Brettell Road, 1960s black country (ish)

Dave Holt

Western Thunderer
Jim,
Must admit I hadn't picked up the brake shoe issue, just thought it looked rather nice, although not my scene. The Comet shoes do look better, though.
Dave.
 

Jim smith-wright

Western Thunderer
A while ago I shared my initial thoughts on extending Brettell Road. For those that missed it heres a link Brettell Road 2

The initial plan required some modification to the left hand end of the existing layout but otherwise it was pretty much an add on. Then the coronavirus happened and while plans were firmed up no wood was cut (lazered) and its not progressed to any kind of physical reality. In that time my thoughts have turned to correcting the first regret, that being that Brettell Road 1 wasn't double track to begin with. This would also have the benefit of replacing the mainline track bed with ply as initially I used MDF. The layout was only supposed to be a play thing if you remember.

This would require some additional tweaks to Brettell Road 1 but actually not as drastic as one might think.

LH-end-adjustment.jpg

Starting with the left hand end, where the new boards would attach to the existing layout in addition to the track. I was actually quite generous with the track spacing and the double track would fit with only a slight tweak to the wall shown by the arrow. There's another advantage here as my first plan would involve splitting the single slip across the baseboard joint but the double track pulls everything further in to the layout meaning the entire slip falls on this board. No changes would be required to the bridges.

RH-end-adjustments.jpg

At the right hand end there's a benefit to slewing the track away from the front of the layout with space then for the second track in front of it. The plan is to extend the furthest siding a little while shortening the front one a smidge. This would allow me to start curving the front wall just after the canal bridge to generate the extra space. I will need to build a new bridge. None of these tweaks are particularly drastic.

Below is a mock up of how it would look.

BR-twin-track-mock-up.jpg
 

ullypug

Western Thunderer
Looks good Jim
I think refreshing and changing a layout keeps things interesting. I changed Wheal Elizabeth from a shunting terminus to an end to end whilst it was still out on the circuit for that reason. Might give you an excuse to build some more stuff too (not that you need it)!
Keep up the good work.
 

Jim smith-wright

Western Thunderer
20140906-131719.jpg


Long time followers may recall this old picture of a Hornby Class 110 DMU that I intended to chop up into something a little more 'local'. With the acquisition of a Bachmann Derby lightweight as a gap filler it kind of fell off the radar a little. I did debate doing another class 100 but in the end I have decided that a Park Royal class 103 would be the target of my attentions.

A little about the prototypes

These units were introduced in 1957 to the Birmingham LMR region. 20 sets were produced and the last vehicle in passenger use lasted until 1983. A few vehicles survived a little longer in departmental use (Derby RTC Lab5 lasting until 1991) or as a Sandite unit (1985). There was another oddity in that one set was converted to a Viaduct Inspection Saloon. This was withdrawn in 1978 but was saved for preservation.

The 20 sets were all allocated to the Birmingham area for their first decade operating mainly Walsall services before moving on initially to Chester then spreading further afield. Although none standard they did use the blue square coupling code so could work with the majority of other DMU types. Pretty early on they started to suffer from cracking in the bogie frames and their poor reliability saw steam hauled services return to many of their diagrams while the problems were sorted out. Aside from the oddballs mentioned earlier they only carried 2 liveries. Green (with or without whiskers and later with a small yellow warning panel) or BR Blue (small panel or full yellow end). None received blue and grey livery.

The Model

The similarity between a class 103 and the class 110 is reasonably obvious and (as with my class 100 and 114 conversions) the desired result can be achieved by cutting parts out and shuffling them around, Plus a few spare panels from previous projects.

class-103-GA.jpg

The above diagram may be of assistance. The red lines are cuts or areas than need to be removed. The orange areas are surplus and the blue areas need filling in. On the driving trailer everything aft of the last door stays the same as the class 110. I didn't cut into the roof.

class-103-DMBS.jpg

Initial stages of assembly. You can see the additional panel from another body shell in white.

