SKEW BRIDGE - Attic Layout

[mick]

Thanks Andrew, although the convincing empty wagons is mainly because I'm still in the process of weathering those missing containers. I do like to see some empty wagons within the train though so I might hold some of them back.

[ba14eagle]

Really enjoyed the intermodal wagons. I would really like to see the sound chip developers make some progress on slowing down acceleration rates. I want to hear more thrash, at lower speeds - particularly in type 5's and bigger.

[mick]

2 hours ago, ba14eagle said:

Really enjoyed the intermodal wagons....

Thanks Iain.

2 hours ago, ba14eagle said:

...I would really like to see the sound chip developers make some progress on slowing down acceleration rates. I want to hear more thrash, at lower speeds - particularly in type 5's and bigger.

I'm not sure there'll ever be a setting that suits everyone but depending on the specific file it's possible to have realistic thrash at low speeds, such as when moving away from a standing start. I quite like the sound of the 66 in the Intermodal video and the sound of one of my class 56's (56049) - both sound realistic enough for my liking. I used to attempt to set the acceleration rates so that I could open the controller to enable maximum thrash and allow the train to accelerate automatically but I find it better with some decoders to manually adjust the loco speed and if present use the notch up setting. I really don't understand enough about it all to delve much further into it than that.

Sound has often been one of the most disappointing aspects of model railways for me, even when it's been obtained from some of the most well known providers out there. It's an awful lot of cash that only very occasionally provides value for money. 

Some of my models are, as I've mentioned elsewhere, 10 or more years old and came with factory-fitted sound when DCC sound was really in its infancy and to be honest I don't see that much has changed since then. My earlier models don't sound that much out of place when compared to my latest and unless we start butchering our models to make room for decent speakers there's going to be little improvement. 

We could of course sell up and purchase the new wave of dedicated DCC sound ready models due for release very soon but I for one am not prepared to do that.

If sound was everything to me then I'd probably have give up entirely by now but at the present time I'm just enjoying what I've got and trying extremely hard, given what we have to play with, to recreate something with a semblance of realism in occasional photos and on video.

[mick]

I'm still trying to grasp this 'focus bracketing'.  My main problem is getting clear access to parts of the layout as there are so many roof timbers in the way making things extremely awkward.

I was probably a bit too close to the rear of the signal with this one as I've failed to get it in sharp focus and midway between the signal and the front of the loco there's a blurred area running horizontally across the tracks. 

This ones not too bad with plenty of sharpness throughout the photo.

 

 

[mick]

Some steady progress today but not something that might be quite so noticeable on videos.

I've been putting off painting the rail sides in the sidings for quite some time so I decided today would be the day as the bright silver was beginning to irk me. It was out with a small brush and some brown paint, a steady hand, and 45 minutes or so of painting. I don't know what all the fuss was about - it's now done. Not only that but the sidings were just too clean for my liking so they've now been covered in coal dust and at this moment in time I've had to leave things alone while the PVA has had time to dry.

Once it has dried I'll add some vegetation between the tracks at various intervals.

I'm unable to run any trains on the inner (down) mainline for now because I don't have an empty road in the storage yard and there are two trains removed from the sidings standing on the scenic section while the glue dries. I really wish I could see an easy way to add some additional storage yards - another six or so would be really useful.

This morning I took quite a few video clips of trains, mainly coal trains, working in and out of the sidings. I'm not sure how entertaining they will be on video because each movement takes some time to acccomplish when you're trying to keep to a realistic speed but that's the kind of movements I was most used to and they did take forever sometimes, especially when propelling into the yard while it was chucking it down with rain.

One thing I do regret is installing some points as 'dead frog' rather than my usual live frog. I'm not sure why I did it, probably to make things easy for myself, but it was bad judgement and although cleaning the point blades takes a mere minute or so it's still something I would rather not have to do everytime I need them to work faultlessly such as on video. Most of the time they're okay but just occasionally they play up. Modifying them now that they are in place is going to be a lot of hassle. Take my advice and stay on the live frog route.

[mick]

I've been trying to work out how best to manage my class 56 locomotives so that I can swap them around without needing to purchase a whole load of sound decoders. I don't need them all on the layout at any one time so occasionally it would be an idea to just change loco bodies over. There are two or three things that I need to keep in mind..

1. The loco bodies that originally came on 8-pin chassis, which are the most numerous ones in my collection, don't work correctly on a 21-pin chassis, i.e, there no lights so obviously something to do with negative and positive wired.

2. Some loco's have round buffers, others have oval ones.

3. Some loco's have red bufferbeams

I think I've probably got enough sound fitted ones but they don't all sound great so maybe reblows would be an idea.

