Mark Forrest

I think you are probably right. These measure 1.8mm (0.072") as recommended; my NHC stock has U shaped droppers of 1.2mm florists wire which also works. Testing so far has been limited to the fixed magnets on FL, I really need to set up a test rig with whatever type of electromagnet we'll be using so I can check it all works. Since taking the photo I've put a 90 degree bend in the balance weight which helps to hide it better behind the wheel.

And now with the dropper and balance weight added: Unfortunately the balance weight needed to be rather longer that I would have liked (Forrest should have paid better attention in those physics lessons). Still it works and even on the tight curves on Foundry Lane the weight does not seem to hinder bogie movement which I feared it might. Next on the to do list; is this Cambrian Boplate E. So far the build has followed the manufacturers instructions - with the exception of some 1mm L angle brass cross members on the trussing. However, this will be finished as to be a vac fitted diagram 1/490 example.

Cheers. The recommendation is to use a 1" long wire nail of 0.072" diameter (off to B&Q with my vernier tomorrow). Half of the nail forms the dropper, the other half forms the balance weight - simples.

Back to the bolsters...... First up, I tried straightening out the levers I had fitted previously, this looked ok, but still not quite right and a bit of a faff with so many to do: So, at Expo EM North I bought packs of short straight levers from both Ambis and 51L, along with some vees from the range stocked by EMGS stores. This combination proved more satisfactory, as seen here with the 51L parts on my attempt at representing an unfitted diagram 1/471 vehicle Meanwhile, my attention has turned to couplings. Fitting AJs to the short wheelbase bogies of the bogie bolsters puzzled me a little, but I've managed this, using the Palatine Models pivot/hinge plates, as seen below (I'm yet to fit a dropper and balance weight): It is the first time I've used a pivot mount for AJ couplings and I've used the same parts on to my latest pair of MDVs: You may have noticed that the couplings are only fitted at one end; these will form the first and last vehicles in a fixed rake with the intemediate vehicles coupled with three links.

I vaguely remember saving up stamps on a card down my old local to get a Banks's polo shirt with the Noddy logo on it - think we need some of these as our BCB corporate image. Not sure how many pints of mild I had to drink to get it; think it was when they rebranded mild as "original".

Whatever next!? Reminds me, there's a spare (blue) Class 25 under Foundry Lane which still has its 00 wheels

Thanks for that Arthur. Both Wagonbasher and I have been looking at wagon loads recently so that was great timing.

Another silent follower adding to the "please continue" list here too. The wagon is looking great and I'm keen to see how the hood develops as I have a project in mind which which require removable hoods.

I may be too late with this, but noticed while looking for something else that Expo list English Garden bond - page 83 of their on-line catalogue here

From memory (may have a couple of photos, somewhere) there was a single line with a loop either side. I've heard that there was a siding serving a Rowntrees warehouse on the Boscomoor Industrial estate but I think that was gone by the time I started to take an interest.

Do you mean the exchange sidings between the mainline and the A449 Wolverhampton Road; the sidings the other side of the A449 in the area where the landsale wharf mentioned above was; or Otherton sidings next to the M6?

There appears to be a platform behind each of the ends. Possibly a tunnel/bridge inspection vehicle?

commonly found elsewhere too you know, sometimes even in the Black Country Hardly seems worthwhile unloading FL from the car after this weekend's outing to Expo EM North. Should be a good show.

Hi Pete - the roll I had was peeling away from the top of the wall, by the time I had stuck it to the bottom of the wall; could well be an issue with my DIY skills rather than any fault of the tape though! Of course this wouldn't have been a problem if laying it down horizontally (on a layout) rather than vertically (on a wall).

Wickes (other DIY stores are available) describe it as Plasterboard Jointing and Repair Tape - although I've found their product isn't very sticky (it's supposed to be self adhesive). Unfortunately I was using it for its intend use rather than for modelling!