110-and-103-cabs.jpg

Face on you can see where the windows are opened up to match the class 103. The new frames are 10 x 30 thou microstrip secured to the inner edges. Incidentally in working on this conversion I have come to the conclusion that the class 110 windows aren't right as supplied. They need to be wider and the angles tops need a slight curve.

class-103-bodyshells-primer.jpg

The 2 body shells after a coat of primer and more work with filler. The angled tumblehome Hornby used has been rounded off and any missing hinges replaces with etched ones from Southern Pride. I need to add another cental filler to the DMBS yet.

Why do one when you can do 2?

cravens-cabs.jpg

While in a DMU kinda mood I have started work on a class 129 DPU using a DC kits body kit.

A bit on this prototype as well

3 of these single car units were ordered from Cravens by the LMR. These had a none standard coupling code (yellow diamond) meaning that the could work with the original Derby Lightweights. Introduced in 1958 they lased until 1973 with one going to the RTC initially for brake testing but later for hydraulic transmission tests and gaining the name 'Hydra'. None of the 3 survived into preservation. Although 55997 was initially allocated to Walsall it was 55998 that was most often to be found working int he Birmingham area during the late 1950s mainly on New Street to Walsall, Wolverhampton or Coventry services. Later it would regularity continue on to Rugby and one slightly unusual service was Alrewas to New Street with produce from market gardens. As with the other DPU class, class 128 they would regularly pull a tail load.

The Model

Charlie supplied his class 129 kit with a standard class 105 cravens DMU cab moulding (no doubt tooling up another cab just for this class of 3 units wouldn't make a huge amount on commercial sense). So there is a little work to do to make it closer to the prototype, mainly removing the destination box and moving the marker lights down. I elected not to use the supplied flat bass etch for the route indicator box and made my own from microstrip.

class-129-body.jpg

The main bodyshell assembled with extra little details. On something so plain sided it pays to add these little things to break up the sea of grey plastic.
 
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oldravendale

Western Thunderer
Jim - from a dyed in the wool steam man I should be embarrassed but I'm not.:D

I'd love to see and follow this but I can't see your photos. How are you putting them up, as Mick B and AJC appear to be able to see them?

Brian
 

Jim smith-wright

Western Thunderer
Jim - from a dyed in the wool steam man I should be embarrassed but I'm not.:D

I'd love to see and follow this but I can't see your photos. How are you putting them up, as Mick B and AJC appear to be able to see them?

Brian

Hi Brian

I do host my images on my own site. I’ve done a little tweak to the last post but as I could see the images before I can’t tell if it’s made any difference. Do you mind refreshing the page and letting me know if the images show now please? (you too as well if you don't mind Mike)

cheers

Jim
 

oldravendale

Western Thunderer
Hi Brian

I do host my images on my own site. I’ve done a little tweak to the last post but as I could see the images before I can’t tell if it’s made any difference. Do you mind refreshing the page and letting me know if the images show now please? (you too as well if you don't mind Mike)

cheers

Jim
Thanks Jim. I appreciate your efforts!

I've tried again but still without success. My browser is Google Chrome and my normal is to pick up photos easily on WT.

If everyone else is OK with this it must be me!

B
 

Jim smith-wright

Western Thunderer
I would expect chrome and Firefox to behave in a similar ish way I
As I believe they started from the same open source software (long time ago now though).
I’ve looked at this thread in chrome on my iPad and it’s fine for me. I used to use Firefox until I monitored its memory use while running (it’s horrendous BTW) so now I use opera on my mac and usually stick with safari on my iPad.

edit. The same posts as here appear on my site. I’ve added a link to it in the signature if you can’t see the images.
 
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oldravendale

Western Thunderer
Nope! Still not working. Chrome and Win 10.

Very odd - most pictures open fine. Those that didn't previously opened when I used Alt F5. This time it's not working.

Brian
 

Mick Bonwick

Active Member
If it's any help to your investigations, Brian, I am using both Chrome (85.0.4183.121 64-bit) and Firefox (81.0 64-bit) on two different Windows 10 (19041.508) platforms and can see all of those pictures on both.

Interesting to see your mention of Firefox memory consumption, Jim. Dare I say that I don't seem to suffer from the same problem?
 
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adrian

Flying Squad
Sometimes I really hate web standards but one thing to be sure of they are anything but standard!! Then it gets worse when you look at javascript settings!! Likewise I'm on OSX and Safari and Chrome work fine for me so I'll have to look at a couple of other options.
 
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