Garden Railway Forum

Hi Jim,

What a beast! It's scale and proportion weren't immediately apparent from the first pictures. When you were first talking about using a kids bike wheels I thought they would be oversized, now I've seen the thing 'in action' I can see they are spot on.

Some headstocks used to have a smaller wheel fitted to help with rope changes. It's a long time ago now but I seem to remember some of them being fitted at right angles to the main wheels. That fact now makes me think they may have been there in connection with the emergency winders (which couldn't always be positioned to use the normal wheels).

I seem to remember that Snowdown colliery in Kent kept it's loco fleet long after it was needed for shunting purposes purely because they needed a loco to draw off the old rope when a rope change took place. It seemed overkill though to keep two steamers and two diesels just for that! Goodness knows why that was necessary, I'm pretty sure all our pits used the winding engine to do the job!

On the subject of the Lancy boiler, could it fit at the chimney base locates at right angles to the headstocks?

Keep us up dated wiht plenty of pics won't you?

a little progress has been made over the weekend iv made some walls out of coffee sticks iv vanished them and they do look a bit bright at the moment hopefully this will tone down outside the walls will be placed around with a few keep out signs too iv also given the pit wheel a coat of grey primer

Wow, great work, cant wait to see it on your railway

been busy this weekend but I have had time to make these I thought it would look good to have a few old coal loading wagons outside the mine that have been abandoned and left to rust bean cans have been used yet again .im planning to fill them with crashed coal im going to paint the rest of the pit wheel tonight and im hopefully going to get the model outside and all in place this week

Very nice, how did you build the chassis for them?

its a wooden chassis with ip engineering wheels etc

Ok cheers, i will have to attempt something like that my self!

its quite easy the chassis is jest basa wood paved together and then iv spray painted with car spray paint the tin is a bit harder to use its bent in to shape but scored first with a sharp knife its quite sharp stuff so be careful

ok cheers

panted the pit wheel its looks a bit silver in the photos but it is black and I have also made another building out of off cuts of wood (its pallet wood im using a lot of pallet wood to build things for my wedding you can get a lot of wood out of a pallet and its free) the last building will weather up very quick and the wood will darken down its another building to go with the pit it will not have a roof and will help the pit look more derelict .if the weather clears the week im planning on putting it outside and in place iv got a lot of old slates I plan to use as walls and flooring I managed to get a bucket of coal I plan to brake this up and scatter around the mine as well as add to my coal wagons I made .to help hold some of this all in place iv collected some moss im going to mix this with crushed coal, sand,cemet,pete ,this will hopefully make a sort of rolands mix and encourage moss to grow

the coal mine is now finished and in place in the garden il post some photos up tomorrow

great looking forward to it!

I managed to get home and get a few pictures of the coal mine in place. please excuse the no ballasted track some of it is only placed around at the moment and not fixed this is on the list of jobs to do this year.the tin will soon rust and im going to plant a few small conifers one side and leave them in pots so they don't grow too big I will also plant a few other small plant near the side of the track to help hide and make the mine look more overgrown .bine weed grows in the garden quite a bit in the summer mouths so I may get some of this to grown up the pit wheel hope you all enjoy the coal mine .none of the techniques iv used are very hard to do they jest take a little time and patience.hopefully this model will last years and years outside but time the wind rain etc will tell .this model hasent cost me a lot I the tins where free as I got my mum to save them for me from her work.the bike was also free ,the wood was off cut from work ,the basa wood I buy in big packs iv made a lot of buildings from a 12 pound bundle and the glue I bought a massive tub of and I still have a lot left ,now what to build next its cold and wet so time to build another model or too

Well done Jim, that looks well on site.
I must say you are a brave man putting your hard work out in this weather.... you have a great deal of confidence it will survive.
By Summertime it should have matured nicely with a little rust and some planting in all the right places.

Brilliant - I'd like to see some pictures when its been out a while and weathered. Well done !

thank you very much peter .I think part of the fun is seeing if it does survive .il take a few pictures in the summer when its settled in a bit and has some plants around it .it will tone down a bit and soon get rusty its nice having buildings outside they change with the seasons and look different at night and when its sunny etc

Coor - I can practically hear the wind whistling through the spokes of the pit head wheel and the slight squeek of some ancient dormant machinary disturbed by the gusts, something is dripping irregularly inside the empty stone winding house, the sound echoing endlessly off the bare stone walls. Brrrr....

Evocative modelling!

stuuning .... im sure the balsa walls would havbe taken a while and would of been very messy but well worth it fantastic