Clearing up the list

Let’s go through the list, tick off the things to do, then add some more, and then do them too.

Rusted rails on the deck and the tipper activator.

The legs look good. They create the impression that something is there,
but are not too noticeable

The legs that support the delivery chute were a task that took quite some time. As this is a last minute addition and not really planned, it had to fit the space available, and the stock had to stay clear of the legs. My LocoRemote “Amberley” Brush electric is the widest of my locos, and has given me some issues with the location of the “return bumper” that rights the skip buckets. So everything was measured against this.

My stock of Evergreen styrene yielded enough girder, tube and rod to construct it. Though as I say, the measuring, cutting and gluing took a lot of time to get everything to clear the stock and work smoothly. But it’s there now. A spray of a dark green colour hides it in the shadows. It creates the impression that something is there, but doesn’t overpower things and draw attention to the offstage area.

Yesterday I mentioned how I would add more weeds and the like to add to the overgrown feel. I also said I’d use grass tufts to help in the accurate locating of the bin. I’ve made a good start on that. But, it’s no exaggeration to say that weeds grow everywhere of course. 

Weeds help position the bin in the same place every time. 
More weeds needed yet, but you get the idea.

Things are starting to feel anti-climactic hereabouts. Thoughts have turned towards another layout project…

Tipping Talk Three

 The cliffhanger from the last post was intentional…

Things had gone pretty well with the tipping part of the sequence. But I had paid absolutely no attention to what was going to happen after the bucket had been emptied. The way I had set the rail up, it was fouling against the frame of the skip chassis, derailing it, as I shoved it past the tipping point.

"No problem." I thought. It would just be some simple twisting and bending of the rail until it cleared the frame. But it wasn't as easy as that. As I twisted the rail in one angle, it changed the slope so that the rail didn't tip the bucket any more. Another twist and it tipped the bucket too early, another and it tipped too late. All very frustrating. Then even more frustrating, the rail fractured and broke as a result of all the twisting. It was at this point I took a break and published the previous post complete with abrupt cliff hanger, I was that frustrated.

After a couple of cups of tea and a few pieces of Kendal Mint Cake, I felt refreshed enough to try again.  It took quite a while to get it right, but I got there in the end. I was also much more careful with my bending and twisting of the rail.

The redesign progressed slowly

Much testing was done with the tipper to make sure it functioned OK and that there was enough clearance. In fact, I’m still testing it out daily.

Test runs look good as you can see, and yes I still have to add a bumper to return the buckets to their proper position. I haven't decided quite where that's going yet as I like to see a short train of skips in the tipped position wending their way down the layout. 

I’m gradually feeing better about all the work I’ve done and all the problems I’ve been through. A chute is still a likely addition to stop any overspill, as you just can’t trust how the material will tip into the bin. 

One little detail I’m quite pleased with is the addition of the figure at the tipping point. He looks like he’s about to operate a lever to actuate the tipping mechanism.

Terry the tipper man.

So there we are, it has taken the better part of three days to get this working well enough. The hobby is full of ups and downs and I’ve just had my fair share.

Tipping Talk Two

 Over the past few weeks I have been giving thought to how the skips should be emptied. Should I do it manually, or should I attempt some kind of automagical system using an actuation rail to tip the buckets? 

I made a little “pusher” that would hide away at the base of the shelter. But it was something that would have to be moved out of the way whenever I needed to empty the sand bin underneath the tipper. 

The unremarkable, yet quite functional “pusher”

Besides, it was easy to make. Too easy. Considering that I have been challenging myself every step of the way in this project, I began to think that I should at least try to build an automatic system. I had watched Giles Favell’s automation videos on YouTube many times and studied his tipper videos in great depth working out how made his work and how I could translate that to my model . 

I could find no technical details out there on optimum ramp lengths and angle of the rail for tipping. So I winged it. I guess many people might be doing the same, as there were almost as many different systems as there was modellers producing them. I set about doing some thinking and measuring. It was clear that there were two important dimensions for the actuation rail.

