annexe and into no 6 loading dock. The further SG track is the one which swings round to enter the dry end of no 1 & 2 m/c house, seen in 49.

No 51. Down by the riverside again looking north, some wonderful track laying, especially where the NG crosses the SG.

No 52. Back inside 1 & 2 m/c house. The lower NG track on the left is in what becomes the pipe tunnel running the length of the machine house, no 2's dryer basement beyond it, no 1's dryer basement on the right hand side. 

No 55. Standing in the Salle area, north of the machine houses looking roughly west towards the main line and New Hythe Lane. The main line is on the dark embankment beyond the post and wire fence, the home signal protecting New Hythe Lane crossing is visible. New Hythe Halt does not seem the have been built yet - it was originally just a wooden platform, on the site of the later New Hythe station, adjacent to the level crossing. Some of those wooden huts, WW1 army surplus, were still in use as management offices in the 1980s and lasted almost until the end of the mill in the early 2000s.

A note on terminology:

Papermachines have a wet end - at the beginning where the pulp slurry is fed onto the wire mesh belt forming wire (or just 'wire'), the paper web is pressed then dried on steam heater cylinders (the dry end) and is then reeled up. 

Pulps and papers are often referred to by the pulp type, depending on pulping process; kraft (from the German for strong) is chemically pulped wood by the 'kraft' or suplhate process, used for wrapping, bag and sack papers, unbleached it is brown, but can be bleached to cream or white. 

Beaters (and refiners) are machines which defibre pulp sheets or rags and fibrillate the fibres to improve the fibre bonding characteristics, and so the strength of the paper. Beaters are a batch process, refiners continuous process.

Salle (German for hall) is traditionally the room where the paper is further processed to the form required by the customer (slit into narrower reels, cut into sheets, inspected, sorted, packed etc).

Some for today.

No 22. Inside the machine house - excavating the basements, the tops of the concrete foundations are the future machine floor level 16' OD, the basements were at 8' OD. NG points and a turnplate in the foreground, one of the skips looks as though it has also been turned off the spur on a turnplate. The 3 hole link evident on this one.

No 23. Having turned 180 degrees, now looking south, mobile derrick erecting the beater house and power house steelwork.

No 26. A view down on the area of no 23, from the top of the chimney. I've tried the clarity editor on this to sharpen it up a bit. A nice array of NG and SG track. I'm tempted to interpret the NG track coming in top centre and swinging round to parallel the SG as coming from the site of the ballast pit, bringing ballast for the concrete plants, it might then be that the odd shed near the river bank in some shots, with a tall chimney, was a washing and grading plant, using water pumped from either the river, or excavations to wash the gravel before use.

54 minutes ago, Krusty said:

 

It fixed the skip in one of three positions: 

(a) level for filling and running

(b) partly tipped for shovelling out the contents

(c) fully tipped.

These bars were very common on German vee skips. There are YouTube videos showing them in use, although not easy to find unless you get lucky.

Excellent, thank you Krusty. The bars appear on wagons in a few other photos, but not all.

I'll have to look more closely at some of those Youtube videos. 

Jumping about a bit - the photos are in chronological order as numbered, but I jumped to some that I thought might be more interesting or informative, so going back a bit to some I jumped over.

No 10. South end of machine house looking roughly north. Shows the mobile derrick mounted on 3 NG wagon chassis - rails rather precariously laid on top of the vertical stanchion foundations. Also a nice little pump in the foreground draining the excavation of the power house basement.

No 16. Boiler house - some NG in evidence.

No 17. Beater house under construction, looking west to the SECR mainline and Reed's Siding. MR wagon and another (GN?). NG track and point lever. Skip by concrete mixer. Mobile derrick on NG chassis visible again.

No 18. Coal bunkers under construction, river out of shot to the right. Standard gauge track and some bits of NG. Regarding that trolley - it would be a bit of a coincidence but there was a very similar wooden trolley, with towing ring on the frame stretcher on the east mill sidings in the early 1980s - just visible near the water tower on the 'modern' photos.

