How I constructed some Gn15 skips from Smallbroook kits

Why a 15" gauge feeder?

The copper mines which provide the main rationale for the Peckforton Light Railway are served by a 15" gauge railway system. There is a clear reason for this choice of a 'minimum gauge' feeder line for the Peckforton Railway. In my hypothetical history (see A history of the railway), the local landowner and keen engineer, Lord Tollemache, was the main driving force behind the development of the mines and the railway. I've assumed he would have been very familiar with the 15" gauge Eaton Railway which had been constructed a short distance away from Peckforton on the Duke of Westminster's estate by the pioneer of minimum gauge railways, Sir Arthur Heywood. It seems reasonable that Lord Tollemache would have experimented with a minimum gauge railway to both serve his estate and to negotiate the narrow galleries and tunnels of his copper mines.

The location

Having just completed the buildings for the copper mine (See Progress Report 45) I felt the need to construct a short stretch of Gn15 railway to represent the transportation of the ore and spoil from the mines to the crushing shed and the loading chutes. This, of course, would require some rolling stock. I had previously acquired a loco, a tub and a flat wagon through a well known online auction site but needed to source some appropriate looking skips.

 I had considered making my own but eventually decided I needed the time this would take to devote to other projects on the railway. The most appropriate models seemed to be those provided by Smallbrook Studio. Whilst these are designed for use on 0n16.5 railways, Smallbrook suggests they are equally appropriate for Gn15 - which indeed they are!

Construction

 The kit arrives complete with all fixtures and fittings, and a well explained instruction leaflet.

The resin castings inevitably require some tidying to remove flash, this was achieved with a couple of needle files.

 After suitably sized holes (2.5mm and 0.8mm) were drilled in the ends using the marked centres, brass panel pins were inserted and fixed in place with Superglue for the pivots for the skip .....

 ...... and a suitably bent piece of copper wire was inserted to act as the lifting handle.

 Once the glue had set, the excess was snipped off and filed flat on the inside of the skip tub.

 The two pieces of the chassis were then filed and glued together. The lower half of the chassis is weighted with lead shot which has been embedded in the resin - hence its spotty appearance.

Although the instructions suggest applying the paint at this stage, I decided to add the two squares of plasticard which are provided to make the coupling pockets on the chassis sub-base.

I then filed off the pinpoint bearings on the end of the axles for the wheelsets which again are provided in the kit.

The chassis and the skip tub were then given a couple of coats of Plasticote red oxide primer and then the axle mounts were reamed out with a 2mm drill held in a pin-chuck before the wheels and axles were clipped into place. The couplings were assembled and pushed into the pockets ........

......... and then the wagons were suitably weathered and rusted in my time-honoured way (see How I weathered a set of LGB tippler wagons).

 They have now entered service and, although their use on the railway is purely cosmetic; I am not intending to make the 15" gauge line operational; I do have tentative plans for the construction of a Gn15 indoor railway to represent part of Lord Tollemache's estate and copper mine railway which I can easily imagine wending its way along the Peckforton Ridge. It seems that, once bitten by the railway modelling bug, there's no known cure!

Progress Report 45

Eastertime and April usually marks for me the beginning of the operating season on my railway. While I do sometimes run the occasional train during the winter season, I tend to wait for the warmer weather to have full-blown, timetabled operating sessions.

Over the winter, I have carried out routine maintenance of stock, buildings and track, but I have also taken the opportunity to engage in some more intensive construction projects.

The Mine Buildings

These have taken far longer than I expected - mainly because as I reach each stage in the construction process, I decide to add just that little bit more detail.

The mine buildings comprise three sections - the workshop ......

....... the crushing plant ......

......... and the minimum gauge feeder railway and conveyor (See How I constructed a hopper and Minimum Gauge Railways - a short history).

I've used this project as an opportunity to test-bed a range of construction techniques. As you can see from the photos, I'm not far from the completion of the the project - though I know from experience that the fine detailing and titivation can actually take far longer than anticipated.

To help with painting and weathering the buildings, I've been roaming around the locality with my camera to find suitably weathered structures (see Weathered Buildings - photo gallery). Whilst rusty corrugated iron has proved relatively easy to simulate, ...........

........... I'm still struggling to accurately represent the silvery-grey of weathered wood.

The hedge behind the copper mine sidings has been cut-back and the sub-bases for the buildings have been fixed in place. So, once the buildings are completed all I will have to do is position them and do some landscaping to blend them in.

 Hopefully, if we get a spell of decent weather the project should be completed within a week.

Update:  Since writing the above I've more or less finished the mine buildings. Just some minor titivation and tidying (and giving everything a final couple of coats of clear matt varnish). A few additional photos I took today when the sun was shining.

