Ruston

Was that a guess or did you work it out? I was going to crack on with the baseboards today but it's rained non-stop so I haven't been able to get outside to cut any wood. Instead I went out and bought a LH PECO bullhead rail medium turnout (why do they call it medium when it's the smallest one they make?) and painted it. It takes some painting with all those chairs and keys does an O gauge turnout! I also did some work on a Parkside GWR van kit. I had the N gauge running around the loft while I was working and yes, the physical size difference is huge but so is the price! I could have bought 4 N gauge turnouts for the price of one O gauge or 7 van kits for the price of one.

For about 12 months now I've been dabbling in O gauge. I've built a few locos and wagons so it's time to build a railway for them. Scene: Part of the internal railway system of a tar distillers/chemical works, somewhere in the West Riding, mid 1960s. A BR connection and more of the works is off-scene. Traffic/Rolling stock: Goods in - unspecified goods in covered vans, tar from NCB coke ovens in rectangular tanks. Goods out - chemicals to industrial users in cylindrical tanks, smaller consigments and household chemicals to retailers in covered vans. Locomotives: Ruston & Hornsby 44/48HP type diesel shunter, Hawthorn, Leslie & Co. 14" 0-4-0ST and a Hudswell Clarke 14" 0-4-0ST. Track Plan Locos There's nothing of the layout itself to see yet but I've begun cutting wood for the baseboards, which is a hateful business so I thought I'd start a topic about the layout in the hope that the good people of RMweb will spur me on to doing something more about it. By the way, Bury, Thorn & Sons is an anagram of something...

That's far better for being made with a proper chassis. The axleboxes and radius rods are a nice touch too! The next challenge is to paint it and line it in the ex-works Ruston livery.

If you mean 305306 at Chasewater, it's been removed at some point in it's life in preservation. If you've got Adrian Booth's 'A pictorial survey of standard gauge industrial diesels around Britain' (D. Bradford Barton 1977(?) then page 53 shows W/n 305306 at Tarmac's Buxton quarry and the strip is visible. I've looked through my collection of official RH photos and out of two dozen only one is taken from a high enough vantage point to show it. I don't have a scanner so I can't copy it for you.

On the real thing the side panels are hinged and the very bottom of the lower section of each side is rolled. When the bonnet side panels are opened to allow access to the engine they are folded back and the rolled part rests in a shallow channel on the top of the bonnet so that they stay open and don't fall on thehead of anyone working on the engine. I'm not sure that I have a picture and I can't post one in here (see, I told you forums have the advantage over blogs ;-) anyway. In this scale you'd get away with a length of thin strip brass or microstrip. It needs to fit fore and aft between the etched lines where the bonnet mid section goes between the radiator cowl and the fuel tank, if you get my drift?

Those are looking good! Are you going to add some sandboxes to the std. gauge loco as I see you've added sand pipes, and how about a bonnet door rest strip along the top of the bonnet?

It's not well documented but in the mid 70's, the Eastern region ran summer Saturdays only excursions from Rotherbrook Midlland to Blackpool North. One such working is seen, photographed from one of Rotherbrook's ill-concieved 1960s high-rise housing developments. Today the scene is very different, with the works long since demolished and modern apartments built on the site. During the late 1990s, Rotherbrook Midland was renamed simply "Rotherbrook" as the old GC station had long closed with the line singled and restricted to freight only. Nowadays the only trains that can be seen at Rotherbrook are dull plastic units and even the GC line has been "mothballed" but is awaiting funding from Central Government to turn it onto a light rail system that will serve the new housing developments out of town on the site of the former Rotherbrook Main colliery.

I may as well have a go myself. 8 Penyghent and an unidentified class 24 ready to depart the exchange sidings at Rotherbrook Main colliery with trains for local power stations, summer 1974.