Barchester

Summer has arrived ok here in Spain, 33 degF in the shade today and 36 degrees in the railway room, warming up nicely. I have three or four projects on the go at the moment, painting figures, making barges for the canal basins, making lorry trailers for various positions about the layout and a set of cranes for the Goods Yard, Timber yard and Jetty.

Here's a picture of the first fifty of the new inhabitants for Barchester. There is another 250 to go but I will spread them over a fair bit of time. Most of the figures are from Dapol but there are also ones from old Airfix kits that I rob for the bits and pieces.









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Have made a start on the jetty for the larger of the two canal basins on Barchester. The Timber Yard canal basin won't need a jetty as loading and unloading will take place directly from the basin side by hand and by crane. So far I have used card for the 'body' of the jetty and stripwood for the legs.

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This next picture is the same as the previous one but with the bits and pieces that I am adding to complete the basic jetty. These things come in all shapes and sizes to suit the individual location so we have a lot of leeway here.

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Next picture shows the jetty with handrails, lifebelts, coils of rope and various crates and drums. There is a crane yet to be added and a fisherman plus more 'junk'.









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Here we have the jetty in it's final position in the canal basin. The crane has been added, a plastic kit that a friend bought me, but there is still the fisherman, plus a couple of workers and some more junk to be added.

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I have made a cutting list for two more cranes to be made from card as I prefer making my own kit and they don't look difficul. I will probably start work on those tomorrow. I have also been looking on the internet for photographs of working commercial narrow boats but haven't found anything that I really like from a modelling point of view. Suddenly remembered that there was a good photograph in my copy of Peter Denny's Buckingham Branch of a barge that he had made for Buckingham. It's a simple model and should be easy to replicate, more or less. Anyway, first things first so it's on with the cranes.



Well here is the first photograph of progress with the two extra cranes I said I needed. At the left hand side you can see a partially constructed crane and on the right are the materials for making the second one which will be indentical. Being Barchester of course they have to be different to the original as I have never pretended to make scale models of prototype objects, beyond my capabilities I think, so all the things I make are to my own design and of a generic nature. These Barchester cranes aren't hand operated like the one made from the plastic kit but have a small combustion engine which operates the crane through a flywheel, as you will see when I complete the cranes.






 

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Here is one of the pair of cranes in Barchester's workshop, almost finished and waiting to be installed. It is being tested with a load on to make sure all is well. I'm quite pleased with the outcome really.








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That's it then, another month over in the ongoing construction of Barchester. Railway room temperature now up to 39.C every day and August, the hottest month here, just around the corner. I will still be modelling but August may well be a much quieter month as next Saturday, 5th, we have three grandchildren coming to stay with us for two weeks so we will be entertaining them every day but I will do my best to sneak a couple of hours in.

See you all later.






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