Class 31 With PFAs And KFAs by kevsmith posted Feb 23, 2023 at 9:58 PM The picture above shows a typical consist leaving Sellafield with a Class 31 at the head. In the grand scheme of things, back when British rail was being split up into sectors before privatisation, the Nuclear trains were put onto the same group as Coal trains. Now there is a huge difference in the way Coal (Not a hazardous substance) and Uranium and this was what prompted British Nuclear Fuels to found Direct rail Services to ensure the Nuke moves were Safe,k Secure and reliable. Two rare pictures of 31 276 'Calder Hall Power station' up site at the real place Three of the reactor buildings can be seen behind More soon Kev
Back in Z I returned to some early attempts to do DRS locos, which while O.K back then, Showed their crudity a bit these days resin cast 47 and 57 and 3D printed 37 now with proper individual flush glazing and the paintwork tidied up a lot Now last week I had the classic example of what Nuclear railfreight is really all about. Sellafield to Barrow docks 68 018 Vigilant and 68 009 top and tailed an empty train of six four truck KXA-C flask carriers (The entire fleet) with seven PFA wagons as spacers. After they come off Network rail onto the Ramsden dock branch strict speed limits (walking pace) are in place The top and tailing, one loco at either end is to facilitate the access to the dock branch without having to run the locos around the train at Salthouse junction The video should make more sense. Tomorrow the light engines will return the the dock to pick up the train, Needless to say I shall be somewhere near more soon
Thanks, real big thanks, for the effort you've made to explain all this to us. I know that the camera can distort things, but the curves seem really tight and the grade steep by rail standards. Is that illusion or real?
Real! That is why the KXA-C wagons have four trucks mounted on span bolsters to get around the curve going onto Ramsden Dock Empty KXA-Cs with adapter frames en-route to Barrow Approaching the Terminal gates at walking pace Out on the main line the train runs as a 'Class 7' 45 mph max I was saying to the signaller after it passed how the whole platform seemed to be bouncing up and down as it passed loaded with five flasks!. The little PFA barrier wagons are to spread the load over the viaducts further north on the line video to follow Kev
It does, doesn't it! You recall I showed you this picture of a Class 31 hauling the skipliner I mentioned to Martin King I was thinking of doing a 31 and he turned up a couple of evenings later and gave me this it is one of the old Airfix/Palitoy models introduced in 1976. Ads you would expect from Airfix the body moulding was quite good and I can bring it up to scratch (Grabrails, cab interiors fan grills etc) and repaint into railfreight subsector livery. But the chassis, Oh my god, I had forgotten just how crude it was A weird open frame motor driving two axles of one end. The centre wheels of the A1A truck are just moulded lumps underneath as part of the truck moulding. It runs rough and sounds even rougher. The truck at the other end has plated wheels and they are all the same diameter (The center ones should be smaller), the driven ones are black! But....Guess what A few years ago some bright spark discovered the Athearn PA1 chassis drops straight in and transforms the running by a quantum leap. So far so good until I tried finding one in the U.K. Little chance and the only one on ebay they are asking £80. the search throws up loads on ebay USA at the right price but they are quoting an average of $45 postage even before it gets through customs. I wish I was in the States right now because I reckon I could pic one up for a sensible price And what did I have when I still lived with my folks? Back in my Nickel Plate Road H0 days Kev
Good news! Picked up an Athearn PA1-PB1 in Espee livery . Due to arrive Monday The Airfix body has had a bit of work All the grab rails replaced with stainless steel. the pink areas are the exhaust for the 'Spanner' steam heat boiler. the access steps and water filler. Fan opening cut out and multi bladefan inserted. all the holes drilled for M.U cables, Vacuum brake hoses, Air brake hoses (2 pipe yellow and red) Screw couplings. it took me years to work out what the curious lumps by the front windows were (seen in yellow) They were the bump stops for the nose end doors. When the doors were sealed shut the stops were retained Kev
