Ruston

Cutting strips of corrugated aluminium, pressing in screw heads, cutting out individual panels and then gluing them in place is tedious but it's almost done. Only the roof remains to be clad on this building and then it's down to adding the details. The low-relief building along the end wall will need just as much corrugated sheet. I'm going to be having nightmares about it! I need some industrial lighting, like the one in this snipped picture of one of the buildings at British Oak. It doesn't need to actually illuminate. Does anyone know of anything - perhaps someone does a 3D print?

Interesting. It would have been a very odd choice to work such a site but stranger things have happened. A little more progress.

What does the "bespoke electronic setup" entail? Are we talking Stay Alive here? I've never heard of a Nano chip before. What sort of fitting is it - Next 18 or hardwired, or whatever? I would like some more information in order to decide whether or not to go for a sound-fitted one. If it does have a Stay Alive then I'd go for sound-fitted. But if not, I would fit a decoder that can take a Stay Alive, that is assuming other decoders can be fitted at all, and if a SA can be got in there. I imagine it's all going to be extremely tight on space.

Stick some wasp stripes on the tank front, add some block buffers, and this could be a perfect stablemate for my Peckett. If they haven't sold out by the New Year I might just have to order one.

I planned it so even a Class 08 can get under there with plenty of clearance.

The steelwork for the loader is taking shape. It will be 3 times the height when finished but the upper part will be made from card, clad with corrugated sheet, so there's no need to build the framework any taller than this. Some work as been done on the roller. I drilled out the rivetted over parts that held the floor to the body. That was easy, but getting the roller out was a swine. It was held in place by a roll pin that must have been made from hardened steel as a piercing saw blade simply skated over it without leaving a mark. I had to use a slitting disc and at first cut through the wrong end! The roller will need a hole putting in it to take an axle now. The rivetted stud that held the body together also held the roller frame on. This was positioned to give far more steering lock than necessary, making the entire thing longer than it ought to be and with far too large a gap between the frame and the body, so a new hole has been put in the floor. The frame will now be held by a screw and captive nut. The nut is held by epoxy. I also found some better wheels for it and have filed down the half relief exhaust casting. A new exhaust will be made from plastic rod.

I wouldn't rely on that advert as an example of plausibility. The 8-wheeled one was a Yorkshire Engine Company proposal that I'm sure was never built. The 4-wheeled one is implausible as it stands - a 4-wheeled bogie loco! Spinning on the bogie pivot it would have its own built-in turntable. 😁

It can be done without the milling machine. I didn't mill the entire lot away in any case. I sawed the most of it away, using a piercing saw, and only tidied it up by milling it. A decent enough job could be done with a file instead and it's not as if anyone's going to see it. If they do then it means the loco has taken a dive off the layout and is upside down on the floor, in which case file marks are the least of your worries. 😕

This is the sort that I meant by sprayed on insulation. I don't know whether it was sprayed on or not, but that's how I guessed it was applied as the anchor cables are embedded in the insulation.

I like the lagged tank. I don't remember seeing that modelled before, except for my own rather naff attempt, where I made the outer cladding from card. A challenge would be to do one with that insulation that looks like it was sprayed on.

Can you not fill between the spokes as desired? I filled between the spokes to make the balance weights on this Peckett.

There's still some work to do on the ground cover but it's starting to look good, even if I do say so myself. And, yes, locomotives can actually run down these, all the way to the end. Not that they will need to.

A small side project. Various pictures of the screens area at British Oak show a wheeled air compressor and a towed vibratory roller sitting in the dirt. There are a few 3D prints and kits about for wheeled compressors but I've not seen any towed rollers. I found an old Corgi Raygo 600 roller in my local model shop and paid just £2 for it. I think these Corgi Juniors were supposed to be 1/64 scale but that looks on the small side and the prototype Raygo rollers seem to have been available in different sizes, so it'll do for 4mm, I'm sure. I was going to use just the roller and frame as a towed unit but I've decided to use the entire thing. It needs a bit of alteration, detailing and a repaint.

