Ruston

Here are a few more. FH3768 & 3799 at C.F. Booth's Rotherham yard in April 88. This pair had originally worked for Samuel Williams at Dagenham dock. The yard was also full of Cemflo wagons for from Blue Circle Cement that were here for cutting. Another scrapyard in August the same year. RH 186309, a 44/48HP loco (like the one in my avatar) had been new to British Acheson Electrodes, Wincobank, Sheffield in 1937 and as far as I am aware had been here at Vernon & Roberts Peel St. yard in Stalybridge since 1965. RR10236. Yes it is a Rolls Royce! The firm constructed 3 Janus locomotives to the Yorkshire Engine Co. design at the Sentinel works in Shrewsbury after YE had ceased to produce locomotives. It is seen here at BSC's Appleby-Frodingham works in Jan. 89. An unidentified TH 4wDH at Shell's Stanlow refinery in 1996.

Could be. I've done a bit more work on the engineering department's building. It's going to have lighting inside to show off the interior. I'll probably make a lathe, a workbench and a few other things to go inside. That drainpipe is too short, I know. I'll have to re-do that. I'm going to have to put a diesel tank (for fuelling the Ruston and for road vehicles) next to that wall. It would look better under the staircase at the other side of the tracks but then you have to think about how it would be filled. It wouldn't be large enough to warrant being filled from a rail tank so it would have been delivered by road and then how would a road vehicle get to the other side of the tracks? I'm just thinking of the "road vehicles in silly places" topic y' see...

My memory must be going because I seem to remember the Eurotunnel bodies going on low-loaders along the Wakefield road. Did they build the coaches/wagons at Horbury? Here are some from what is my most memorable day chasing industrials. In July 96 I took a few days holiday in South Wales with the aim of visiting the various steelworks and other industrial sites. I'd bought an OS map, which showed a public footpath crossing the BR main lines and the point where Margam yard met BSC metals at Port Talbot steelworks. I reckoned that if I stood on the path, between tracks, then I wasn't trespassing. I wasn't sure of this strategy and still wary of being chased off by either BR or BSC employees when this beast came out of the works, heading for the exchange sidings... BT97/WB3142 was built by W.G. Bagnll for the Steel Company of Wales to an order by Brush Traction, using Brush electrical equipment and so has a works number from both companies. This is one of the rebodied locos. It came, dropped its wagons and left with another set - the crew obviously saw me but said nothing so I assumed I was safe... And then another hove into view... BT94/WB3139. One of the original machines. As this train drew up to the level crossing the driver slowed right down and opened his window. I thought I was going to get a bollocking but he brought the train to a stand and shouted to ask if I'd like a ride. Do bears sh*t in the woods? So I stood in the cab as we trundled through Margam yard... Then we stopped and as the shunter got down and uncoupled the train the driver got out of his seat and lit a fag, pointing to the seat and asking if I'd like a go. Well, I thought that my birthday and Christmas had come at once so I was in the seat before he could change his mind.He asked me if I'd ever driven anything like this before and I said yes, Of course that was a bit of a lie. I'd driven a narrow gauge Ruston and a couple of V-skips but nothing like this. I soon sussed out the controls and told him what was what. Air brake, forward/reverse , power handle etc. So off we went. I changed direction after we'd cleared the points and headed back toward the level crossing. At that point I expected he'd take control again but no - he had me back the loco down onto a set of empties and haul them off into the works! I must admit that I did a damn good job of backing onto the train, compressing the buffers just enough for the shunter to couple up with his pole first time. The driver and his mate. Cheers fellas!

I've definitely got some of one of the Longbridge Hunslets at work and I may have some very poor shots of when they were at Aldwarke. Brian R's pic is definitely Bardon Hill. They had a pair of Steelman locos, one green and one yellow. I visited a couple of times and I remember the green one being out of use with the engine out. I'm sure the DVLR are wrong about Octavious Atkinson being the only 88DS fitted for passenger use. It may be the only one in regular passenger use but the Middleton Railway had one of the ex-Rowntrees locos vac-fitted. I've got a whole series of pics from when 466630 arrived at Starbeck and was repainted for an open day there. I was a volunteer at Starbeck until the railway closed and moved to Murton. I'd catch a bus from home to Leeds and then the train from there to Starbeck before I had a car. I'll see if I can find them. A few more pics... Blackburn Meadows sewage works can be seen when crossing the M1 Tinsley viaduct by looking to the left when southbound. It has been modernised now and the railway is long gone but in 1991 the standard gauge internal railway was still working. The system was, at one time, connected to the big railway and a full description and history can be found in Sheffield's Sewage Works Railways by Adrian Booth and published as IRR No. 106 by the Industrial Railway Society. The photo shows TH265v. I've seen narrow gauge sewage works systems modelled but never a standard gauge one. I think it would be something different from the ordinary to see at an exhibition. Another Steelman loco but this time one numbered in Thomas Hill works number range. I'm afraid I didn't note it on the slide though. Seen here at British Steel's Shelton works, Etruria, near Stoke, 1997. This works has since closed and the site is unrecogisable now. JF4210142. This loco once worked on the Derwent Valley Light Railway when it was a proper freight-carrying railway. I saw it working in April 88 at Marple & Gillott's scrap yard at East Coast Road, Sheffield. I think it became part of the scrap pile itself not long afterwards. It was named Claude Thompson and was still carrying its lined green DVLR livery. IIRC this was taken on the occasion that we caught a Peak-hauled train from Wakefield to Rotherham and walked to Sheffield. Along the way we saw industrial locos at 7 different locations. I think this yard and Aldwarke are the only ones that remain in use and rail-connected. United Engineering Steels operated several of these 0-6-0DE Janus class locos, built by the Yorkshire Engine Co. when I took this shot from the hills above Stocksbridge. Happily this is one site that is still going and still using rail to carry its products.Anyone modelling POA wagons take note of just how bashed about they got!

