Phred's hodge-podge

[Phred]

Thanks Glencairn. Everything I build is purely the product of my fevered imagination and vague memories. It's a peculiar mix of Australian and British building styles catering for steam, diesel, electric and everything else all at once. I even tried to incorporate a narrow gauge track amongst it all, but it looked ridiculous, even on that layout!

[Phred]

The signal box. The same materials as used in the previous buildings but with the addition of lamps made from bent pins and those little plastic things for covering up screw heads in furniture.

The piles of muddy spoil below it are made from gravelly sand from the local creek (with the bigger bits removed) mixed with brown acrylic paint.

One of those tarps made from freezer bags can be seen more clearly there (half covering the stack of timber).

The structure was originally built without a toilet but the signalmen complained that it was too far to walk all the way to the main maintenance shed when nature called. The union became involved and a sort of lean-to toilet was eventually added.

[Lofty]

Thanks Glencairn. Everything I build is purely the product of my fevered imagination and vague memories.

It’s good to see stuff that isn’t the norm, I find your structures intriguing.

[Phred]

Cheers Dave!

Here is the station. It's based on the old timber stations which were the norm in Australia before they were replaced by concrete and chrome monstrosities.

The obvious repairs to the roof on the platform side are the result of procrastination by Queensland Rail. A leaky skylight was reported but nothing was done until (years later) the roof trusses and corrugated iron were badly degraded, so a large section had to be replaced. It was still just a patch-up job though, since the station was earmarked for 'modernisation'. I always have a back story to cover my mistakes!

I thought I'd cheat and save myself some time and tedium with benches from Hattons which were shown on their site as fully assembled with no mention of being in kit form. They look the part but by the time I put them together (nervous about breaking bits because I paid money for them ) I could have made my own. Cheaters never prosper!

[Phred]

This is a sort of garage shed with fuel pumps.

The grey thing between the pumps, which looks like a giant oil can, came in the accessory pack with a Hornby diesel shunter many years ago, with no explanation of what it was or how it was meant to be fitted. Anyone know what it is?

I think this was the loco the mystery object came with:

Some trackside infrastructure:

[Phred]

I should have mentioned that the pumps are made of balsa fronted with layers of shirt box cardboard, shirt box plastic and printer paper to build up the effect of dials behind glass. The hoses are 0.40 insulated telephone wire.
Phred

[captrees]

I should have mentioned that the pumps are made of balsa fronted with layers of shirt box cardboard, shirt box plastic and printer paper to build up the effect of dials behind glass. The hoses are 0.40 insulated telephone wire.
Phred

I like the way you think. Next time you make benches, try florists wire and slivers of balsa. I have a Lime Works, the prime components of which are oven extractor fan filter mesh, toilet rolls, glasses cleaner bottles from Specsavers and a Bisto container. I horde useful componentry, boxes, hearing aid batteries, and the detritus of grandkids toys, especially Lego.

[Dad-1]

Ahh Phred has a Hornby 06 shunter.
A weathered one into the bargain !!
As cheap as chips and much maligned, but my Marilyn,
now coming on 16, is still one of my favourite locos.

Geoff T.

[Phred]

glasses cleaner bottles from Specsavers

I just went to Specsavers yesterday and they gave me a new bottle! My wife says I already have more junk than the local recycling depot though.

Ahh Phred has a Hornby 06 shunter. A weathered one into the bargain !!

I think most locos look better with a good coat of muck but I can't bring myself to risk messing about with them until they are many years old.

Here she is with one of the mystery accessories alongside (there were two of them in the pack) I still don't know where to put them! Note that I have removed the coupling hooks. Seems to work better that way.

[Mountain]