The copper mine complex with loading hopper, crushing plant, workshop and offices

The minimum gauge mine railway and loading chutes

The loading hopper and conveyor

The office building

The copper mine sidings during a quiet period

Milk churns

Whilst waiting for the paint to dry or the glue to set on the above major project, I decided it was time I got around to finding or making some milk churns. As my railway is fictionally set in rural Cheshire which has long been noted for its dairy farming (and of course its cheese making), it seemed clear that milk would be a principal source of traffic on the railway. In the early 1930s, when my railway is set, milk was transported almost exclusively by galvanised milk churns - and until the mid 1930s, these were generally of a fairly uniform 17 gallon conical design. Over the years I've bought a few off-the-shelf models but have decided I really ought to make my own - given the number I will ultimately require and the cost of buying them.

I've eventually found a reasonably reliable way of constructing my own by modifying a children's plastic party toy. I will use one of these to act as the master for a mould and cast the rest of my requirements from resin. (See How I made some milk churns)

Bespoke figures

Having accumulated quite a number of readymade figures from various sources, I have now reached the stage where I need a few figures in specific poses which I've not been able to find commercially. I've therefore started sculpting my own figures in oven hardening polymer clay.

My first efforts were singularly unimpressive but, with perseverance, I'm slowly turning out figures which bear some resemblance to the human form. I'm still struggling to make the faces look less slab-like but, no doubt, practice will make perfect!

I am now using spare moments when there ain't much worth watching on the telly, to sculpt more figures. Hopefully, my skills will improve with experience!

The Garden

The weather has been atrocious so far this year and this, together with a bout of ill-health, means that I have not had a great deal of opportunity to tame the garden. In previous years, Easter marks the beginning of the running season and by now I would have been fighting my ongoing battle with the undergrowth (see Undergrowth = overgrowth). This year, very little seems to have started growing and a continuation of overnight frosts has prevented me from doing some of the concreting which I had planned (see How I built the raised beds).


However, I have been able to keep the tracks clear (with minimal effort I must admit), prune back some of the more vigorous plants which threaten the right of way and plant a couple of miniature rhododendrons which I found on offer in a cut price shop.

One of my next jobs is to make and inventory of all the (surviving) plants in the garden and be a little more systematic in how I go about planting out the garden.

Routine maintenance

As with all railways, there is an ongoing regime of maintenance and repair. I've rewheeled some of the wagons with some metal wheels which I came across when reorganising my storage drawers, and cleaned the wheels of all my locos and lubricated prior to the new running season.

The track seems to have survived the winter well, I don't seem to have suffered any subsidence of the trackbed though the frost has managed to penetrate some of my sandstone cladding. This has occurred only where I have not put coping or top-stones along the upper edge - a salutary lesson.

Some of the fencing panels which are beneath overhanging vegetation have rotted away and will be replaced shortly and one support-post has rotted away where I had not continued the concrete above ground level - another salutary lesson (see How I extended the railway). This will require digging-out and replacement once the weather improves as it supports the swinging end of the swing-bridge.

This year, I'm really going to have to do something with the viaduct. The cladding which I experimented with has mostly fallen off and although the underlying plywood structure is sound, it probably won't be long before this starts to deteriorate. As this structure needs to be moveable to allow access to the patio, I am considering various options to keeping this lightweight.

How I made some milk churns

OK. I'll admit this doesn't sound like the most exciting of topics - but actually, now I've done most of the heavy engineering on the railway, I'm beginning to get down to the finer details - and I believe it is details such as these which will ultimately bring the railway alive.

The motivation

As my railway is set in the Cheshire countryside in the early 1930s, noted for its dairy farming, one of the main sources of traffic would have been milk, and this product in those days would have been primarily transported in churns. The line therefore needs a healthy supply of milk churns.

 The prototype

A quick bit of research on the web revealed that until the mid 1930s, milk churns were mostly conical in shape and held a staggering 17 gallons!

Reproduced with permission from http://www.gwr.org.uk/nochurns.html

 For general information about milk traffic on railways, I found the Goods & Not so Goods website very useful. An excellent source for background information for the 17 gallon conical churn was found on the GWR Modelling website. An article by Russ Elliot was particularly helpful as it not only gave  background information, it also gave dimensions - though he does point out that sizes tended to vary with manufacturer. Armed with this information I now set about finding suitable models.

Off the shelf models

I found that appropriate models in 16mm scale can be purchased in either whitemetal from Garden Railway Specialists (GRS)

....... or as resin castings from Trenarren Models

and Modeltown

These provide reasonable representations of 17 gallon cans but they all seem to be too narrow at the base - even taking account of the variations between manufacturers.

Image Source: http://pilgrim.ceredigion.gov.uk/utilities/action/act_download.cfm?mediaid=1791&stname=large_image

Furthermore, although they are reasonably priced given the work which goes into producing them, I felt that, considering the quantity I would require for my railway, the cost of buying them from these sources would have been prohibitive, so I cast around for a source of materials to make my own.

