Brookhall Mill - A GNR(I) Micro Layout

[Patrick Davey]

1 hour ago, Tullygrainey said:

That water is very convincing!

Thanks!  A few bubbles in the resin but sure that can be frog spawn 

[Galteemore]

6 minutes ago, Patrick Davey said:

Thanks!  A few bubbles in the resin but sure that can be frog spawn 

I’m getting flashbacks to Seamus Heaney now: 

Death of a Naturalist

BY SEAMUS HEANEY

All year the flax-dam festered in the heart

Of the townland; green and heavy headed

Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.

Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.

Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles

Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.

There were dragonflies, spotted butterflies,

But best of all was the warm thick slobber

Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water

In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring

I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied

Specks to range on window sills at home,

On shelves at school, and wait and watch until

The fattening dots burst, into nimble

Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how

The daddy frog was called a bullfrog

And how he croaked and how the mammy frog

Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was

Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too

For they were yellow in the sun and brown

In rain.

 

    Then one hot day when fields were rank

With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs

Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges

To a coarse croaking that I had not heard

Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.

Right down the dam gross bellied frogs were cocked

On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:

The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat

Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.

I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings

Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew

That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.

[Patrick Davey]

Ha very cultured!!!!

[Lambeg man]

On 4/10/2022 at 10:09 PM, Patrick Davey said:

Dennis Wailer,

Very good!

[Patrick Davey]

27 minutes ago, Lambeg man said:

Very good!

I was going to expand it and say that Dennis was in foul form himself after an incident at home when his wife ended up with a ladder in her tights.......

[Patrick Davey]

A few more views from around the mill.

 

[Patrick Davey]

Mr. Weaver had been asking his groundsmen to build a fence around his garden and eventually it was done.  The garden is on a curve and a slope so they decided to build a series of individual panels which could easily follow the contour of the location.

Starting point - coffee stirrers.  Appropriate material for building something that will be in the ground......

 

 

Lots of planks

 

 

Creating the panels by aligning the planks onto double sided tape before adding a spot of glue.

 

 

Each panel had a post attached.

 

 

Some completed panels before the posts were sharpened at the base.

 

 

19 panels were needed - here they have been braced and are ready for staining.  The bracing would also be trimmed when everything was fully dry.

 

 

Stained and installed - only a few to go.

 

 

Fence installed.  They needed a particular type of wood stain and the groundsmen asked Mr. Weaver if there was a B&Q in Lisburn - he told them that there was a B but definitely no Q.

 

All's left will be to try and straighten up some of the uncooperative panels then blend the fence in with foliage etc.

 

Edited October 15, 2022 by Patrick Davey

[Tullygrainey]

Versatile stuff, those coffee stirrers

[Patrick Davey]

That's the fence bedded in, and a very rapid-growing tree has appeared above it!

[Patrick Davey]

A few more characters have arrived at the mill this week......

 

Meet the Brookhall Mill medical team: Dr. O'Condriac (he's always in a rush) and Sister Burns-Ward.

 

 

Frank the Postman arrives with Mr. Weaver's latest copy of 'Steam Railway' magazine. The postman is called 'Frank' because he always says it as it is and he always leaves his mark.  Although Mr. Weaver is wondering why Frank and Dr. O'Condriac are standing on large panes of glass....

 

 

[Galteemore]

I’m sure he’ll see through them eventually. 

[J-Mo Arts]

1 hour ago, Galteemore said:

I’m sure he’ll see through them eventually. 

Well you've beaten me to making a joke, and made a better one that I could've. Thanks for shattering my comedic aspirations... 

[Colin_McLeod]

On 23/4/2021 at 11:18 AM, jhb171achill said:

In the early 1970s, there were still QUITE a few linen mills going - Barbours in Lisburn, one of the biggest, went in into the 1980s at least. 

The two big mills in Lisburn that were adjacent to the GNR(I) were Stewarts which was demolished in 1985 and Hilden (Barbour Threads) which closed February 2006.

[Galteemore]

Sir Milne Barbour, director of the Barbour Mill (obviously enough) was also a director of the GNRI in the 20s-30s. I think he’d have approved of Brookhall Mill…..

[Patrick Davey]

1 hour ago, Galteemore said:

Sir Milne Barbour, director of the Barbour Mill (obviously enough) was also a director of the GNRI in the 20s-30s. I think he’d have approved of Brookhall Mill…..

Much appreciated thanks GM!  I missed a trick though with the name - it only struck me recently that due to the homage being paid to GNR architecture, I should have called it 'Hemingway Mills' although that does sound a bit 'across the water'!!

While the speculation reaches frantic levels about the forthcoming IRM releases, life goes on at Brookhall Mill.....

When Mr. Weaver isn't running his mill or thinking up new ways to wind up the desk dudes in Amiens Street, you might well find him in his back garden, watching the birdies.

 

Is it a bit obsessive to add tiny birds to a tiny birdtable in a tiny garden?

I got them on higher perches.......

Edited October 18, 2022 by Patrick Davey

[Patrick Davey]

Some goodies arrived today from the fine folks at York Modelmaking:

 

The pallets were easy enough to knock together and being made from plywood, they already look correct!

 

The platform benches were NOT easy to assemble, very fiddly and it was a classic case of one's fingers being stickier than superglue.  I painted the 'wooden' parts red first and left the 'iron' parts white.  Maybe the red is too loud?

 

More goodies on the way too, to help further develop the insanity side of things....more characters to create crackpot scenarios with......

 

Edited October 22, 2022 by Patrick Davey

[popeye]

I love those benches, they really look the part. 

