Northroader

This small layout that’s been threatened is starting to take shape, beginning with a new baseboard, as all the old stuff went to the council tip before the move. Rather than doing it in 2x1 and chipboard, I thought I’d try foamboard this time, so I ordered a pack of 10mm thick foamboard, A1 paper size.(That’s 33.1” x 23.4”, or 840mm x 594mm) I only used two sheets for this job, so it’s quite competitive with using timber, though not so durable of course. I cut a strip 12” wide lengthwise off a sheet to give me the top for the main board, then the rest of the board went in six 48mm wide strips. These were glued together in pairs, using PVA Bond, and used for the reinforcing runners under the top. The other board gave me a 9” wide top for a three road fiddle yard, and the rest of the reinforcing strips. Here’s the two together, with a 7mm 0-6-0T and a small station building roughed out to give an idea of how it will look. Theres a 5mm thick foamboard to act as a backscene support. Obviously you can’t screw, nail, or use track pins, everything needs gluing, but the back sheet is bolted on, using 2mm thick ply pads glued on the outer faces. The two boards are just resting loose on a “tabletop”, an old door made narrow. The rail tracks will register across the join between the two boards, but the boards will stay loose, as I am treating the fiddle board as a single large cassette.

I’ve only done two outside frame locos, one scratchbuilt and one a kit, and they were standard gauge using Slaters wheels. They had inside main frames, and dummy outside frames with loose axle boxes. The one thing with both of them was this arrangement seemed to take away any side play, and as they were six coupled they wanted to go In straight lines only. I managed to sort out the scratchbuilt one, so all it needs now is a superstructure, but the kit one needs new inside frames, which I keep putting off. This sideplay allowance is something to watch out for. if you do get into using Slaters wheels, the ones for outside frames have the wheels fitted on a taper on the axle, once they’re on it, they don’t want to come off, and this affects how you plan the assembly, so it’s best to check the frame bush alignment with dummy axles and the side rods, then sort out motor and gearbox mounting as the wheels go on the axle for the first (and only) time. Good luck with how you sort out the availability of suitable wheels and axles, and how you do the quartering for the outside cranks. You look to be a better craftsman than me, and I’ll enjoy seeing how you do it. I see you’re reusing Fintonagh, I’ve always admired the grouping of buildings on that, with a Swilly station it could be a bit simpler?

“Ahh, well, if I was goin’ there, I wouldn’t start from here at all, sorr…”

That’s great to see, Leslie, nice to know they’re finding good homes. I expect there’ll be some tweaking needed, wheels to polish, couplings to fiddle with, paint jobs to finish, and hope the models all behave, but we couldn’t have a better outcome. Breaking News: “Provincial Models goes into 7mm”!!

Good to hear from you, Alan, thanks for your best wishes, and hope you’re not too bogged down with your job to get some modelling time in.

Thanks, David. Mind, the line will be “dual purpose” https://www.rmweb.co.uk/topic/151308-“beyond-dover”/page/31/#comment-5323321

Glad to hear: a) it was displayed at the Dublin show, and folks enjoyed it. b) Ken’s got it, but did you tell him it’s 32mm gauge? Following on from reading the two Dave’s exploits on here, Arigna Town, Belmullet, Northport Quay, Rosses Point, Abohill halt, and seeing some of them in action, I convinced Ballycombe will have be sort of 36 and a bit mm gauge as it reappears. Good luck, Ken, that 3D print looks very tasty.

Er, track standards… when you was doing Abohill halt, say, what was the sleeper sizes and spacing you used? Just askin’ for a friend.

So today was a trip out, to Uckfield in East Sussex. The model railway club there have a reputation for organising outstanding thought out range of layouts, and so it is this weekend. A star attraction for me was Northport Quay, David Holmans line, and seeing it in the solid was most enjoyable.

Really neat job, I’ve had several goes at doing coach bodies that way, and never managed to get them looking that good. Still, keep on trying, eh?

It’s nice thought, a station with one of those stone huts roofed in turf by the lake, but we’ll have to have one of the GNR brick jobs. I’ll be sticking with the brand name “Ballycombe”, although it’s been pointed out to me that “Combe” doesn’t have Irish roots. It come about way back when I was in need of an Irish name for the line, and my wife was saying “Ballylongtime”, as it was slow coming together. We were out walking the South West Coast Path in Cornwall, approaching Watergate, just east of Newquay, with a load of activity on the beach, all folks in pastel shade Edwardian costume, with plenty of horses, and a banner up, “Ballycombe Beach Races”. “Bingo”, I says to myself, “never mind Laytown”. All round the Watergate Hotel there were these big trailers, cables off everywhere, a film crew hard at it. It turns out later they were filming something for American TV called the “Magical Legend of the Leprechauns”, but I’d made the station boards by then.

well, here we are downsizing to the new place. A couple of weeks before the move, himself, galteemore, was in for a dish of tay, as he’d just moved as well, a real treat for me. I haven’t moved so often as him, and not so well organised in setting up the workplace, but it’s coming along. Now we’re here I can think about what can be done, but it’s going to be small, that’s for sure, a couple of those six wheelers and a tank engine to pull them off stage, with a siding for a wagon or two, nine bean rows, and a hive for the honeybee.

That’s a beautiful layout, looks really good.