Today I've started adding some weathering to 3 of the loco bodies

56013, my only plain BR Blue example. Needs bufferbeam details and the rear coupling sorting out as the Kadee sits too high. I do like this livery!

56128 'West Burton Power Station'. I've got a few of these coal livery ones and I was hoping to put this body on a spare sound-fitted 56127 but this one is 8-pin and 56127 is 21-pin so no working lights.

56059 is my only EWS liveried  one. I need to go round cleaning the overspill from around the windows - most people just mask them off but not me!

I've been working on the 3 individual chassis' all day trying to get them running smoothly at low speed as they're a bit jumpy. They've been running on a rolling road non-stop but it hasn't made a great deal of difference yet.

In addition to the above I also have 56006 in Loadhaul, 56040 in Railfreight, and 56084 in large logo BR blue and fortunately they all run nice and smoothly.

Edited January 22, 2022 by mick

[mick]

Just a quick phone camera photo this evening.

It's late in the evening as EWS liveried 60048 hauls a heavy steel coil train past Skew Bridge. The sidings are busy with 56127 and 66068 having just propelled their trains into the yard while 60007 is waiting to depart with MGR empties.

I have some spare class 56 loco number transfers and so I've managed to remove the numbers from my spare 56127 loco body in readiness for renumbering. I also cleaned off the weathering paint overspill from a few cab windows, managing in the process to push a door window out on 56059. It never rains...

The sidings are now dry after the scattering of coal dust and PVA glue. I just had to tidy up a few places where particles had stuck to the rail sides making travel a bit bumpy.

Edited January 22, 2022 by mick

[mick]

This is a video I uploaded a few days ago but never got round to making it public as I wasn't sure the pace would be to everyones liking. It does however show the type of movements that were frequently carried out when coal was an important and valuable commodity.

Until the railways came to their senses drivers of coal trains from certain depots would take their loaded trains to a stabling yard or sidings further down the line, detach it, and pick up an empty set of wagons for their return journey. Another driver from another depot would then collect that loaded set, take it to a local power station for discharge before returning the empty wagons back to the sidings, or perhaps take it for loading at a local colliery. It created an almost non-stop stream of movements into and out of local sidings, detaching one set to attach another and so on. Simply crazy at the time!

Later on it became more usual for a driver to work a train from its originating colliery or loading point directly through to the power station for discharge before returning home with the empty wagons cutting out many of those senseless and unnecessary movements.

Anyway, in a much smaller scale but no less tedious....

 

[mick]

Over the past week or so I've taken a fair number of video clips on Skew Bridge so that I've always got some in reserve but I've now got so many that it's a headache trying to sort through them and to put videos together with some kind of order to them. I don't want to upload too often because I think people will just get fed up of seeing them but it's nice to do an occasional video even if only as a record of progress for myself.

I had a derailement this afternoon involving 56127 and some MGR wagons. It was unusual because I don't have many derailments and the ones I do have are almost always operator error such as forgetting to set the correct points! Anyway 56127 still has the Hornby close coupler mechanism although I have restricted it's sideways movement by gluing in some plastic stops. It's fitted with a Kadee coupling but it's the same old problem in that they can sag or droop due to the flimsy coupling mechanism and once they do it seems to force the opposing coupling in the opposite direction with one riding above the other and they become a tangled mess.

So I removed the Hornby close coupler from a spare class 56 body entirely - it's now gone. In it's place I've glued a piece of plastic to act as a base for a NEM mount and NEM pocket. The base and NEM mount when fitted with the Kadee coupling are almost spot on with the Kadee height gauge without needing to make any further adjustments. It's now much more sturdy with very little vertical movement but still with sufficient sideways movement to get through the points and curves. It seems to work fine, and I've already run it with a full rake of MGRs in both directions, so I've done 56127 in similar fashion and left it to dry fully.

The first one took me about an hour or so while I worked out what to do and how. The second probably 20 minutes. If everything's okay tomorrow I will definitely consider doing the remaining 56's.

One further point which I think I've mentioned before is that the NEM coupling pockets on MGR wagons have lots of play in them so that when you insert a coupling, either standard tension lock or in my case a Kadee, there's a lot of vertical play. I insert the coupling and then pack out the space beneath the coupling prongs (I've used blutac) to prevent this so that the coupling is solid and remains at the same height all the time. With that and the modifed coupling mount on the 56 they are much improved.

Todays photo is another quick snap with my phone camera due to the fact that I noticed the un-weathered Dapol FEA spine wagons and thought perhaps it's time they had some weathering too, especially now the Intermodals have been done. 70001 is non-sound fitted and to be honest not a locomotive that actually fits in with what I'm trying to do but it does make alternative power for the container trains though being a bit lightweight I doubt very much that it would manage the full Intermodal rake. 