The position the rail starts to tip the skip (A on this sketch), and the position when the skip is fully tipped (B). The tipping rail also had to be angled over the track to enable the skip bucket to tip fully. 

I found some code 83 rail and started bending. There’s no other way to describe it other than trial and error. I didn’t need a steep angle on the rail as that would have resulted in a quick “tip” I wanted something a bit slower. I think I was pretty lucky in getting something that I was happy with relatively easily. Perhaps I would not have persevered with it had I struggled. 

These pictures show how the rail worked during tests.

As I worked on the rail I decided it needed some bracing to hold it at the correct angle over the track, as it is not particularly stable. The overhang of the rail over the track makes it want to lean over. If I added a brace hooking over the deck that would add some rigidity. 

It’s an odd looking spidery thing

In location

After a little adjustment of the rail, the skip tipped directly into the centre of the bin, with no overspill

For a while there I was feeling really pleased with myself and then…
. 

Day 19. Dodged a bullet

I had an enforced long break for the layout over the past four days. I had the not most pleasant prep for a routine surgery. Most I think will know what I’m talking about. It basically entails overdosing on laxatives… 

Anyway, today it was back to business as usual. The plan being to add long static grass to the layout. So I stripped everything off it and set to work.

You always think that when you have put things out of the way. That you’ve put them WELL out of the way. Nowhere near where you’ll be when working on your task. 

Then you go over to where you’d left something. The tipping dock for example, and forget that it’s there.

And…

Well let’s just say I was not a happy camper as I heard it hit the floor. The air was not blue, just silent as a wave of shock and disbelief that this had happened, rushed over me.

I dared not look though, lest I burst into tears thinking about all the work I had put into this centerpiece structure.

But I would have to look sometime…

Oh.

That’s not too bad.

I had expected to see it smashed into smithereens. Hand rails and legs all reduced to their consistent parts. 

It wasn’t. 

I don’t know if it was due to my constructional techniques or what. But the damage was manageable. None of the legs were reduced to their component parts, and only four handrails had become detached from the posts. Some of them still had the locating pins in place. Enabling me to easily fix everything back together. I lost one post. But I had several spares on hand.

Fixing the damage

I shall take my time fixing it. But it could have been so much worse.

As for the static grass. That’s not looking too bad either.

This is starting to look like neglected, industrial permanent way

Only my second attempt at static grass but looking promising

We live to work another day.

Day 18 This is where we’re at.

Buoyed up with confidence over the mocked up look of the top end from yesterday, (and finding more fine leaf foliage) I set to and worked on finalizing the scenery for the loader end of the layout. Things are coming along quite nicely. So I decided to put everything together so to speak, and see how it looks as a whole…

Looking good, but a bit clean around the loading chute.Much detritus needed.

Nice visual. Train passes between gaps in foreground objects

This is well on the way to looking like sand quarry trackage

Even a simple bit of detritus like a wrecked skip chassis adds to the scene

Wether it’s a hut or a sheeted down pile of whatever. This space needs something.

The tipper and bin is already well established. I just need to decide how to model the concrete blocks

Overall view from one end

Overall view from the other

I think that we can agree, everything is coming together pretty well. As the layout stands it’s pretty workable. All it really needs is the details and detritus that an industrial scene would have to pull it all together. 

Then it needs the display case with lighting. 

Then it needs the sector plate, fiddle yard/fiddle stick. 

Then it needs legs. 

Then it needs an extension. 

Wait. I didn’t really say that did I?

Day 14 (or so) Bins

What I really want to be able to do on this layout is to empty the contents of a skip into the back of a truck. A long search, accompanied by helpful advice on the NGRMOnline forum, has sourced some good ideas for suitable builders lorries to receive a load. However, one particular manufacturer is quoting 2 months delivery on an item, While another would appear to be reticent about delivering to the USA. (To be honest, I don’t blame them. The transatlantic mail service is not what it used to be.) So, I’m giving consideration to making a bin to tip into, while I wait for a lorry to arrive from wherever it may be. 