Thanks, Leslie, so what are we looking at here? I’ve done three 0-4-4T locos besides this one, and I’ve found that you need to allow the rear bogie to traverse sideways across the loco, besides just pivoting centrally, because the leading drivers are fixed to the superstructure. On a curve this displaces the rear end of the loco sideways by a fair amount, and so the pin the bogie turns on works in a slot across the bogie frame. The first batch of the GSWR 0-4-4T were originally built as Fairlie engines, with the driving wheels mounted on a bogie, as well as the carrying wheels at the back end, so the whole lot worked very like a modern Bo-Bo diesel. Later versions were built without the driving wheel bogie, I suppose because of the trouble with having flexible steam pipe joints, The trouble is in a model, this particular class does have quite an appreciable distance between the front and back sets of wheels, and you do encounter sharper curves, so you do need a bit of flexibility. To do this, the Driving wheel sets are mounted on a frame as well, with a central stretcher with a hole for a pivot screw which attaches the frame to the superstructure. The motor is mounted on the back axle, and points backwards so as to clear the central pivot. The motor fits inside the firebox, with a small amount of clearance on each side, so it can wag from side to side a bit. (If the engine had full side tanks it would be much better for the clearances) There’s a brass block at the leading end of the frame to help balance the motor overhang. Then the rear bogie has a full slot across the middle stretcher for the pivot pin to traverse across the full width. There’s pickups on all the wheels, though I see the wheels are starting to get a bit rusty. That’s the trouble with Slaters wheels, they do the tyres in mild steel to keep costs down, fair enough, but on a loco which has been around some time, you have to go round with some emery.

Everton FC have recently opened a souvenir shop in the glitzy new shopping centre called Liverpool One. After some consideration, they’ve called it Everton 2. Now any post they get is addressed to Everton 2, Liverpool 1.

May I suggest you go up a scale to 0, as you get older it’s something that’s going to happen anyway. You can pick up Atlas Plymouth diesels quite cheap second hand jobs. Nice runners, though they do grind a bit. Then just build a new superstructure in plastikard to what you want.

I’ve done open wagon loads of crushed coal, and ballast, but first I make a wood block, lower than the sides, which is a loose fit inside the wagon, and then work on the block away from the wagon. Wrap and glue a paper strip round the block which is higher than the sides. Next put some neat pva glue round inside the top to seal the join between the block and the paper. Then arrange your load inside the top, with a slight hump in the middle, and treat it with the usual mix of diluted pva glue with a drop of washing up liquid, just like you was ballasting the track. Let it all harden off, then go round with a small pair of scissors or a craft knife, trimming the paper strip back down to where it meets the load. Finish off by painting the paper cut edge and sides to match the same colour as your load. Then ease it into the wagon, and off you go.

Mention of the “Scotty Dog” 37s, Leslie, reminds me of a far off occasion when due to some on going industrial action, Cardiff Canton had a few of the Eastfield locos transferred down. One of them had been in for a service, and the night foreman was going round it. Luckily he spotted before it was released that some joker with a white paint pot had added a second scotty dog behind the first, getting on very friendly terms with it.

There’s this site says they were rebodied anyway, but I’d be hoping for a few pictures.(maybe in their gallery, I couldn’t be a**** signing on to Google!) https://www.classicbuses.co.uk/+LLSR.html youll be wanting a bridge next?

It would look nicer putting track down, Leslie, not taking it up. Actually, I think Ernie’s portfolio for the Valencia Harbour line is one of the most evocative set of railway pictures going.

Not the best of times, my father could have been the guy in the picture before he got sent to the Western Front, but I found this picture on an RTE website, and it’s worth a look at. In my mind it’s very rare to get such a fully detailed look at a van, I’ve just trimmed the view to a single van. A GNRI ventilated van to go with the passenger coaches, for “perishable” traffic, meat, fish, dairy, and so on. There’s one of these in that poor picture of the trains in the carriage sidings at Amiens Street on page one of this thread, only that one doesn’t have the “torpedo” ventilators on the roof, which this one does have. The seriffed capitals suggest to me that it lettered to run with passenger stock, presume the van was painted brown? You can just make out a vac. pipe on the end, and there’s a vee hanger in the middle, suggesting a cross shaft coupled to a vac brake cylinder, although the hand brake is the old style lever to the block on the far end wheel, so the brake work could be a bit of a tangle. You’ll see that the leaf springs end in small swing links, which is a concession to a suspension running at passenger train speeds. The wheels, could these be some more 3’4” diameter jobs?

Perhaps, Leslie, if you can do a photo of beneath the loco looking up, folks can get a better idea of how the leading coupled drivers are mounted?

I’m afraid I never got round to lining it out, coal in the bunker and so on. It’s built as a double bogie, out of necessity to go round curves.

nice old brake van over on the left in the Dundalk shot.

On that cross border archive I’ve linked to, there’s another interesting picture, the inside of Dundalk carriage shops in full swing: It’s the nearest coach that’s taking my attention, it looks four compartments well spaced out, with a toilet placed between the two pairs, so possibly two second class outside of two first with toilet accommodation? Then at the near end there’s a small brake compartment, so a brake composite? Another useful coach. The one beyond is a later bogie job, with a “cove” style roof, I.e. made from three radii.