The Burford Branch

Tell us about your layout, where you put it, how you built it, how you operate it.
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jim s-w
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby jim s-w » Thu Jun 27, 2019 5:49 pm

Um, Alan’s pictures are showing upside down to me :(
Jim Smith-Wright

http://www.p4newstreet.com

Over thinking often leads to under doing!

Steve Carter
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby Steve Carter » Thu Jun 27, 2019 6:25 pm

The photos originally posted by Martin were the right way up on my iPad but the reposts by Alan are upside down!
What’s going on?
Steve Carter

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Noel
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby Noel » Thu Jun 27, 2019 6:41 pm

In Windows 10/Edge, Martin's were inverted, Alan's are correct...
Regards
Noel

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John Donnelly
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby John Donnelly » Thu Jun 27, 2019 8:16 pm

Noel wrote:In Windows 10/Edge, Martin's were inverted, Alan's are correct...


Same here in Safari on a MacBook.

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Will L
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby Will L » Fri Jun 28, 2019 8:32 am

And they are all the right way up on Windows 10/ Firefox

martin goodall
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby martin goodall » Fri Jun 28, 2019 11:07 am

[For the benefit of those members using Apple equipment (iPhone, iPad, AppleMac, etc.) I re-posted the three 'upside down' photos here in their original format, but there still seems to have been a problem with them, so I have now (June 2020) re-edited them again, in the hope that the problems with them have finally been resolved.]

IMG_5338.JPG

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Steve Carter
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby Steve Carter » Fri Jun 28, 2019 12:27 pm

All the right way up on my iPad Martin.
Thank you very much.
Steve
Steve Carter

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Dave K
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby Dave K » Sat Jun 29, 2019 9:28 am

Martin,

Loved the photos of the station and auto coach, but who’s model is it?

Dave

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Tim V
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby Tim V » Sat Jun 29, 2019 9:42 am

Martin's :D
Tim V
(Not all railways in Somerset went to Dorset)

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Craig Warton
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby Craig Warton » Sat Jun 29, 2019 10:00 am

They are upside down for me.

I have a Mac and live in Australia. Maybe they cancel each other out.

Regards,

Craig W

dal-t
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby dal-t » Sat Jun 29, 2019 4:52 pm

Works as advertised on my ancient ipad running ios5.1.1 and (almost as ancient) Dell running Windows XP. Ain't that weird?
David L-T

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Dave K
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby Dave K » Sun Jun 30, 2019 4:17 pm

Tim V wrote:Martin's :D


Tim,

Do you scratch built?

Dave

martin goodall
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby martin goodall » Sun Jun 30, 2019 6:21 pm

Dave K wrote:Martin,

Loved the photos of the station and auto coach, but who’s model is it?

Dave



The Autotrailer (No.202 of Diagram Q) was built from an old K's [N & KC Keyser] whitemetal kit, but with the moulded plastic roof. (Early examples had cast whitemetal roofs.) My model is over 40 years old. I described its original construction in an article in the January 1979 issue of Model Railway Constructor, but it has had much extra detail added since then.

["But observe, Watson, at the luggage end some miscreant has cut off the buffer heads.

"Good Lord, Holmes; so they have. But why ever would they do that?"

"It's elementary, my dear Watson. I suspect that there may in fact be an innocent explanation. Possibly, this vehicle was "in shops", as they say, having some work carried out on those buffers, and some inattentive foreman returned it to traffic without realising that the buffer heads were still missing."]

martin goodall
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby martin goodall » Thu Jul 04, 2019 9:09 am

Before dismantling the layout commences, I have taken a final opportunity to show the layout to various friends before it moves up-country. This involved getting the layout working properly for the first time in two or three years (due to my having concentrated exclusively in the meantime on constructing buildings for the layout, to the neglect of both rolling stock and operation of the layout).

Getting everything working again was fairly straightforward, the main tasks being to repair a length of plain track that I had inadvertently damaged, and then thoroughly cleaning the track, giving the locos a much needed oiling, plus a few other miscellaneous tweaks and adjustments. I did not encounter any problem in getting the layout to work smoothly and reliably, once the locos had been warmed up and everything had settled down.

