7mm Whitaker's Tramway

[Dave]

A post by Jordan, in the Heyside thread, reminded me of when I built a bridge with individual bricks, cut from Slater's plasticard. It was on my 7mm narrow gauge (O14) layout Whitaker's Tramway that I built between 1995 and 1999.


The bridges. To the left is a corrugate iron-lined concrete arch from the gravel pits and to the right is the brick arch from the clay pit.


The pugmill (based on one at Barton on Humber) and drying sheds at the brickworks.


The loco repair shop at the gravel works with Ruston and Motor Rail locomotives in residence.


The outdoor forge with repair work being carried out on a Hudson skip chassis.

The pictures aren't messed with in Photoshop, they really were taken on Ilford B&W film!

I've got more photos and will write a bit more about it if anyone's interested.

 

[dltaylor]

Splendid layout Dave, and I've seen those pictures before, did they appear in The Review at some stage?
Cheers, Dave.

 

[Dave]

Splendid layout Dave, and I've seen those pictures before, did they appear in The Review at some stage?
Cheers, Dave.

Thanks. Yes, it was in the NG&IRMR twice. I wrote an article on the loco fleet and their construction and one on the layout itself.

More pics.

The Hoffman kiln at the brickworks. It was all done with plasticard brickwork (though not all individual bricks this time!) and Duncan Models corrugated iron roofing. I'd taken some photos of the kiln at the Normanton Brick Co. and scaled off counting the number of brick courses.


Rather like my current standard gauge projects I built lots of locos and just used a few different ones, although the workshops were meant to be a central repair depot for locos from the company's other works and pits in the area.
This picture shows a mid-194os style 44/48HP Ruston & Hornsby loco that was scratchbuilt (with the exception of the Wrightlines cast buffer block and axleboxes) and powered by a Wrightlines bogie.


As an alternative to the Hudson skips (Roy Link kits) I scratchbuilt some Hudson saddleback cars for the gravel works line. the loco is another scratchbuild on a Wrightlines bogie, this time a Motor Rail 7-ton 60S type.


This one really doesn't belong on a West Yorkshire line at all. It's more at home in a Welsh slate mine as it's Ruston w/n 198297. At the time I owned the real one so I had to model it.

 

[queensquare]

Some cracking stuff, really atmospheric modelling.

Jerry

 

[Dave]

The last four.

An overall view of the gravel plant. Top left is the 60S with the saddleback wagons, over the tipping grid. Any really large boulders would be prevented from entering the hopper by the grid.

The gravel then travels up the conveyor to a primary grader, where oversize is dumped into a crusher below (the output of the crusher being caught in an end-tipping skip and returned to the grid) and the rest into the rotary washer. Here mud and general detritus are washed from the gravel and pumped to the centrigugal cone washer (out of sight in this pic, behind rotary washer) to seperate saleable sand from the rubbish, with the gravel coming out of the end onto another conveyor belt up to the screen for final grading into three sizes to the hoppers. Of course non of this actually worked but it was all set out as per the real thing.


33/40HP Ruston. This is a Wrightlines kit but the frames have been altered. As bought the kit has the frame extensions for locos of over 2-foot gauge. I guess this was before 014 was invented and 0-16.5 was the norm. I could have simply left the frame and regauged the bogie but I left the extensions off and filled the gaps with a low-melt solder before filing the whole lot flush.

Other details include filing off the front radiator air intake grilled and drilling the front so a fan could be fitted. The sides of the engine compartment were removed and a representation of the 3VRO engine made from plasticard, with injector pipes from copper wire.


An Orenstein & Koppel diesel heading out to one of the pits with a PW train.


12HP Ruston with a fuel train for the excavator in the clay pit. The loco is scratchbuilt on a Roy Link chassis.

I have more pics but they're mostly the same but from different viewpoints so I won't post any more.

I sold the layout in 2007 or 2008, I can't remember now. Anway, it now belongs to a fellow called Michael Delamar. I don't think he's done anything with it and it's stored at some club rooms or other. I kept all the lcoos and rolling stock, so I could do something else in narrow gauge but it's unlikely.

 

[Jon Gwinnett]

Cracking layout. Any colour shots? Michael Delamar is active in another place, wonder if he has any plans to revive it one day?

(Edited to deal with stupid ipad autocorrect)

 

[Dave]

Sorry, Jon, I never took any colour pics. I think Michael intends to revive it but I don't think that even he knows when.

 

[Jon Gwinnett]

No worries, I always wished I took more photos of Chagford before it was dismantled.

 

[Osgood]

Very neat idea using an old WD diesel electric power plant to power the gravel plant! Was this from a photo of an actual plant or your own idea?

 

[Dave]

It was my own idea. I bought the Dick Kerr loco as a body only, for a fiver, at a show and as they were a petrol-electric I thought it would have made an ideal self-contained generator to add interest to the plant.

I think the real things were sometimes used by the WDLR as stationary power plants but not with the wheels removed, obviously.

Just to compare the model with the real thing, here's Ruston 198297 not long after I'd finished lining it. Lining the real thing is much easier than the model, which explains why the model is unlined.


The box on the back is an exhaust conditioner, which contained water, through which the exhaust gases were passed to dissolve the aldehydes (the stuff that makes your eyes water and your throat sore) in order to allow it to work underground. It was proper Ruston kit but had been bodged on to fit for use in an explosives store during the war.

The store was the former Croesor slate mine in N. Wales but the loco was originally built, in 1939, for use on the contract to extend the docks at Avonmouth. AFAIK the loco ceased work at Croesor in 1971 and remained underground until it was rescued by Rich Morris in 1979. From then on it sat in the loco display at Gloddfa Ganol until that closed and all the locos were autioned off in 1998. That's when I bought it and took it to the Moseley Railway Trust's store in Whaley Bridge and returned it to working order.

The pic was taken in 2000 and was the first time it had run for almost 30 years.

 

[halfwit]

Dave in print;
'Whitakers Tramway' NG&IRMR 38
'A 7mm Scale Diesel Locomotive Stud' NG&IRMR 33

Funny what you find whilst looking for something completely unrelated.