Ruston

I managed to get the airbrush to work enough to spray some orange over the orange and have left that to dry whilst I made a start on the wheelhouse for the barge.

For whatever reason, the running plate was orange on the model so I've put that right. The frames, springs etc. have been gone over with matt black, just to get rid of the plastic shine. Weathering proper will come later. I've also painted the engine compartment handrails . I will attempt to fix my airbrush and give it a blow over with a less drastic shade of orange before adding electrification flashes and number. It has run up and down the layout a few times but hasn't pulled a train yet. The provided screw couplings are cosmetic only, which is a retrograde step as previous Heljan offerings came with very nice functional steel screw couplings.

Sound and Stay Alive fitted. Running plate painted black, as it ought to be. Engine compartment handrails painted orange, as they ought to be for British Oak D.P. 12099 number and BR electrification flashes to be added before weathering. There are radiator overflow pipes provided to be fitted by the purchaser but there are no locating holes for them. Presumably we're expected to just glue them on. The screw couplings that come with it are a let down. Heljan's Class 05, 07 and 14 all came with good quality screw couplings with steel end links that moved freely and could be used with a magnetic shunting pole but these are cosmetic only so this has yet to pull a train.

The pic is clickable for details on the site where the link goes to. Going back to the previous page, the links to DOCP one at Backworth is no longer functioning. Does anyone know where a photo of it may be found?

You mean just general weathering and appearance, don't you? I was imagining all sorts of horrors; that you had seen a review sample or something and it was awful. You just don't know what you're going to get when you order a loco that you haven't seen any real photos of. I'm no expert on these things but it all seems to be OK. They are the right way up anyway. 😁 When it comes to weathering, everything below running plate level appeared to be slathered in that typical greasy oily crud so I'll try to do that and perhaps some dry brushing to highlight the spring leaves. As the model comes, it seems to be in Bowers Row condition - repainted and minus BR electrification flashes and 12099 cabside number. I guess it would have been just as bright when originally painted orange but photos of it at British Oak show it with the orange faded and with rust patches, but still with flashes and number. British Oak, 1981. Another in this Flickr series shows it from the cab end where the BR number is more visible. Bowers Row, 1985. Brighter orange, obviously repainted as the flashes are gone the green patch where the works plate used to be has gone, and with no trace of the BR number. Making it as faded as in the first photo will take some doing. A complete repaint I expect, which isn't difficult for the orange but I don't want to try to repaint the stripes on the ends and I'm not sure how to go about fading the existing ones. It does need something doing with it as it is a bit in yer face. This photo really doesn't do it justice. It's a lot more orange than this. If it looked like it does here, I'd be happy but it's like it's been Tango'd! I'll probably fade it slightly, paint the small bodyside handrails orange and add numbers and flashes before a general dirtification. I got it apart but whoever wrote the instructions for that needs a good hard kicking. They say to pull off the battery boxes to reveal two screws and to remove these. I took off the battery boxes and removed the screws. Nothing seemed to feel any different; the body wasn't loose in any way. The instructions then say to "carefully slide the body away from the chassis". Nope, nothing's moving but does it mean slide forward or backward? Is this perhaps to release a catch-type thing, where the body locks under some part in the chassis? Whatever it means it still wasn't moving or even loose, so I suspected something was accidentally glued or jammed. I held the chassis between thumb and forefinger of one hand and pulled on the body with the other. The cab snapped off! Catches - that the instructions don't mention, did hold the cab down but broke in pulling the body off, meanwhile the body still remained on the chassis and had to be levered off. Now I will have to glue the cab on and glue the cab end down when it comes to reassembly. The front end does indeed have catches, as on the Bachmann 08, that tuck under something in the chassis. Slide the body off, my a&$e! It runs so I can now do something about weathering it.

Oh dear. Sounds ominous. They haven't modelled them upside down, have they? 🙃 I guess I'll find out tomorrow...

Oh er... I don't know. Is there something wrong with the springs?

I can't see any use for it, so it'll probably go in the bin. Another thing that became apparent is that the coal hole, hold, whatever it's called, wasn't wide enough. It wasn't wide enough on the new one either until this afternoon. I think it looks better now, even if it may not be correct. It's never easy to build something like this when the only dimensions you have are the length and width. There are still things not quite right about this one and it's all learning, so I could probably make a better one still but I can't keep on building barges until I manage to get one perfect, so this one will have to do. The Class 11 arrives tomorrow and I've already got a sound decoder waiting for it. I'm excited. All that orangey English Electric goodness.

It's looking better than the old one already. I should be able to get all of the strips on the hull, tomorrow and may even get the coal space enclosure on. Another thing that is wrong with the old one is that the ends of the coal space ought to be curved, or peaked, rising toward the centre and not flat. Perhaps I may even slap some paint on it, tomorrow. The Class 11 is in the post, so when that arrives I may have to stop work on the barge and play with the new toy instead.

I have abandoned that barge. If it was just the bow being wrong then I would probably have kept it but a couple of things weren't right. I would have had to model it as empty, due to how much of it was out of the water and so the bottom of it would look look weird, being slightly higher on the inside and simply being flat along the bottom. I've noticed that they seemed to sit down at the stern when empty, so the stance didn't look right either. The new one sits lower in the water and will have the rear part of the coal space almost full, with the front partly so. I think it will look more realistic.

I didn't realise how flat the fronts were until I saw those photos of the Rally. It's too late to do anything about it on this one now. A combination of a malfunctioning airbrush and a failing bulb in the light above the workbench hasn't done any favours to the paint job but I'm sure it can be salvaged.