From the outset I’ve been considering the concept of tipping different grades of sands or gravels into different bins. I thought perhaps three at the start, now I think only two different grades would be needed. To that end, I started to mock up the size of bin that would be needed. I’ve no idea how this feature would translate into 16mm scale so mock ups are a must.

Mocking up the bin

As you can see, once you add the Land Rover and a bin, the area starts to fill up. I think I could only get away with the one bin on the layout. A few millimeters here and there in the size of the bin are going to  make all the difference. Proportions of height to width, are important. If you make it too tall and thin it’s going to look flimsy and like the walls could collapse under the weight of sand. Too short and fat and the sand or gravel will spill out of the bin as the amount tipped into the bin increases. 

How much gravel/sand will a bin hold? How much spillage outside the bin will there be?

A mock up and test is needed.

The bin holds a lot of sand/gravel

Successful tipping experiments

What this tells me is that despite the long drop there is no overspill. Perhaps as the bin fills up the chance of material ending up outside the receptacle would increase but right now I’ve emptied 6 skip loads into this bin and there’s no overspill. I’ve also run out of fine buff ballast so I can’t add more. I think that’s a success.

I’ll add a handle to the back of the bin so I can easily slide it rearwards off the layout to be emptied or perhaps even change it out with a lorry when it is full. All in all, a successful days work.

  

Day 11. Railings

I was pretty nervous about this project, so I spent quite a bit of time working out the best way to complete it. 

In smaller scales of course, you just go out and buy some fencing to suit. If there’s anything in 16mm scale I couldn’t find it. So scratch building was called for.  

I did my due diligence, researching dimensions and sizes. I wanted to use styrene tube for the posts and rail. In the end it turned out I didn’t have any tube in the size I wanted. I had lots of 2.5mm rod though, and it looked like it looked right. So rod it was. I’d just have to drill a few extra holes, that’s all. These extra holes were going to be in the end of the rod though. But as I had already drilled out rod when working on the exhaust pipe for my “Huddy” I wasn’t phased by that. The first thing I needed was a jig.

Another task, another jig.

Pretty much every job on the layout has needed a jig somewhere to aid its construction. This one was no exception. Sections of strip wood hold the rod in place, and allow me to cut the rod to the correct length. A section of the corrugated sheet that I used for the sleepers had holes drilled in it at the correct distances for the safety rails. This should, in theory, give a batch of identical fence posts, and it pretty much did.

All identical (or pretty close)

A hole was drilled in the end of the fence post, to accept a short length of .75mm rod to locate it in the deck and similar lengths of the rod were placed in the holes on the post to help locate the rails.

From then on, it was pretty simple. Yes you had to be careful, but as all the rods had been cut to the same length and drilled correctly it all went together quite easily. I didn’t even need a jig for this stage of the project. Before long I had a pretty good looking section of safety railing.

First section. Yes, I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself.

The second section was a bit more challenging. But not much. It involved a right angle turn in the railing to enable it to go partly across the end of the deck.

But simply with careful drilling and lining up of the holes the pins were easily placed to make the turn possible.

By now, I’m feeling invincible

Some holes were drilled into the deck and the safety rails were put in place for the first time…

Well, what can I say?

Even the right angle turn worked out.

A quick spray of paint to cover the white and job’s a good’ un

Needless to say. I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself. This is something I’d never needed to do before. It was something that I didn’t have the foggiest idea how to do. There may even have been an easier way to do it. Though I’m not sure that just butt jointing the sections of post and rail together would have resulted in as good a join as I have this way.

The lesson everyone can take away from this is never be afraid to try something out of your comfort zone. 

The eighth day review.

After one week on the project, I thought it would be good to sit back and take a look at what happened in the previous seven days. This is an overall view of all 4’ x 14” of it.

Overall view

Yes. I know that at 4’ x 14” it’s over the four square feet maximum. But putting on my ‘Editor of the Micro Model Railway Dispatch” hat. I’m always happy to give larger scales line 16mm and 7/8ths some leeway. It’s still most definitely “in the spirit of a micro” as Carl would say.

