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Delayed Delivery – Part 2
Once the basic structure of the gantry is in place, the real task of making the signals signally commences. First up were the smoke deflectors and the brackets for the balance weights. Also fitted are the main portions of the fan route indicator, but that will be explained further once I get it going!
For the arm bearing point and lamps I am using some 3D prints produced by Steve Hewitt and available from Shapeways. They can be found here https://www.shapeways.com/product/JJRSB … arketplace. They are fairly expensive but they are neat and save a lot of manufacture. There is, however, a but – they are very delicate and I am very fearful of thier long term durability. I am highly likely to draw some of my own up and get them cast in lost wax. It will make them even more expensive but I have about a 50% casualty rate at the moment, so maybe in the long term it will be cheaper!
The arms are Masokits, these are definitely the best available arms for LMS/LNER/BR semaphores. This is especially true of the minature shunt arms as the MSE ones are simply too delicate to bother with (imagine how do I know that………….!). So this is where we are now at with the arms mounted temporarly on the bearings.
There are five movements in the down direction (three of which operate via the route indicator) and then a pair in the up direction – hence the back to front arms.
The plates at the top of the dolls are mounting points for ladders. It transpires they are wrong and have already gone!
So the intensity level has dialled up a notch with these portions (especially breaking the bearing/lamp fittings) but it really gets interesting when you try and make these things work.
I don’t know myself yet (although I know for the couple of arms I have finished, so I have an inkling), but i think it might be fun to have a little sweepstake on how many moving parts there will be in the finished gantry. Five arms, three fan route indicators and each is operated by way of angle cranks. Each arm, crank and intermediate wire counts as a moving part, as do the servos………………..guesses please?
Controlling Bottom Works Sidings
Followers of this blog will probably be aware that I share some of my model railway escapades with the two authors of the blog OTCM. Both of the authors are in the process of putting together entries into a competition to build cameo layouts being orchestrated by the publishers Titfield Thunderbolt. Cameo layouts was the topic of a book written by Ian Rice and seeks to describe a small layouts seeking to use presentation techniques to capture a slice of the whole in a convincing manner.
To be fair to Oly, his entry is largely complete as long as he does not seek to tinker with it too much(!), the same could not be said for Chris’s entry – titled Bottom Works Siding – so he has some catching up to do! To assist Chris I offered to make his signals and after a few weeks of work we have reached the point where they are complete.
Chris’ model is based on the GCR’s route over the pennines at its Yorkshire end. It will represent a set of transfer sidings from the Woodhead route electrification to a industrial line serving a coking plant – so I suspect we will get to see a fair amount of grot in the finished article! Its signals are LNER or BR(E) practise which is mildly different to what I have built before in some regards but not others as there was a lot of standardisation between the LMS and LNER (and BR more or less adopted LMS practise). So first up (above) is an LNER standard wooden post with replacement BR miniature upper quadrant arms. The post is a piece of brass square section that I filed to a taper (hard work) with predominantly Masokit’s fittings (which I found to be notably better than MSE’s equivalent).
This one is effectively a standard LMS/BR tubular post signal (apparently with brewer’s droop – sorry!) with a small bracket that has another miniature arm signal to it. This is assembled with a combination of tubes and angle section from Eileen’s Emporium, along with some more Masokit’s arms.
And finally a miniature ground signal – which despite being startling small was not actually all that difficult to build – it being based on a excellent little etched kit from Palatine Models.
As a result of a lost camera, there are not really any meaningful photographs of the signals being created but fear not, I still have a few to go for Glenmutchkin, so there will be some to come! In the meantime, and to prove that they really do go, here are some videos.
In the fullness of time, I dare say we will get to see these in situ, so why not subscribe to Oly and Chris’ blog, to get an instant notification?
highland miscellany 