Progress is being made on this layout at a pace not normally associated with my modelling. Usually progress is measured in some form of astrological event schedule such as the return of an asteroid from its journey in deep space. However I have to see this speeding up as a positive step. The layout has a quarry face and therefore some means of loading whatever the quarry produces (yet to be finally decided upon) has to be in place. In the last post I did state that what I had constructed bore some resemblance to what Tony Beets from the Gold Rush programme might have made. I constructed this on the basis of an auger that is loaded by machine from the quarry face feeding some overhead hoppers that would then discharge into wagons waiting underneath. From an engineering view this whole contraption would have probably never worked and condemned for safety reasons before it had even seen any material pass through it. However, this is the World of model railways so imagination, available materials and skills all trump what engineering and health and safety might do in the real World!
The hopper and auger were made from sheet plasticard, some H-beam strips and some lengths of strip and rod ending up after a few evenings work looking like this.
It took a three evenings to build this with no real plan to it other than knowing how wide and how high it had to be to allow the rolling stock under. Guess how I knew to take account of that at an early stage? Lessons learnt from previous failures!
Once built it was sprayed in Tamiya Earth and this formed the undercoat for a light coat of blue Vallejo. The idea was that the overall structure would show age and negelect. Some weathering powders followed this and again highlight the rust and aging that such a structure would show after some years. Some weathering powders were put in the hoppers as the sort of residues you would find on a working loader and hopper and fixed in place by dripping acrylic thinner over them It all ended up looking like this.
The hopper still needs to be fixed in place on some concrete blocks and a lot more blending of the quarry floor and siding need to take place but its getting there!
