Arthur

Thanks Merf. The Chassis. I started by pulling off one of the front wheels, they’re just pushed on to a ribbed axle end, but they take some getting off. I ground off the feeble fuel tank, removed the spare wheel and ground down its carrier block to a third of its original width. Here is the pretty much complete chassis; The Base Toys chassis has three mounting points for the front axle. The original AEC uses the centre position but the Guy, with its axle at on the cab rear line, was better suited to using the rear position. Some brass washers were inserted to improve the track and the removed wheel, hubs painted BSC Blue, glued back on. A new fuel tank was built up from some evergreen tube with microstrip for the mounting straps. I drilled it to take two bits of .7mm wire, one for the filler neck and one to fix it to the chassis. The spare wheel was fitted to its reduced mounting block in a similar manner. A strip of plasticard formed the rear chassis cross member. Anyone who remembers these vehicles might recollect the huge silencer and exhaust mounted under the front bumper, it was a very characteristic feature. A simple fabrication of Plastic rod and brass wire was glued under the chassis front. The Trailer The Base Toys trailer is too short, whereas a 40 footer just looked too long. BSC Orb works, at Newport, ran a fleet of 30’ and 36’ trailers (steel sections were often supplied in 30 ft lengths) so I went for a 33’ trailer. This is the original trailer with the bogie removed, it's just screwed on. The trailer was a simple construction in styrene and was ‘designed’ as I went along to fit the Base Toys bogie. It consists of a 60 thou deck with a scribed deck on top. The chassis rails, side rails, headboard surround and transverse supports are various lengths of evergreen section. I fitted four transverse bolsters, you don’t want steel lengths laid flat on the deck, well, not unless you want to handball it off, the bolsters allow space for lifting straps/chains or forks to get under the load. The headboard, also from two layers, has a front from Slaters corrugated to replicate that shown in the prototype photo. The landing legs are made from 3mm square styrene with the upper housings formed from 20thou panels applied around them and the feet are from pieces of 20thou. Discs of 40 thou, punched out with a leather punch, formed the locating point for the rear bogie and the fifth wheel (tractor-trailer coupling) pin. One Day. About twenty years ago I bought a pack of transparent, coloured, light lens', thinking that one day they'd be useful. Well, one day finally came and I used them to make rear light clusters for tractor and trailer. Here they are fitted; And finally a test fitting of chassis and trailer, the trailer isn't pushed fully home onto the fifth wheel pin. I've started to weather the trailer bed and it will be fitted with a suitable load. TBC

Nice Merf. Have you modified that from the Lledo model and, if so, did you use the original glazing?

Dave's right, it would be a heavier fraction than diesel oil. Fuel oil seems to be a term covering a range of products. It might have been something like Bunker C, a heavy fuel oil used in boilers, furnaces (and UPs gas turbines). Certainly a class B product.

Thanks Rangers, yeah, the Precision BSC blue was a recent find for me too. it looks lighter in the photo than it does in the flesh. Lettering?......all will be revealed shortly! Oh, yes. The Guy 8 wheeler is from the Lledo Trackside range.

Rangers, you're right, the original was allocated to Stocksbridge and Tinsley Park works, they were both part of the Special Steels Division which was headquartered in Sheffield. I'll check, but I think Tubes was headquartered at Corby and General Steels, of which Trafalgar works is part, at Scunthorpe. However, we do have some leeway in registration plates. Many BSC liveried lorries were operated under contract by local hauliers. Edwards of Lydbrook, here in the Forest of Dean, operated some AEC Mercury V and Atkinson tractor units on contract to, and lettered for, Ebbw Vale. We'll return to a suitable registration at the appropriate time. I think you'll find that most hauliers superglued on their numberplates in the 1970s, I intend to follow prototype practice......

