4mm The Harboro Stone Co.

[Dave]

Hi Dave how are you making your corrugated iron? The building looks great.

Michael

Hi Michael,

Sheets of corrugated aluminium. I can't remember the supplier. I cut a strip and then punch in the representations of bolt heads using a blunted pin, held in a pin vice. The strip is then cut into individual pieces that are glued on to the card shell of the building.

In situ.

I have been thinking about the working loader again. The previously built hopper will be used but in its current state the door will be too far under the building for loading to be observed. There isn't enough height to build a chute to direct the load forward, where it can be observed, that will work by gravity alone so a shaker deck, powered by a small motor, will* allow the stone to move on a shallower angle. It can then fall just inside the sheeting, where loading is easily observed.

* I shouldn't really say that it will as none of these things have worked properly yet. Let's say that it could, or it may work. Fingers crossed...

 

[michael mott]

Thanks Dave.

Michael

 

[Dave]

The Fiddle Yard.

Three tracks that traverse on a ballbearing drawer runner that was cut in half. Power is fed to the tracks through copper tape and wires that are soldered to the fixed part of the runners. Wires connect the moving parts of the runners to the rails. As it's DCC all tracks are live at the same time anyway.

The lower track is a simple plug in track. This is the quarry track, where I will load wagons, so if there is any spillage it is easy to clear up with the track removed.

 

[Dave]

At last! Something to show that isn't bits of wood or hoppers that don't work.

For the first time I have had the layout and FY set up together and working. I ran a few wagons up and down and took some snaps of the motive power.

Ceridwen has worked in various guises on four of my layouts so far. The name was bestowed on it when it was new for a Welsh colliery layout and although the engine has been altered twice it has retained the name. It started off as Dodo, one of the first release of Hornby's W4 Peckett models. I dropped the footplate, lowered the chimney, fitted larger buffer heads and repainted her for use on another layout but for the tight clearances of the tunnel on Harboro Stone I have cut the chimney still further and have also lowered the safety valves.


This as yet unnamed Peckett also has larger buffer heads but was fitted with buffing blocks for use with chaldrons and contractors' wagons on another layout. The latest modifications were to lower the cab height and also the safety valves and chimney for the tunnel on Harboro Stone.

 

[NHY 581]

Hi Dave,

Where are you sourcing the double F buffers.......?

Rob.

 

[Dave]

Hi Dave,

Where are you sourcing the double F buffers.......?

Rob.

Hi Rob. I made the heads on the pantograph. I stuck the Hornby bufffers in the lathe and bored a hole into them for a length of 1mm brass tube to be soldered in to centralise the new heads and then soldered the heads on and filed the wire flush.

 

[NHY 581]

Thanks, Dave. Very effective.

Rob

 

[Dave]

@NHY 581 Rob, did you post that SAE to me for the buffer heads? Nothing's arrived yet.

I have made a loader that works. There are however two drawbacks.


1) it makes continuous noise whilst in operation.

2) the spout where the stone comes out is just inside the building.

The noise is from a motor with an off-balance flywheel. This causes the spout to vibrate. Without vibration the stone simply sits in the spout, blocking it. This means there are no working parts at all. No doors, hinges, anything where stone rubs on anything that can cause a jam. It also means that as soon as the power is cut the flow of stone stops instantly. The flow is also gradual and so there's no great dumping of the load that can overflow or not be stopped immediately. It works and has been rigged up in the building but only operated on the bench. I need to see how noisy it is on the layout. If it transmits too much vibration to the baseboard, or makes enough noise to drown out the sound in the engines then it's back to square one.

The spout problem is simply an aesthetic thing. It looks a bit odd filling a wagon when only the first third of it is actually under the building. Obviously as the wagon is moved to get an even load it ends up with all of it under the building, so I guess it's just one of those compromises I'll have to live with. The only reason it is so near the end of the building is so the loading can be observed and getting around that is where all this nonsense with complicated loading systems started.

Another thing that needs to be done is to build up the scenery at the loader end. I was planning on having a low-relief workshop building at the end but that sort of thing never really works well from all viewing angles and so I have decided to have trees as the backdrop. Large trees don't grow in solid rock, so the ground needs to be brought up at the near side of the headshunt cutting.

I will add smaller trees and bushes to make it appear as it it's the edge of woodland.

 

[NHY 581]

@NHY 581 Rob, did you post that SAE to me for the buffer heads? Nothing's arrived yet.

Evening Dave.

Um............I decided to hold off posting due to postal strike.....and it then promptly slipped my mind.

I shall get it off to you tomorrow. Thanks for the reminder....

Rob.

 

[Rob R]

I wouldn't worry about the noise too much. Real stone crushing plants are really really noisy.
If it is too much then try mounting the whole shebang on some foam pads and lining the inside of the building with foam if you have space (and access).
Rob

 

[Dave]

I wouldn't worry about the noise too much. Real stone crushing plants are really really noisy.
If it is too much then try mounting the whole shebang on some foam pads and lining the inside of the building with foam if you have space (and access).
Rob

Absolutely but the sound of a little motor buzzing away isn't the same as a full size crushing plant. It's just annoying and something I'd rather avoid. It is tolerable and doesn't drown out the sound of a stationary steam engine and certainly not the sound of a diesel.

