Helston Revisited

[Miss Prism]

All colours were gloss when applied (for toughness). Buffer beams didn't remain shiny for long!

 

[Andy Keane]

I am trying to work out how best to use the fiddle-yard when operating the May 1911 timetable and have stolen some of the grandchildren's Lego to play virtual trains. White bricks for motive power and railmotors, red for carriages, blue for trucks, yellow for brown vehicles and grey for Toads. It gets complicated enough on my limited runs of track - planning for  large teams on big cub layouts must take some doing.

Edited July 19 by Andy Keane

[St Enodoc]

8 hours ago, Andy Keane said:

I am trying to work out how best to use the fiddle-yard when operating the May 1911 timetable and have stolen some of the grandchildren's Lego to play virtual trains. White bricks for motive power and railmotors, red for carriages, blue for trucks, yellow for brown vehicles and grey for Toads. It gets complicated enough on my limited runs of track - planning for  large teams on big cub layouts must take some doing.

That's a great idea. Unfortunately my grandchildren's Lego is 10,000 miles away so I'll have to carry on using Post-its.

[Miss Prism]

Slight correction to an earlier post - I can't see any evidence of bufferbeam numbers being applied to 517s before c late 1920s.

 

[magmouse]

2 hours ago, Miss Prism said:

I can't see any evidence of bufferbeam numbers being applied to 517s before c late 1920s.

 

Buffer beam numbers presumably came in following the invention of train spotters, who needed to identify locomotives from end on, from e.g. road over-bridges.

 

Nick.

[Andy Keane]

4 hours ago, Miss Prism said:

Slight correction to an earlier post - I can't see any evidence of bufferbeam numbers being applied to 517s before c late 1920s.

 

Well that's even simpler - so just the numbers on the side tanks, nothing on the buffers, no route / power disk and no "Great Western" either! In fact apart form the rather nice crimson paint very little decoration at all!

In due course I am hoping to add the experimental 0-4-4T number 34 to my stable at Helston, but that one I think was lined green, with brass dome and valve cover plus the brass ring around the end of the firebox, and maybe even the ring where the smokebox joins the boiler. This ran at Helston somewhen around 1900-1908.

[Andy Keane]

Another small painting conundrum. I have a copy of a very early drawing showing the locations of the three street lamps in Station Road, Helston. These sit outside the GWR boundary fence and so I assume must have belong to the Town Corporation. So what colour to paint them? In the same bit of road I have the stink pipe which I have painted grass green. Perhaps the street lamps should match? I do not think the railway would have considered it their job to maintain these lamps so there seems no reason to use a GWR painting scheme.

Edited July 21 by Andy Keane

[Andy Keane]

Adding the station lamps along with the telegraph poles, loading gauge and shunting horn pole certainly gives the whole layout a more three-dimensional feel. Currently the lamps are just pushed into their holes - I will leave wiring up for another day - I plan to use some small 5k multi-turn potentiometers to control their brightness, perhaps with some added ballast resistors. These lamps are all from the layouts4u range (https://www.layouts4u.net/oo-scale-lighting) which I think are terrific value for money. I have used a mix of gas and oil lamps with two heights enabled by the parts they supply.

[Andy Keane]

On 21/07/2024 at 08:41, Miss Prism said:

Slight correction to an earlier post - I can't see any evidence of bufferbeam numbers being applied to 517s before c late 1920s.

 

There is a photo in David Maidment's book on four-coupled locos showing 202 with a buffer beam number - the photo is dated c1910. There is also one of 538 showing both the buffer beam number and the "No", but that is dated c1900. And finally there is one of 530 with buffer beam number dated c1920. In the GWRJ there is a photo of 538 with both number and "No", dated c1909 and 1475 with just the number dated 1922. But equally there are plenty of photos without either until you get to the later 1920's and early 1930's when having just the number seems to be pretty common.

 

So does this mean I can have the numbers if I want but its not critical?

[Miss Prism]

Thanks, that's interesting. I had previously thought that bufferbeam numbering had started c 1904, so that 538 pic date of c 1900 seems very early. The No (on the opposite side of the drawhook) probably went out of fashion c 1910-12 (?), but it seems bufferbeam numerals on locos other than express passenger engines were rare/sporadic until the early 20s, maybe a bit before. I don't know why such an inconsistent loco identification policy would have been allowed to continue for so long.

 

[Andy Keane]

18 minutes ago, Miss Prism said:

Thanks, that's interesting. I had previously thought that bufferbeam numbering had started c 1904, so that 538 pic date of c 1900 seems very early. The No (on the opposite side of the drawhook) probably went out of fashion c 1910-12 (?), but it seems bufferbeam numerals on locos other than express passenger engines were rare/sporadic until the early 20s, maybe a bit before. I don't know why such an inconsistent loco identification policy would have been allowed to continue for so long.

 

Yes its very mixed - but since the crimson loco paint was not used for very long, my current thinking is that when painting a humble tank in crimson it would not have gotten buffer beam numbers, even if some of the green 517s had them at that time, so I will leave it off my model.

[Andy Keane]

The villa on the corner of the goods yard entrance is now pretty much done. I just need to add a few hens to the back garden by the hen coop. Fred's roses are looking good in the front garden and his crop of tomatoes has ripened nicely in the south Cornish sunshine.

One thought remains - should there be some chicken wire around the hen coop to restrict where his birds can go or not and if so how to model the netting - has anybody done some chicken wire netting anywhere?

[Neal Ball]

9 minutes ago, Andy Keane said:

The villa on the corner of the goods yard entrance is now pretty much done. I just need to add a few hens to the back garden by the hen coop. Fred's roses are looking good in the front garden and his crop of tomatoes has ripened nicely in the south Cornish sunshine.