9 hours ago, Sophia NSE said:

Oh I like that! Shame the WKR would be unlikely to have anything as fancy as that. Purple and cream Pullmans anyone?

 

One thing I have been wondering about is the colour of the cab on the push/pull set. The model of the Maunsell sets have them the same colour as the body and I hardly think the WKR would be allowed to get away with that. So most likely it will end up being black

Why not red - same as your loco valences perhaps? SR brake vans had venetian red ends. Hmm - maybe that would clash! I think yellow replaced red as the warning colour because too many males are red / green colourblind - similar to the changes in wiring colours.

No reason why WKR couldn't have a thumper, or a derivative. The thought of the SRKT thumping up the Loose valley gives me goosepimples. A couple of those Farish coaches would form the base, perhaps use 3 if you want proper 64' length. In OO you are better off in obtaining a motor bogie or DMU chassis than in N gauge. I used the chassis out of my old Roco ET90, not ideal but it's what I had. Actually you'd only need a motor coach and use the p&p driving trailer to represent the modernisation of the rolling stock in the late 60s. 

NIR used thumper based dmus (classes 70, 80 and 450) and also had the MPV - a double ended motor coach which could run with coaches, driving trailers, multiple with other motors, and at night in multiple work goods trains too - just the sort of thing that would appeal to Colonel Stephens.

Thank you Sir Douglas, that is a very clear photo and shows the catch well. 

Back to the railway.

No 45. Standing with our backs to the river, looking roughly west. A nice portrait of a V skip, on metal sleepered track. Does anyone know what the 3 hole link bar is for? I thought to restrain the skip from tipping but that is usually done with a small lever catch. The skip frame does not look quite like a WDLR one.

No 46. A bit further north than 45, again with our backs to the river, the line in the foreground is the standard gauge siding along the wharf. The narrow gauge (skip off the rails behind the workman (supervisor? he seems to be wearing leather gaiters) and the frame only visible above and beyond it. It looks as though concrete was run in wagons along behind the bunkers, then out to the river with a turnplate at the end and a stub track to the right of the workman where the concrete could be tipped into wheelbarrows. The pipe in the foreground would be used to discharge water to the river, pumped from the wet pit excavation below, the entire site was underlain by river terrace gravel (source of ballast for the concrete) and subject to varying water table height with the tides.

No 48. Looking roughly north, the standard gauge curve connecting the siding off the main line (to the left) to the wharf, also narrow gauge tracks.

No 24. Looking down on the riverward extension of the standard gauge track in no 48. Though it looks like some double exposure has occurred, this shows how fluid some of the track laying must have been with parts of points in situ but incomplete. I think the building with the chimney must be another concrete mixing plant.

Some for today.

No 35. Looking east towards the river at the south end of construction, the beater floor is the further part of the new steelwork, the power house is where the travelling crane is installed - 5 steam turbines, 2 coupled and driving a main lineshaft powering the beaters and refiners, 3 driving generators - power was DC. Part of a site plan from later added to show some of these items. Well laid track in the foreground! Skip wagon just visible in front of concrete mixer.

Nos 120, 121. A bit off topic but to enlarge on the above. 121 one of the turbines, looks like part of the gearbox coupling the two mainshaft turbines on the left. 120 the mainshaft. Though the mill was much altered when I worked there and line shaft drive to the beaterfloor a thing of the past, some of those piers were still in existence with the bearing hold-down bolts, about 3" diameter.

Now, I must not let my enthusiasm for the papermaking and mill history get in the way of the railway content.

No 42. Coal bunkers under construction. The NG track is carried on wooden sleepers here, I presume because this appears to be on waybeams over the wet pits, and the planks in the 2' to make a safe walkway for workers - the wet pits went down to 8' below OD so were about 24' deep here. Elsewhere the NG track is laid on steel sleepers (Decauville track?) except where carried over excavations.

No 43. Two boilers installed, these look in pristine condition and freshly delivered complete, so raises questions about the apparent boiler components seen earlier. The open pit below the track is evident here.