Let’s take a look at the progress of the scenes.

The skip loader in a sand quarry setting. It’s difficult to to put over the effect of a full-blown sand quarry in a couple of square feet. But a few piles of sand will help. As for the “sand”. How do you model it in 16mm scale? 

I’ve no idea, but this is how I’ve started. After I’d covered the contours with spackle, I painted the surface a cream colour, just in case whatever I chose to represent the sand came off exposing the base contours.

The first ground cover was Woodland Scenics “yellow” turf, that looks more like a green. This was sprinkled on a smothering of white glue. Then I ballasted the track with Woodland Scenics buff fine ballast. It’s starting to look OK but some more sand is needed. It feels like Steve Bennett’s early layouts.

The other end of the layout has a totally different feel to it. More conventional in its scenic treatment. There’s going to be a lot of scrub and weeds and such underneath the tipping dock. Right now the two scenes are separated by a retaining wall. It might have some vegetation growing over it, it might help to blend, yet separate the two scenes. I am very inclined to add a small shed of some description leaning against it. But probably not a prefabricated concrete garage.

At the end here, a fence and gate is planned, perhaps with a premises sign. 

The previous two pictures also show the problem with vehicles in this scale. The Land Rover is a small vehicle and yet it’s eight inches (200mm) long. I wouldn’t want a vehicle much longer than this in there. I did find a 1:20 scale toy garbage truck that could probably could have been worked into a lorry. But it was 15” long, as the layout is 14” deep so fitting it in would be rather difficult, if not impossible.

So that’s it then. One weeks work. Still lots to do, but lots to keep me interested.

Oh, one last thing. How did I get the incredibly flimsy tipper shelter to stand up? This rear view should clear things up.

How to stand the shelter up. Extra long legs hidden behind everything

 

 

Day 7

Day seven. Technically that’s one week since the project started. From the outset, I doubted that I could build a 16mm scale layout in the time frame. I’ve come on a long way though. It’s definitely starting to look like a micro layout. How does the old adage go? The last 20% of a layout’s construction takes 80% of the time? I’m getting perilously close to starting on the last 20%.

One thing that has been causing much head scratching has been the shelter for the tipping point. In the photograph I have, the structure looks flimsy. Very flimsy. It looks like it would get blown away in a strong wind. I’ve since had it confirmed to me that these structures were not to the strongest construction. The problem was to be recreating that flimsiness while building a structure that will withstand trips to model railway shows. 

With only one photo to work from and no dimensions. A lot of guesstimation was involved. I had a feeling that to keep things simple, the shelter height was the same as a sheet of corrugated metal (why waste time cutting things?). The standard sheet height was eight feet. The internet also told me that a sheet was about 28” wide. Knowing that there would also be a one and a half corrugations overlap between sheets helped calculate the length. I had some corrugated sheet that looked right and cut it to size. After that, I searched through my stock of styrene girders and found stuff that, once again, looked the right size. There was even more guesswork attached to the roof. But no-one will know. Besides, I probably used the same frame of mind in the construction of my model as the man who built the original.

My take on the tipping shelter. It looks good enough for me.

As for looking flimsy, but being sturdy. I’ve accidentally dropped it a couple of times and it has survived each fall. Job done then.

One job I hadn’t done yet was to bed in the tipping dock. I’m surprised I hadn’t done it as soon as the rails were laid on it. Because that meant I could run a train on there. There’s still lots of work to do on the tipping dock, finishing off the shelter of course, hand rails around the edge and a buffer stop at the end for starters.

But that shouldn’t stop me fitting it in place and trying things out…

You know you wanted to see a run of the train on the layout… 

The Motor Rail uses Chris Rennie’s LocoRemote WiFi system. Right now I’m perfectly happy with it. The big thing is there’s no wires to the track and the rails can be as dirty as you like. The trains will still run.