Thanks, James. Well I'm on a roll now and as I've nowt better to do at the moment I've scanned a few more. Of course not everywhere was as accomodating to young industrial enthusiasts as the places in my last post. One Sunday morning in February 1988, after climbing the wall at Sweet Street West to gain illicit access to BR's Holbeck shed yard, we walked on to the Jack Lane works of the Hunslet Engine Co. That's when it really was the Hunslet Engine Co. and not simply a name used by a firm in the midlands... Being a Sunday there was no one working but there was a gripper in the security office so we asked him if we could walk down the yard to photograph the engines. He flatly refused so it was out with the 200mm zoom lens. The line of locos were all Hunslet and Barclay products awaiting their turn in works. I would later get a proper mooch about the works as a member of a Middleton Railway working party rescuing a mine tub for preservation. Unfortunately a lot of my photos at this time were of dead locomotives. It seemed that industrial locos were arriving at Booth's from closed collieries every week and we turned up one day in April 88to find this sorry sight. HC D1154, formerly known as 21 Carl No61, had arrived from Manvers Main colliery. The loco was cut up and there's now no trace of Manvers Main. This pair of Hunslets, seen inside the loco shed at the Longbridge car factory in 1996, were originally built for use at Templeborough steelworks in Rotherham. They had last been used at United Engineering Steels' Aldwarke works until being sold off. The locos were maintained by travelling fitters from a company called Wilmott Bros. who had a yard near Ilkeston, which was somewhere I would also visit. I believe at least one of the locos is still operational under the ownership of HNRC but Longbridge works is now a flattened wasteland. The Procor (formerly Charles Roberts) works at Horbury Junction had operated for many years by using a road tractor fitted with a buffing plate and so it was a surprise to walk past in December 95 and find this beast in charge of shunting wagons. L.J. Breeze is (was?) a Steelman type loco and was Rolls Royce w/n 10275. Horbury Junction works is where the class 60 bodies and the eurotunnel loco bodies were built. It came to be owned by Bombardier Transportation and has since closed. I've no idea what became of the loco.

