Tuesday 13 January 2015

Gathering winter fuu-uuu-ell...


Although it's been quite mild over the last couple of days, the Christmas period had seen us lighting the fire in our living room almost every evening.  That usually meant that there was a constant round each morning of restocking the coal scuttle and firewood basket.

So after a bacon sarnie, I was hard at work lugging logs and coal in from the garage to the house ready for the evening's warmth.  Whilst I was doing so, I remembered that my stocks of model coal were running low.  Yet here in my hands was an entire new stock...

A quick rummage in the kitchen produced an assortment of metal colanders with holes of different sizes, and a stout plastic bag.  A return trip to the garage produced a hammer!

Unfortunately we don't have access to Welsh anthracite, to use some proper steam coal, but I selected a lump

This is the result:


Three different grades of coal, ready for use.  The largest will be to finish the weathering on my Great Eastern Coffeepot.

As can be seen here (Y5 image on Wikipedia)  these locomotives often had lumps of coal stored on every single possible surface.  As they were generally only used for the very lowest of speed shunting duties, I assume that they didn't have the problem of the coal being bounced off when they moved!

I've been meaning to finish weathering my own Coffeepot for a while now, and this has given me a kick up the posterior to get on with it.  Like CraigW found on his excellent wagon building topic here: (link to Scalefour Forum) I am far too easily distracted!

Cheers
Flymo


4 comments:

  1. I find a big pair of pliers better than a hammer for coal re-sizing. The lumps don't tend to fly as far and with practise, you have quite a lot of control over the process.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm not allowed Big Pliers :-(

    They normally result in pinched skin and blood blisters. Besides, using a Brummie Screwdriver is so much more satisfying...

    ReplyDelete
  3. That photo with the coal piled up all over the place is quite something! If you are in need of some Welsh anthracite, I may have come into the possession of a few large lumps that bounced out of the tender of King Edward II as it was being coaled at Didcot...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Alan, I'm not entirely sure that I could tell the difference between GWR anthracite and [local coal merchant] domestic stuff when applying the three-foot rule :-)

    It's not something that I'm going to count the rivets on...

    ReplyDelete