Wednesday 25th January 2023

Worklist:

Make axle converter shaft for Land Rover.

Make sub-roof panels for factories.

Tidy-up re-flocked siding.

Recreate area under lorry tipping point.

Stephen had been progressing his Land Rover shunting vehicle at home and now needed a favour. The Corgi car axles are 2mm dia. and the output shaft in the gearbox is 1/8". Geoff kindly offered to make a brass transition axle to accommodate both requirements.

Stephen then moved onto the factory roofs, cutting laminated grey card sheets to size. At the same time, checks were undertaken to ensure that all panels had right-angle leading edges to ensure that the corrugated cladding could be correctly applied. He then moved on to making the substructure for the loading bay roof. For this he used offcuts of some 2mm MDF strips that Geoff had thrown away. These came from packing case sides, which were soon found to be an excellent replacement for thick cardboard, as they were solid and flat, but easy to cut with a craft knife.

Geoff started with the shed siding, taking time to remove excess flock and plaster.

The water tank, swivelling engine feed pipe and underground tank feed pipe were discussed and confirmed again. Geoff moved on to the lorry tipping point on the quarry edge. He was keen to create a solid edge and was planning to use sleepers. Stephen suggested a rock face, using the same mould used for the engine siding area. The mould was partially filled with plaster and left to dry. After lunch, the old face was cut away and sections of the cast rock fettled and fitted into place. Additional wet plaster filled the gaps. Geoff is still concerned about how the rock angles can be accommodated with the surface debris to be re fitted to the perspex. He will try and reconcile this query next week.

Geoff also started to introduce troughs and dents in the adjacent road surface.

Wednesday 18th January 2023

Worklist:

Continue with scenery - grass and stones.

Continue with the factory building.

Investigate a Land Rover conversion.

The first job was to run a fine saw through the joint between the two boards. There was only a tiny bit of glue to be cut and both boards were free. 

Geoff then got to work extending the grass areas using electrostatic and hand applied grass. This time, fine brown grit was sprinkled over the glued areas (as seen on TV). We'll review the effect after the excess has been hoovered off next week.

He also added more stones to the dumping area.

Geoff's LWB Land Rover (Oxford) is slightly larger than Stephen's Corgi model, but it might work in our favour as the Oxford version does look big between the factory buildings.

The engine shed siding suddenly became overgrown with grass and weeds. Paraphrasing Geoff's own words "It'll be interesting to get the track usable again!"

Stephen was pleased with the solidity of the factory roof structure constructed from the previous week. He filled in the rear areas to provide support for the rear roof edges. He then checked and adjusted the alignment of valleys, ridges etc. to ensure that each roof plane was flat.

A roof gutters had been laminated from thin card and was now loosely fitted. A hopper and downpipe will go on the front, in due course.

Stephen's Land Rovers had arrived and he had stripped one to bare metal. He'd also cut-away areas of the body and the chassis to facilitate a motor and gearbox. 

He'd had a problem getting the Branchline's gearbox kit square. Geoff talked him through remedial work and how to make the final connection between motor drive and axle. Maybe a job for next week.

Wednesday 11th January 2023

Worklist:

Add greenery to the quarry water.

Continue building the factory roof.

Geoff had reviewed various techniques for water plants and selected two materials from the 'scenics' box - a pot of electrostatic grass and a sample of artificial grass. 

Using PVA, scissors and tweezers, he made a start. The grass stems were placed into a line of PVA painted on the perspex sheet. The thin viscosity of the PVA did little to hold the finer grass stems in place, but patience prevailed. The artificial grass went down a lot easier than the fine grass. More plants will be planted out into the lake and also fixed to the bank. The perspex will later receive a thin layer of resin, which it is hoped will run into the plants to anchor them firmly.

With a temporary plastic divider in place, some rocks and debris were added to the edge where the trucks dump material.

To gauge the overall effect, Geoff also applied some scatter material to the bank. It was looking good.

Stephen resumed his work on the factory building. Several left-over pieces of board were perfect for completing the basic structure of the roof. A lot of use of a small steel angle was required to get everything aligned and levelled correctly. These roof components units alone would not be capable of resisting the likely wear and tear this tall structure is likely to attract, so infill walls, props and roof sub-panels will be added when the glue was hard.

Wednesday 4th January 2023

Worklist:

Continue work on the quarry water insert.

Check assembly of the loading dock building adjacent the factory.

Cosmetic work on the engine shed area.

Discuss development of alternative 'shunting engines' into factory.

Check how the cottages survived being glued together.

Locate cottages on base and create path around the top cottage.

Discuss loading dock building construction.

Discuss additional features beside engine shed.

Geoff got to work on the removeable perspex sheet for the water, adding more paint for the weed and silt next to where the lorries tip waste (LHS). Painting on the top and bottom surfaces can give a feeling of depth. He also gave the bottom of the sheet a light rub-down with very fine emery paper to obscure the timber framework below. Reeds will be glued on the edge of the perspex and the surrounding ground to hide the join when the sheet is slid into place. A coat of resin will then be applied.

Stephen checked that the loading dock polyboard panels glued together before Christmas could be released from the tunnel structure, which they could. He also worked on cutting and forming more panels to support the corrugated roof panels.

Geoff moved on to adding texture to the trackwork in the engine shed siding. A loose mix of plaster and paint was daubed on the pristine ballast and then over-dusted with fine (OO) ballast.

Over Christmas, Geoff had circulated an article on shunting tractors and emails had bounced back and forth with different ideas. However, over lunch, Geoff's tractor arrived in the post - a 1922 Fordson. The tractor was secured to its base with triangular security screws so it was not until he got to the workshop could the underside and wheels be examined closely. It would be a tight fit to get a motor and gearbox into the rear space. Maybe a cab of some sort would hide some of it (not unreasonable). Stephen declared that he was bidding on some s/h short wheelbase Land Rovers. These should be much easier to fit a drive unit. Geoff had a long wheelbase land rover model which looked worryingly big.

Land rover and loading dock base.

Stephen was pleased how solid the full row of cottages had become. Dropping them into place showed that the hillside at the top was obscuring the path around the last cottage. Paper mache and foam were carved away, and new layers of newspaper glued in place to reinstate the path.

A long discussion took place about the materials to be used for the non-factory buildings. The managers house would be brick. The adjacent office - stone. Geoff preferred stone for the loading dock, but Stephen had always envisaged CI, to stay in keeping with the factory. Both agreed on a canopy, but disagreed on construction.....

 

Note the base for the loading dock.

Engine shed siding: Geoff outlined ideas for a simple coaling stage against the stone wall, with sleepers for the ends and the floor. There was also room for a rectangular water tank on the ledge above, with a feed pipe from higher up.

Maybe something like....