The Night Mail

[polybear]

1 hour ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

There was a well-known incident during WW2 in the Pacific when a Squadron of P40s on one of the islands (can't recall which one) urgently requested supplies of ethylene glycol for the cooling radiators on the aircraft as they were rapidly running out. Their request was denied, the signal from bean counter central saying that antifreeze was not needed in the Pacific theatre.

 

Dave

 

Whilst freezing in the Pacific probably isn't too much of a problem the use of Anti-Freeze also raises the boiling point of water - which may come in rather handy.

 

1 hour ago, Dave Hunt said:

The bad bit was that having made the floor, solebars and buffer beams for a scratchbuilt tariff brake van and fitted the W irons I checked it against the dimensions and found that another schoolboy error had been made, i.e., measuring only once before cutting, with the result that the buffers are 1mm too low. Bu**er! I'll start again tomorrow 😪

 

Dave

 

Several weeks ago a certain Bear was searching the 'net (and the S4 Forum in particular) for info regarding correct Buffer Height; it seems there is actually a min/max range and at least one photo was provided as evidence of differing heights between wagons etc.  So as Big H has mentioned I'd not worry about 1mm at all.

[polybear]

Highly recommended viewing:

 

BBC Four at 02-55am tomorrow - "Winterwatch 1963 - The Big Freeze"

About 45 minutes of uninterrupted B&W footage, with a bit of modern blurb at each end.  Choo Choos feature significantly, as does life in general.

No doubt it'll also be on BBC iplayer.

[Winslow Boy]

1 hour ago, SM42 said:

 

Andy force

 

Andy

 

Wasn't there a makeover show on the telly called that.

[jamie92208]

1 hour ago, Happy Hippo said:

I laughed at that as we had a similar with nitrogen for cooling Thermal imaging equipment:  Didn't need it because it was cold in Norway.

The pongoes who manned the Green Goddesses at our station had great problems with the bean counters over petrol consumption.  The counters only looked at vehicle mileage they couldn't understand  that driving a large pump for an hour or few could use a lot of petrol for no miles. The sgts language when asked to explain was interesting to my tender ears.

 

Jamie

 

[zarniwhoop]

On 05/12/2022 at 11:47, iL Dottore said:

I managed to dig out the following - to show you some Georgian "Speculator's Rubbish".

 

 

And the prototype:

Of course, now that the dust has settled and I can re-view it critically, There's a lot I don't like and I'm almost tempted to bin it and re-do it....

Coming back to this -

 

For that last point, as Linus Torvalds often says - the perfect is the enemy of the good.

 

Me, I'll settle for adequate (if I ever get a 4mm layout it will be 16.5mm gauge).

 

I like that flemish bond, and particularly the mortar (not sure about the brick colour, but I know nothing of that area and  I'd assumed it would be very dirty).  I keep trying to convince myself to have a go at test building part of a station (OK, maybe just the loo block 😀 ) based on Bramber, Southwater and similar) but on S.E. Finecast brick sheets I can't see where the courses are unless I prime them in grey - and then adding the mortar colour has so far beaten me. So I'd be interested in a link to your thread on that, or just a title to search for, or hints on how you did it ?

 

Pretty please with sugar on ?

 

Meanwhile I'll go back to agonizing about what size bricks really were!  I find Peco/Ratio/Wills have nice relief, probably overstated but shows up well, S.E. Finecast seem a sensible size, but looking at photos of platforms built from the 1840s to the 1880s it seems to me that the bricks were smaller (i.e .more courses above the rail than you would expect for platform surfaces at 2'9" or 3' above the rail level - the typical estimate is 3 courses per foot, but when I can make out the mortar, 12 or 13 courses seem more likely in the ex-LBSCR photos I've looked at).

[zarniwhoop]

54 minutes ago, zarniwhoop said:

Meanwhile I'll go back to agonizing about what size bricks really were!  I find Peco/Ratio/Wills have nice relief, probably overstated but shows up well, S.E. Finecast seem a sensible size, but looking at photos of platforms built from the 1840s to the 1880s it seems to me that the bricks were smaller (i.e .more courses above the rail than you would expect for platform surfaces at 2'9" or 3' above the rail level - the typical estimate is 3 courses per foot, but when I can make out the mortar, 12 or 13 courses seem more likely in the ex-LBSCR photos I've looked at).

Possibly, I found some duff info somewhere. From https://www.rmweb.co.uk/topic/56716-slaters-embossed-brick-sheets/  four courses per foot  and a typical (domestic) door height of 6'6".

[iL Dottore]

20 hours ago, polybear said:

 

Does @iL Dottore have any shareable details of his own layout (size, trackplan etc.) that he is happy to share?  Judging by the Buildings it promises to be rather special.....

