With a view to building a small shunting layout I embarked on a project to construct a model of a sand and gravel works using a track layout based upon the Inglenook Sidings shunting puzzle. The Flixton Industrial Tramway is built to 16mm scale and uses track powered locomotives. These pages detail a little pf the progress to date...
Clicking on the links above will take you to the relevant section of this page.During the railway mania of the 1840's, Samuel Morton Peto, of Grimble and Peto the constructors of Nelson's column in Trafalgar Square, noticed, whilst building the Norfolk Railway line between Reedham and Lowestoft, that the distant bank rising above the river Waveney flood plain was of a sandy nature. His investigations led to the development of a sand and gravel works at Flixton between Somerleyton and Oulton. Materials were moved about the works and to the river loading dock by hand worked plateway. They were then transported by wherry, the local inland trading craft, to Beccles, Yarmouth and Lowestoft.
Following the first world world war the Flixton Sand and Gravel Company took the opportunity to purchase redundant equipment from the Ministry of War, converting the plateways to 60cm gauge track and utilising internal combustion locomotives. The building boom that followed the war bought great riches to the company and the grandly titled Flixton Industrial Tramway was expanded to serve the local community in the direct vicinity of the works, taking on both agricultural and a little passenger traffic.
OK, not all of the above is true, but some of it is, I'll leave you to work out what is fact and what is fiction!
Initially I'm going to construct two locomotives, a Ruston 16/20 and a Motor Rail plate frame simplex.
The Ruston is built on a scratch chassis made from components bought from the Home of O Gauge. The side frames are 1/16" brass from K&S, these were cut and cleaned, then drilled for the spacers. A motor mount plate was made from thinner brass, this was initially bolted in position until the worm and gear meshed well, then the plate and spacers were soldered to give a stiff chassis.
The wheel sets have one wheel insulated (you can see the black plastic ring in the centre of each wheel above) so the chassis is live. There are phosphor bronze pickups on one side (soldered to the lower half of the PCB visible above). The motor is a Mashima 1833, that drives the front axle through a 54:1 worm drive. The front and rear axles are linked using delrin cogs and chain.
The body is mainly constructed from plasticard sheet of differing thicknesses. The radiator elements are the fine corrugated card from an aftershave box and the round tube used for the fuel tank and radiator top are the core of a credit card machine paper roll. This tube is unfortunately a little overscale which has made the central section of the engine housing a little small, however the overall Ruston look is retained I think.
Bits of drinking straw have been used for the exhaust and also to retain the epoxy glue around the 8BA screws that locate the body on the chassis. You can just see the top of the motor shaft poking through the hole in the top if the engine housing.
The gearbox and axle boxes are fashioned from Fimo clay, the seat and engine compartment louvres are from Cambrian Models. With the construction complete, the outside was primed, the inside sprayed matt black and the top coat, hopefully looking a little like GER blue, applied. Paint is from the Halfords car range.
The Simplex body is an IP Engineering kit, a much modified Branchlines MB35 chassis replaces the one from the IP kit. This chassis, designed for 00 gauge with a 35mm wheelbase will be extended to 55mm and fitted with 32mm gauge wheelsets.
All rolling stock comes from Binnie Engineering. Some are standard tipper wagons and some are chassis with modifications! Couplings are all Bemo OO9 bolted to the Binnie chassis. These loop and hook couplings can be uncoupled when lifted below. Locomotives have simple buffing hooks with no loops.
The first four wagons are made up as per the instructions and have been painted using the 2 pack rust treatment supplied by Back 2 Bay 6. These models were featured in an article I wrote which was published in issue 111 of 16mm Today.
The track, brass railed Faller, is laid out in the style of Inglenook Sidings, three basic sidings leaving the "main line", two of which can only hold three wagons. I've added a kick back siding to the longest siding so that a locomotive and one wagon can manoeuvre to the buildings that mask the exit of the line to the loading dock.
The baseboard will be about 6ft by 18inches (2m by 50cm) and will probably divide into 2 for ease of handling. Framing is likely to be from ply with a chipboard or insulation board top. Full details will appear here in due course.
The layout is based on a shunting puzzle. There are 8 pieces of rolling stock and three sidings. The aim of the puzzle is to extract a train of 5 wagons in the specified order. Two of the sidings can only hold 3 wagons, the other 5. The headshunt can only accommodate the locomotive and 3 wagons.
Wagon selection can be accomplished in many ways - the simplest being 8 counters in a pot, each counter representing a wagon, the most technical being a computer program which I downloaded from the Internet. A pack of cards could also be used.
Well, it's hardly started yet so who knows?