Chute!

The chute is a great feature. I’m proud of the overall effect of it. However, the pouring of the sand needs slowing down. It’s gravity and mass, you can’t scale it down. 

I’m using Woodland Scenics” fine ballast for my sand and it just falls straight into the skips, and the “sand” can bounce out. I needed something to slow things down. A baffle, a filter. I knew I had some  3.5mm scale wire mesh fence that I thought would be perfect. But I couldn’t find it. (I bet it’s with the track spikes I can’t find). Then as I was doing the grocery shopping with my wife. I saw one of these.

A sink strainer

It was only a couple of dollars. I thought it was worth the experiment. I cut a section of mesh out of the strainer, and placed it in the chute and tried it. It slowed the flow down a great deal, but the material was clogging up the strainer. I guess that’s what the strainer is supposed to do. But not what I wanted it to. So I decided to make the holes larger. I kept poking at the mesh, making the holes larger, until I got a flow I was happy with. 

The filter in place

Tipping into the skip, thinned out and slowed down

A slower tip seems to result in a more rounded pile of sand

A new bucket

At the other end of the chute I added a new bucket. The original one was small and I had to fill it with a teaspoon. One spoon at a time. A pretty slow process. It was simple to make one large enough to take a skip loads worth of  “sand”. Having made one it seemed a sensible idea to make two of them. The second one would be used to fill the first. That way I’d get pretty much the same amount in the skip every time. That sounds like a winning idea to me.

Consistent filling

The skips are filled with a consistent amount, and the rounded pile of material is pleasing to the eye. This has really worked well. What do I work on next?

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…

Loads and loads

 With the end in sight, it was time to turn my attention to the last working feature. The loading of the skips. This was the one that I had the least concerns about. I’ve worked on so many layouts where I have loaded wagons and had so many problems and successes with the process that I had a pretty good idea what I was going to do. The basic idea was outlined in this post on my Cuddle blog. 

My plan was to have a chute appear from offstage and the sand (or whatever) would be tipped from the chute, into the hopper and then into the skip. Much thought has also been given to using a farm toy conveyor belt to transport the material. But as the conveyors I have found are overscale and will need some kind of converting, this chute idea will have to do for the moment.

The first task was to work out the shape of the chute to allow it to swing into and out of view.

First mock up of the chute.

For me, the only way to do this is cut away at pieces of card or add bits until what I want to happen, happens. It can definitely induce frustration when it doesn’t work as planned but I’m no engineer. I’m sure and engineer would be able to calculate the angle of swing of the chute and its size in a CAD program and very likely  produce something in a 3D printer. Alas, I have to work with my hands to get things to function. Most rewarding when it goes as planned. My first mock up seen above worked pretty well, and I decided I could go ahead with it with minimal modifications. 

The card version was reworked in styrene. The pictures below should give you an idea how it works.

The bucket carries enough material to 1/3 fill the skip, so the action has to be repeated for viewers

The angle of slope of the chute was steep enough that all the material in the bucket at the top was tipped into the skip bucket. I felt pretty pleased when that first load was tipped into the skip I can tell you.

Definitely a feel good occurrence

The chute was dressed with rusty corrugated styrene to make it less conspicuous

That’s it really. Job’s a good ‘un. The cord that raises and lowers the chute is just pinned out of the way when not needed.

Perhaps some will find the appearance of the chute from upon high jarring. But I think that will be overcome when people see the wagons being filled auto-magically. It also suggests that the action spreads beyond the confines of this blue grey box.

There’s a little fine tuning to be done, mainly to stop the overspill. I think a baffle inside the hopper would help direct the material into the skip, as well. Some kind of guide line to help operators position the skip directly under the hopper. That will come with practice.

Honestly, that’s it. For now anyway. 

I can spend the the time between now and it’s first showing at Randolph Railroad Days October 20th and 21st practicing operation. This is a situation I’ve never been in before. I have a layout ready three weeks before a show. I always used to pull all nighters in the week before a ships getting ready. This feels most odd.

Weathering the Loader

 As you can expect. I couldn’t leave things alone, and had to add some weathering to the loading chute. Weathering is subjective. One person’s weathering masterpiece is another’s primitive daub. My work keeps me happy and lies somewhere between the two extremes.

A light weathering.

As with all my work, I start by giving the model a good scrub down and dry brushing with my favourite Asphaltum acrylic paint. It really kills the plastic feel of the models in my eyes. 

I’ve had this paint for years.

Then I scrubbed it on a bit darker in places, and added dabs of orange to suggest the beginnings of rusting. Finally because this would be a dusty, sandy place, there would be dust and sand collecting in crevices and on horizontal surfaces so I dry brushed some white on there too. I think it needs more of that and probably some sort of sandy colour too. One can get caught up in the minutiae of this process. But right now, this is good enough for me. Don’t you think?

That will do for now

Day 12 The skip loading chute. A day of mixed fortunes.

I wasn’t expecting this to happen…

When I changed my mind about having a workshop on the layout and replacing it with a loading chute. I knew exactly what I wanted. Something akin to the one that features on David Barham’s Fen End Pit layout. I am not planning an operating dragline excavator though. 

Having a working feature like this at the front of the layout opens up interesting opportunities at a show. One could invite viewers to load the skips, thus drawing them into the world of the layout rather than just watching. 

The first mockup of the chute was well received over on the NGRMOnline forum and I got some good feedback on things to incorporate. 

As per usual, a drawing was produced, The most important thing about this drawing was it would enable me to get the size of the panels for the chute correct. Something that required me to dredge up knowledge from grammar school technical drawing classes to correctly design and build it.

A quick layout drawing of the loading chute

With the help of the drawing, progress was pretty swift. By lunchtime I was well on the way to having it completed.

Coming along nicely

Though much of the design is inspired by the design on Fen End Pit, as I worked further on it, I decided it needed a bit more bracing between the legs to aid rigidity. Plus it would give the structure my own touch of individuality. Luckily, I did have enough right angle section to be able to do this, and as my afternoon tea break approached, things were looking very good indeed. 

Another structure looks pretty good.

While the kettle was boiling and the tea brewing, I took it outside to give it a quick spray of primer, and then let it dry whilst I enjoyed my Earl Grey and biccies. 

Suitably refreshed, I went outside to continue priming.

OH SH!T.

A gust of breeze had got up and blown the model off the bin I had been spraying on, and it had fallen on the concrete path. To say I was shocked was an understatement.

Perhaps as a testament to my construction processes, the chute only broke into two parts. So repair shouldn’t be too difficult. But it most certainly wasn’t what I was expecting at the end of the day today.