I’ll have to see what I can dig out.

 

I worked with the late Ian Rice to come up with a rather nice “roundy-roundy“ layout. Unfortunately, thanks to Mrs iD taking over part of the workshop/hobby room I no longer have the space to construct the full layout. So, what I will be doing (have to do!) is adapting Ian Rice’s design to an L-shaped “there and back“ layout.

 

The pub and the Georgian terraced will be in the “town“ part of a “town and country“ layout – one leg of the L being “town”, the other: “country”

[iL Dottore]

5 hours ago, zarniwhoop said:

I like that flemish bond, and particularly the mortar (not sure about the brick colour, but I know nothing of that area and  I'd assumed it would be very dirty).  I keep trying to convince myself to have a go at test building part of a station (OK, maybe just the loo block 😀 ) based on Bramber, Southwater and similar) but on S.E. Finecast brick sheets I can't see where the courses are unless I prime them in grey - and then adding the mortar colour has so far beaten me. So I'd be interested in a link to your thread on that, or just a title to search for, or hints on how you did it ?

I am not sure whether or not the thread I started on the Georgian Terraced House build has survived the various transitions and server problems  RMWebhas suffered from over the past year or two (I know that some of the threads in which I posted photos of the various builds I’ve done no longer have the photographs).

 

Being a bit obtuse this morning, I’m not sure if you are asking how I did the brickwork or how I painted the brickwork. Anyway, the house fronts are all resin castings from a master that I created from plastic card and South East Finecast brick sheets. I made the house fronts prototypically thin – which was not a spectacularly good move as for stability and lack of warping a thicker casting would have been better. Quite a few castings were binned because of warping or defects (such as air bubbles or incomplete hardening) in the casting.

 

As for painting the brickwork, I don’t have a single “tried and true“ method. However, there are two methods I mostly use and which particular one I use depends on the acreage of brick I have to paint. The first, which is terribly time-consuming but probably gives the better finish, is to paint the brick with the mortar colour (I use Tamiya Deck Tan which gives a pretty decent motor colour) and then dry brush the bricks with the appropriate brick colour – touching in individual bricks with a fine paintbrush as needed.

 

The second method, and the one I generally use (cos I’m a lazy so-and-so) is to paint the entire brick facade in the brick colour and let it dry for a day or so. I then flood the brickwork with Tamiya Deck Tan, which is slightly diluted with water, I let it dry for a minute or two and then I wipe off the bricks with either a dry brush or some tissue paper.  The result is that the brickwork is toned down to a reasonably weathered appearance and the mortar courses are nicely filled in.

 

By diluting the Tamiya Deck Tan with water after having let the brick colour dry very well, there is very little risk of lifting the underlying brick colour. This approach does take some practice, but can give a fairly acceptable result.

 

5 hours ago, zarniwhoop said:

Meanwhile I'll go back to agonizing about what size bricks really were!  I find Peco/Ratio/Wills have nice relief, probably overstated but shows up well, S.E. Finecast seem a sensible size, but looking at photos of platforms built from the 1840s to the 1880s it seems to me that the bricks were smaller (i.e .more courses above the rail than you would expect for platform surfaces at 2'9" or 3' above the rail level - the typical estimate is 3 courses per foot, but when I can make out the mortar, 12 or 13 courses seem more likely in the ex-LBSCR photos I've looked at).

The above is definitely a Master Craftsman’s approach to modelling  brickwork ZW. I tend to be a lot more lackadaisical: my approach is that if the brick bond is correct, the sizing of the bricks can be (generally) overlooked. Of course, there are some brick structures where the overall appearance is definitely down to an unusual type of brickwork. For that sort of structure (which I would normally avoid like the plague) I would start off with seeing if there is a close enough approximation amongst the available brick sheets And if not, then I would scribe thin plastic card which I would then mount the onto the thicker structural plastic card. 
 

p.s. returning to paint for a moment, my three “go to” paints that can be used for an infinite number of painting jobs are the Tamiya acrylics: Deck Tan, NATO Black and Neutral Grey (all of which I use by the litre)

[polybear]

7 hours ago, zarniwhoop said:

Possibly, I found some duff info somewhere. From https://www.rmweb.co.uk/topic/56716-slaters-embossed-brick-sheets/  four courses per foot 

 

From about 1970 onwards (when bricks became metric at a height of 65mm) that sounds right (assuming 10mm mortar joints); however any building constructed before then (which would be all in the steam era) the bricks were imperial and 3.5" high - so 14" plus four 3/8" mortar joints, making a total of 15.5"

[Compound2632]

6 minutes ago, polybear said:

however any building constructed before then (which would be all in the steam era) the bricks were imperial and 3.5" high

 

"Up to". Many domestic buildings before the mid-Victorian period used locally-made bricks that could be to some local standard or no standard at all. Eighteenth century and earlier bricks can be thinner than modern ones. One needs an additional reference to establish the course height for any particular case. A window frame dimension is good but in the absence of any known measurement, door heights can provide a good sanity check. For gable ends, one can ask, does the pitch of the roof look right? 

