Inverlochan Colliery

[tedp]

Over 20 years ago I built Inverlochan Colliery, the mainstay of income for the Craigcorrie & Dunalistair Railway. The buildings were described in the Railway Modeller as part of a general article on collieries. They were kitbashed using a Faller colliery kit, which in hindsight needed so much modification I would better have scratchbuilt the entire structure. Later I think Faller produced a better kit. The screening house was made from Wills corrugated sheet, and it was loosely inspired by the tarmacadam plant spanning the Glyn Valley tracks at Hendre.



One thing quite unlike prototype practice is the lack of a merry-go-round circuit where empty mine tubs push the loaded ones out of the lift cage. Instead, the empties have to be exchanged for the loaded ones using a locomotive on the upper level tramway, a most uneconomic process. This is the danger of building a model without proper prototype study!

As mine tubs I use Roco tippers - the type with a square container instead of the V-shape one. Another deviation from prototype, but alas - I'm stuck with what I did at the time! The screening plant consists of a tray with a screen attached. The entire assembly is supposed to be shaken by a belt drive, which sorts the coal in two grades - medium and coarse, or, as Angus Macnab, the senior driver on the C&DR is reputed to say, bad and worse. He uses the stuff in his firebox...









After comments made by Dave Rowe and Klaus Olschewski, I modified the headframe structure and the engine house to a more prototypical shape, with the sheaves side by side and a better diagonal support structure. I got rid of the canopy which isn't very common in Britain.



The structure as built incorporated lights and power units to create movement. The headframe sheaves and the lift ropes will run using a severely modified Lima N gauge bogie for power, with pulleys added to the wheel faces. The pulleys were made from Airfix/Dapol pug wheels - I feel the unit should therefore qualify as a pugbash!



Here is the headframe structure lifted out of the building, showing how the elastic string rope is guided at the bottom of the lattice structure:





The pulleys and string were included in the Faller kit, and they proved to be the worst possible material to create an animated model. The pulleys are terribly off centre. But somehow I managed to get it working. It's 20 years ago, so mercifully I forgot the details!

Here is a view showing the unit assembled:



The mine pump If I remember correctly was inspired by one at the Beamish museum. It has a beam engine and a wooden pump rod running into a narrow shaft, all scratchbuilt, and the drive again is an old Lima N gauge bogie.







Anyway - over the past days I have had the colliery on the workbench to try and make the 'works' move again. It took some time, and the main problem was the power supply, as it runs off the layout light circuit, part of which supplies about 8-9 volts AC (after losses in the circuit). I fiddled about with diodes and resistors to get a reasonable running speed out of the mechanisms, They proved to have their mechanical limitations, so probably the speed is rather excessive, and the knot in the elastic string also plays havoc with smooth operation. Again, this is a 20-year-old model brought to life again, so I have to accept that. Here the mechanisms are being tested:



Finally, here is the unit back in its proper place, and at work.







And last, but not least, here is a short video showing what it looks like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Avsv-0rOtFw

[Andre Anderson]

Greetings,

I don't care if it is twenty years old it still looks great! :o And the fact that you have some animation going on really helps make the model.

Thanks for sharing,
Andre Anderson
Portland Oregon USA

[tedp]

Thanks, Andre - glad you like it. Here are a few photos of the colliery after dark, made today.





I will be publishing more night photos of the layout in a new thread.

[Andre Anderson]

Ted,

As I said in response to your other post WOW, the dusk with the lights just coming on adds another level of WOW. Nothing I have seen makes the argument for lighting quite as well as your two posts. I really like the dusk as night moves in, it is still light enough that you can see the buildings but with the lights coming on adds a warmth and invites the viewer in to enter the scene.

Andre

[tedp]

Thanks, Andre - much appreciated.

The dusk effect is due to the use of a shaded light pointed to the ceiling of the room. It lights the surrounding scenery and the sky in the backscene. In addition, I needed to tweak the photo considerably to get rid of unwanted hues. The camera doesn't like light levels this low, but did a fair job considering!

Here are some more images of the colliery. First, the original plan which I drew up using an Atari computer. The siding round the back of the engine house was lifted when the latter had to be rebuilt. Loads of pit props must now be manhandled to the track in front of the engine house.



Screen foreman shouting to the C&DR loco driver:


Screen operator - note hoppers for medium (L) and coarse (R) grade coal. The sign was made using the Atari and a dot matrix printer.


Someone digging for gold?


Old Nobbin hauling the explosives trolley from the store. Note Reinier Hendriksen's Bagnall on the spoil tramway above. The bin at the foot of the engine house is the coal hopper for the boiler.


The original track on the kit baseplate was about 5mm gauge - an extra rail was laid:


Pump house detail - note wooden casing of pump shaft:


The hopper operator's cabin under the screen building:


Theoretically, the tramway may be powered with a shuttle service running back and forth, as I made working track and working stub points. Even the wiring is in place, to enable frog switching. I remember I ran a small loco over the tramway after constructing the track. But I should find a way to operate the stubs by hidden servos first, and I'm afraid this takes a low priority. Here is a construction view of the track:

[Martin Collins]

Nice one Ted!
I often wondered what to do with Lima power bogies - they never pulled trains very well!

Martin

[Andre Anderson]

Ted

I just noticed that you are using stub turnouts, every now and again I wakeup, Were these a commercial product or did you make them yourself? Do you have any problems with locomotives with the short movable section?

Andre

[DeadHorse]

The Inverlochan Colliery is my favourite bit of any model railway I have ever seen.
My second favourite has no buildings on it at all, just a gentle curve in a cutting with reinforced timber walls.
I forget the name of the railway but you all know the one as it was used as the banner for the 009 page for many years.
Old age & a mis-spent youth is creeping up on me wibble wibble.

[tedp]

Thanks, all!

These stub points were hand built, Andre. The rail sections pivot on rail joiners and the ties are printed circuit board, gapped where necessary.