Experimentation

I considered making churns from scratch, but felt that making consistent truncated cone shapes in weatherproof materials (eg plastic, wood or metal) would be beyond my capabilities. I have some experience of casting in resin (see How I made my third batch of open wagons) but this would still require a master to be made from which the mould could be cast.

My first effort involved using oven hardening polymer clay. Whilst this was reasonably successful, I found it difficult to make the model with sharp enough edges to represent the galvanised steel from which the originals were constructed.

Furthermore, I doubted I would be able to keep them consistent in size and shape. I then considered plastic. Where could I find a cheap source of suitably sized conical plastic shapes? A visit to my local 50p shop unearthed some party horns with conical mouthpieces.

A couple of churns were made from these, using brass plated metal cups for screw heads and plastic domed screw-cover-caps for the tops of the churns.

Whilst this approach worked, the base of the churn was even narrower than the off-the shelf models and so in reality would have had to be considerably taller to contain the requisite 17 gallons.

My next thought was to find suitably-sized cone-shaped tops from plastic bottles - but none I could find were the right size. However, whilst browsing around the party section of my local supermarket for some larger party horns I came across some fairly cheap basket-ball toys with conical bodies which looked about the right dimensions - and they were on special offer - buy two packs of four and get another pack free!

So, I splashed out £2.80 for a dozen toys and started experimenting. After a couple of attempts I found a reasonably reliable way of bashing the main component of each toy into something which more or less resembled the original 17 gallon churns in 15mm scale.

The process

The first job was to disassemble the toy to get at the conical plastic section. The protrusions for the ball-flipping mechanism were carefully removed with a razor-saw.

The next job was to find a way of marking off the cone to enable it to be trimmed to a suitable size. This I achieved by mounting a pencil 21mm above the table on a couple of wooden blocks and then rotating the cone. The cone was then inverted and the marking repeated.

The razor-saw then removed the top and bottom of the cone, taking care to rotate the cone to ensure the cut didn't stray from the lines.

A small section from the side of the base of the cone was cut-out to fill the hole left by the trigger mechanism. Although the diameter of the removed section of the cone was larger, I felt it would not be too noticeable. This was glued into place with Superglue.

Next, a 2.5mm wide piece of plasticard micro-strip was superglued into place around the base of the cone. I found gluing the strip in stages and then trimming off the excess on the final stage to be the most reliable - certainly in terms of keeping the glue from sticking to my fingers!

I considered various ways of making the upper inverted cone of the churn, such as discarded plastic golf-tees and screw-cups. However, none of these looked remotely appropriate and so I revised my knowledge of basic geometry and worked out how to draw the net of a truncated cone of the right dimensions. It actually turned out to be a simpler shape than I expected - basically two semicircles - one radius 20mm and the other radius 15mm. These were drawn on 0.75mm thick plasticard ....

.......  and carefully cut out with scissors - a small 2mm tab being left on one end.

The nets were then curled and glued with a dab of superglue.

Once the glue had set, the overlapping tabs were carefully filed and sanded,........

......... before the cones were slipped on to the top of the churns and held in place with superglue.

The rim was then formed with a fine 0.5mm square section of microstrip.

2A little more research on the net unearthed a couple of pictures showing the churn lid. Again, the design of these seemed to vary according to manufacturer.

 Source: http://www.thecowshed.co.uk/img/p/225-457-large.jpg

Source: http://sandfordstation.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/ChurnRestored1.jpg

I decided to keep things simple and went for a plain disc of 1mm plasticard with a diameter of 17mm.

The knob was simply cut from the pivot for the toy's trigger mechanism.

The manufacturer's plate was made from a very thin oval of plasticard attached with Superglue.

A quick look at the photos of the churns on the above website revealed that there was a range of different types of handle - some hanging down, some pointing upwards. The position for the handles was marked at 19mm from the base.

Two 1.5mm holes were drilled 4mm apart ........

..... and copper wire stripped out of some twin and earth cable was threaded through the holes and bent with fine nosed pliers to represent the handles.

I probably should have used finer gauge wire but this was all I had to had - and I generally tend to over-engineer things destined for the garden!

The completed churns were then given a coat of plastic primer using a Plasticote aerosol and then given a couple of thin coats of silver-grey acrylic paints (a mix of silver, black and white) - with a dab of gold on the manufacturer's plate.

The finished churns were then ready to enter service.

 

The future

I have kept what I consider to be the best-made churn unpainted as I intend to use this as a master to make a mould for resin-casting.........

.... and I can then go into mass-production. As I now potentially have an unlimited supply of churns, I am considering a creating lineside industry on the railway of a creamery similar to that found beside the Leek & Manifold Railway.

Standard gauge milk tanks on transporter wagons on the Leek & Manifold - Source: http://www.kachuzyn.fsnet.co.uk/ecton2.jpg

Of course, that might one day lead to the construction of some standard gauge transporter wagons. (For more information about the Leek & Manifold Railway see the entry on my Narrow Gauge Railways blog).