[Nick Holliday]

33 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

From about 1970 onwards (when bricks became metric at a height of 65mm) that sounds right (assuming 10mm mortar joints); however any building constructed before then (which would be all in the steam era) the bricks were imperial and 3.5" high - so 14" plus four 3/8" mortar joints, making a total of 15.5"

The 65mm dimension for a modern brick is actually just over 2.5 inches, and most pre-metrication bricks were slightly smaller than that dimension, usually around 2.5”. Hence four courses, including allowance for mortar, come to 12”, an easy dimension for bricklayers to set their string lines to.

[TheQ]

Locally there is a brick wall where the oldest bit is flint, the next oldest uses brick of about an inch and a half thick, but slightly longer than modern bricks. then there are non metric standard bricks, in soft Norfolk reds, probably from the brick works about 2 miles away. 

 

My own house of 1906 uses soft Norfolk reds , in a couple of bands round the house the rest is semi salt glazed bricks which supposedly weren't in general use till some years later.

[polybear]

3 hours ago, Nick Holliday said:

The 65mm dimension for a modern brick is actually just over 2.5 inches, and most pre-metrication bricks were slightly smaller than that dimension, usually around 2.5”. Hence four courses, including allowance for mortar, come to 12”, an easy dimension for bricklayers to set their string lines to.

 

Thanks; I got the 3.5" size from here:

 

https://www.tendringdc.gov.uk/sites/default/files/documents/planning/heritage, conservation & trees/TDC_BricksB.pdf

 

- though I did only speed read it so may not have got it correct.

 

In double checking I also found this site - which goes to show what a potential minefield the whole subject can be:

https://www.brocross.com/Bricks/Penmorfa/Bricks/Bits/BRICKS THROUGH HISTORY.pdf

[polybear]

Bear here.....

The morning's fun included the testing of a motor/gearbox assembly that arrived yesterday, courtesy of the 'bay:

 

 

 

 

 

At a mere 1v it takes something like 6m 15s for one revolution; at 12v it's 30s/rev.  Very powerful too - the follow RMWebber who put me onto them mentioned a friend who uses one to power a (6ft?) blind. 

Uses?  Well they're ideal for Turntables for a start.

Gears are metal, by the way - and there's four M3 (or was it M4?) threaded holes on the gearbox to make mounting a doddle.  Very pleased

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/403590735990?var=673545571925

 

 

Edited December 8, 2022 by polybear

[polybear]

10 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

I’ll have to see what I can dig out.

 

I worked with the late Ian Rice to come up with a rather nice “roundy-roundy“ layout. Unfortunately, thanks to Mrs iD taking over part of the workshop/hobby room I no longer have the space to construct the full layout. So, what I will be doing (have to do!) is adapting Ian Rice’s design to an L-shaped “there and back“ layout.

 

The pub and the Georgian terraced will be in the “town“ part of a “town and country“ layout – one leg of the L being “town”, the other: “country”

 

Thanks iD; I've yet to come up with a suitable plan (= desirable, yet will still fit in the space available).  I do keep coming back to a plan that appeared in Morrill many, many moons ago - that's also by I.R. and can best be described as a Terminus to Fiddle Yard arrangement, in a U-shape; I would modify it a little though - most likely to include the possibility of a continuous run and also tweak some other details too, such as adding a turntable.  The track plan for the Blakeny layout (the model, that is) may also have possibilities - hopefully in about 6 months or so I might finally be able to get my little furry ar5e in gear and start doing something about it at long last, if only to stop the snide remarks from Puppers @PupCam.....

[PupCam]

1 hour ago, polybear said:

The track plan for the Blakeny layout (the model, that is) may also have possibilities - hopefully in about 6 months or so I might finally be able to get my little furry ar5e in gear and start doing something about it at long last, if only to stop the snide remarks from Puppers @PupCam.....

 

Who? Me?  Never 😜

 

Puppers looks forward to seeing how the turntable develops and what method the Bear is going to use index it.   Me thinks the Arduino homework (set sometime ago) could be of use here.   Puppers can supply (sell? 🤣) him some useful information on shaft encoders and their use for accurate positioning.

 

Snide remarks indeed!    That's it, I feel that a LDC raid should be planned, I know where there is a den where there's a goodly stash!