[mick]

You should be able to make out the Dapol FEA wagons standing in the down loop. I'm pleased to say these have now been weathered or at least the base coat of frame dirt has been applied.

What I'm not so pleased about is the fact that some of them are cracked! Doesn't look too serious at the moment but I've just had a look online and yes, it appears that since early 2021 there have been a good number of reports of Dapol spine wagons cracking. At first I thought it was just a scratch down the base of the chassis and thought no more about it but now I am aware that there's a problem similar to the earlier mazak problem that affected some locos. I've had these wagons for some years (first purchased in 2011) so I doubt there's anything anyone would be willing to do about it now but when I go back up into the attic I need to check them carefully again and see just how many of them are affected.

In addition to the chassis I have base weathered all but two of the containers - believe me when I say I'd had enough and couldn't manage the final two.

I've posted a b&w version of the following photo in the Gallery section but here's the original colour image of 60007 and the Gypsum wagons. I've erased the roof timbers by expanding the skyline and copying trees from the embankment opposite. I really do need to get round to adding some driver figures.

And here's a similar photo but of 60048 and the BDA/BAA steel coil wagons.

 

 

Edited January 23, 2022 by mick

[mick]

I've just been up into the attic to check on the Dapol spine wagons and see what the damage is and fortunately, as bad as it is, it could perhaps have been worse. I only have four cracked chassis out of the 14 in my collection.

And as perhaps an indication as to where the problem lies....

...the four are actually in numbered pairs 640213 & 640214 along with 640353 & 640354.

The Dapol spine wagons were sold in pairs :

640213/640214 was catalogue number: Dapol B724C

640353/640354 was catalogue number: Dapol B724D

None of my other spine wagons appear to be affected (as yet?)

I'll add some additional photos in my original post reviewing these wagons a few years back. 

 

Edited January 24, 2022 by mick

[Riddles]

1 hour ago, mick said:

The Dapol spine wagons were sold in pairs :

640213/640214 was catalogue number: Dapol B724C

640353/640354 was catalogue number: Dapol B724D

None of my other spine wagons appear to be affected (as yet?)

I'm pleased to say that my GBRf 640623/640624, Dapol B913A are also unaffected!

After reading your report I was a little concerned as I had bought them at Dapol's open day off their "Not Quite Perfect" table in 2014. As far as I can see it's still only the box that's NQP.

[mick]

2 hours ago, Riddles said:

I'm pleased to say that my GBRf 640623/640624, Dapol B913A are also unaffected!....

That's good to hear Dave and a relief to yourself I'm sure.

These are the catalogue numbers of the remaining sets I have that appear to be unaffected:

Dapol B724F (640221 & 640222), B724M (640709 & 640710), B724N x2 (640499 & 640500), B913C (640163 & 640164) - all in Freightliner green livery.

[mick]

I've just about got the FEA wagons sorted, weathered, and put back together. There's some touching up to do and areas of weathering that I've missed which is evident in some of the following photos but I'm not far off. At least the four cracked vehicles appear to run okay. I've run a line of superglue along the cracks but I'm not sure if that was a wise thing to do or whether it will even make any difference. I just want them to hold together for a few more years.

Here's 66552 hauling the newly released rake.

And some of the weathered containers

I only have the final two small containers to add plus another small one that I've already done but haven't yet fitted so there's going to be a number of empty spaces. Looking at the price of additional containers it might stay that way for the time being.

Finally, my log wagons have arrived and I couldn't resist posing some behind 60087 'CLIC Sargent'. I'm going to be busy cutting little twigs for the foreseeable future. First impresssion are extremely favourable and they run ever so smoothly which is going to be important by the time they are fully loaded. Don't hold your breath with this one.

 

 

Edited January 24, 2022 by mick

[mick]

Mick's for the CHOP!

That's right, I've made a start on chopping up twigs to make loads for the log carriers and I've got plenty of twigs to be going on with. This isn't even half of my supplies!

I've begun by cutting them to size with a Stanley knife so that I can get 5 stacks of logs per wagon. The twigs are a mixture of fuschia, astilbe, conifer and whatever else I could lay my hands on during pruning over the past year or two that looked right. The conifer cuttings look really nice but it's difficult to get many of a suitable thickness that look the part as they tend to be a bit knobbly. I intend keeping the most suitable ones for using on the visible sections of the loads but a general mix of all types looks decent enough too. This is as far as I've got after almost 2 hours! And no, that's not the living room carpet I'm chopping up on - it's in the attic out of the way.