Arr, it's bostin' aye it

Part 2 covers the history of our works and the traffic which it generates (thanks again Arthur): 1805 The works opens with blast furnaces and wrought iron works. The manufacture of wrought iron requires a forge train (rolling mill) so starts a long history of rolling. Works has short arm linking to nearby canal and uses local ores and coke/coal. 1875 The works is linked to the rail network. 1888 Steel works opens on site adjacent to the ironworks. Open hearth furnaces with steel rolling mill. Some iron now sent to open hearth plant for conversion to steel. 1891 The obsolete blast furnaces close, local ores are exhausted. Pig iron is bought in from elsewhere. 1905 Achieving its centenary, the wrought iron works, after period of declining output, closes. Works is coal fired (not coke), making steel from cold pig iron and steel scrap. Steel cast into ingots which are rolled down to finished products. With some upgrading of plant in 1932, the pattern remains essentially the same until 1955. 1951 The industry is nationalised as The British Iron & Steel Corporation. Though now under state ownership, no significant changes to management, operations or output are implemented. 1953 A new government privatises the industry and the original companies are offered for sale. The works is bought in 1954, along with Round Oak and Park Gate, by Tube Investments. 1955 TI invest heavily in modernising the open hearth plant and the heavy end of the rolling mill. Works adopts oil firing for its open hearths. Coal still used for steam raising and power plant. Works output 200,000 tons year. 1962 New finishing mill is commissioned, a state of the art, continuous rod & bar mill, and light section mill. Plans for Electric steelmaking are considered following its successful introduction at Round Oak though are not implemented, doubts over re-nationalisation halt further development. 1967 After a period of uncertainty the works is re-nationalised under the British Steel Corporation and becomes part of the General Steels Division. 1969 BSC announces first radical restructuring of its operations. Like other, smaller plants, the works is fated to lose its steel making capacity, and, as a consequence, ingot casting facilities and the heavy end of the rolling mill. 1971 Steel making ceases. With new billet reheating furnaces installed, the modern and highly efficient rod & bar and finishing mills are a valuable asset, and with a massive, local, customer base, the West Midlands, the rationalised works have a secured future. The works becomes a finishing mill with a 250,000t/year capacity. 1981-Present The works is not likely to change much until its possible closure, ownership would have changed to Corus in 1990 and Tata Steel Europe in 2007. Closure could be anytime in the past thirty years, though it could still be open in 2012, Skinningrove lost iron and steel making capacity in 1971 yet still survives as a rolling mill. Post closure, it could become a steel distribution centre or something else entirely, intermodal distribution depot...... Traffic Bearing in mind the longer term plan to operate the layout at various time frames what would the traffic be? 1950 -1971: Open Hearth Steelworks. Inwards; coal (and heavy oil post 1955 for open hearths), pig iron (pig iron wagons), steel scrap, limestone, small amounts of iron ore, dolomite (L type containers), ingot moulds. Outwards; ingots, blooms, billets, rolled sections, bagged steel slag as agricultural fertiliser, bulk slag as ballast/roadstone. 1971-closure? Steel Re Rolling Mill Inwards; billets, heavy oil (though at some stage gas would be bought in). Outwards; finished sections, scrap metal