 

 

Edited December 8, 2022 by PupCam

[AndyID]

It has warmed up a bit here and snow is expected later today and tonight. I might head for the hills with my skis tomorrow but then again......

[Happy Hippo]

I have now crept into Reading for a few days. This is purely to see the family before Christmas. 

Apparently we are going g to a garden centre tomorrow.

For what purpose I have no idea, but imagine it will be on par with last Friday's visit to that retail hell hole, Cheshire Oaks.

[Dave Hunt]

47 minutes ago, PupCam said:

 

Puppers looks forward to seeing how the turntable develops and what method the Bear is going to use index it.   Me thinks the Arduino homework (set sometime ago) could be of use here.   Puppers can supply (sell? 🤣) him some useful information on shaft encoders and their use for accurate positioning.

 

My turntable uses the infinitely adjustable Mk. 1 eyeball control system. It’s powered via a rheostat knob and aligned by squinting along the tracks until they are aligned, whereupon the knob is rotated to the off position. The software is installed between the ears of the operator. It has yet to fail.

 

Dave

[Dave Hunt]

I’ve drawn today’s star prize, which is driving 80 odd miles to see two of the grandkids in a nativity play then driving home in the dark. However, on the way we stopped at the Slaters factory and had a coffee with my old mate David White as well as picking up some essential supplies so that was a bonus.

 

Dave

[zarniwhoop]

6 hours ago, polybear said:

 

In double checking I also found this site - which goes to show what a potential minefield the whole subject can be:

https://www.brocross.com/Bricks/Penmorfa/Bricks/Bits/BRICKS THROUGH HISTORY.pdf

I can't access that - the full address gives me a 404, trying to access a little further up the directory tree gave me 403 (forbidden). But I guess I've got to the complete set of brick pages at https://www.brocross.com/Bricks/Penmorfa/index.htm

 

Various other topics at www.brocross.com might be of interest to some peopel here.

[zarniwhoop]

13 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

As for painting the brickwork, I don’t have a single “tried and true“ method. However, there are two methods I mostly use and which particular one I use depends on the acreage of brick I have to paint. The first, which is terribly time-consuming but probably gives the better finish, is to paint the brick with the mortar colour (I use Tamiya Deck Tan which gives a pretty decent motor colour) and then dry brush the bricks with the appropriate brick colour – touching in individual bricks with a fine paintbrush as needed.

 

The second method, and the one I generally use (cos I’m a lazy so-and-so) is to paint the entire brick facade in the brick colour and let it dry for a day or so. I then flood the brickwork with Tamiya Deck Tan, which is slightly diluted with water,

[...]l
 

p.s. returning to paint for a moment, my three “go to” paints that can be used for an infinite number of painting jobs are the Tamiya acrylics: Deck Tan, NATO Black and Neutral Grey (all of which I use by the litre)

I suspect there is no hope for me  - I cannot abide the smell of Tamiya paints!  Will need to get my ars in gear and dig out the plans I made for an initial trial build.

 

Thanks.

[J. S. Bach]

My digitally-operated* turntable will be at the right end of this plan:

The black is OO/HO/On2½; the green is standard-gauge interurban. P2 is the passenger transfer platform to/from the trolley. The table is strictly for turning the locomotives/doodlebugs.

 

*hand-operated 😺.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[PupCam]

1 hour ago, zarniwhoop said:

I can't access that - the full address gives me a 404, trying to access a little further up the directory tree gave me 403 (forbidden). But I guess I've got to the complete set of brick pages at https://www.brocross.com/Bricks/Penmorfa/index.htm

 

Various other topics at www.brocross.com might be of interest to some peopel here.

 

Thanks for that Zarni, most interesting particularly this page detailing some of the Greater Puppershire brickworks.   I hadn't realised just how big in bricks Puppershire was!

 

https://www.brocross.com/Bricks/Penmorfa/Pages/stewartby.htm

 

Which reminds me; I watched an old Portillo Great British Railway journey the other day going up the ECML.    Two points of note for me were his stopping off at Jordan's Mill in Biggleswade (Langford to be precise) somewhere where I regularly stop for breakfast supplies (Bags of granola and a full english when out on the AJ) and also the section on the Peterborough brickworks.   I found the bit about the continuous process of firing bricks in the many different chambers (as seen in the link above) and the fact that the fire wanders around from chamber to chamber fascinating.

Edited December 8, 2022 by PupCam

[Northmoor]

9 hours ago, polybear said:

In double checking I also found this site - which goes to show what a potential minefield the whole subject can be:

https://www.brocross.com/Bricks/Penmorfa/Bricks/Bits/BRICKS THROUGH HISTORY.pdf

Without even looking I know that's the sort of website we could all happily lose an hour in but couldn't possibly admit to in polite company.