A sawmill in three gauges

[nomisd]

If someone ever asked me what the best kit I have ever built was my answer would unequivocally be Kibri’s Saw Mill and accessories. The first time I built it was by accident. I found it under a table at Ally Pally about 20 years ago. I wasn’t looking for it, I didn’t really want it but it was only 20 quid. I still hadn’t decided what I was going to build as a layout and was dabbling. The price was too good to turn down so I got it.

 

When I made it, it wasn’t really with any purpose but to build it. The thing was it went together so easily, I couldn’t stop! I never did anything with it (but it did once be an industry of a Belgian flight of fancy along with a cement works. I probably still have the doodlings somewhere).

 

I hadn’t given this model a second thought since I put it in its box. It is a long since lost model. But tonight I was looking for something entirely different when I came across one for sale. Its gone up in price but having seen it, I could help myself, I bought one. Especially after I had been looking at for about 5 minutes, I recalled a conversation I had with Mrs nomisd recently. We were in a model shop that I had just come across in a town about 40 minutes from us. It’s the first time we had every really been to this town, only lived down the road from it for 9 years. Anyway whilst were briefly perusing (I did by something, not just a peruse), he had some Roco HOe and I made a brief comment to Mrs nomisd that I had always fancied playing with some narrow gauge. She replied “Well why don’t you?”

 

The more I thought about this, the more I thought “I think I have an idea”. I have in my garage the frames for three 2ft by 4ft exhibition boards. I did eventually getting round to settling on something 20 years ago when I got back into modelling. I had a crack at building the Walthers Cement Works when they released it. I had visions of a three board with a one board traverser board that I intended to put this on and perhaps one day exhibit it at the club I was then a member of.

 

Well life took over and we became globe trotting for a few years before we finally ended up where we currently are (with no intention of moving). The boards have (that I got from some chap in Sittingbourne from a small ad in the Railway Modeller. He made them to order and we went down to pick them up – they fitted in our Focus with ease. Truly the greatest boot a car has ever had) been sitting in our garage since we moved to France. They did briefly become home for my short-lived French layout. They are still perfectly useable. So one should be more than enough for what I have in mind.

 

Rather than being a distraction from my main project this is a sort of practise run. One of the things that I want to do with Greenford Green is use lights. I have never really had any experience of fitting lights in buildings and I want some practise before let loose on the many buildings of Greenford Green. I am interested in seeing how my model building skills have improved over 20 years having built the kit once before. I also want to put a river/canal over as a the scene break. I want to do the same on Greenford Green and have never used water before.

 

I am looking at it more like a large diorama. From a railway point of view, it is simplicity itself. Not a point in sight! Just straight bits of track in at least two gauges. In reality its three but to start with only two of them will work. The narrow gauge to pull wagons of tree trunks in. The standard gauge to take sleepers out (and deal with creosote tanks in and out). There is of course the HOf in and out of the creosote plant. I have thought about getting some working HOf but it ain’t cheap.

 

As for location, it will probably be French. I have a Joeuf C6100 that I can use on the Standard gauge along with a flat wagon for sleeper transport (I have some sort of tank that will suffice as a creosote tank – we are not fine scale modelling here). I also have some other stuff that can be re-used. Narrow gauge TBA. I am setting myself a target of next November for a potential exhibition outing. The kit arrives later this week.

[hayfield]

Sounds interesting with multi gauge track

[nomisd]

To call this a track plan is perhaps over egging the pudding. Lets call it a plan,  I think its all self explanatory. I think the site and size of the three different woodpiles will change once I start putting things on the board. The back scenes/fascias will be made out of 8mm OSB/Sterling board. Not the lightest of materials but I have a large amount off suitable offcuts on hand from a recent building job on the house so it seems a shame not to use it. I think that apart from the 600mm gauge track and stock, I have everything to do this. Well not the scenic break but thats not a great problem. Hopefully the kit will be here by the end of the week.

