Rare Coal Load on Nystrup Gravel

Skips loaded with coal was a comparatively rare occurence on Nystrup Gravel, where the vast majority of trains consisted of skips loaded with gravel. Recently a black and white picture of a coal train in the Nystrup yard surfaced and I wanted to explore the story behind the image.

Nystrup Gravel loco 3 with three skips loaded with coal, including some rather large lumps.

The image is quickly exposed as a simple editing of a digital colour photograph from my small 1/19 scale layout. The coal in the skips is Danish coal from a site I visited on my trip to the Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea. Bornholm has its rocky underground exposed in contrast to the more westerly located parts of Denmark and a few sites on the island has been worked to extract coal. I visited one of the sites and quickly filled a bag with small lumps of coal. Back home I filled a few skips with Danish coal to resemble the black and white photo. Quite expectedly I succeeded splendidly!

Skips 12, 3 and 54 filled with coal and pulled by Nystrup Gravel's small Lister R. The coal transport is a striking contrast to today's Denmark that used no coal for the last 3 months straight for the first time since the 1830's.

The coal lumps are quite large and some of them may have to be worked with a hammer to fit on the grate in Nystrup Gravel's central power plant.

Despite being quite large, the coal lumps from Bornholm are flaky with thin layers of sand. It will not be hard work breaking them up.

The coal from the Hasle quarry on Bornholm was brown coal (lignite) of a better quality than the brown coal quarried in Jutland at the same time during the German occupation of Denmark (1940-1945). The coal on Bornholm had a burn value amounting to 2/3 of German coal. Up to 40 m of overburden had to be dug away before the coal could be excavated. The overburden was transported by 900 mm skips to the nearby coast and tipped into to water. Surely an endevour only profitable during wartime with a cronic lack of coal from foreign suppliers. Today the site is called 'kultippen' (the coaltip) despite the fact that it was overburden being disposed of. Walking on the tip it's quite easy to pick up pieces of black coal in the sandy dunes that today is left as a kind of desert. There is even a few skips (collected from elsewhere on Bornholm) displayed at the site. Follow this link and see a short movie about the coal extraction on Bornholm.

The sun setting into the Baltic Sea behind the row of skips displayed at 'Kultippen' near the old coal quarry on the Danish island of Bornholm.

900 mm Jung-loco with skips on the tip. The wooden skips are seen being emptied on the site that can be visited today and that supplied the coal for my small 1/19 scale skips.

Bornholm is also known for its many stone quarries and on a visit to one of them, I had to have a supply of granite for another skip. The granite may be on its way to Ericsson's Stone Masonry that sometimes had stone slabs delivered via removable track panels. Perhaps the skip with smaller pieces of granite was delivered this way too? 

Nystrup Gravel skip 2 in almost immaculate condition with small blocks of granite. Probably for the local stone masonry.

'Take care and move slowly, when you get to the masonry's wooden track' chief mechanic Petersen could be telling the driver, before the short train leaves Nystrup.

Vacation Modelling

As usual I bring a project for some slow vacation modelling in the cottage. This year I chose three 3D printed Hudson underground skips. They are second stage of a six wagon build proces with three skips finished in first stage back in 2023. With experience from building the first three skips there shouldn't be much to worry about! 

Three skips posing assembly line like on the cottage table cloth. One-piece full length 4 mm diameter brass bearings fitted.

One skip fitted with wheels - two still waiting.

The skips' wheels are designed for 3 mm axles and I used Albion Alloys thin-walled brass tube with a 4 mm outer diameter for bearings. To make the wagon a few grams heavier, I cut a single, long brass bearing completely enveloping the axle instead of two bearings fitted into the axleboxes on each side of the skip. With limited view of anything below the skip's tub the slightly larger appearance of the axle has hardly been noticable on the first three wagons. The axles were then cut to length and the wheels' axleholes were reamed with a 3 mm drill, the axle fitted in the tube bearings and the wheels pushed on. 

Before fitting, the wheels were cleaned up a bit and the worst dimples on the running surfaces removed with a sanding stick. 

Three skips fitted with 'caked on' ash on frames and skip bodies. The modeller enjoying a beer while working.

The putty has dried and now lead sheet is fitted as ballast.

Before the wheels were fitted, I sanded the printing traces from the sides of the frames. That was an easier job than to remove the traces on the sides of the skips' tubs. As the wagons were used to transport ash on Nystrup Gravel I'm applying a heavy weathering that will help to cover the last traces of the printing proces.  From prototype photos the skips were covered with 'cakes' of ash on the sides and to represent that, I added texture to the skips with modelling putty. I applied the putty with a wooden toothpick and worked the semi-dried putty into a thin layer with texture with an old tooth brush. 

With the putty dried I turned my attention to fit the lead ballast that is crucial to achieve accetable running from the skips. The first pieces of lead sheet was super glued into the skip body rests after being bent to a perfect fit.

Now work to bend up couplings are waiting.