 

[Dave]

The unmetalled road has gained some greenery and railings. I didn't like the look of any available proprietary items so I made my own. They're supposed to look like something made by a local blacksmith, rather than any kind of railway company fencing. The rails are brass wire and the posts are milled brass.

 

[Dave]

I haven't done much on the layout itself but have instead been working on yet another engine (well, you can never have too many!) to add to the roster. Of course it has to be able to fit through the tunnel...

I started by pulling all of the bodywork off another Hornby W4 Peckett. The buffer beams, cab, chimney, dome, smokebox door and front all came off. Then I sawed and filed away two areas of the footplate.


The reason for the footplate cutting is evident in this picture.

The chimney is the original with about 5mm chopped out of its height but the cab and front buffer beam are 3D prints. The cab is courtesy of James Hilton, of Planet Industrials and is a test print of a yet to be released cab kit that is based on various prototype Pecketts that had dropped footplates, including Greenhithe.

 

[Dave]

Over the weekend I got the Peckett finished; cosmetically at least. It has no motor at the moment but as I can't get a decoder due to shortages, I can't get it running anyway. On the layout itself I got the weigh cabin planted and a dry stone wall along the length of the layout at the rear.

 

[Dave]

A shed extension has been added.


And the flimsy plastic legs that the main building stood on have been replaced by a frame, made of milled brass H-section. This is firmly fixed to the baseboard to avoid gaps between it and the ground cover. The building sits on the frame. Another frame has been made to run between the tracks as it looked a bit empty under there and there is supposed to be several hundred tons of crushers and stone hoppers inside the building, so I reckoned it needed some more support.

 

[Dave]

I'm back to scratching my head and trying to work out how to make something else work. In the first post I showed the board with the freshly-laid track and mentioned that the hole in the board was where wagons would discharge their loads. This is for the internal use wagons coming from the quarry.

I originally intended to use contractors' type side-tipping wagons but the available kits for these (RT Models) aren't designed to actually tip. They are also very heavy, being made of white metal and with the steep gradients, small engines, and the fact that there's a lot of friction with the inside bearings, they would never work on this layout. I decided to use hopper wagons but I haven't been able to come up with a satisfactory method of opening and closing the hopper doors. It would need to be done without manual intervention otherwise they would be derailed easily in this scale.

Another method of unloading is a tippler and I have made working tipplers before but they take up a lot of space, which I don't have here. The other problem is in the operation. They require the train to be split for every tip. That's uncouple the first wagon that has been propelled onto the tippler, draw back the train, tip the wagon, shunt forward, couple up, shunt the next wagon on and then uncouple both the first and third wagons etc. It's a lot of faff which would have to take place right at the back of the layout.

The solution would be a rotary tippler. Make the couplings able to rotate in the headstocks of the wagons and design and set up the tippler so the axis is along the centre line of the coupling. The photo below shows the kind of tippler I'm describing, only that one isn't centred on the coupling.

The thing that's got me scratching my head is how to make it work. The prototypes were often fitted with a huge ring gear that I assume engages with a pinion, gearbox and electric motor but I have neither the know how or machine tools to make one for the model. Without such a gear I don't know how I could make it rotate.

 

[simond]

Make your drum from wood, plastic, whatever, and use a toothed belt to make the gear?

 

[Chris Veitch]

Without such a gear I don't know how I could make it rotate.

My suggestion would be to keep the mechanism simple and maybe just drive the drum with a hidden rubber wheel against one of the rings, and add a cosmetic toothed ring. A stop on the circumference of the ring could index it to return to the horizontal accurately enough. Representing the ring might be tricky and possibly a custom 3D print might be the best way - after all, it’s not a complex shape.

Incidentally I’ve just picked up on this thread and really like the presentation, especially the restricted clearance tunnel. It’s an aspect often modelling in narrow gauge but not in standard, where it was quite common in industrial locations.

I'm usually not keen on "micro layouts" but this has just the right proportions to it.

 

[Dave]

Thanks for the replies. Before I have a go at the tippler I thought I'd have another go at the hoppers. The trial hopper used a plasticard door and the hinge wasn't very robust. It used just one door that covered the width of the bottom of the hopper, which meant that when open it fell between the rails. Obviously the wagon could not move with the door open. If I make two smaller doors that will allow the wagon to move with them open and so closing the doors isn't vital as they can be closed manually before refilling in the Fiddle Yard.

It's all made from brass this time. I'm just waiting for the epoxy that fixes the frame to the hopper to set before working out some sort of catch arrangement to hold the doors closed.

 

[Osgood]

Tippler drum - why not use Delrin chain and sprockets?
The cranked link style of chain is exactly the same as that used on heavy excavator crawler tracks and rotary drying kilns / aggregate washing barrels where gear rings are not used, and is pretty much the ideal size for something like a 4mm wagon tippler mechanism.
The large chain wheel could easily be made in a set of segments with the complete ring having every second or third tooth as was typical in practice.
Just need to be careful of having slack to avoid jerky movement but that could easily be achieved by use of a well-sprung idler wheel.