 

Edited December 5, 2022 by nomisd

[nomisd]

\i've just realised that HOe is more 2ft 6in so read 750ish mm for  600 mm gauge on the track plan, Its monday and I have wrestling with the temperamental wood pellet burner all morning. Its finally working, hooray for heat.

[nomisd]

The kit did indeed arrive at the end of the week. I spent some time over christmas starting to construct it. I am pleased to say that the kit was just as much as a pleasure to build as I remember it being.  I started with the machinery contained in the mill. Some of it is quite fiddly and is made up of many parts. I decided to paint them as I went along. Mrs nomisd did question why I was painting every thing the colour that it was moulded in. Just because!

 

 

 

I then tackled the building. Again I gave every thing a quick going over with a rattle can before I put it together. Personally I prefer this as it means that there is less masking when you paint before putting the parts together. The colour that I have chose for the concrete frame is perhaps a bit too green but concrete is a difficult colour to get right imo.

 

 

 

And the two together.

 

 

[nomisd]

One of the other things that happened over christmas was Mrs nomisd asked if I wanted a chirstmas present. As a rule we stopped buying each other chrismas and birthday presents years ago on the basis that we buy nice things all the time, why wait for two arbitrary days? I took her up on this very generous offer so we went to the model shop near us that started this. I decided that I would get some narrow gauge stuff. They have a very nice selection of Minitrains, Bachman and Peco on offer. I was going to go for a Minitrains Deutz and then buy some track and a couple  of wagons/

 

Mrs nomisd then spotted the Roco train set that consists of (what I think is a) freelance diesel, four bogie hopper wagons, oval of track and a controller. Why don't we get this instead? Well because the loco is not real, I don't want four bogie hopper wagons I want flats, I have a controller and I wanted track that was a bit less train set like was not the answer I gave! So we got it, Now these were all things that went through my head as were all the counters to those points. And it is extremely rude to be so churlish when someone is getting you a present.

 

We got it home and I set it up on the table and played trains with it for half an hour and great fun it was too. Mrs nomisd pointed out she had never actually seen anything model train related working so quickly. She may have a point. I then made quite an important discovery. The track that is moulded into the base of the saw mill

 

 

 

is actually 9mm gauge and not the smaller HOf scale that I thought it was originally. This set cogs whirring in my head.

[nomisd]

I got three of the straights from the track in the set and just checked what I thought

 

 

I then took the Dremel to the base.

 

 

These holes were far from the correct width just to drop a length of track into so much snipping of sleepers was done until the three lengths fitted into the holes. I then glued them in and set about filling the gaps. My chosen medium for this is Jointing Compound designed for tape and jointing plaster board walls. The reason being I have a 10 litre tub of it knocking around (its a long story....). Its my intention to use it to make the roads and concrete aprons on Greenford Green so its in line with this being my test bed for that. A couple of applications and a sand later and its looking alright.

 

 

 

I just dragged a scalpel blade down the flange way a few times until it was deep enough to run a wagon down it. Next job is to paint the base. Of course this does now call into question the premise of the title as its now going to be a sawmill in two gauges not three.

[nomisd]

I have decided on the base board. It needs some last demolition of the previous layout. Its 124 x 69 cm. The black section on the left is a bolt on filler board. For some reason that I cannot remember, I had one board made narrower than the rest of the boards. Someone at the club I was a member of at the time made a filler board that wide to fill the gap. I think its a tempting standard gauge road bed. 

 

[nomisd]

After digging out the board, I did a bit of noodling. It started off as just a doddle for the mill general arrangement. It snowballed!

 

[nomisd]

A request for inspiration. This project has changed with its building.The initial idea was to have just a single track of all gauges with no points or anything complicated. As I started building it and finding out that the moulded tracks could be taken out and replaced by real track changed everything. When I was doing the above doodle, I expanded on an idea that came from being the new owner of four Roco wooden bodied hopper wagons. What couldI do with them, especially once I found out that the coal loads just popped out.