I suppose that you could say that with trains running and some scenery in place, I have built a layout in seven days…

Day 6

Right now I feel compelled to work on the ground, the contours.

In the smaller scales you can model the ground level in something like a small quarry as flat and get away with it. Maybe a larger bump and rut in a rough road. You could get away with using different grades of  scenic scatter to suggest the unevenness of the ground.

Not so in 16mm scale you can model every bump and rut, every puddle. You could even model every messy footstep in a muddy morass if you so desired. 

I built up lumps and bumps with offcuts of EPS, and cut away the basic shape for my ground contours in the sand loading area and gave it a skim over with lightweight spackle. There’s lots of lumps and bumps and even a pile of sand shaped out. The areas that I cut away might end up being filled with water for puddles.

Shaping the ground on the sand tipper level

The lower level called for something much flatter. So I gave a general, level coverage to the area. Then thickened that up in places and dragged a piece of strip wood through it to simulate tyre tracks, then just because I was feeling silly. I took a figure and childishly walked him through the thick patches to leave footprints. Right now It looks like someone has been out in a snowstorm so I need to add a wash of earth colour to get rid of the snowscape.

Tyre track and footprints in the snow.

After letting the spackle dry for a while the surface was given a base colour to kill the snowscape.

The mud looks good (though has not reproduced well in this image), and you can still see the footprints among the tyre tracks.

The tipper vignette starts to come together

I sit staring at this mock up of the tipper shelter, and the picture in issue 134 of The Review trying to work out how to make one myself

All in all, another good day with lots of solid progress.

Day 5.

 First thing on the cards today was the laying of the rails onto the deck of the tipping dock. Spiking rail, as you know, is not my favourite task. But as confidence was at a high after yesterdays progress, I felt pretty good about pressing home tiny nails into basswood. 

Spiking in progress

When a succession of spikes go in easily, I feel good about it. Sometimes they don’t. Then the job becomes tedious. But this is still a new technique for me. I’ve been spiking little more than a year. I’m sure I can grow to tolerate it. 

But I did feel good when I had the whole deck spiked and a wagon on it..

A skip tipping on the dock. As it should be.

In other news, there’s been a slightly major change of plan. Having waxed lyrical in praise of the prefabricated concrete garage. It’s now gone from the layout, to be replaced by a skip loading chute. 

Last night as I was about to go to sleep, an idea came to me and I needed to sketch it so I didn’t forget.

Had to scribble this before I fell asleep

As I was emptying a skip at one end of the layout, it seemed to make more sense from a story telling point of view to load wagons at the other end. 

I had been having informal discussions with Chris Mears about his scheme, and he told me how he would get more pleasure out of loading and unloading skips than anything. That remark stuck at the back of my mind a while. Laying there dormant, until I needed it. 

There’s nothing wrong with my idea of a workshop scene. I’ve done too much research on prefab concrete garages to let the idea totally drop. But it doesn’t tell a story. Wagons would just appear from offstage and be tipped. Without reason. Small layouts, and particularly Micro layouts need to tell a story to get audience engagement.

If the two scenes here can be successfully separated to represent two ends of a small industrial system. Then a story can be told. Material is loaded into a wagon at one end of the line. Material is tipped out at the other. There’s countless small systems where this happens. 

I’m liking this concept more and more as I think it over. There is the potential at a show, to invite punters to load the wagon somehow, and then see the load tipped out. For a child, you could even tip some sweets or candies into a wagon to be transported to be tipped out in front of them. Audience engagement.

I mocked up a wagon loading chute to get a feel for the idea. 

A mock-up loading chute idea.

The mock up looks pretty good. I went a bit further and mocked up a few more scenes up and took a few more shots. This time I converted them to black and white to remove the distracting scenery and colour of my kitchen. The overall effect has great promise. As with Croft Original Sherry. “One instinctively knows when something is right”

A pile of sand or some change of relief is needed to help separate the two scenes

Aerial view

Perhaps a shelter for the tipping point could be useful.

Still lots to think about. A lot of headway has been made these last couple of days. Things are feeling really good.