Great Chesterford Junction Part Two

Well thank you Gary.......I`ll slip you that ten bucks later on......
Gormo

 

Yes Gary,
I do remember your solution there on Linden Ford.
I must admit it did cross my mind as a solution to hiding the panel. I think it would require an industrial building because of it`s length. Then again, a row of houses would do the job nicely.
I think either way would work, a building or a hill, because the panel only sticks up 40 odd mm from the baseboard top.
The determining factor I suppose, will be how close the panel comes up to the track on the right hand end of it. I haven`t actually measured that yet.
If it`s too close to have a realistic slope on the hill, I will do a building instead........so it`s an artistic decision probably better taken when the thing is in place.
Gormo

 

Well Easter slowed things down a bit and I`m almost fully booked this week as well, but I`ll find a few minutes here and there to plod along with the build.
I`ve marked out the area that needs to be removed from board 2 on Bamford. This is really just a ball park area and will be subject to accurate measurements later on when I take a saw to it. As luck would have it, there is a screw directly under the right hand edge that will have to come out before cutting commences.
We can now see how close the panel comes to the track on the right hand side, so I think a hill is not really a practical solution to cover the panel, so I`ll go with buildings to cover it instead.





I`ve started preparing the second enclosure that will go onto board one.....this is a far simpler affair than the other enclosure and follows the same theme.





Cut away completed to give clearance for the levers and mounting holes drilled for the frame.





A nice fit




Baseboard mounting holes drilled.




So the base has to be cut out and drilled and a strip of timber has to be cut to fit to the base as well so I can mount the front piece of Aluminium angle and the back stop piece of Aluminium angle has to be made too.
Each job is not too hard so I will just focus on one at a time and the enclosure will be finished before you know it...
Gormo

 

Aah yep..........
Gormo

 

Good idea Gary,
It should be fairly easy to come up with something that looks right for the job.
Scalescenes have a low relief model that could help out too.
https://scalescenes.com/product/t038-low-relief-creamery/
Gormo

 

Yes Jim,
I think I saw or heard it in a documentary many years ago .....long enough ago that it had been parked at very rear of my thoughts and your comment resurrected it.
Thank you
Gormo

 

Thanks Pete,
The pic gives a good idea of what to aim for.......I think I would go for something that looks quite old and not too tall in it`s height.
Your pic is in the right ball park, so I will have to do some research and find some pics to work off.
Gormo

 

I found some time this afternoon to move a bit further forward with the small lever frame.
The Aluminium angle back stop has been cut to size and shape and the levers are temporarily secured.




That enabled me to move to the back of the box and determine exactly where the timber strip packing piece should go and consequently the rockers which are secured to it all in one.
Dummy connecting rods are fitted purely to line things up accurately









Then I took a piece of 18mm thick timber to check the clearances on the rockers. The 18mm timber simulates the baseboard ( same thickness )





You can see that there is just enough clearance. Now you can see why we do the rounded ends on the rockers. Square ends could possibly catch on the baseboard as the rockers move through an arc.









More as it happens
Gormo

 

Thanks Jim,
Yes you are seeing it warts and all at the moment, and I hope that when it`s installed it will have less of a presence visually as you will only see the front eventually. All the gubbins and dinky little bits and pieces and old brass farthings etc. will all be hidden behind the scenes.
In one way it`s a shame to hide the workings, but it is purely functional and necessarily heavy to do the job properly.....so best hidden.
Don`t know why, but I found it rather tiring today....so an early knock off today and back into it another day.
Gormo

 

G`day Folks,
I`ve had a busy last two days looking after our little Grandsons again. It will be the last time for a good while because we are now right at the end of their school holidays and they`re back to school next week.
Needless to say, we have again had some good running sessions over the two days with everything going fairly smoothly.
The younger of the two, James, needed some other stimulation today and came up with creating some more head stones for the church yard. I had never got around to adding any more than two when I did the scenics in that area, so James got on and into production.
The older brother, Liam, kicked in later and also made a couple of headstones. That was good actually, because they both have a different approach to making these models, so we get different results in the headstones.
The job was done with two different sizes of craft sticks. James used three acrylic colours and a stippling effect to give a rougher finish. Liam used bulk paint for his headstones, which when dried looks like very weathered stone. Pastels were also applied to the finished headstones.
All in all, they did a good job and I was happy to plant them in the church yard. As I said to the boys " It`s the dead center of town and people are just dying to get in there " ......to which they usually reply " Oh Pop!! ".......







So now in just one day, we have gone from just two headstones in the church yard at GCJ ( it`s was so healthy there that nobody ever died ) to ten headstones, which begs the questions, was there a mass murder overnight or had the pandemic taken it`s toll.....?????....we`ll probably never know....
I also have a fully booked weekend coming up, so no railway work will happen until next week probably.
Apart from having Bamford mods on the go, I`ve also worked out a latching relay circuit to reset signals on the branch once a train has left the section. A further layer of complication to run this railway.
Gormo