Friday 5 August 2011

Gravel pits and no reciprocity failure

The model: Sentinel 'Mendip' poses with a single wagon next to a Ruston Bucyrus 19 'front shovel' on Cement Quay Old Gravel Wharf (try saying that quickly after 5 pints). The foreground is in fact a wharf, but for bit of fun you can instead see temporary big pile of beach sand.

The Ruston Bucyrus is a fettled with Corgi Trackside model and will be the subject of a 'Workbench' in the popular press shortly. I'm only showing its ugly side because most of the interesting stuff is on the pretty side and I don't want to give too much away at this stage.

Since more or less completing the Bucyrus seen here, I'd quite like to build a gravel pit layout, but with current space restrictions there is no way I'll be granted planning permission by the domestic authorities. So instead there will be a bit of land-reclaiming by turning some of the water along in front of the current wharf into a gravel pit - see here. I have a spare Walthers Cornerstone aerial conveyor too, so it will consist of gravel dumps to allow for drying prior to loading into wagons. I'm tempted to add a little narrow gauge tramway coming through from the rear too - who knows what will happen, so much more fun!

Photography: Rather than use studio lighting, for convenience this shot was taken under a single domestic light bulb hanging from the ceiling with a 4 second exposure. Digital photography especially when shooting RAW allows succesful results in the sort of lighting that would never have worked well with colour film without a great deal of trial and error correcting and filtering to compensate for the warm colour temperature which is probably only around 1800 kelvin; and that's before we even get to reciprocity failure!

3 comments:

  1. That is a great gravel pit and a great Bucyrus crane. We have a scrap yard here in Roanoke that has a high hood GP40's cab that has been turned into a fishing boat that seems like it would be a great finishing touch for a model RR.

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  2. Very droll Chris. I think a good many of us can relate to issues while negotiating with the " domestic authorities ". Many times I'm sure with little chance of success !

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