Jump to content
 

St Ruth

A blog by D869 in RMweb Blogs

  • entries
    59
  • comments
    352
  • views
    85,349

The Trains of St Ruth

D869

Entry posted by D869

1,084 views

 Share

St Ruth is a layout that is designed to be operated and (we hope) entertaining, so deciding what trains to run and how to run them is an important part of the whole package.

 

We needed a way to operate the layout for its first outing at the Oxford Expo, so a sequence was drawn up shortly before the show (very shortly actually).

 

As the layout is 'inspired by' Penzance, we have used Penzance as the inspiration for our operating sequence. St Ruth is, of course, not the same as Penzance for the period modelled - notably it has fewer platforms, less carriage siding space, a goods yard instead of a parcels depot and a branch line that Penzance never had. The branch opens up all sorts of possibilities, but for now it is assumed to have traffic similar to the local branches on either side of the Hayle estuary.

 

At the Expo the available stock was predominantly 1965 to 1970 era so the sequence was put together based on some fairly sketchy knowledge of the train services to Penzance around 1968-70 - but limited by the stock that what we actually have.

 

We have the following types of traffic at the moment:-

  • Express Passenger to and from London. Being a long way from London, there are more departures in the early part of the day but nothing much arrives until early afternoon. Currently run using a rake of Farish Mk 1s in typical 'piebald' late 60s livery - mixed blue/grey and maroon
  • Stopping Main Line Passenger - being shorter distaince services, these are fairly evenly spread through the day. Currently run using a rake of Farish suburban Mk 1s
  • Branch Passenger - usually a DMU (heavily modified BH kit) which shuttles back and forth throughout the day and is sometimes parked in one of the middle roads to keep the platforms free
  • Empty Carriage Stock to and from sidings assumed to be further up the main line because we dont have room 'on scene'. It is probably difficult for punters to tell these from actual departures. Using more obvious shunting locos for ECS moves would help... if we had them.
  • Parcels - arrives in the morning and departs in the evening. In reality there were several parcels services and newspapers too. At the Expo this train wound up being a couple of Farish Mk 1 BGs because other vehicles proved prone to derailment on some rather iffy track. Improvements (to track and vehicles) are in the pipeline because parcels trains are wonderful opportunity to run a mix of more interesting vehicles.
  • Milk - departs early evening with empties coming back the following morning. Run using scratchbuilt 6 wheel milk tanks.
  • Fuel Oil - this is a more recent service (hence the more recent loco and wagons) and just weekly in reality. Happens around the middle of the day. Run by a Dapol class 66 and Farish weathered TTA tanks.
  • Pick-up Goods on the Main Line - departs from St Ruth in the morning to shunt the various yards en route. Balancing mixed goods working arrives in the evening. The goods stock is a mixture of converted Peco, Parkside and Parkwood kits and 2mm Association mineral wagons
  • Fitted Freight - arrives in the middle of the day and departs in the evening
  • Branch Goods - departs early morning and arrives back later in the day

There are also further possibilities for the future... when someone builds the locos and stock and we lay a few more tracks in the fiddle yard.

  • Cross Country Interregional Passenger services
  • Sleeper service, possibly combined with Motorrail in vans
  • Travelling Post Office
  • More modern trains - possibly a HST and a Voyager. Experience shows that younger punters are usually keen to see these. They've paid, so who are we to argue?
  • Older steam-hauled trains
  • Coal - early 1970s photos show a lot of 16T mineral wagons in summer at Ponsandane. They can't be for loco coal by then and surely it's the wrong time of year for big house coal demand, so was coal being supplied to the power station at Hayle by rail as well as by ship? or maybe imported via Hayle Wharf for use 'up country' ?
  • Chemicals - from the Associated Octel plant at Hayle Wharf. Some interesting wagon opportunities here.
  • Engineers trains

Since the Expo we've acquired some better information including a GWR Journal article showing how Penzance was operated in the early 1950s and a book called

'Operation Cornwall' showing the passenger and parcels workings and train formations circa 1957. Now we just need to read them and incorporate the ideas into

the sequence for the next show... whenever that might be.

 

Oh, and somebody needs to build all that GWR stock and a bunch of steam locos.

 Share

2 Comments

Recommended Comments

  • RMweb Gold
bcnPete
  • RMweb Gold

"possibly a HST and a Voyager. Experience shows that younger punters are usually keen to see these"

 

At 44, I am happy to fall in to the 'young punters' bracket :lol:

 

When I saw this at the Expo, it brought back nice memories from the Eighties of visiting Penzance and seeing 47, 50's and HST's snaking out from the platform - I think a Dapol HST would look rather smart on this layout.

Link to comment
D869

Thanks...

 

The Voyager (Dapol) is in the works, but to be honest my experience with trying to convert various Dapol offerings has rather put me off their stuff.

 

Got the chance to poke around the old Hayle wharves yesterday. A fascinating place when you know its history. The rest of the family probably wondered what on earth I was doing wandering round such a wasteland in the rain. Actually they are used to it and sat patiently in the car. Not all that relevant for St Ruth, but if I build those wagons for the Octel plant then I might one day want to build something to show where they were going.

 

I also bought a book with a photo of the coal wharves at Hayle in GWR days. There are coal wagons on the wharf and a coaster alongside. It's not clear whether the wagons were delivering coal for the power station or being loaded from the coaster, so that one is still a bit of a mystery to me.

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...