Ruston

It's a Bagnall, not a Brush. I don't know if it was built like that but I have a feeling it has worked on some contract or other, on the London Underground.

I think the Baguley Bass No.5 would best suit the chassis that you have with its spoked wheels and a relatively long wheelbase.

Any more progress on the 7mm 88DS, Mike?

I made up two lengths of rail with chairs on them and must have put them the wrong way round without noticing. I don't know why you think that will stop the wagon from rolling though? Anyway... PHOTO UNAVAILABLE THANKS TO PHOTOBUCKET MUPPETS Tippler well made from card and tippler on temporary supports. PHOTO UNAVAILABLE THANKS TO PHOTOBUCKET MUPPETS Wooden guide rail and balance weight for the arm that holds the wagon in place when inverted. PHOTO UNAVAILABLE THANKS TO PHOTOBUCKET MUPPETS The hopper/chute in to which the coal is tipped. Made from plasticard and weathered using the salt and hairspray technique with polished Humbrol metalcote.

I have made a start on the wagon tippler. PHOTO UNAVAILABLE THANKS TO PHOTOBUCKET MUPPETS The tippler will have to rotate through 130 degrees in order to ensure complete discharge of the wagon loads. PHOTO UNAVAILABLE THANKS TO PHOTOBUCKET MUPPETS It is made from card and plasticard, with a brass axle. The white plastruct thing that looks like a goalpost is free to swing on the axle and holds the wagon in place when inverted. Plastruct has been used as a temporary measure to obtain the height and position of the fulcrum - brass will be used on the final version and the balance weights will probably be cast lead. The Lionheart wagon and load shown weighs over 250g so the counterweights are full of lead sheet to reduce the load on the motor and gear train.

Cheers, Rob. Ah, Land Rovers! I don't regret selling mine one bit. The Jaguar is much more comfortable, my hearing is no longer being destroyed and it does more miles per gallon!

Does the kit come with parts to build the slope-fronted cab?

I can't see my interest returning to it to be honest. It was built as something to keep me occupied at a time when I couldn't work on the shed but then WW1 aircraft modelling took over and now the O gauge shed layout (Royd Hall Drift) is the focus of my modelling time. It could be for sale, with or without rolling stock, if anyone's interested and makes a good enough offer...

The Coal Preparation Plant forms the backdrop to a 2ft. 4in. gauge Ruston LAT on the surface stockyard at the National Coal Board's Royd Hall Drift mine.

Loco shed ready to plant. The inspection pit is a bit of an optical illusion as I am unable to cut into the baseboard itself so the area of baseboard on which the shed will be planted has been painted black. Two of the Phoenix figures, now painted, that I bought at Telford. The miner with the safety lamp is presumably a pit deputy.

About 47 out of a total of 236 were exported in gauges from metre to 5ft. 6in. Known destinations being Belgium, Brazil, Burma, Egypt, Holland, India, Malaya, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, United Arab Emirates and Zambia.

The water tank is almost finished. It needs some piping and a control valve. Shown in place but not yet fixed down. Under the tank is a platform, made of old sleepers (balsa strip) with corrugated iron to act as a coal bunker for locomotive use. I love making this kind of scene and it's one of the great things about industrial railways that you don't have to follow any particular railway practice or architecture. In fact the scruffier and the grottier the better and no one can tell you that it's wrong! The isolated track is now almost completely hidden. I had a moan some time ago about the prices of second hand O gauge rolling stock but I seem to have got lucky. The brake van on the right was bought a while ago, ready built for £25, which is the cheapest I've seen for one of these Slaters MR brakes. The one on the left was an absolute bargain at Telford. An unbuilt kit with all but the transfers, which I didn't want anyway, for just £15.

Yes, that's it; black enamel paint. Paint the area around the filler then let it dry before adding thick runs with a small brush, letting them dry and layering more runs on. Putting on MEK or Plastic Weld on some of it makes it wrinkle and adds to the effect but, of course, you have to be careful not to melt the plastic!

More scenic work. The track with the tar tank isn't connected to any other track and will be very overgrown with one of Bury, Thorn & Sons tanks, long-abandonded in the bushes. I might even distress the Slaters Manning Wardle and have it also on this isolated track - I may as well make some use of it as I doubt it'll ever run. The wild bushes are from a company called Polak, a company that I had never heard of before but I'm impressed with them. Water tank for the tippler shunter's shed. I thought I'd go for something more conventional than an old tank wagon, or Lancashire Boiler. The panels are cast resin parts, which were bought from Invertrain and the rest is scratched using plastruct and 0.8mm brass wire.

There's something not right about drawing. The frame looks different from the usual 88DS and on the front view the bonnet looks to be too low and the cab windows don't look right. I don't like the way that site forces you to look through a tiny window at detail or view a very small and indistict view of the overall picture. All that wasted screen space!