So. managed to find an Athearn PA1-PB1 pair for £50 in Espee colours The similarities between the mechanisms is remarkable except that the Athearn one is in a different class in terms of power, smoothness and quietness (Bit of gear noise but miles better than the Airfix) Truck spacing, wheelbase and side frame detail really close. Needs a slight taper filing on the casting on one end where the 31 cab tapers in Also arrived today etched plates and waterslide decals from Fox Transfers and at yesterday's kirkby stephen model railwa show I picked up all the railfreight greys made by railmatch Still waiting for the etched window and grill surrounds, Fan mesh and etched cab steps and the two headlight fret to go above the cab windshields Martin King is going to loan me one of his Hornby Class 31s fitted with a TTS sound decoder to have a listen to Sadlt the 31s were all pretty much swept away when Ed Burkhardt started inporting huge quantities of EMD Class 66s into the U'K. we found ourselves at Barrow Hill ropundhouse watching a parade of 31s heading for the cutting torch What are you going to do with PA shell ? you may well ask I've always been tempted to do one of these. Bet many of you have never even heard of these Alcos? Kev
It's alive! Re. The Alco world locomotives, bear with me please. I know a lot about these but need to plan out a thread as it is complcated. Not just Pakistan but Australia and others I can't remember off the top of my head. A lot of the pictures I have might have copyright issues with so let me see what I can do. I'll put it in the Ready Track International section Meant to mention, the NWR Alocs are 5 ft 6 " gauge! Kev
So.... Etched detailing parts arrived. Nicely done but for me etched in the wrong stuff. If I'd done them they would be in semi hard Nickel silver, These were soft brass and very easy to distort. The loco body was by now fitted to the PA chassis and the back wall of the cabs where the doors to the engine bay are had been fitted with a cutout for the Athearn final drive gear towers. Might need to paint that Brass flywheel visible through the window though So started to add the details. Oh my word, they were fragile and fiddly Patience is a virtue but assembling the cab steps was a nightmare. Anyway, got the fan surround on, lamp irons, Headcode panel blanking plates and light bezels fitted and the cab steps assembled ready for fitting And then, Doh!. It all ground to a halt. Those cab steps won't fit. If I line them up with the cab doors they hit the Brake cylinders and they sit too high and foul the bottom of the chassis. Trying to ease them in ended up with two being seriously bent and they are too flimsy to cut a rebate out in the uprights to clear the cylinders. So, scratchbuilt ones will have to be made but I'll try and salvage the open mesh treadways if I can you can't tell from this picture but the battery box and fuel gauge detail has been added So last thing tonight I masked off the bodyshell and applied the first coat of Railmatch Executive grey to the roof. Nostalgia!! I can't remember the last time I sprayed old school Synthetic enamel as everything has been acrylic lately. Usual method, thinned with Zippo lighter fluid and applied fairly dry. The drying time is nuts so I locked the workshop door and came in for a can of Brewdog 'Lost Lager' very pleasant kev
So..Had a couple of hiccups when the Tamiya masking tape lifted a bit of the lighter grey paint. My fault, rushing it a bit Not sure there is enough difference between the roof grey and the upper bodyside grey. The Ford Signal Yellow wasn't quite right and I had to overcoat with BR End Panel yellow The side grills need tidying up (with my favourite Staedlter Lumocolor Black permanent fine tip marker), two minute job and then start to apply the decals PA1 chassis still waiting for steps, life guards, sand boxes etc Meanwhile I'm supposed to be getting our new Z scale layout 'Port Shaughty' ready for the Leyland show in August but while the stripping bath was out we thought the Lima 00 gauge Class 33 should go in Brooklyn picked the 'Crompton' (railfan nickname for the BRCW built Bo-Bos) from a model show a while back. i think he got it for £15 The factory paint job was ghastly! The first thing we found out was that the white paint on the roof was rather like the 100 year old white wash I stripped of the inside of the Barrow Hill Roundhouse water tower. tough as" still W.I.P what has this got to do with Nukes? we called these 'Cadillacs' the best ridng locos DRS ever had and a firm favourite of train crew and enginners these two are top and tailing a move from Workington docks to Drigg LLWR. that half height ISO container contains sea pipes that discharged contaminated water into the Irish sea and have been recovered off the sea bed More soon Kev