One thought remains - should there be some chicken wire around the hen coop to restrict where his birds can go or not and if so how to model the netting - has anybody done some chicken wire netting anywhere?

 

The houses look great @Andy Keane, I particularly like the flowers, how have you made them?

[Andy Keane]

Neal, I cannot claim them as my own! The flowers are from ScaleModelScenery: https://www.scalemodelscenery.co.uk/oo-scale-9-c.asp#4ac1/fullscreen/m=and&q=flowers while the tomatoes are Gaugemaster: https://railsofsheffield.com/products/gaugemaster-gm1620-tomato-plants-6 . The flowers are self adhesive and very easy to use, the tommys come with their own base and I have edged that with soil scatter.

The front tiled paths are to my design by Jakub at LCut.

Andy

Edited July 24 by Andy Keane

[BWsTrains]

1 hour ago, Andy Keane said:

has anybody done some chicken wire netting anywhere?

 

Typical chicken wire is <1mm diameter so bit of a challenge here scaling that down to ~0.01mm . Stretched hosiery comes to mind but as to which Dernier would be appropriate that is trickier!

 

Clearly some in depth research is required!😈🤣

[Andy Keane]

3 minutes ago, BWsTrains said:

 

Typical chicken wire is <1mm diameter so bit of a challenge here scaling that down to ~0.01mm . Stretched hosiery comes to mind but as to which Dernier would be appropriate that is trickier!

 

Clearly some in depth research is required!😈🤣

I think it really may be impossible in 4mm. Also I have consulted the farming side of the household and she pulled out some 1920's photos of her family's hens at play - it turns out back then the wire was six feet high and only used to keep foxes out at night - during the day they just went where the wanted and at night they either went into closed coops or behind these high fences. So I will adopt rule 1 and rely on the quite tall back garden fence and skip the chicken wire - despite the research possibilities.

[BWsTrains]

My grandfather was a poultry breeder in rural S Glos. between the Wars before retiring at a relatively young age, something his grandson and great grandson both echoed to their advantage. His favourite stories were to tell us of getting out with a shogun in the evening and using the deterrent approach but I suspect that might not be an option in your backyard location.

 

Rather OT but my recent research has turned up the place he lived / raised chooks in Yate; the house and poultry shed still exist 100 years on but the latter now is some sort of garage / workshop.

[Graham T]

Andy, the villas and the overall view of the station both look absolutely superb - BZ!

[Neal Ball]

We are in Tywyn mid-Wales at the moment and their is a house close to the station where the chickens are freely roaming the garden.

 

There’s a prototype for everything 

[Andy Keane]

A bit more progress on the 517. Roof on, safety valves bonnet on, buffers on, tools on back, crew in, glazing done, speaker and grill in bunker, revised plates, red headlamp, paint toned down with light weathering. It needs some coal of course and some dirt on the buffers but overall when viewed at normal distance it will I think look fine.

Edited July 25 by Andy Keane

[Andy Keane]

Well 517 class number 1163 is now finished and in service. I have had to add a very large lump of lead up forwards to get her to ride OK because the backhead casting and speaker in the rear, along with the coal made her rear heavy and the front driving wheels kept bouncing in the air without the lead. Another thing I have learned is not to leave the headlamp on if using focus stacking - the way the headlamp intensity is controlled is with make space implemented by the DCC decoder - the result is many of the images show the light off and some of the out of focus frames have it on. The third picture here shows the results - not entirely what I wanted!

 

Edited July 27 by Andy Keane

[Andy Keane]

I am now at work on the buildings of Station Road. At the time I am modelling there were seven of these and they are all still standing: a double fronted detached house, a pair of semis and four in a terrace, all covered in smooth render. I think these were built by the GWR for their staff with the double fronted detached house being for the station master:  https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.1056284,-5.2690223,3a,90y,227.52h,88.11t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sC8zhUDZ8zpRWP__gdbrmgg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205409&entry=ttu

Given they remain I can model them fairly accurately, but what colours would the woodwork have been painted in? What colour would the render have been painted? Does anyone have any info on how GWR housing was painted in 1930? All I can find is the short paragraph in the Structure Colours book that says:

 

"The GWR owned many houses for occupation by staff. It is recorded that the gutters, down pipes, etc., and most of the woodwork on these, were usually painted with dark green paint, presumably similar to Bridge Green. Window sashes, casements and fanlights were painted white. However, there is photographic evidence that houses adjacent to the operational railway were, in some cases at least, finished in the standard stone colours, again with white window sashes, casements and fanlights."

 

If I follow this the woodwork needs to be bridge green and white as the houses are outside of the station perimeter fencing. There is nothing about the paint for the render. And how does bridge green compare to the green used on GWR locos? I have no accurate source for this colour.

All thoughts most welcome.

Andy

 

Edited August 3 by Andy Keane

[Penrhos1920]

On some of the houses the render appears to represent dressed stone walls. So it might have not been painted at all or have been painted to look like local stone, which is what the side of the houses look like they’ve been made from.

[Andy Keane]

52 minutes ago, Penrhos1920 said:

On some of the houses the render appears to represent dressed stone walls. So it might have not been painted at all or have been painted to look like local stone, which is what the side of the houses look like they’ve been made from.

Yes indeed - I had been wondering about a pale cement colour followed by some light weathering.

[Andy Keane]

Whilst doing the CAD on the Station Road houses I have also been building up the latest six ton hand crane kit supplied by @Harlequin.

This has superb detail on it and is going to be a real highlight of the layout. Mine will be motorised to swivel around as well hence the base detail is slightly different on my build to the standard kit. If you have a GWR goods yard this is really a very fine way of spending £35: