Chemin de fer Sud de Bretagne

Don't forget that there were many other craft on French canals apart from the standard peniche which is a 'Freycinet' 38m x 5.5m. This is huge in 'G' scale. 172cm x 25cm.

You could pretend it is a Berrichon or Flute de l'ourcq which measured from 25m-30m x 2.5m-2.8m.

And there are all the Dutch and Flemish barges (Tjalk, Aak, Steilsteven, Luxemotor etc.)which were a myriad of different sizes and shapes which found and still find there way into France.

I think we discussed this before somewhere.

Yes Carle we did.

It was just looking at my cut-outs for the hull it looked to short and dumpy compared to the more slender vessels around here that still fit the locks width wise. Just a visual thing really of what I had in my mind to represent a typical craft.

A minor RED letter day today the first run of a train outside for three years got the track cleaning loco running around the first completed circuit, photographs to follow when I get over the shock.

Pictures as promised. It took a while to get back into it all.

First train leaving station




It actually made it all the round without disaster

There has been some progress in the Train Shed. But the flooring is still to be finished. Not to mention the walls!



View from control centre window.

Well about bl***y time Peter!! Nice to see it though.

Mikey

French Chuffed wrote:

View from control centre window.

Hey... What a view even now. Think in a couple of years time when plants have grown and the scenery has matured a bit.

Looks very 'Marne la Vallée' to me.

Well carl there's some space for a steam boat now, to deliver the coal for the trains, new project !!!!

Looks very nice, i wonder when i could start my own tracks.

Just so that you all don’t get carried away with all this scratch built railway stuff there are a few of us that are at the other end of the modelling spectrum. The latest addition to the railway is the Brewery. Detail to be added and I need to work out how to do a cobbled yard at the front, any suggestions? And possibly get a factory gate with the road leading across the tracks to behind the engine sheds.



The coaling stage from Geoff looks good, just got to paint the ‘coal’ black

thats a nice looking model Peter. I'll be along to sample when its in production!!

Mikey

Nice looking building... I have used several of that type of wall panel for my own pipe-works - another of my ongoing project-ettes. I seem to remember seeing the brewery as a complete unit in a (Piko?) catalog, which actually did include some large, ornate 'ironwork' gates.

As for a cobbled yard, I haven't tried it yet but I have retained several old Brita water filter cartridges for some experiments involving the micro-beads that are contained therein. Don't know yet how effective it will be, but you might like to investigate for yourself and report back!

Pah, next you'll be telling me that you don't need to filter your water!

True no water filter.
I will ask Jeremy if there are any embossed cobble’s in plastic sheets. Has anyone had experience with 2 part silicon moulding ‘stuff’ and where to get it? I have user the hot melt but obviously that would not do for taking a mould of plastic, or I suppose I could carve a section and keep repeating it but that sounds very time consuming. I need to inset quite a lot of track around the brewery and engine shed / turn table area so that it is level with the top of the track, without sacrificing the LGB track by burying it totally with concrete, any suggestions?

French Chuffed wrote:

True no water filter.
I will ask Jeremy if there are any embossed cobble’s in plastic sheets. Has anyone had experience with 2 part silicon moulding ‘stuff’ and where to get it? I have user the hot melt but obviously that would not do for taking a mould of plastic, or I suppose I could carve a section and keep repeating it but that sounds very time consuming. I need to inset quite a lot of track around the brewery and engine shed / turn table area so that it is level with the top of the track, without sacrificing the LGB track by burying it totally with concrete, any suggestions?

I did promise to send you the link to Tirranti, so here it is, they sell all the resin and mould making products you would need along with excellent customer service. http://www.tiranti.co.uk/
The are just outside Newbury so handy for the M4.
I am commisioning a new bridge from Jim to cope with the traffic on my new loop and may cast the abutments in resin.

clive_t wrote:

Nice looking building... I have used several of that type of wall panel for my own pipe-works - another of my ongoing project-ettes. I seem to remember seeing the brewery as a complete unit in a (Piko?) catalog, which actually did include some large, ornate 'ironwork' gates.

Yes Clive the gates are a separate item. The building consists of a Piko brewery, a chimney and a boiler house that I had, joined together so that it would cover the filter for the canal, the reason why it’s so Big. I was debating whether to leave the chimney on the floor or mount it on the side building to give it extra high.

[Slightly off topic]Spookily enough, I was on the Tiranti site myself this morning, looking at centrifuges. They do also seem to do a lot of casting stuff. I am considering trying to produce copies of the figures I am making - 700 nicker is a lot of folding stuff though, it must be said. I could get a live steamer for that! Well, one that has non-turning wheels maybe
[/Slightly off topic]
I used remeltable rubber for producing moulds of a couple of the wall panels. The trouble with that is, the melting point is 130C, which seemed not to be particularly to the liking of the master. So I would suggest trying out a moulding compound that is usable at lower temperatures.

In the matter of the chimney: if it was me, I'd probably have it on top of a small building, to signify a boilerhouse or similar. Maybe also a bit of pipework coming out of the boilerhouse into the main building, that kind of thing.

Absolutely amazed to see this link! Its literally just round the corner from where i used to live for 17 years! AND in the same road as my son-in-laws parents house. So if anybody living in france wants anything, my S-i-L (long distance lorry driver) can pick it up (he always stays at his parents house when in UK). Save a lot of postal charges!!

Mikey

Thanks for that, Good info. I will have to study and possibly get some two part silicon mould material. The hot melt stuff is good for taking an impression of concrete and lasts for quite a few mouldings, not so good for taking a mould of plastic melty things.

I did promise to send you the link to Tirranti, so here it is, they sell all the resin and mould making products you would need along with excellent customer service. http://www.tiranti.co.uk/
The are just outside Newbury so handy for the M4.
I am commisioning a new bridge from Jim to cope with the traffic on my new loop and may cast the abutments in resin. [/quote]

Right I have looked at the web site and blown my mined. What is the best material for making moulds and casting say a cobbled street?
Me of little brain cells find that there is far to much choice

One thing you could do is to make a master from a square bit of plywood with, say, a 1-inch batten round the edge. Then half-fill it with some loose material that looks like the cobblestone effect you want, e.g. pea-gravel or maybe something a bit smaller, like fish-tank gravel. You don't need much really just enough to cover the internal surface of the plywood. It might help to put a coat of glue on the bottom first so that when you tip the gravel or whatever into it, it sticks and remains in place. The danger would be, if you left it loose, that the pouring of moulding material over the top might displace the gravel and leave you with patches of 'plywood' and little mountains of gravel all over the place! Also, you will need to build some sort of 'trench' into the edge of the master, so that the mould itself, when it comes out, has a built-up edge around it.

I have a diagram somewhere that will illustrate what I mean, however for some reason I cannot access my Photobucket accout from where I am at the moment. I will add it when I am able.

Anyway, once you're happy with your master, then make up your moulding stuff and pour that in, so that the surface is about 0.5 inch over the top of the gravel. This makes for a nice thick strong mould at the end. Try and agitate it gently to get air bubbles away from the mould face. If you time it right, you could put the thing on top of your washing machine as it goes through its fast-spin cycle!

As far as moulding material is concerned, I guess you're right, there is a bewlildering choice on offer it seems. However, I would think that the key to it is that the mould is reusable ie you get a good number of castings out of it. Ideally the rubber that makes the mould should itself be reusable (ie can make new moulds out of the same mould material), however the downside of that is that invariably that will involve high-temperature moulding, which as I have already said is often not to the liking of the thing you are taking a cast of.

It might be worth your while pinging an email to enquiries [at] tiranti dot co dot uk , telling them what you want to do and asking for advice on the best way to go about it with their products. I would imagine they'd be able to advise you, especially if there's the likelihood of a sale at the end of it!

Hope that helps anyway, and good luck!

Thanks Clive that sounds like a practical solution, I will look for some suitable material to make the cobles in the bottom of a mould, and will send an e mail to Tiranti for a suitable mould medium. I do have some hot melt stuff already and that may be suitable if the master is made from none meltable materials.

Peter

Here's the diagram I was looking for, now that Photophucket is back with my pics still intact... Fairly self-explanatory I guess, and I'm sure you could visualise what I was talking about anyway, but here you go for what it's worth:

Yes thanks Clive I had the idea of how it all works with moulds etc. Nice diagrams though.
Next question have you any advice re heating the re mouldable rubber? Last time I used a large Gas cylinder (906) mounted Gas burner but there wasn’t really enough heat to do a ‘proper job’ as the Cornish say.

I used a microwave - erm, might be an idea to pack the other half off to the hair-dresser/shops/bar for a couple of hours... that will hopefully give you time to clear the smell from the kitchen

I did an article for the G Scale Journal a while ago, when I get home on Friday I'll dig it out and send it to you if you want. Or I could try and reproduce it as a thread here for the benefit of anyone else comtemplating such a venture?

Essentially though:

Use a Pyrex dish or something like that to melt it down in, and add a handful of lumps/cubes of rubber at a go til you think you have enough.

When you're ready to pour, make sure you have oven gloves or similar. When you remove it from the microwave, it will be +30C hotter than boiling water. What's worse is, when it splashes you it sticks to you. Not recommended, believe me. Also an old wooden spoon to scoop out the stuff quicker. Failing that, a new wooden spoon and somewhere to hide it afterwards - helps too if you have someone that you can blame its disappearance on, e.g. kids/grandkids, dog, budgie, whatever. Do not be tempted to use a metal spoon of course, as it will transfer the heat of the rubber to your fingers with breathtaking efficiency! Again, not recommended.

Pour the stuff into the mould from one corner rather than into the middle. You've got about 10-15 seconds to remove as much of the air-bubbles from where the mould material meets the master - agitate it as much as you safely can, either by shaking gently or tapping or otherwise vibrating it. Once past that point, the rubber will have started to solidify at the point of contact with the master, so if air bubbles are stil there by then, they will show up in your casts. Although, in this particular case, it's not really an issue I suppose. You can buy yourself more time to do this if you pre-heat the master in some way - I immersed mine in boiling water for a while first before attempting to make a mould from it. You might be able to pre-heat yours in a conventional oven? Another good reason to make sure "Her Indoors" is not in the vicinity.

Never thought of the microwave, I have a spare on in my workshop. If you know the date of your article in the G scale journal I probably have it as I have all of them going back to at least 2000. I had a quick look through the recent index’s but could not see anything.
If you ever find yourself on the ferry from Portsmouth to St Malo, I am only an 80 mile drive from the St Malo ferry terminal

Peter

There's an article index spreadsheet on the Journal page of the G-Scale Soc website - provided free and for gratis by yours truly.

http://www.g-scale-society.co.uk/journal.htm

Either filter by author or just do a simple word search in the spreadsheet for the word 'casting'. From the search I have just done, it was Autumn 2008.

A cracking good read if you're having trouble getting off to sleep of an evening.

Thanks.
Excellent article I thought I had seen those diagrams before. (But the memory is not what it was). I will re read it with added interest.