# January Steamup at Rod's



## davidarf (Jan 2, 2008)

A fine morning turned into quite a wet afternoon, but a good steaming session and excellent hospitallity made up for the indifferent weather.  Here -    http://www.sdfr.info/sdfrother.htm  - can be found a couple of film clips from the day.  The first features Rod's Regner Meyer Compound, and visiting Accucraft C16, K27 and K28 (the latter running with the K27 tender pending replacement gas tank).  The second film features Trevor's incredible working railway crane, and with it is a photograph of the crane coupled to his Accucraft Garrat.


 


Thanks to Rod for a great steamup and to Trevor for a chance to see the crane.


 


David


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## rodblakeman (Jan 2, 2008)

David, Thanks for doing all the filming and for  posting the results, it was a good day dispite the rain later on. 

Here are the pictures that John took. 

picasaweb.google.com/wpandyr/JanuarySteamUp


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## jfrank (Jan 2, 2008)

Beautiful railway and great videos and pictures.  Thanks for sharing with us.


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## Larry Green (Jan 2, 2008)

Rod, very nice scenery along your railroad. I'm especially interested in the low green groundcover growing between the ties in some areas--could you give me the name of it? Thanks, 

Larry


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## rodblakeman (Jan 2, 2008)

Larry,  Thanks for the compliment,  the "ground cover" is just natual Moss that grows on the damp stone and rock. During the summer it will dry and die off before greening up again in the wet of autumn   In the damp climate of the UK  moss will grow on just about any surface  that is left un touched  for a year or two. It does make for good "landscaping" on the embankments and hill sides.


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## slug (Jan 5, 2008)

I love that crane, any more photos of it? 

Sam


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## weaverc (Jan 2, 2008)

Fascinating views of the working crane. Is it live steam, or battery powered? Thanks for the videos. I love the layout.


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## Ed Hume (Jan 3, 2008)

What a nice looking railway - great job on integrating those bridges. 


That working crane is an incredible example of model engineering.


 


Regards,


Ed


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## rodblakeman (Jan 2, 2008)

The crane is battery powered and hopefully the owner, Trevor Goodman, will come on line and post more info later. 

Thanks for the nice words regarding the layout, I was trying to represent a rugged Alaskan landscape for the WP & YR, but it also suits the mountains of Colorado for D & RGW. I imported 7 ton of rock to build it.


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## main131 (Jan 3, 2008)

Hi. The Cowans Sheldon 30 ton 'steam' Crane is, as Rod stated  (re-chargable) battery operated.   It was made by Roger Marsh who is, one of those  'real quality' engineers here in the UK. This was the second one made, the first was, believe it or not, coal fired. You can see by the way that I was fiddling with the controls on the utube pictures that the operation takes a bit of getting used too.   On the live steam version I can imagine you would need a degree of sorts and a lot of time and patience!     Basically there are 8 controls here; On/Off switch; Regulator; Reverser; Hoisting brake; Hoisting Clutch; Slewing (rotating) gear shift; Travelling gear shift; Luffing (jib) clutch; Luffing brake; 'withdrawing' gear operated by hand wheels either side of the carriage frame. The control lever quadrant is marked H.R.T.L.   For the various movements an arrow indicates the direction of movement when the reverser is in the forward position.  When the jib has lifted a small engine, which it can, the relative brake must be applied as this clutch has to be released to allow a second clutch to be applied to slew the jib outwards in one direction or the other.    The jib is designed to traverse 360 degrees. One thing that was not apparent on the pictures were the props. Two on each side. Thse are pulled out to the fullest extent and the screw jacks brought down on to suitable wooden packing blocks. Cowans of course also made much larger cranes. With the 30 ton version there were usually a second one present. One at each end. Anyone want to buy a second?     Trevor


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## Dan Pantages (Jan 2, 2008)

OK, I give up, where are the pictures of the crane?


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## rodblakeman (Jan 2, 2008)

Dan, the video clip is here;

www.sdfr.info/sdfrother.htm 

Scroll down the page to the Crane clip.


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## rbednarik (Jan 2, 2008)

Rod, 

Smashing good crane! Looks like the quality one would expect from Roger Marsh. Wasn't aware that he modeled anything of this magnitude in Gauge 1. For that don't know, Roger is/was one of the quintessential developers behind the Ogwen locomotive, of which production was later taken over by Maxwell Hemmens, if memory serves me right. Here's a link to Marc Horovitz's review of the Ogwen. The review not only gives a good history of the Owgen, but a nice synopsis of the masterful Roger Marsh himself.


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## Dan Pantages (Jan 2, 2008)

Thanks, I never though of looking down farther for it. I see a couple of clips of Martin Rogers' Cowan Point Railway on Bowen Island. Have you been there or did you get the clips sent to you?


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## rodblakeman (Jan 2, 2008)

Ryan, Roger is certainly one of the masters of model engineering.

Dan,  I don't think ,  Martin Rogers' Cowan Point Railway on Bowen Island, is related to Trevor's crane built by Roger Marsh,    Are you looking at the addition clips YouTube offers when one is looking at the clip of the Cowan's crane ?       

Mind you I could be wrong  /DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/crying.gif

The clip of the crane  was taken last week on my track when we had a little steam up. Trevor brought the crane along to demonstrate and David filmed it for him so that we could post the pictures..    It is such a beautiful model we thought MLSer's would be interested.


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## Dan Pantages (Jan 2, 2008)

OK, I now understand. I though that the clips were on your site, you had put them up. I didn't realize they were YouTube sites. Bare with me, in a few years when I grow up I will understand all this computer stuff, maybe.


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## rodblakeman (Jan 2, 2008)

Don't worry Dan, we all go through these "senior moments"    /DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/whistling.gif


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