[Patrick Davey]

 

Mr. Weaver is always concerned for the health and well-being of his staff so he always encourages them to take time to explore the lanes around Brookhall Mill
 

[Patrick Davey]

New members of the insanity inventory:

Billy Barrel - his job is to roll out the barrel.....he even wrote a song about it....

 

The formidable Mr. Foreman, and his assistant, Mr. Threeman (slightly lower pay grade).

 

Mr. Weaver dislikes Mr. Foreman (Mr. Threeman even less so) because he's always insisting that everything be done by the book.

Edited October 23, 2022 by Patrick Davey

[Patrick Davey]

More tiny folk doing things at Brookhall Mill.

 

 

[Noel]

On 20/10/2022 at 10:12 PM, Patrick Davey said:

 

Mr. Weaver is always concerned for the health and well-being of his staff so he always encourages them to take time to explore the lanes around Brookhall Mill
 

OMG the visual story telling is sublime.  Master piece.

Edited October 23, 2022 by Noel

[Patrick Davey]

Tiny Signs for the tiny folk to read!

Just now, Patrick Davey said:

Tiny Signs for the tiny folk to read!

Apologies for the tiny photos too.....

[Broithe]

4 minutes ago, Patrick Davey said:

Tiny Signs for the tiny folk to read!

Apologies for the tiny photos too.....

No problem. Don't worry about it.

[Patrick Davey]

This part of the layout had been niggling at me, being one of the few areas remaining unfinished. I needed a means of marking the transition between the platform and the wooded area beyond:

 

I had tried a few things in the past which didn't work so I decided to build a brick wall, using thick card covered in embossed brick plasticard:

I had to excavate a bit to give it a solid foundation but it seems to work ok.  There will be a short fence section between the back of the platform shelter and the new wall.

 

Starting to blend the wall in with chinchilla dust, which was kindly provided for the platform a while back by Paul Chapman.  Mr. Weaver is casting his eye over the work.

 

This side has been built up using offcuts of the thick card covered with a layer of black scatter, then the whole lot was soaked in dilute PVA.  Once dry, the black scatter will be covered with green scatter then foliage.  I only used the black scatter here as I have lots of it and haven't found much use for it other than as a coal pile elsewhere on the layout.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 26, 2022 by Patrick Davey

[Patrick Davey]

The new wall now has a gate…… not glued in place yet hence the droop.....

Edited October 27, 2022 by Patrick Davey

[Patrick Davey]

The droop has been de-droop-ified.

 

[Tullygrainey]

Perfect solution! Much better than trying to blend platform into woodland. Those bricklayers are a speedy bunch 

Alan

[Patrick Davey]

14 hours ago, Tullygrainey said:

Perfect solution! Much better than trying to blend platform into woodland. Those bricklayers are a speedy bunch 

Alan

They have obviously done a few courses…….

[Robert Shrives]

Great work, just to say the Yrk modelmaking benches are lovely and the 2mm version very fiddly !  

Robert 

[Patrick Davey]

I wasn’t happy with the colour of the benches so I repainted them grey and also found an ideal use for the extra bus destination blinds which I had for my GNR buses. Also picked up some handy flower tufts at the show yesterday so I quickly knocked up a planter for some of them from matchsticks, to replace the one which used to sit on top of the air raid shelter.

[Patrick Davey]

On the workbench today, two more of Leslie McAlllister’s fine Provincial Wagons kits: an NCC ‘brown’ van and a GNR loco coal wagon. Lovely models! 

[Patrick Davey]

Provincial Wagons NCC brown van and GNR(I) loco coal wagon complete, with just the decals to go, which is my least favourite part of it because I seem to have less patience and poorer fine motor skills for this job these days….

The instructions for the brown van encourage the builder to add the supplied brake shoes as they apparently make a big difference to the finished model so that made me determined to master them but I had to admit defeat after a lot of expletives were uttered.

The eyesight and fine motor skills really aren't what they were....

Maybe I'll add the decals next year......

 

Edited November 6, 2022 by Patrick Davey

[jhb171achill]

26 minutes ago, Patrick Davey said:

Provincial Wagons NCC brown van and GNR(I) loco coal wagon complete, with just the decals to go, which is my least favourite part of it because I seem to have less patience and poorer fine motor skills for this job these days….

The instructions for the brown van encourage the builder to add the supplied brake shoes as they apparently make a big difference to the finished model so that made me determined to master them but I had to admit defeat after a lot of expletives were uttered.  The eyesight and fine motor skills aren't what they were it seems.

Maybe I'll add the decals next year......

 

You do realise that without a wagon number, Mr Weaver will kick up hell!

[Patrick Davey]

I had a decision to make regarding the turnout control on Brookhall Mill.  There are only three turnouts, and not being electrically-minded, I wanted to keep all the electrics as simple as possible so I was considering some form of mechanical solution.  One of my modeller mentors had previously offered to wire the turnouts for me but then with lockdown etc I got impatient and kept building the scenery and buildings etc and thought that this would make it tricky to work on the electrics (I know now that this isn't the case as the baseboard is quite deep and can easily stand up on its side).

Anyway I seem to have found a mechanical solution, a bit rough 'n' ready but it seems to be working!

 

An 8mm wooden dowel, with a short length of brass tube inserted at one end which has a 1mm Peco turnout pin soldered inside; a drawer knob at the other end:

 

 

The dowel assembly is positioned under the layout, after an 8mm hole is drilled in the baseboard side and screw eyes provided:

 

The knob (behave in the back row) is on the outside of the baseboard side:

 

And...... it works!

 

 

It certainly is rough but it works, and as the three knobs (stop the sniggering) are very close together, they can all be accessed without having to move from the operating position.

So the next stage is to set the layout up for a running session tomorrow and to find out if I have destroyed the electrics......

 

 

 

[popeye]

It's basically underground point rodding.