Ruston

I didn't find it necessary because I tend not to bother with lights, if they are going to make wiring difficult and also because my 07 became a Ruston LSSH and didn't have all the extra lights that BR needed on their LSSEs.

Scott came to visit on Saturday and we had a proper play with the trainset. Some of the big stuff came out, too.

The throb of a 6LDA28 and squealing of wheel flanges can be heard as a BR/Sulzer Type 2 lifts a fully-fitted coal train up the bank from the NCBOE's Blacker Lane Disposal Point.

I do hope this thread is going to get more interesting than a couple of planks of wood. 😆

It just became more than words on a screen. That's both boards laid out on the living room floor and connected together so that the joining tracks can be fitted and we'll know that tracks will align when the boards are reunited. Mine is the one on the left.

The sign of a messy mind, certainly. 🙂 Rivet heads and stubs of brake shafts have been filed off the chassis block in order to give a flat surface to on which to affix frame overlays. The overlays are made from 10 thou. hard brass.

Ex-WD Barclay shunting a delivery of strip coil in the Metal Box sidings.

And another classic film/TV 'mistake' of some idiot getting on the footplate, accidentally opening the regulator and the train moving off (Twice!). Left in gear and no brakes applied then? The detective character asking about any railway staff being on the train and being told a driver and a fireman. No Guard then? How they conveniently didn't show how the loco driver got off the footplate of his moving locomotive, entered a coach to stick a knife in the victim and then get back again - in a tunnel, in the dark! How the railway's rules on dealing with a report of debris on the line are to tell the fireman to get off the moving loco, also when in a tunnel, and walk alongside the loco. 🤪 And how the loco driver told the detective "Get orf my train". As if any driver would say that. Get orf my footplate, or orf my engine, yes, but orf my train? I'm just not buying it. Train Station. 🥴 I needed to lie down in a darkened room after that lot. 😄

The two layers of brass are soldered together, along with the spacers underneath and valances added. I perched the bodywork on top to make me feel like there isn't much left to do. 😆I have weighed it and to get it up to the same weight as the Peckett will require an additional 50g of ballast to be stuck into every nook and cranny. That's another downside of 3D-printed bodies - they weigh next to nothing. I don't suppose it matters much if they are going to run on a micro layout, where they'll only shuffle 3 or 4 wagons at a time, but I want this thing for Blacker Lane, where it needs to pull 9 of my poor-running Parkside hoppers up a 1 on 50 on a 3ft. 5in. radius curve. A Hornby W4 Peckett can only manage 5.

It makes me wonder how this stuff will fare in the long term. Are people going to find their 3D-printed models have warped and twisted in a few years time? I've made the new running plate from 40 thou. engraving brass and 20 thou. cartridge brass, so that isn't going to warp any time soon.

The only trace of the Hartley Bank staithe is a section of brick wall. Or is the wall part of the bridge abutment? I can't remember now. It's been a few years since I walked down there. I have seen a couple of photos of it from the canal side. One is in a publication about barges and the other is on the Horbury and Sitlington history Facebook group. It was inside a wooden building, much like how the original British Oak staithe was, and would have handled end-tipping wagons. This Flickr shot, taken by Andrew Bell in 1966, shows Standback No.3 at Hartley Bank, with the staithe building in the background.

Probably to restrict the flow of air over the radiator. The radiator would probably over-cool in cold weather, especially if the loco was only working intermittently, so restricting the amount of air passing through it would get the engine up to temperature faster.

From the RH parts book.

I dug out the 3D-printed Manning kit. Oh dear. How sad. Never mind.

Hunslet diesel-hydraulic.

I bought one of those Hornby B2 Pecketts when they were first available. It ran nicely but on my deliberately and not so deliberately scruffy industrial trackwork it jumped as the massive flanges hit pieces of ballast and a section of track on my CVMR layout, where the rails were set into DAS clay and static grass, was completely out of bounds to it. Hattons Barclays and Hornby W4 Pecketts, plus all of my kit-builds that use Gibson wheels were able to run without a problem. I don't know what possessed Hornby to use such deep flanges on these models, especially as this one came after the W4 Peckett, which didn't have them. It's something that has put me off the model so much that I don't own a single example of a B2 as Hornby intended. One was converted to a C Class and the other chassis is under a Manning Wardle body. On the left is an unaltered B2 wheel. On the right is one that has been turned down using a drill and file. The axles are splined, so it's pretty easy to put the wheels back on and get the quartering right. With the motor removed it rolls nicely, so the quartering must be OK. I'll go over the bare brass on the wheel flanges with some brass blackener. I don't think that this one will stay as a B2. I like the bigger Peckett 0-6-0STs but aren't at all keen on the B2. I've got another Manning body kit somewhere in the stash. A Manning knocks a Peckett into a cocked hat, every time, and if you think differently then I'm here to tell you that you're wrong. 😐