I first discovered Industrial locomotives in, I think, 1985. On Saturdays my brother and I would buy a West Yorkshire Metro "Day Rover", which allowed travel anywhere in the WYMPTE area, on train and bus, for 50p, being kids and all that. We'd go spotting and riding on the remaining loco-hauled trains. We would also travel out of the area, as far afield as Crewe, but that was more expensive so we couldn't afford that quite so often. One day we'd been to the K&WVR and took the train from Keighley to Bradford Forster Square, passing a scrapyard at Shipley on the way. Out of the window of a class 110 unit we spied three locomotives in the yard, one chunky 0-4-0 diesel attached to some POA wagons and a couple of older-looking things at the end of a siding. We looked in our Ian Allan ABCs, expecting these unusual locos were in the departmental section but we couldn't find anything listed for Shipley or Bradford. A week later and still perplexed at what these locos could be I was looking through second hand copies of RAIL ENTHUSIAST magazine in a shop in Westgate, Wakefield and found an article by, I think, Adrian Booth. The loco in the main picture accompanying the article was the same type as those we'd seen at the end of a siding and from this I learned that they were built by a firm called Ruston & Hornsby and were of their 88DS class, that many similar locos existed all over the country and that they were privately owned by companies. And so the spark of interest in industrial locomotives and railways was fired. Most of the pics were taken on 35mm slides using a Zenit camera, which was unpredictable to say the least and I'm not a very good photographer in any case. I took the pics simply as a reference of locos that weren't going to be around for very long so the quality is poor and the cheap slide scanner hasn't helped either. Anyhow, I hope someone enjoys them and if there's enough interest I'll scan some more. An 88DS class loco, w/n 466630 or 1962, at C.F. Booth's Rotherham yard in February 1988. This loco had come from Roe Bros. who merged with Booths at some point. Their yard was at the end of a truncated line from Tinsley Stn. Jct. Elizabeth, as it was once named, was used once or twice to shunt scrap wagons at its new home but was laid aside with a leak on the air start system. It was later saved for preservation by members of the GYRPS at Starbeck.. FH3677. This loco, built by F.C. Hibberd in 1953, was an SCW type and belonged to the Tinsley Wire Company. It was still in occasional use at the time I photographed it in March 89. I believe that the loco is scrapped and TWL is no more, the site being flattened. RR10288 was the yard shunter at Booth's Rotherham yard for most of 1988. This was before the company started to scrap BR locomotives and so one could wander about the place without being hassled after asking the foreman in the weigh office. This picture shows the loco in the yard on the south side of Millmoor Lane. RR10256 at the loading point at Croft quarry, Leics. sometime in the early 90s. My brother and I had walked along a footpath next to the BR Nuneaton-Leicester line and watched as a class 56 reversed a load of empties into the exchange siding. Minutes later a TH 0-6-0DH appeared out of the quarry and was coupled up to the train. The driver, seeing us taking photos of his engine, asked if we'd like a ride. Is the Pope a Catholic? He shouted up to the signalman in the box on our side of the line, who confirmed there were no trains coming, and we crossed over and got onboard the loco. A couple of minutes later and we were in the quarry. The Rolls Royce was the spare loco.

I've added another rectangular tank to the tar fleet. It's not exactly prototypically true because I made it from the left over scraps from 4 other kits and the wheels from a long-abandoned project. I think it will look the part once weathered though. There are no rivets in the tank as it's meant to be an insulated type. The timber baulks at the ends are real wood with card corners plates. The tank is made up from plasticard. The vertical stanchions on the ends are scrap plastruct section with some nut mouldings glued on. The headstocks are from plasticard and the frame sides from a GWR van kit with 7mm cut out to shorten the wheelbase. The inside V-hanger is from the same kit but the outside one was made from brass sheet. The rodding through the timbers is iron wire threaded through a piece of plastic rod that I drilled out. The tank filler is made from some sort of plastic bung that was lying around the garage and a shirt button with a plasticard disc on top and also various scraps of plastic rod as the hinge and fastener. And then there's the loading shed gaffer, standing on the steps of the building to oversee the yard.

With apologies to Paul Bartlett.

I received a Slaters tank wagon kit for Christmas and it's spurred me on to finish the one I bought myself a month or two ago. I've also finished the other anchor mount tank. I used the better of the resin tanks that came with the Powsides kit and persevered with it. They all need weathering, including spillage and horribleness down the tanksides. And then there's this building. I'm not too sure what it does. Maybe a boiler house and the hand crane is used for unloading coal wagons?

Thanks for the new section, Andy. I'm looking forward to a few more industrial layouts coming out of the woodwork but to kick things off, please move my Bury. Thorn & Sons layout topic in here. Link below (in sig). Ta,

Not much, young snail. It's too cold, I've been wating on a delivery of corrugated plasticard and I've run out of ballast. The Land Rover now has the basis of a 3/4 tilt but it's unfinished. One other thing - I was all for chucking the whole lot in when the locos wouldn't run anything like reliably and even blamed DCC. I've rebuilt the Ruston with full suspension and it runs better, if quite wobbly. The Hudswell runs better after several hours on the rollers. The Hawthorn Leslie hasn't run since I went DCC because I've still not fitted a chip to it. The Markham is still a pile of castings and etches because I haven't even started to build it. The Ruston 88DS scratchbuild is still in the planning stages but only in my head.

Was it an official Land Rover conversion? I suppose I could leave the truck cab and add a 3/4 tilt but this is what I was thinking of. http://www.landrover...064/7064-01.jpg

I'm sure it'll be perfectly safe. As I've run out of corrugated plasticard and my local model shop is waiting for a delivery from Slaters, I thought I may as well have a do with this here Land Rover and make a start onconverting it to a mobile welder and at the same time correct a few inaccuracies on the basic model. For a start, that heater intake has got to go. Only series 3s had that and it's on the wrong side for a home-market motor anyway. The wing mirrors are a bit too chunky so they'll be heading for the bin. The ridge on the top of the tub will have to go. This seems to be to locate the top on an optional hard top version of the model. The rear cross member (fallen off in the photo) is the wrong colour and doesn't have a PTO hole in it so that needs something doing about it. The Land Rover badge has the extra piece for a Station Wagon badge underneath it so that'll have to go. The tailgate appears to have fixings for pioneer tools - on a civilian motor. What were they thinking? Oh dear, what have I done? The interior is for a series 3 so I'll have to ditch that horribly realistic plastic interior and get it back to basics. The steering wheel is on the wrong side too! The whole thing is going to get repainted. Deep Bronze Green, the classic Land Rover colour, for the bodywork and wheels with black for the chassis and drivetrain/suspension. I'm also going to ditch the truck cab and attempt to make a full canvas hood but I haven't quite figured out exactly how yet...