I've done a little more to the barge. I added some half round Evergreen strip along the sides and have now slapped some orange paint all over. I wonder if anyone can help with some detail that I need of the rudder and how it was fixed to the hull, but it's not very clear in the photos. The second from top photo on this page, and the one with the barge named Ethel show something straight and thin sticking up just forward of the hold. There's what appears to be steam coming out of the one on the barge that's next to Ethel. Is this a chimney for a stove? I would have thought they were diesel-engined and that the engine and its exhaust would be aft, so it's surely not an exhaust. Another feature is the curved structure just forward of the "chimney". Would this be a cover for stairs? @figworthy

There was more than one weighbridge on site, so the wagons could have been weighed and given a ticket. Paul Lunn, in his article, states that the capacity was 70-75 tons due to the depth of two particular locks but that in deeper water the actual capacity was 100 tons. If the barge in the 53A photo that I linked to n Flickr is only carrying 75 tons I wonder where another 25 tons of coal would go? It's already piled pretty high! That's surely more than 75 tons? Perhaps they knew that they could easily get away with 80 tons or more and so simply dropped the contents of 4 wagons in and experience, and looking at how far down in the water the vessel rode, told them when enough was enough.

I wonder how they worked out the loading? The wagons were 20 or 21-ton capacity. I presume there was some control over the unloading of the ex-Liverpool Corporation hoppers, with the wheel to open the doors but I don't think there was any control over the types with levers. Once opened it would dump the lot. There doesn't look to have been a storage hopper built into the staithe, from where the flow into the barge could be controlled.

Is it the one in one of Ron Rockett's books?

I was going from the empty ones in the photos. It doesn't have to be a full one anyway. It could have only just begun loading. I can always make another, loaded, one and swap them about for a bit of variety as they need not be fixed in place now. But, yes the chute is a problem. I would have thought they would have to trim the load even with the chute in the correct place as dumping 20 tons of coal in one go isn't very precise.

The good news is that I went wrong somewhere in converting 57ft. 6 ins. to millimetres. I thought that I had to make the barge shorter than it ought to be but my unnecessary shortening has luckily ended up being spot on and it is a scale 57ft. 6in. after all. The bad news is that I built the tipper house and chute without having a barge to use for heights and clearances, so the chute has ended up being far too low and not long enough. It's going to require modification but as the working tipper in it is now redundant I am considering ripping the entire thing out and going back to the original plan of a staithe based on the 1969 Qualter Hall-built one that was at British Oak, and using 21-ton hoppers with it. I would keep the 13-ton minerals but instead of using them on the canal run I would use a bit of Modeller's Licence to run them to the fiddle yard, as if there was an off-scene Landsales yard somewhere. I'm not sure what to do at the moment. The basic card shell is being covered with Plastikard.

I've made a start with some card. It's going to be a little under length owing to the space available. I forgot this. The car hoarder's collection now includes an old Fordson tractor. I was buying the lorry and dozer driver figures on Scale 3D's website when I saw the tractor and for just £2.49 I couldn't resist. It's not a kit, it's a single piece print. All I've done is to paint and weather it. I'm still not convinced of 3D printing for model locos, but this is the sort of thing where 3D printing comes into its own.

Langley do a BTD6 and I plan to get one at some point. No idea what attachment it has though.

Trinity fan Eddie got the job. Here is at work in charge of a D7 on the tip and thinking about his team hammering Cas at the next home game.

On the waste tip at Blacker Lane D. P.

Today I will continue work on the dozer. The instructions are almost non-existent and consist of a list of parts and a series of 3D renders, so although I quickly realised the yoke was missing it wasn't until yesterday that I discovered that other parts were either missing of wrong. Parts that should go with the hydraulic rams and the arms for the blade aren't there and will have to be made from scratch. I've given up hope of getting a reply from Milicast. Tomorrow I will begin to build the last sizeable item for the layout, which will be one of Hargreaves' barges that carried coal down the Calder & Hebble Navigation to Ravensthorpe power station, in the 1970s. This Flickr photo, taken in July 1973, shows a barge at the Figure Of Three locks, returning to British Oak. Healey Mills yard on the left and the flyover bridge for the up lines can be seen. Thanks to @03060 I have a copy of Paul Lunn's article in Scale Model Trains, where he describes them as West Country barges and gives dimensions of 57ft. 6in length and 14ft. beam, so that gives me something to work from. The wheelhouses were collapsible as shown by the photo above. I don't know if that was to fit under some low bridges when empty or for the crew to keep cool in hot weather.

Speaking of beer and pubs... Blue Bedford HA van, PUB167G was my Grandad's van. Apart from his main job as an ambulance driver, he made dartboards in a workshop that joined on to the meat market, in Brook Street, Wakefield. He supplied pubs all over Yorkshire and I remember often being left with him in the workshop whilst my mother went shopping. I can still remember the smell of freshly sawn wood, the dye to blacken the wood and a general workshop smell, plus some SS daggers that he'd taken from dead Nazis during the war and some rather saucy postcards on the wall that weren't really suitable for a junior school-age boy to be seeing! Here's his van on the way to deliver a dartboard to the British Oak having already been to the Bingley Arms in Horbury Bridge.

Any news on this? Does bespoke set up literally mean for this BRM exclusive variant only, or is it going to be the same on all of these Bagnalls?

If he was like my Grandad it would be John Smiths, or like my Dad Tetleys. Thanks. Shame it's out of stock.