Looking into the box of stuff, I found these two engines. The Hornby B2 Peckett is as new, out of the box. I acquired it as part of a deal that I can't even remember the details of. One of those things that seemed too good to turn down and which might come in handy some day. It's day has come. It's not going to look that way for long. This Hattons Barclay came to me minus cab and buffers and the clacks are missing in action, as is usual with these things. Otherwise it's fine. I've got a cab and some buffers, if I want to complete it as standard, but I've got other ideas for it.

I don't have the kind of brain that understands it either but then you don't need to understand it. It's like a Software Engineer friend said, when I asked him to explain to me how the internet works - "You don't need to know how it works, just that it works". I'm hopeless with all that CV stuff and whatnot. As long as one wire goes to one rail and the other wire to the other, that your decoder is plugged or wired in with the 4 wires in the right places then that's it. Never mind there being no need for control panels or having sound or whatever else, the one thing that makes DCC far better than DC is the Stay Alive. By the way, I have to admire the dedication of the chaps who have used IKEA stuff to make baseboards. The last time I visited a branch of IKEA was about 9 years ago. I went in to buy a stool to sit on at my workbench and came out having very nearly lost the will to live. Dreadful place! @NHY 581 Where's your Class 11, Rob? Has it not appeared yet?

Yes, it had to be re-weathered but apart from the rust patches and scrapes the limestone dust etc. was mostly only done with powders, so there was no need for a repaint. I start by painting rust scrapes and patches on, using Tamiya Hull Red and then give all the bodywork a wash that is made up by using Tamiya thinners with black/white to give a dark grey wash. Then I'll go over the rust scrapes with a tiny brush and appropriate weathering powder. Black smoke weathering powder on the tank and roof with light streaks on cab sides etc. To get that gunky oily filth on the wheels and rods I use a mix that I make from Tamiya clear yellow and gloss black and whilst it's still wet I paint in some smoke weathering powder. In case any of that has made its way into the crank pin holes in the rods I paint some oil into them, which prevents them from gumming up and also keeps the shiny oil look. That's the most of it but sometimes I'll rub graphite on the edges of cab steps etc. where paint would wear off and the constant use would keep the metal shiny and free of rust.

I've stopped work on the Rustons for now. This one, returned to my ownership a while ago in a deal involving swapping an O gauge loco for it and another sound-fitted OO loco. I had built it to order for use on what was my White Peak limestone & Tarmacadam layout but when it returned to me I didn't find much use for it. It's had a quick make-over to adapt it for use on Blacker Lane.

A rather scruffy Peckett, at Blacker Lane opencast disposal point.

A rarely photographed view of the weighbridge. Rare because I can't get the proper camera in here and need the rubbish phone camera for this. And a new/not new loco. I've had this one for quite a while now but this is the first time it's run on BL. It's a Hattons Barclay with deep buffer beams and "Workington Steelworks" buffers, from RT Models. It's based on a prototype that was bought second hand by the NCB and worked at Hartley Bank colliery, which was about half a mile away from British Oak, as the crow flies, although the two places were separated by several miles by rail. Hartley bank also had a staithe on the Calder & Hebble and the line there also passed under the Midland line on another viaduct. Picture from a local newspaper cutting. The Barclay is on the left. I have found video of the Barclay, which clearly shows the workington buffers but as I don't know what colour the loco was painted I simply left it red.

To be honest, Mike, I don't enjoy building wagon kits. It's not like building a loco, where you usually build just one example. With wagons its usually many of the same type and it's repetitive and quite boring. There's also the way that some kits just don't build well and don't run well. At least that's what I've found but perhaps I'm just not good at building wagon kits? If that's the case I'm certainly not alone. I don't like spending hours of time and effort to end up with something that may not run well because if it doesn't run well, or derails on curves and points then it's as much use as a chocolate teapot. Not to mention the waste of money in buying the kit, transfers, paint and in some cases the wheels and buffers, too! At least you know the thing is going to run perfectly straight out of the box with RTR and I'm not really bothered if I've made it or some Chinese factory workers have made it. The bit I enjoy is weathering and that still needs to be done whether it's a kit or RTR. I'd rather shake the box, weather the wagon and enjoy seeing it running than see my cash and time wasted on a kit that may end up being a useless lump of plastic.

192 throbbing horsepower of Rustonness.