The BCB team have recently received some excellent information from Arthur, which outlines the history of the iron/steel industry in the Black Country and suggests a history of our works. It's great that the project is able to include input from the RMweb community and we are gratefully for the time and effort which has gone into producing this (and the history of our works which will follow) and I'm pleased to be able to share it here. The Black Country Iron & Steel Industry Boom & Bust In 1750 there was one blast furnace and a handful of wrought iron fineries in the area now known as the Black Country. By 1850 there were about 200 blast furnaces and 2000 wrought iron puddling furnaces in the area, supporting mills, forges and foundries. The area was the worlds leading iron producing region and there was no iron working or product in which the Black Country was not involved. By 1970 there was one blast furnace, wrought iron making had ceased completely and the area had never been more than a minor player in steel making, which ceased in the Black Country in 1982. Terms Iron: (pig iron/cast iron) Smelted from ore in a blast furnace, commercial iron contains around 4% carbon, and traces of other impurities. Traditionally cast into small ingots in a sand bed adjacent to the furnace, it became known as pig iron because the individual ingots ‘feeding’ off a runner were thought to resemble suckling pigs. It is an excellent casting material, however, it has a low tensile strength, it cannot be forged, rolled or drawn and under stress fractures readily. It was, up to around 1880, mostly converted to wrought iron, after that date, to steel. Wrought Iron: Literally ‘worked’ iron. Cold pig iron was re-melted in a special forge, a finery, and later in a puddling furnace, and in the process the carbon was burned out. The resulting mix of iron and slag was worked under a hammer and rolled in a forge train (rolling mill). It resulted in an iron with near 0% carbon and with threads of slag worked through it, giving a structure not dissimilar to wood, with great structural strength. A very useful material, it could be rolled, forged or drawn and the rolling and finishing of wrought iron became a major Black Country trade. The downside was that it was very labour intensive to make and its production was never mechanised. This was the material for which the Black Country was renowned and the red glow in the sky above was largely from the puddling furnace stacks and their associated mills. You cannot recycle old wrought iron by simply melting it, the crucial structure is destroyed. Steel: A term covering a wide range of iron/carbon alloys. Once expensive, methods of bulk production developed 1850-1860 dropped the cost drastically. It could do everything wrought iron could do, plus a lot more, at considerably less cost. It can be made from iron or simply re-melted from steel scrap. History 1750-1800 Initially there was little iron industry in the Black Country, though there was local ore, there was little forestry to supply the charcoal fuel, and few fast moving streams/rivers to provide power. In 1709 Abraham Darby had smelted iron with mineral fuel, coal (specifically coke). The invention of the stationary steam engine around the same time freed the ironmasters from reliance on water power and in 1784 Henry Cort made wrought iron with coal instead of charcoal. In 1757 John Wilkinson built a blast furnace at Bilston, ‘the Mother Furnace’, possibly the first in the Black Country. From 1760 onwards Black Country land owners, such as The Earl of Dudley, keen to exploit their mineral wealth, built blast furnaces and wrought iron works, with the developing local canal network providing transport. Initially the industry grew slowly, by 1796 there were just a dozen or so blast furnaces in the area. 1800-1850 The Black Country iron industry boomed and started to dominate the trade. The pattern was of coke fired blast furnaces supplying pig iron to either local foundries for casting, but mainly to wrought iron forges. The blast furnaces could have been independent of, or linked to, wrought iron works. The wrought iron works had coal fired puddling furnaces, helves (hammers), forge trains and finishing rolling mills. Virtually all were linked to a canal directly or by a tramway. The works ran twenty four hours a day, though most closed on Sundays. There were 123 blast furnaces by 1830. The same year, Tipton man, Joseph Hall, radically improved the efficiency of the wrought iron puddling process, his wet puddling method became the standard. 1850-1860 The peak years of prosperity, if it involved iron, the Black Country was involved. A steam hammer, the first of many in the Black Country, was installed at Netherton Ironworks in 1850, and their pounding resounded around the area for the next 100 years. The local rolling mills produced a vast range of sections. The Earl of Dudley opened Round Oak works in 1855, no expense had been spared, it was the finest works of its type, and it soon built a reputation for quality wrought iron. However, there were the first signs of trouble ahead. The local ores and coal were showing signs of exhaustion. More importantly Bessemer, in 1856, announced his method of making steel from pig iron in bulk. Initial teething problems were resolved and even an early Bessemer convertor made 5 tons of steel in less time than it took a puddling furnace made a few hundred pounds of wrought iron. William Siemens developed the open hearth steel making process, patented in 1867. Steel could do everything, and much more, than wrought iron could, and was considerably cheaper to make. (In 1863, Ramsbottom had lengths of steel rail installed at Crewe, they out lasted the existing wrought iron rails 23 times). 1860-1900 Up to the 1870s wrought iron production increased, but was outpaced by the growth of steel, the manufacture of which started to concentrate elsewhere, e.g. Teesside, Scunthorpe and South Wales. Blast furnaces peaked at 200 in 1863 and puddling furnaces at 2116 in 1872. The Black Country began to import pig iron, though wrought iron production remained strong, over 2000 puddling furnaces were producing 20,000 tons/week in 1865. The Black Country iron industry entered a period of slow decline. Local ores, and coals suitable for coking, were exhausted. The typical local blast furnaces were small, hand charged and outdated, iron production had moved to other areas where ores and coking coals were still readily available. Many of the wrought iron works started rolling steel as a profitable side line. The Black Country works which were to survive installed steelmaking capacity and either had, or would soon, leave the wrought iron trade. The first steelmaker was Old Park Works (Patent Shaft) with Bessemer convertors in 1864, followed by Hickmans at Spring Vale in 1882. Round Oak built an open hearth shop and rolling mill in 1891. All three would eventually become open hearth works. Whilst these companies thrived, the old blast furnaces and wrought iron works closed all around them. 1900-1967 Round Oak closed its wrought iron works in 1913 and there were just 21 blast furnaces and 660 puddling furnaces in use that same year. The forges either closed down or turned to steel re-rolling. World War Two saw just 13 workable blast furnaces left. Only one survived beyond 1954, with a new modern one joining it, at Stewarts & Lloyds Bilston Works. The final three wrought iron works closed in 1959 and 1960, the last, Netherton, in March 1960. By 1960 only three works, Bilston, Round Oak and Patent Shaft, remained making either iron or steel along with a few re-rolling mills. 1951-1953 The industry was nationalised. In 1953 a new government re-sold the industry, in most cases, back to the original owners. One major new entrant was engineering company, Tube Investments, who bought Round Oak and Park Gate (Rotherham), both of which received substantial investment. Stewarts & Lloyds took back Bilston and Patent Shaft was bought by a consortium of Cammell Laird and Metropolitan Cammell. 1953-1967 Open hearth steel making was still dominant as most works switched to oil firing which offered significant advantages, raising the output of the typical melting shop by around 15%. Electric Arc steelmaking became viable as a general steel making process, previously its cost had limited it to the manufacture of specialist, high value, steels. Round Oak installed Electric Arc Furnaces in 1958, closing its open hearths, the first British works to use this process for general steelmaking. Patent Shaft installed them in 1975/76. A new, medium sized, blast furnace was erected at Bilston in 1954. A modern furnace, it was to be the last built and operated in the Black Country. In the mid 1960s continuous casting was developed and adopted at a number of works, though in the Black Country only by Round Oak, in 1976. It signalled the end of costly ingot casting and heavy rolling mills. The future pattern for steelmaking became clear, either smaller works, 500,000 tons per year, with Electric Arc furnaces or huge works, 2,000,000 tons per year, with blast furnaces and Basic Oxygen furnaces, both using continuous casting. The future of many smaller, inland, works was uncertain and impending nationalisation added to the air of doubt. 1967 The bulk of the industry was nationalised as the British Steel Corporation. Patent Shaft remained in private ownership, Round Oak became a BSC/Tube Investments joint venture and Bilston became a part of the BSCs Special Steels Division. One of the Steel Corporations tasks was to rationalise and reshape the industry for the future. In 1969 the first round of works closures, some partial, were announced and in 1971 closures commenced. Quite a few works lost iron and steel making capacity but retained rolling capacity, becoming re-rollers. In the Black Country, Wolverhampton & Birchley Rolling Mills Ltd, Cable Street Mill Ltd., and The London Works Steel Company Ltd were the major re-rollers along with the specialised mill at the Ductile Hot Mill Ltd (thin strip). Only the first of these was nationalised, the others remained subsidiaries of much larger industrial concerns. 1970-1980 A decade of radical closures, by 1980 iron and steel was being made at a mere handful of plants. Many former steelmaking plants became re-rolling and finishing works. Difficult trading conditions at the end of the 1970s saw the closure of Bilston (1978), finally ending iron making and open hearth steelmaking in the Black Country, Patent Shaft (1980) and Round Oak (1982) 1980-present There has been little, significant, technological change. The bulk manufacture of iron & steel was concentrated at five super works, Port Talbot, Llanwern (closed 2001), Scunthorpe, Teesside and Ravenscraig (closed 1992). A handful of electric melting shops survived, some in private ownership, as did several rolling mills, many being parts of, originally, larger works. The steel industry has always been cyclical and over the past thirty years several mills and manufacturing plants have closed when trade has slumped e.g. Cable Street Mill Ltd, (1996) Wolverhampton & Birchley Rolling Mills Ltd (2009). The Steel Corporation was privatised in 1999 becoming Corus, a joint venture with Dutch steelmaker Koninklijke Hoogovens, and Corus itself was acquired by Indian steelmaker Tata in 1999, becoming Tata Steel Europe.