I’ve divided the build into three components, the cab, the tractor chassis and the trailer. For the cab, this was the starting point (which I forgot to photograph!, but this stock photo will do, though mine was in a light grey, BRS livery); The other donor vehicle was a Base Toys AEC Mercury tractor and trailer. That was similarly dismembered, and from that I will use the tractor chassis and the trailer bogie. The trailer body will be scratch built. The Cab. The rivets holding on the axle keeper were drilled out and the cab separated, with a thin cutting disc in a 4.5” angle grinder, just behind the leading mudguard. The cab, interior and glazing were the only parts used, the rest going into the spares box. Here’s the cab stripped down, drilled for mirror brackets, and wipers. The original lacks the narrow rear window which was such a feature on the actual Motor Panels pressings. As it's very obvious on a tractor unit I drilled and filed one out. The headboard on the roof is being built up from styrene, superglued on and then flooded with araldite to make it secure. A panel of plasticard will form the top. The front bumper will be built up from overlays of plasticard to represent the heavy steel channel of the prototype, complete with recess for the towing pintle. I did intend to preserve the printed GUY name on the cab front but it kind of disappeared at some point during the work......Plan B will have to be implemented. I made the mistake at this point of surfing the net for prototype photographs and came up with some photos and drawings showing the cab rear.....and suddenly an air intake/ filter and header tank seemed essential..... The header tank is a piece of 60 thou with a corner chopped off. Three bits of tiny micro strip form the pressed strengthening ribs and the filler neck is a bit of wire. The air filter comprises a short length of plastic tube with the ends filled, the intake is a length of plastic rod and the cap was punched from 60 thou and shaped by spinning and filing in a mini drill. The lower air pipe is bent up from brass wire which locates in a hole in the lower cab. All of these additions are attached with a short length of brass wire inserted into holes drilled into the cab. Parts for the air cleaner A cruel close up of the cab rear, a bit of tidying up methinks. TBC And here’s the cab interior, details picked out in paint, gear lever from a pin, the head is etched with the correct gate pattern for a Guy Five speed, you’ll have to trust me on that one..... The driver is from Slaters, horribly mutilated with scalpel and pliers to better look the part. Finally a bit of paper was UHU’ed to the dashboard to replicate that in the prototype photo. I primed the tractor unit with Tamiya grey primer, it gives a nice thin coat, tidied it up, and gave it a second coat. The inside was brush painted light blue and, when dry, the first of two coats of thinned Precision Paints BSC blue was brushed on. The bumper was painted a slightly off white, just to kill the glare. Here’s a head on shot with the completed cab headboard, I think that the basic casting is a pretty good representation of the prototype. TBC

Thanks Mark, So, by way of an introduction; Although I’d supplied the BCB gang with a bit of information on the steel industry, following the excellent work in the various building projects I thought that I’d like to make a more practical contribution too. I’ve particularly enjoyed Pauls (Worsdell forever) road vehicle building thread, and with Paul being happy for me to throw a lorry into the mix, I made an offer to supply a couple of BSC vehicles. One is a lorry, the other will be a locomotive for the industrial line, more of that later. So, firstly the lorry. This is where we’re heading, a 1970 registered Guy Big 4 tractor unit and flatbed trailer. When I came across this photo fairly recently, it struck me as being an eminently suitable prototype for the BCB project. The British Steel Corporation had a number of operations in the Black Country and surrounding areas, indeed, the industry served by the BCB industrial line is a BSC plant, and the area contained a large number of steel users. A BSC lorry would have been an everyday sight in the area. The Guy in particular has local interest, these highly regarded motors were built in Wolverhampton. When I contacted the BCB team to offer these vehicles Mark told me that his grandfather had driven a Guy for Manders Paints, a nice personal link. It seemed that the Guy was an ideal project. TBC.

Here's one of our oddities; About 30" x 20", no bottom at all. just four longitudinal bearers, of two sizes, and three top boards. It's quite robust and was probably made to carry a small bit of machinery, a small pump or motor. In support of what Mike mentions above, around 1980, when I was driving for a living, I collected a Gardner 8XLB from a commercial breakers yard in the Midlands which was bound for Ireland and eventual fitting in a trawler. A long and very heavy straight 8. As you might imagine from a breakers yard, it was strapped to a totally unsuitable pallet, no cradle, no concessions to H & S. The pallet merely needed to survive one loading onto the trailer, which it did, and one unloading at the other end, which I didn't witness.

Some pallets are one sided in that the top has a full set of close spaced boards to support the load whereas the bottom merely has three wide spaced boards to hold it together. We've some here.

We've several old pallets lying around on which we store hay and straw. I had a look at them this morning and a motley bunch they are. Two are 'double' size, around 7 ft x 3 ft 6 ins, none of the 'normal' sized ones are exactly the same, and a couple are around 30 ins x 20 ins. Some are single sided, others double, and some clearly originally made from good timber others from rough old lengths. There are standard sizes but others are built for specific roles, others knocked together for a one off task.

Here's the one preserved in MSC livery at Williton; http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ad/Williton_MSC_DH16_front.jpg/800px-Williton_MSC_DH16_front.jpg The 0-6-0s were used at the western end of the system, Ellesmere Port etc, whilst the 0-4-0s were used at on the eastern section, around Salford, Trafford Park and Manchester Docks.

Re. the Spring Vale/Bilston ore traffic, whilst it might not be what actually happened, there's no reason why Bilston couldn't have used tipplers. Hoppers were used because there was no pre-treatment of the ore at Bilston, no sinter plant for example, so it was easy just to run the hoppers direct onto the blast furnace high line, and dump them direct into the stock yard, which is what they did. Obviously, all that would have been required to handle tipplers would have been a tippler and conveyors, the cost of which would have been small beer in terms of what S&L spent rebuilding the iron making plant at Bilston in 1953/54. They might well have done that because, as I've posted elsewhere, in the 1950s there was a trend to move home ores in tipplers because the ores were often wet and sticky, and loaded in large lumps, and so not particularly free running. Hoppers were better suited to the dry, crushed, free running, imported ores. Tyne Dock-Consett, Bidston-Shotton and General Terminus-Clyde Iron/Ravenscraig were all new flows run with hoppers. So, not totally authentic but not unreasonable either.