I was a bit concerned about the additional weight of the logs but they actually feel very light indeed. I want to weigh one wagon load to see exactly how much will be added before deciding whether I need to use something even lighter on the inner sections of each load and fasten the outer logs round that to conceal it.

And to think some say I've got very little patience!

 

[mick]

Not as bad as I had anticipated. The timber carriers themselves weigh in at 122g tare while the load of logs adds just under 50g additional weight. There's barely any difference when you pick up a wagon with logs on and one in the other hand without and as I mentioned earlier the wagons are very free running so I'm hoping that weight won't be a problem. The aditional weight in logs is probably equal to another 4-5 wagons which I think would be a doddle but I guess only time will tell.

My wrist hurts!

[mick]

I think this will be my last big project. I can't think of another model that might possibly get released in the future which would tempt me into spending a large sum of money on a complete rake of wagons. This is one that I've really wanted to do even from before these wagons were even anounced as I'd got the bug from doing the smaller OTA log wagons.

All the hard work has been done for me with the production of these fantastic looking, highly detailed wagons and all I have to do now is dirty them up a bit, cut several thousand 4mm scale logs and load them all up.

Most of you will know by now that I'm not really one for ensuring that everything I do or model is prototypically correct. That's a challenge that most modellers are willing to take on but I just like to create a sense of realism, something that just looks right but isn't necessarily correct. When I first saw 60087 hauling the timber carriers through Blea Moor towards the viaduct at Ribblehead I don't think there were many IWA wagons on the train, today that might have changed though 60087 might no longer be the chosen motive power. In my mind that doesn't matter too much and is something I can readily overlook.

So before any work on the IWA's actually begins I've taken this short video of them in their pristine straight from the box condition running on Skew Bridge behind 60048. I did have to loosen several bogie retaining screws to get them running perfectly as they were derailing on curves and points because the bogies were so tight they were unable to swivel properly but that wasn't a big deal.

 

Edited January 26, 2022 by mick

[mick]

I've just worked out that I need to cut approximately 4,500 logs in order to have enough to load the entire train. I'm not sure how many I've managed to do so far but it feels like a lot believe me! The bag on the left are the ones I cut yesterday while the ones in the tub on the right are from today.

When I did the OTA wagons it was just a case of placing the logs in the wagons, but I think this time, having placed some on a wagon as a test, I need to make sure that the most visible logs all have a similar appearance as a multitude of different shades/colours doesn't look quite right. Some of the smoother cut logs also look more like dowel rather than a sawn log. The darkest of all are the conifer cuttings but there aren't a lot of them at the moment and they also look the most realistic but cleaning them off takes time.

[mick]

I took an early break from all the chopping last night feeling a bit disheartened. I was doing a bit of a dry run to see how the logs looked on the wagons and where the additional stanchions supplied with the wagons needing fitting. I reached the conclusion that my logs might be a bit longer than they should be if I was to model the wagons I've actully seen but if I were to make them shorter then they wouldn't quite fit where the stanchions should be fitted according to some online images.

So I've done a bit more searching online and it does actually appear that logs come in different cut lengths. Some wagons have 5 longer stacks while others have 6 shorter. Indeed, I have a photo that shows 4 stacks of one length with an additional shorter stack at one end of the wagon. I was concerned that I'd done all that chopping and made them all too long but perhaps it's all okay. On one hand I'm wondering if it really matters that much whether there's 5 stacks or 6 per wagon and yet on the other hand I'd like to feel I haven't made a glaring error.

In addition I also feel that my logs are too clean and smooth whereas in reality they are actually quite rough. Again, is that something I should worry about? Is there something I can do to make them appear rougher and darker? I know that the conifer cuttings look better but there's just so much work necessary to remove all those little bits of greenery sprouting out along them.

Anyway I do feel a bit better about it all this morning so I'll see what I make of it once I get up in the attic. Perhaps I just need to cut them to the length that suits me best, load them as best I can and arrange the better coloured ones on the most visible sides with the stanchions placed accordingly because it seems that's how it's done anyway.

[mick]

Here's one of the wagons I did a trial loading on last night with some of the additional 'later' type stanchions in place. 

It's impossible to judge when looking at the wagon directly whether you've got it right so the best way to do it is to take photographs. I think the logs to the left are slightly too large in diameter whereas the ones on the right look much more convincing although the size of logs did vary a great deal but for general stacks the smaller ones look better in my opinion.

Colourwise I think the darker brown they are the better. Some appear a bit too light in colour whereas one or two appear to have a reddish tinge which is enehanced further in the photos by the attic lighting. Looks like I will need to sort them out accoring to both size and colour and take some time arranging them when it comes to the actual loading process.