Ian Harrison took some photos when he and Ted Farmer came to see the layout in late June and, with Ian’s kind permission, I am posting some of these here. They show a mixture of Ian’s GWR stock and my current BR(WR) stock (mainly RTR in my case, to get something running until I have completed some more GWR rolling stock of my own)
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Ian also took some photos of the Brewery, including this shot of the Brewery Yard
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also the loading platform in the brewery siding
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and the Brewery Maltings
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The next two shots show a unique Through Coach working from Devon.
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Ian’s 45XX is heading his beautiful 3-coach set of Slater’s Toplights
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Finally, we had the rare sight on this layout of a goods train actually being marshalled and departing – an almost unheard of event.
The engine is a Bachmann Collett Goods (No.2221), which is a very steady performer now that I have fitted a set of current collectors to the tender as well as the engine.
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[The large dark grey meteorite that has landed in the lane (seen in several of these shots) is a well-worn Peco track rubber. In other shots, the Beaujolais track-cleaning cork can also be seen.]
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The hand of the Fat Controller is operating the switches that control the uncoupling magnets.
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The Branch Goods is ready to depart.
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And as the train sets off for Minster Lovell, Witney and stations to Oxford, the brake van disappears in the distance, leaving the Train Shed empty and silent again.
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steve howe
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby steve howe » Sat Jul 06, 2019 12:20 pm

"Finally, we had the rare sight on this layout of a goods train actually being marshalled and departing – an almost unheard of event.
The engine is a Bachmann Collett Goods (No.2221), which is a very steady performer now that I have fitted a set of current collectors to the tender as well as the engine."


Lovely stuff Martin, can I ask if the Bachmann Collett is a conversion or a new chassis?


Steve

martin goodall
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby martin goodall » Sat Jul 06, 2019 4:59 pm

steve howe wrote:"Finally, we had the rare sight on this layout of a goods train actually being marshalled and departing – an almost unheard of event.
The engine is a Bachmann Collett Goods (No.2221), which is a very steady performer now that I have fitted a set of current collectors to the tender as well as the engine."


Lovely stuff Martin, can I ask if the Bachmann Collett is a conversion or a new chassis?


Steve


It has its original Bachmann chassis, motor and current collectors. Conversion of the loco was by means of a set of drop-in P4 wheels from Ultrascale, but I couldn't make the drop-in tender wheels work for me, so I rebuilt the tender frame with an old Perseverance etched kit (which has 3-point suspension) and fitted Ultrascale EMF wheels to the tender, set to the P4 back-to-back. At the same time, I added current collectors to all six wheels of the tender with a plugged connection to the loco, which means that there are now up to 12 wheels from which current can reach the motor. This has hugely increased reliability.

I found it necessary to lower the front buffers, removing the moulded buffer housings and substituting commercially available Collett buffers, which turned out to be a surprisingly easy exercise. The tender is close-coupled to the engine, although I am not completely satisfied with the way this works, and may have another go at this. I may also substitute wire current collectors on the engine, which simply had its Bachmann current collectors tweaked to reach the regauged wheels. (Various details have still not been added to this model, such as more realistic coal, a loco crew, lamps, etc.)

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steve howe
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby steve howe » Sat Jul 06, 2019 5:27 pm

Thanks Martin,

Encouraging news! The likelihood of getting Ultrascale wheels for the conversion is probably pretty remote at present, but it seems Alan Gibson does a conversion set:

4800/19 Bachmann GWR 2251 3 Axles 5' 2" 16 spoke - 3mm Axles Price AU 3 x 4' 1" 12 spoke, 4M42B

So I guess thats another one for the list,

Steve

martin goodall
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby martin goodall » Mon Sep 23, 2019 9:29 am

No news is……….er, no news.

By now, dismantling of the layout should have been well under way, and my hope had been that the layout itself would have been moved to its new home before the end of this month. But progress has been much slower than expected, and so at the time of writing, the layout is still intact in its old home, although various other contents of the room (including books and bookshelves, tools, kits and components, etc) have been moved out, and more items will follow in order to clear the way for the layout to be taken down.

The main reason for the delay is that I have had to spend a lot more time than I originally planned in completing a major writing project, so that the resulting book can be published by the end of October. (The book has nothing at all to do with railways or model-making, and is in fact the Third Edition of one of my previous books, which was originally published five years ago. It is now three years since the Second Edition was published, so we are now somewhat overdue for this new edition.) I enjoy writing, but I find that hobbies tend to take a back seat when professional demands take over.