I painted mine with no problem at all. I gave it a wipe over with some Tamiya thinners before painting. Once the thinners had dried off I sprayed and brushed Tamiya acrylics. No problem whatsoever. Time to drag yourself kicking and screaming into the 21st Century, John? 😉 Use acrylics instead of smelly old enamels.

Thank you. Just the thing. And a choice of cable or hydraulically-controlled dozer blades too!

Thanks. That would be just the thing if it wasn't HO scale.

Evening all, Does anyone know of any kits or die casts for pre-1990s bulldozers? Preferably of a similar size range to a Cat D8.

Yes, another one! As if building a shed layout, finishing a micro and planning a joint project wasn't enough. I have been given a 4ft. x 15 in. baseboard, so it would be rude not to build a layout on it. Early 1990s Speedlink era. 1ft. FY area, using either cassettes or sector plate. 3ft. scenic area. Two roads for loading or unloading of tanks. One road for the loading of covered vans. One engine shed. Peco Bullhead trackwork. TTA tanks. VEA vans. Ruston 88DS. It's not a puzzle; it doesn't really do anything. Shuffle wagons up and down. It's better than watching the telly.

321731 certainly got about. Here it is much later in life, in this Gordon Edgar shot.

Ah yes. Different profiles, by the look of things. I hadn't realised that the Bristol one was a low cab and the tops of the windows being in the shade made them look larger and a bit odd. Someone here must know about clearances on the line at Bristol...

This one's an oddity that I've never seen before. The caption says that it's unidentified, but if it was taken in 1952 at Bristol Canon's Marsh gasworks then it has to be W/n321731 of that year. It looks very new in the photo, which makes me think that cab is original. I can't think why that odd cab would be specified though. https://bristolharbourrailway.co.uk/2014/08/28/tbt-another-ruston-at-canons-marsh/#jp-carousel-781

Black Milliput is the answer. I'll need a couple of packs just to cover the area under the loader, but I've just put some down in front and at the sides of it. To make a crossing I rolled sausages of it and laid them inside and outside of the rails and smoothed them down, as I did with the shed concrete. I got a couple of diecast lorries and pushed them around to leave tyre tracks around and across the rail tracks to the loader and to clear the flangeways I pushed an old Lima stone hopper and a Triang wagon chassis up and down. Their flanges are deeper and the wheels broader than anything I'll ever run properly, so ought to have pushed the Milliput out of the way. I'll find out, tomorrow, when I put power to the tracks again and attempt to run a loco and wagons up the sidings. I sprinkled some sand and fine coal on but I'm not sure that will stick.

I'm thinking along the same lines, Cap'n, but not for the gauge. I'm thinking that the HL kit will allow the builder a choice of wheels. The Class 03 wheels are quite distinctive, with their large balance weights that take up around a third of the wheel, where the Bagnall has a more usual crescent-shaped weight and if you're going to the trouble of building the chassis kit then you may as well use more prototypical wheels. I imagine the HL kit will have been designed for the older Bachmann body but changing the position of a hole in a spacer to match the newer body, and this kit, can't be that difficult.

And? Is it any good? I hope that it shouldn't be long now before we get to find out for ourselves.

It could work in 7mm but I think that 4mm wagons, especially the kit-built 21-ton hoppers, would be too lightweight for the flanges to push down the sponge. This is chopped from a photo of the British Oak screens, found on the interweb. Obviously in wet weather. The rails can barely be seen. And one in dry weather, by 5050's friend, Bryan. Pretty much the same only not looking wet. Only the line at the far right, on which no coal loading took place, shows any sign of the sleepers and chairs. The above photo is facing toward Blacker Lane with the single road loader standing away from the larger two-road building. I'm going to do something similar but in reverse to give a broader expanse of low-relief building as a backscene. That's just a rough approximation. I'll probably not have it extending so far to the left. That was going to be for lorry loading but that could now be supposedly done under the backscene building and the lorries would then drive up toward the camera, cross the two tracks in front of the loader and go off down the left hand side of the building. The left wall and far corner will have trees as the backscene. How the area is looking at the moment.