Those are air brake cylinders. Don't know if any class 06's were later upgraded to have them or not.
Air brakes in the UK were not adopted until later. Early diesel shunters tended to be unfitted so had no brake cylinders or brake pipes, but they soon began to fit them with vacuum brake pipes as more and more stock were using them. The earliest shunters to be scrapped when B.R. ended up with far too many shunters (Apart from a few unreliable designs) were the unfitted examples as though they "Could" spend out and upgrade them, they already had too many shunters so it was logical that these were the first to go unless the locos were used for a specific task in mind where the individual locos may be more suitable than using other classes of shunter, where an unfitted shunter may have had a slightly extended life.
Air brakes did not find their way onto our railways until later so it was generally in the late 1960's onwards that any new locos may have had them, and first with coaching stock, so only later built shunters that were built to shunt the new coaching stock would have had them. (As more and more stock started being built or converted to air brakes as time went on, the shunters used to shunt these would eventually be converted or withdrawn. One can shunt with an unfitted loco if one goes to the bother of isolating the brakes on the stock which is time consuming (And one also HAS to remember to set the brakes back again afterwards as if larger loco with either a vacuum or air brake (Depending on the stock one is pulling) couples on and no one has done a proper brake test, it has been known for accidents to happen! (Seen a photo of such an accident where merry-go-round wagons ended up stacked perfectly five high on top of each other! One couldn't have normally done that if one tried!)

Over the years, any failed locos that were costly or not so easy to repair were gradually withdrawn and their parts could be used to keep the rest of the fleet on the rails. The most useful "Fitted" examples would be more likely to be the ones to be rebuilt with spare parts from the unfitted examples, as they were more useful to the railway than the unfitted locos.

I do not know a lot about the class 06 as they operated the opposite end of the country (Scotland) so I do not know if any recieved air brake equipment later in life, but photos will show if they did, as these air brake cylinders are hard to hide due to their size, but bear in mind they may only have one fitted on one side such as some examples of the class 03.

[Phred]

Thanks for that, Mountain! Makes fascinating reading and armed me with the info I needed to do a search. I couldn't find a class 06 with a brake cylinder fitted, but here is a class 50 with the beast in place:

Mystery solved after all these years.

[Phred]

Geoff T, I've just been having a sneaky look at Marilyn in some of your posts. The name plate looks lovely. She must feel very special!

[Mountain]

Thanks for that, Mountain! Makes fascinating reading and armed me with the info I needed to do a search. I couldn't find a class 06 with a brake cylinder fitted, but here is a class 50 with the beast in place:

20.jpg

Mystery solved after all these years.

I think you mean a class 03.

If I recall correctly (I need to ask a friend who has a class 03), the other cylinder just below the footplate is a vacuum cylinder for operating vacuum brakes. I believe I am right but I am no expert. Class 03's look small but when one walks up to one, one realizes that even smaller locos are big!
Basically these cylinders store either air or vaccume. The loco will have a gauge to show how much air pressure (Or vacuum) one has stored. Regarding air, the locos I have worked with as a guard ideally need around 4 or 5 bar to release the brakes and usually operate at 7 to 8 bar if I recall correctly. Have seen them at 9 bar (Unusual as the unloader valve should operate at less than that). Most of the DMU's I worked with needed around 3 bar to operate the doors as sometimes I had to do door tests without the engine running if no driver was present and if one did not have 3 bars, the doors would usually open but not close again as the air pressure ran out!
Brakes were designed so that the brakes were on hard if there was no pressure which is a good safety method, so if a train split while in use, the brake pressure would suddenly drop and the brakes on both portions of the split train would apply quite noticably! The same idea was with vacuum brakes where if a train split while in use, the brakes would apply. Have been on trains that developed a leak after hitting a bird or other obsticle and ended up stranded whena hose would be damaged. Usually one would send another train to couple onto it and one could usually (Not always) by using the additional air from the other train provide just enough air to release the brakes to get to somewhere where it could be seen to.
I remembef on my first training for engine and coaches where we were shown how to isolate the brakes on Mk2 coaches for the rare situations where one developed a leak and one had to reach somewhere to deal with it, or to drop the offending coach off so that it could be repaired at another time via a travelling fitter, but several years later when I did get to work engine and coaches, I had a refresher course and this was not part of the course, as these days only fitters are trained to isolate brakes.

[Phred]

Hi Mountain. To be honest I just copied and pasted what was written under the picture on Google images. I actually know nothing about trains apart from what I'm learning on here. I do enjoy the anecdotes from members like yourself with real-world experience.

Your mention of air pressure failure reminded me of the time I was driving a truck and had trusted one of my mates to hook up the trailer. I thought it felt a little funny but had driven right across the depot yard before I noticed the black skid marks behind us. The trailer brake was not connected, of course. Always check your own truck!

[Phred]

Is this an appropriate position to mount the air brake cylinder? Doesn't seem to be much room anywhere else (without covering something else up).