That last one is very interesting but I wouldn't have thought it would have many uses as a standard gauge loco if it was ever built!

The drawing I posted is of what you might call the pre-production 44/48HP loco. As far as I know it is the only one to have that style of bodywork. All other 44/48HP and 48DS locos had the curved engine covers as in all the other photos. I have got more drawings that I can post.

I have 48DS in 2mm (N), two in 4mm (EM) and two in 7mm (O). The N gauge version doesn't run and is a wagon load only but all the others are powered on all 4 wheels. One of the 4mm locos is the old A1 kit and has been fitted with a chassis from RT Models. The other is the Judith Edge kit and uses the provided chassis. One 7mm loco is a 44/48HP and is entirely scratch built. It uses a small Mashima motor with a 50:1 worm drive gearbox, which is further reduced 2:1 by Delrin chain and sprockets. The other is a modified Electrifying Trains kit but with a scratch built chassis. This also runs a small motor through a worm drive gearbox and Delrin chain. It's not difficult to power a 7mm 48DS on all wheels. Build here :- http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/42289-ruston-48ds-in-7mm/

There's also a very good colour video on ironstone railways if you can get hold of The Ivo Peters Collection Vol.6. I have it on VHS. Perhaps it's still available on DVD? Are you going to have dump cars on the layout? It would be interesting to see if working versions can be made.

If you don't already own a copy, Part 3 of The Ironstone Quarries Of The Midlands, by Eric Tonks will be worth obtaining for this project.

Yes, It would be easier to load a single size but I've got it in my head to load at least two sizes of coal and have one loader for waste. The third coal loader would be for hopper wagons, which need greater clearance. Although the coal will all go through the same tippler at the other end the plan is to have takeaway containers under the baseboard. These will be slid out when full to refill the screens hoppers, so it's simply a matter of changing the container when tipping different-sized coal. I'm sure the structure is strong enough to withstand the vibration. The brass 5x5 section is fairly strong itself but with the card and brick plasticard infill glued in the whole thing is quite rigid. I suppose the weak points are the legs but the hopper springs do a good job of insulating most of the vibration from the structure anyway. I made the spouts covered because I was worried the coal would spill over but having seen yours in action I guess this isn't the case. Tomorrow I will build another hopper and make some alterations to the design of spout.

Thanks for posting that Philip. It is very quiet in operation but I notice that you only have one loader though. Perhaps I'm trying to be too ambitious with one loader for each road? I did a rough experiment, using a plastic Chinese takeaway carton, some crushed coal and a protractor and I found that even with such a slippery surface as the carton it must be tipped to at least 35 degrees before the coal will move by gravity alone (without help from tapping the container or vibration). So if I used just one road for loading I could make a single large hopper with 35 deg. sides, which would help the coal to flow and less vibration would be needed and for the spout only, rather like the one in PGH's video. In an attempt to fit 4 hoppers in the building and maximise their capacity the bottoms of my hoppers are only about 10 degrees so that's probably why they need so much vibration. Trying to fit 4 loaders with such steep-sided hoppers would mean they could hold only enough coal for 2 wagons at the most. After Stu's comments I shaved more material from the flywheel but it didn't make a great deal of difference and so I removed it from being mounted on the spout, turned it through 90 degrees and mounted it on the top of the hopper. This has really improved things and the motor can now run at a much slower speed and thus cause less noise for the same performance. I managed to fill 5 wagons and the hopper wasn't even fully-loaded. If I fill it to capacity then 6 or maybe even 7 is possible but I'll have to fit a lid to prevent spillage in operation.

I don't know, Steve. I've never modelled 1:48 so wouldn't know about the availability of anything in that scale. If I ever finish it I'll post some pictures.

On starting it's the motor that makes a loud whining/screeching sound. This doesn't appear to be a lubrication problem as it didn't occur when using a battery but now it has a speed control it does this. In fact both motors do it. Once they have got up to speed the sound goes and it's the vibration that makes the most noise. Simple answer: I don't know. I haven't tried the motors in any orientation other than that shown in the earlier picture. It may try changing it. Possibly. The new hopper has more cut off the flywheel so I will try running the smaller coal through this one and see if it flows as well as the large coal did in this same hopper. That should give me an idea as to whether or not it's worth altering the flywheels. I don't think so. The first tests were made with the hopper on the bench and it didn't perform any better or worse than when fitted into the building.

This evening I have been playing around with the coal loading hoppers (I have made a second one) and have now fitted a speed control to the motors. Since I crushed and graded more coal I now have two particle sizes to play with. The large coal (up to 6mm) flows well but the smaller size (up to 3mm) seems to take a faster motor speed to get it moving freely. The operation of the hoppers is unacceptably loud, even the one with the large coal. With the smaller coal not only is the sound of the DCC locomotives drowned out but so too is the television in the shed and the thing can even be heard in the house. It looks like it's back to the drawing board... :-(