Thanks Martin, see you next weekend; which reminds me - I still need to assemble the new legs for Foundry Lane

Indeed, EM it is. For those who might be interested, here are a few guideline specifications: Gauge: EM (18.2mm, 16.5mm back to back) Couplings: the end of each rake will have an auto coupling (most likely Alex Jackson type) - but we'll sort those out. For the intermediate wagons we'll go with three links - me suggestion would be the Smiths type for ease of use and installation. Springing the hook is not necessary. Suspension/compensation: EM tolerances and the excellence of Geoff's trackwork should make this unnecessary, however if personal preference is to use this (or you are looking for an excuse to experiment) that would be fine too. A few suggestions of kits which might be suitable: Parkside Dundas PC72 Grampus PC01A Steel Highfit PC02A Wooden Highfit PC45 Steel Medfit Cambrian Kits C13 Mermaid C11 Catfish Chivers Finelines RC446 Lamprey I'd recommend the relevant pages of Paul Bartlett's website or Vol 2 of David Larkin's recent work on Civil Engineer's wagons for those looking for prototype inspiration.

Cheers Stu. Yes I think now we have a view on what we have to play with and what the likely traffic flows would be we're in a better position to consider your kind offer of help. How do you feel about engineer's wagons? I'm looking at including two rakes, one of fresh ballast in hoppers and another of spoil in (probably) Grampus or ex-revenue High or Medfits. Should give a nice bit of variety and could be either kit builds or RTR modified. Anyone else interested?

It's been a little quiet over here on the rolling stock workbench recently, but work has been continuing mainly on completing some MDVs which had been started some time ago and a few other bits which needed finishing off or repairing. We've also had a bit of a round up of what stock we have available and what gaps we have to fill before February. I'll have some of the BCB stock with me at Expo EM North next weekend, so if anyone wants to chat about wagons (or anything else for that matter) do say hello. Should be at least one other Staffs Finescaler with me lurking around about Foundry Lane.

The rods between the baulks are interesting too. Presumably if they weren't buried in ballast we'd see a nut on threaded bar at the outside ends?

I think the pipe (another must have feature?) is holding the roving bridge up!

Reminds me of: BR Standard on parcels at Wolverhampton by Oxendale-mac, on Flickr