I’ll take photos of the layout as it’s dismantled, but don’t hold your breath. It may be a few weeks before I can get back to this.

martin goodall
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby martin goodall » Mon Jan 20, 2020 5:10 pm

Progress (of sorts)

The new railway room is now ready to receive the layout and, as a first step, the untidy pile of boxes that used to be stored under the layout has been moved into a wardrobe in the new railway room, which has been adapted by the addition of extra shelving.

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The photo above was taken before the sliding doors had been put back, so as to hide away all the unbuilt and half-built kits from the vulgar gaze.

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And now.......... A layout has been delivered to its new home.

[No; this isn’t the Burford Branch.]

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It’s Crichel Down, which had been mothballed for over 20 years.

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The layout has been temporarily set up on a base of packing cases. It doesn't look too bad after being neglected for more than two decades. My wife thinks I should refurbish it.

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The track, point rodding and wiring all look as though they should be OK, so it probably needs only some fairly minor scenic repairs and a few cosmetic improvements to restore its appearance.

Tempting though it is to put this layout back into working order and to add the modest extension that was always intended, I really don’t want to delay further work on the Burford Branch, which (at the moment) is still in its old home, waiting to be dismantled and moved.

[My fears that these photos might display upside down to those viewing this on an iPhone or iPad seem to have been misplaced. It proves not to have been a problem this time, due probably to my having held the iPhone 'right way up' this time.]
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Ian@Exton
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby Ian@Exton » Mon Jan 20, 2020 10:51 pm

Martin
Good to see that you are getting your new railway room up and running.

Looking forward to seeing pictures of Burford installed in its new home.

And your pictures are the correct way up on my IPad.

Ian

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steve howe
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby steve howe » Tue Jan 21, 2020 2:32 pm

Nice to see Crichel Down again :thumb

Why not be really cheeky and enter it for the MRJ cameo challenge?! :twisted:

Steve

martin goodall
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby martin goodall » Tue Jan 21, 2020 7:19 pm

I was very tempted to enter Crichel Down for the Cameo Layout challenge, but I was not sure whether it might be disqualified because it had featured in Iain Rice's Cameo Layouts book.

The real clincher, however, was that it would have required too much work to get it back into a presentable state and full working order, and whilst I don't rule out doing so in future, I didn't want to divert from other projects at the time.

Someone suggested to me that I should take it to Scaleforum 2026, as part of the Society's 50th Anniversary celebrations. That is a timescale that I might perhaps be able to work to, provided I am not too decrepit myself by that time.

martin goodall
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby martin goodall » Thu Jan 30, 2020 10:22 pm

You may recall that some time ago I discussed the apparent yellow ‘cast’ in photos of the layout after the installation of new LED light bulbs.

In addition to giving an uneven spectrum, those bulbs proved not to be as long-lived as their makers claimed they would be, and when they failed one by one within only months of being purchased, I replace them with different LED bulbs, still having a colour temperature of 2700 Kelvin but proving to be much brighter and giving a much more even spectrum of light.

This shot taken the other day shows both the brighter lighting effect, more like a bright summer’s day, and the elimination of the yellow ‘cast’ that the previous bulbs caused when taking colour photos of the layout.

IMG_5817.JPG

The layout itself still hasn’t been dismantled or moved, although much of the accompanying gubbins has now made the journey to its new home.
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martin goodall
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby martin goodall » Sat Feb 22, 2020 12:21 pm

A start has been made at last on dismantling the layout in readiness for the move to its new home, beginning with the removal of rolling stock from the layout

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………and packing it away for transport

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Various smaller buildings were removed to await packing.

[The porter reading his newspaper seems to be blissfully unaware of the chaos piling up behind him. Unlike many other details on the layout, the porter and the packing case on which he is sitting are glued firmly to the platform, so he will be staying put.]

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The Goods Shed was removed next.

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Even though this is only a start, it has already created a sense of wide open spaces on the layout.

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The Station Building and Train Shed will be next.
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BrockleyAndrew
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby BrockleyAndrew » Sat Feb 22, 2020 11:36 pm

Hello Martin,

As a regular reader I just wanted to quickly say how much I enjoy reading of your working methods and progress. The background in particular but also your decision making regarding detailing on the layout is useful and thought provoking.

Your perspective/viewpoint tricks in the backscenes are very clever, and work very well from the photographic evidence!

Carry on posting!

Andrew


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