 

Whilst I was making the model, it occured to me that the silverchute

 

 

was on the wall of the extraction system for the whole mill. In real life it possibly was designed as a chute to get rid of the saw dust collected. It is not inconceivable that these could be collected for further use. A traffic was then created with V skips collecting the saw dust via the chute. The V ships taken to a bank and tipped into the hopper wagons.  Loco collects the hopper wagon and removes the hopper wagons to the factory using the saw dust.

 

As far as I can tell all I need is a way to lift saw dust to the chute and a tipping mechanism  for the V skips. Anyone got any suggestions (including a more suitable forum) as to do achieve this?

   

[phil_sutters]

I have to add a saw mill to the back of John Bland's timber sheds on Highbridge Wharf. When I was thinking about the comings and goings of the materials, I suspected that the timber offcuts and saw dust went into the boiler house, that fed the steam engine, that drove the saw and hoists etc. That would have been in the first part of the 20th century. Saw dust is a highly flammable product which would need careful handling, so it doesn't fly about. I am sure that someone here on RMweb is an expert - there's always at least one!

[Darlington_Shed]

Not an expert, but I have always planned for a sawmill on my (unbuilt) layout and did quite a bit of research during lockdown. If you look at the first link you posted to the Kibri sawmill, you'll see two metallic extractors on the roof of the building, and I'm pretty sure that at least one of these will carry sawdust:

Those sorts of extractors - and associated ductwork - appear in many pictures of sawmills. Here's one from just before WW2 at Crook in Co. Durham:

(from the Britain from Above website)

 

As @phil_sutterssays, sawdust is not only highly flammable but explosive, so closed extraction systems are common. In addition to possible use as a fuel source for the sawmill itself, particleboard was invented towards the end of the 19thC so sawdust and woodchips became a commercial product after that, but particularly around WW1 and WW2 when timber supplies were affected by the wars.

[Darlington_Shed]

The topic sent me back for a rummage through my research folders. This site is a great resource:

Goodearl furniture and sawmill

 

About halfway down the page there's a good picture of a modern (gigantic) extractor, and if you thoroughly explore all of the linked pages you'll have a good idea of exactly how a sawmill processed trees into timber and related products, including the saws, the cranes, kilns for drying the timber, and plenty more. 

 

Hope this helps.

[Keith Addenbrooke]

I had a quick look in the Kalmbach Model Railroader’s Guide to Logging Railroads for US practice.  I’m not an expert, but the author is.  There’s not a lot on sawmills, but it is noted that around 15% of every log is turned into sawdust, which from c.1900 until the 1950s was usually burned in an enclosed conical sawdust burner.  From the 1960s environmental regulation and new products that used sawdust saw this practice end.

 

A further 15% to 20% would be offcuts, and I have seen large US hopper cars for collecting and moving wood chips (not sawdust).  Perhaps that was one use for the chute: wood chips rather than sawdust?  Just a thought, Keith.

[nomisd]

13 hours ago, Darlington_Shed said:

The topic sent me back for a rummage through my research folders. This site is a great resource:

Goodearl furniture and sawmill

 

About halfway down the page there's a good picture of a modern (gigantic) extractor, and if you thoroughly explore all of the linked pages you'll have a good idea of exactly how a sawmill processed trees into timber and related products, including the saws, the cranes, kilns for drying the timber, and plenty more. 

 

Hope this helps.

That is a fantastic link. exactly what I have been looking for. Thanks for that/

[DGO]

Sawdust extracted from the cutting process tends to end up being compressed in effectively giant vacum cleaner bags, this is then either further processed or burnt on site, proicessing might be turning it into some form of board, turning into pellets to be used foir burning or cat litter, or just being sold as sawdust 

[ColHut]

So what happened next with this build ?

 

:)

 

regards