So, Me and Brooklyn went to the Crag Bank Toy fair in Carnforth on Sunday. this is a small event where local model railroad dealers sell mainly used '00' gauge stuff. Bargains to be had if you searched carefully through all the assorted boxes and trays Not much of interest to start with with, Brooklyn found a 303 calibre, dummy bullet (WW2 era Lee Enfield rifle) which they were asking £3 for. "we cannot sell it to you, you are too young?" "But we can give it you" one happy little boy! Meanwhile the show organiser, who also had a stall had a couple of interesting 00 scale wagons at the front. RNA barrier wagons in 3D printed resin. After a conversation I was offered the pair for £10. Another piece of the early nuclear moves added seen with the rapidly progressing Class 31, of which more later So, the RNA Barrier wagons are another strange U.K design. Due to the Unions worry about exposure to Ionising radiation the flask wagons were seperated from the brake van (Caboose) by intermediate vehicles . The first common barriers were HEA four wheel hoppers but at a later stage the hopper body was chopped off and the vehicles re-coded on TOPS as RNA barrier wagons This was before DRS took over when nuclear trains ran as Class 7, 45mph max The shot above and below were both taken in 1996 in Askam, long before I moved up here Which set me wondering about another oddity The converted VEA barrier vans More soon on these babies Kev
Donor VDA van, Hornby. Needs weathering to get the red down to faded pink and the grey all washed out 20T brake van is complete. Almost unrecognisable as 1960s original tooling kit Almost complete Class 31 conversion. LEDS need installing and steps and sandboxes on the trucks last thing Not bad for a 1970s original and with the Athearn chassis fitted it will probably pull more than the real thing! Brooklyn has a much modified Lima Class 47 in Railfreight Distribution color scheme and it looks well on the Skipliner wagons. The prototype is an old acquaintance of mine 47 375 'Tinsley Traction depot'. You will notice it also has diamond depot plates at one end. When the sub sectors cam in all of the main diesel depots were given unique emblems. Tinsley depot, on the east side of Sheffield, had the White Rose of Yorkshire. The class 31 was allocated to Crewe diesel and carries their Cheshire cat Dave McDigital posted a side on view of the skips on Flickr and I now know how they were tied down so a bit more work to do. Ordered a full sheet of 1/76th Radiation symbols, UN and Radsafe plates which should be here in the next two days Kev
In between getting Port Shaughty the new Z scale layout ready I've still been doing odd things on the Nukes back in the house The first PXA four wheeler is almost complete as is the Dollegruben flask. The flask has the hazchem symbols on now and the wagon just needs some more data panels on the solebar (Chassi frame) I really need another VDA four wheel van(Boxcar) for the formation to be correct The Drlgg low level waste skips have been modified based on Dave MaCaloon's broadside photo and had the Hazchem symbols applied. They need weathering now, in real life they went rusty, fairly quickly Today I indulged in another set of Accurascale's superb PFA four wheelers. This time the set with the Nupak containers these were small,demountable boxes sat on a more substantial carrying frame that brought material back from the Low level waste depository at Drigg back to Sellafield. The other vehicle in the set has the full height 20 foot ISO box on it Some wag said earlier today that " if you get any more model nukes in your upstairs office it might go critical!" Ha Ha Kev
The Class 33 has had all the moulded grab rails removed, Holes drilled for the stainless steel replacements and the Halogen headlights and a lot more of the OEM Paint job cleaned up We were at Leyland model railway show this weekend with Port Shaughty (See thread in the Z forum) and I had decided to get rid of the last of the N scale Locos that used to run on "Mardy Model engineers" my 1/32 scale park railway layout. Did very well with selling the Ibertrain, Minitrix and Atlas/Rivarossi tank engines. At the beginning of last week I had cleaned and serviced them all and they were all running and the only remedial action was to loctite a return crank pin back in the Rivarossi NKP 2-8-4. Which then went completely dead with no life in the motor seemingly. No worries it was always my favourite N scale engine anyway and I'll do a full stripdown when I have a minute and get it sorted. Flush with cash Young Brooklyn was already wondering what he could have as a treat off the Leyland Club members sales stand and ended up with a Limo 00 scale Class 60 heavy haul Co-Co. I had my eyes on another prize 47 802, one of the first four BR Class 47s acquired. You have already seen my Z scale models of one of these but a Vitrains model, pre-owned but in immaculate condition was calling me. 47 802 on Kingmoor shed in 2005 Whoever owned it before ran out of patience with all the additional parts to fit as they are all still in the box. I'll order etched 'Pride of Cumbria' nameplats to overlay the printed ones. Nice model, with the later DRS Compass paint scheme 802 seemed to spend a lot of its working life with DRS coupled to 47 298. This loco for some reason had its side numbers mounted higher that all the rest of the class so I'm going to have to get another 47 to match them back up Later I will tell you about the astounding Accurscale 00 models of my 'Pet Fleet' before I retired . The FNA-D Nuclear flask wagons that I was responsible for from their introduction in 2014 More soon Kev