Not being familiar with TOPS codes, when I read that from Mike, I thought he was offering to build some wagon coded WTT, seriously. It wasn't 'till I read subsequent posts that realisation dawned..... Yes, something on TOPS code would be very useful and interesting.

Thanks for that Mike. I'd been following your posts on the traffic to Spring Vale and wondered if that was the explanation. Any other coke ovens in the East Midlands/South Yorks would have been able to supply the right type of coke. Regards Arthur You and me both Phil!! Had you mentioned any other coke ovens I wouldn't have noticed, just that Avenue was an unusual plant.

Interesting Phil, so was that coke from Avenue to Stewarts & Lloyds at Spring Vale/Bilston? Avenue was built as a low temperature carbonisation plant specifically to produce household smoke less fuel. I'm surprised that the coke it produced was of suitable quality for metallurgical use. Nothing to do with BCB, just of interest to me Just some background, Metro Cammell had owned the former Patent Shaft works at Old Park since 1949, it was no longer Patent Shaft. Patent Shaft still made steel at their Brunswick works, and from 1956, after a brief spell of nationalisation, it was owned by Cammell Laird, 75%, and Metropolitan Cammell, 25%.

In Manchester too. In April 1970, an estimated 14000 gallons of petrol 'overflowed' from a tanker whilst it was being loaded at Partington on the Manchester Ship Canal. When it ignited, over a mile of canal was ablaze and five men crossing on Partington ferry (just a rowing boat) were killed, and four severely injured.

George Dent has an article in the latest Model Rail, No 177, Jan 2013, in which he fits a set of the Dave Alexander pumps and tanks to a Hornby 9F. The 9F conversion kit from Dave Alexander is priced at £7.95 according to the article.

Some interesting views of a Scottish based TK tractor unit here; The first two show the vehicle in the yard at Carron Ironworks near Falkirk, no date sadly. The wagon is Carron Ironworks No. 755, presumably once in main line service and more recently internal use only, and probably now bound for preservation. The second image shows it at what may be a BR yard somewhere? Interesting that there appears to be no evidence of retaining ropes or chains, the wagon seem to be held by timbers on the trailer deck.

Thanks Philip, that is the one, excellent photograph as usual! Just some thoughts about the line itself; I think it highly unlikely that the private line would have been maintained by the main line company, and, as has been suggested, the steelworks would have furnished the materials and fixtures themselves. The suggested timeline has the line laid in 1875, the works at that time would have been able to roll its own wrought iron rails, and from 1888 through to about the 1950s, its own steel rails and fishplate section. They’d have been standard rolled products featured in the company section book (trade catalogue). They feature in every section book I have, from a wide range of steel companies, Round Oak would be a local example. Lancashire Steel for instance, by no means a specialist rail roller, features several weights of flat bottom, bullhead, tramway and conductor sections, several fishplate sections and a patent clip fastener for steel sleepers. It’s even possible, certainly in the early days, that they could have cast the chairs in their own foundry. Making and repairing crossing gates would have been done in house, even in wood. These works were highly self sufficient. Remember that the line is linked to a works which would have been maintaining several miles of internal railways. Without doubt it would have had its own plate laying department and railway, general engineering and joinery workshops. Round Oak again, for example, certainly did. They were among the largest of industrial undertakings in their day, and equipping and maintaining a mile or two of their own track would be a relatively minor task. It was only with the BSC rationalisation in the late 70s, and following the general trend in industry, that they would have started to farm out some of these support activities.

Are we talking about an unmade, farm type track, here? I'm a bit vague about the detail but there used to be such a crossing near here, I might actually be standing on it; (apologies for the quality) It's the former Manchester Collieries system just east of Astley Green Colliery on the main line to Mosely Common and points north. I cannot recall whether there were the remains of gates but, if so, they were long out of use by the time of the photo, 1970. The trains didn't stop, as you can see. The farm land hereabouts was arable, not livestock, that might have had a bearing. I'll ask Philip Harvey (PGH) to pop by, he may well be able to throw more light on it.

I cannot say that there were no ex Littleton GECs at British Steel Teesside, but some went there brand new in 1976/77. There's a photo at the head of this thread of one working there in 1979; http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/28937-steel-making-on-teeside/ and a manufacturers ad. from 1976 in post #10 here; http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/28782-locomotive-rolling-stock-manufacturers/ http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/28782-locomotive-rolling-stock-manufacturers/

I suspect that in that neighborhood, they've been stolen

Darren, Nothing to add to the methods outlined but just be aware, in my experience anyway, that these push fit wheel/axles do not take kindly to being pushed on and off more than a couple of times. They can tend to become a bit loose or offset, Romford/Markits are more forgiving in this respect. Nothing more disheartening than getting it running smoothly, disassembling it, and then finding you cannot get it running smoothly again. Just plan ahead to minimise the number of times you need to remove them.

Reminds me of Canal Street in Manchesters 'gay village'. Local wags frequently vandalise the street signs, blanking out the first letter of each word....

This might be of some interest. This months (November) Steam Days has a ten page article by Harry Pratt about his footplate days at Bushbury; "Bushbury Footplateman 1948 to 1965".