Ruston

Hopefully they don't. It would look rather silly.

Is it April the 1st? No, but someone's playing silly b*****s. I've never heard of the GWR owning an 88DS and the works list doesn't show one as being built for them either. As far as I know, BR never had a D2959 and if they did, it would have followed on from D2957 and D2958, which were Ruston 165s.

Another couple of pics of the dump truck. I'd like a 4-wheeled Foden half-cab, or a Scammell Mountaineer, but I don't think anyone does kits or diecasts of them.

AEC dump truck at Blacker Lane D.P.

The weekend's project was a lorry re-weather. Way back on page 3 I showed the Oxford Diecast AEC 690 dump truck that I had bought for the waste tip. It was then pictured, weathered, on page 4 but, to be honest, it was lacking something. It didn't look filthy enough for a truck hauling pit waste. The shade of orange paint was the factory-applied Wimpey livery, which also didn't look right for my needs. I was looking at some photos on a Facebook group that showed big Scammell dump trucks hauling waste at North Gawber, which inspired me to give the AEC a makeover filthover. This is how it looked after the first attempt. And now. It just needs a load in the back now.

I'll be watching this with interest. I would like to build 1643 if this becomes available as a kit, and if I have any chance of building that valve gear.

Raising steam. NCB Opencast Executive, Blacker Lane Disposal Point, 1967.

More coal loads completed. I changed the method of making them to using balsa wood for the humps and thick superglue to hold it all together. The thin stuff not only made the kitchen roll smoke but gave off a lot of fumes; so much so that I had to vacate the shed after doing each one. The thick glue gives off only a fraction of the fumes of the thin stuff and instead of dripping the thick glue on to the coal I put the glue on and sprinkled the coal onto the glue.

Agreed. The plugs never look right and always need the gaps to be filled and sanded, which is damn near impossible to do on a buffer beam with lots of rivet detail.

If it was my project I'd make new frames and rods to the correct length but by doing that you may as well scratchbuild everything. There's no point in using the few common parts from the kit (cylinders?) and leaving the kit unusable to yourself and unsaleable to anyone else. What will you do about wheels? I've got the 7mm kit to build for a friend and the wheels that are with it aren't proper Barclay wheels.

I visited Dunaskin a few years ago. The fireless had been advertised as running on that day, so when I got onto the platform and saw it parked up on a siding I felt quite disappointed. Then a member of staff walked across the track, got in the cab, rang the bell and the loco moved off to collect some wagons! I had never seen a fireless in working order before and never expected that it would be completely silent when parked up. Unlike a normal steam engine there wasn't a constant hiss or any little leaks of steam to show that it was ready to work, hence me thinking it was out of use. The Barclay 0-4-0ST that was running the passenger service failed and although the fireless couldn't pull the train, due to having no train brakes, we passengers all took turns in cramming into the cab for rides, which was a bonus. Another odd thing about it was that it didn't have the usual screw-operated brake but some sort of over-centre weighted lever in the cab to operate the brakes. I presume this is common to all fireless Barclays.

I saw this elsewhere on the interwebs and thought of this thread.

I wasn't going to buy one of these as I didn't have a layout that was really suitable for it, but I bought it anyway and then built a layout to suit it. I may have to get another one now.

Cheers, Rob. It won't do any harm to have a few loose ones lying about. These little details are the sort of thing that the various 3D printing folks could be selling. I've got some hollow open-ended oil drums that could use a load of chair screws. I made some removable coal loads. I was going to make them using dilute PVA in the same way we ballast track, but it would take days for the glue to dry, so I tried superglue. I use superglue for most modelling that needs glue and my usual type is the Javis yellow top stuff, the one that's mid way in consistency between the really watery blue top and the very thick red top. I have a bottle of the blue top that I bought as a last resort when I couldn't get any yellow top, but it goes everywhere and I spent a lot time ungluing myself from things when I used it. I reckoned it would be ideal for gluing coal loads in a very short time. I cut rectangles of card to fit the wagons and smaller rectangles to support the larger ones and then glued them together. I then tore off bits of kitchen roll that I had used to wipe brushes on, scrunched them up, flattened them a bit and glued them to the card. Then I dripped the runny superglue on and whilst it was still wet I sprinkled on coal that had been previously crushed and sieved. When I covered the kitchen roll in the runny superglue there was some kind of exothermic reaction and it started to smoke! So what did I do? I dropped a load of coal on top! 😁 Nothing caught fire anyway, so no harm, no foul. Instead of waiting for days for the glue to set, it was all dry and ready to use within minutes. Repeat 8 more times for one train of 21-ton hoppers. Just 22 loads for RCH minerals and 9 for 21-ton steel minerals to go. The HAA/HOP32 still need loads but I'm going to wait and see what Accurascale come up with. Having those cross members at the top means a load cannot be placed in or taken out as the wagons stand currently. A lot of the coal that is going to make these loads was collected on dog walks of the British Oak trackbed.

Excellent and informative set of posts there, Mol. No progress as such, but...

Wm. Pepper's Kerr Stuart Victory gets a heavy coal train moving toward the BR exchange sidings at Blacker Lane opencast Disposal Point.

A filthy Coal Board Hunslet crossing Blacker Lane at Calder Grove, West Riding, 1972.

It comes in all sorts of thicknesses. Anything from 5 thou. to 60 thou. so Plasticard is quite suitable.

Of course, you're right. I guess it's just one of those imagined things. When I look again at the Flickr photo that shows the orange Jinty and the viaduct, there's a lot of both wooden and concrete sleepers lying about but not one with a chair on it.

The roller, from the bottom of page 9, has been reassembled. I've still got to make a new exhaust for it. I also made some sleepers from balsa. I'd like to have some lying around with chairs on them but I don't have any chairs and C&L want well over £20 for a pack of 250, which is a huge waste of money when I only need about two dozen.

I might do. The Leyland Boxer skip lorry on Charlie Strong's yard was built from one of their kits. The sun was shining through the shed windows and I had the proper camera with me, so took this snap. It's going to look alright once the trees are in place and the buildings are finished.

Hi Rob. I've just googled Oxford Diecast Leyland Bison and I get lots of bus models, a few LDV vans and some old-looking Leyland lorries, but nothing that looks like either of those lorries in the photo, or in fact anything that looks like a 1970s lorry at all.

I don't think it ever worked there. It was saved and the last I knew of it was at the Severn Valley Railway.

Having had a very quick skim through the website that Durley linked to I'd say so! Way beyond my pay grade for sure. Best to work on the KISS principle.

I added some static grass to some areas. I'm not sure about it. It may look better when I add some more. None of these shed area buildings are fixed down yet. The shed itself needs joint pieces adding before it can be planted permanently. They've probably got a proper engineering or architectural name but I mean where the various pieces of angle iron come together and the plates that they all bolt to. I have found a photo of the loco watering facilities at British Oak but I won't be changing what I've got now. There was a rectangular tank, with plain flat sides, mounted high on the outside of the rear of the shed. A pipe and bag swung out and the loco was watered on the track that ran past the shed. Obviously, I couldn't replicate that anyway as the nearest track diverges away too far from the shed on the layout. I don't know how steam engines were coaled but one of the uses of the JCB could be that, so that's how it's done at Blacker Lane.