OK, OK, I'll keep the Land Rover! I didn't mean that it would carry the drums anyway. Full drums leave the works by rail! New empty drums would arrive by rail too. What I was thinking of was a van for local deliveries of smaller consignments, or a small lorry for local deliveries of less than railway wagon-load. I'll probably modify the Land Rover to be a mobile welder unit. They did build some series 2s with a PTO-driven generator and arc welder set in the back. After all, it was the World's Most Versatile Vehicle! I could make some sort of cameo with the landy and a bloke welding some piece of plant.

Just out of interest, what is the width and length of this vehicle in millimetres? I'm looking for something of this type for my layout, although I won't be making it radio controlled. Thanks,

I think you're right. It's not glued in so I can remove it and dirty it up a little. I'm not sure I'll leave the Land Rover in though. I can't imagine anyone would use an 88 to deliver drums of chemicals. It'll only hold 3 at the most and it would be quite a task to get them in. What I really need is a Transit-sized van or small, short wheelbase lorry. I'm not sure if a Transit fits the time period?

Hi, Kris No, they're only there to hold it until the glue dries. They're much too large for rivet heads and the tank is supposed to be of welded construction anyway. I've added a small detail to the water column. I think this fellow is about to pour some petrol on the the brazier that keeps the water from freezing up (a hollow resin drum with some holes drilled in and suitably weathered and some gloss varnish around the column to represent leaking or spilled water). The staircase is made from 32 individual parts of plastruct channel, plastic rod and Slaters treadplate effect plasticard. Gratuitious shot with steam effects photoshopped in.

It's almost a month since I posted anything about this but I have been doing something with it. First off, the 16tonner as finished. I've already posted this pic elsewhere but here it is anyway. And a general view of other things that have been going on. The backscene has a full-height building along part of it, a water column has been made and is fed from a water tank made from an old lancashire boiler (Duncan Models castings on an old silicon sealant tube). Some ballasting has also been done. The building in the foreground is the engineers workshops. And for the far end of the railway (which is still completely bare) I've started to make a storage tank for the tar when it is unloaded from the cars. It's made from foamboard and cereal packets. You can just about make out the scoring on the card to represent welded panels. It'lll show up more when the thing is painted.

And I also found an earlier black & white print of the Ruston shunter outside the loco shed. Probably sometime around 1956-60.

Rooting through some old colour slides of industrials I came across this one, believed to have been taken at Bury, Thorn & Sons' Huddersfield works sometime in 1961.

It scales at about 65 feet high so as large as it may look, it still isn't a big as it ought to be!

It's been a couple of weeks since I posted anything about this and, to be honest, I haven't done much in the way of progress on the railway itself. I have made one more structure and have been tinkering with wagons so here's a few pics. Works chimney. The tank wagon, complete with home-made tank. The transfers are from Fox. I haven't weathered it yet because I'm still thinking of having some Bury, Thorn & Sons transfers made. I initially painted the tank in the same light green as I've used on the buildings and made my own transfers, with black lettering, on the ink-jet printer. The transfers weren't too bad but the tank looked horrible in green! So I removed the transfers and repainted it in black. I've also been turning this: Out-of-the-box 16t mineral RTR by Lionheart Trains. Into this: Horrible tatty mess.

I've dug the POWSIDES 14t anchor-mounted wagon kit out again and have had a go at making my own tank. On the left is the tank that comes with the kit, filled, filed and primed but still egg-shaped at one end and with a diameter that varies by as much as 4mm along its length. In the middle is a piece of drain pipe that I have used to make the tank on the right. The original tank should be about 46mm dia. but the pipe is 41mm so my tank will become a chemical tank that should have a dia. of 42mm. I'll get the extra milimetre by layering it with plasticard. I've glued two layers of thick plasticard to both ends and cut and sanded to shape. For HMRS Paul - length of kit frame over headstocks as built up = 123mm. Width = 48.5mm

I'll go back and edit my posts accordingly, shall I? I forgot to say that I used the same polyfilla mix to cast the steps into a mould made of plasticard offcuts. I then pulled the mould apart. The steps were then superglued to the floor and some dried up mix was crushed to powder and used to fill the gap. Pete - yes it is PECO bullhead except for the inset track, which is PECO flat bottom rail only.

I meant which details? If you mean the oil drums: