Coal staithes are under construction for the Claptowte Railway. I have already been thinking ahead to accessorising them. I have sourced some excellent filled coal sacks from the Modeltown range and was looking for some weighing scales. I could not find any commercially available in G Scale so I referred to ge_rik's illustrated write up (link below) on how he scratch built some for his garden railway.
He very helpfully gave measurements of the various component parts as he went along, but right at the end was the caveat that he felt that the scales were slightly undersize and that if he were to make another set, he would increase the dimensions by about 25%, so I used that as my starting point. I followed his instructions but adapted them to the bits and materials I had to hand. The only extra embellishments were to add a wire handle to the scuttle, to raise it up, and handles to the tail end of the carriage to move it around. I found that the model, as I had made it, was too high and I pulled it apart twice, and re-glued it, before I was happy. The end result of that has a slightly wonky tail leg and messy glue spots, but hey, the paint should hide everything.
Link to ge_rik’s web site and his coal scales. How I constructed a set of coal scales
Rik used a bit of 20mm tube as the starting point for the scuttle. Upsizing this to 25mm I found an old inhaler casing was the right size I had intended to use the whole section as the scuttle but having cut it open I found there was a moulded lug that prevented this, so I had to cut this end off and make a new end as Rik did with his scuttle.
The rest of the model was copied from Rik using strips of plasticard. The wheels are ‘de-flanged’ plastic ]OO’ bur I only had spoked wheels. The weights are just a length of plastic tube,
The finished model out of the paint shop.
David
He very helpfully gave measurements of the various component parts as he went along, but right at the end was the caveat that he felt that the scales were slightly undersize and that if he were to make another set, he would increase the dimensions by about 25%, so I used that as my starting point. I followed his instructions but adapted them to the bits and materials I had to hand. The only extra embellishments were to add a wire handle to the scuttle, to raise it up, and handles to the tail end of the carriage to move it around. I found that the model, as I had made it, was too high and I pulled it apart twice, and re-glued it, before I was happy. The end result of that has a slightly wonky tail leg and messy glue spots, but hey, the paint should hide everything.
Link to ge_rik’s web site and his coal scales. How I constructed a set of coal scales
Rik used a bit of 20mm tube as the starting point for the scuttle. Upsizing this to 25mm I found an old inhaler casing was the right size I had intended to use the whole section as the scuttle but having cut it open I found there was a moulded lug that prevented this, so I had to cut this end off and make a new end as Rik did with his scuttle.
The rest of the model was copied from Rik using strips of plasticard. The wheels are ‘de-flanged’ plastic ]OO’ bur I only had spoked wheels. The weights are just a length of plastic tube,
The finished model out of the paint shop.
David
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