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Mid-Cornwall Lines - 1950s Western Region in 00


St Enodoc
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Where and when?  Cornwall has been pretty well covered in OO to the point of if you could join them all up, you'd have the complete Cornwall railways.  Perhaps a bit better as most are pre rationalisation!

Interesting project though, as always.

 

Brian.

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Where and when?  Cornwall has been pretty well covered in OO to the point of if you could join them all up,

Brian.

 

 

While there's truth in that I have yet to see some areas represented at all.  Who, for example, has brought us a model of the Gerrans and Portscatho Joint?  The beautiful Roseland area is so often overlooked in real life and in model format.

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50 years on and Superquick still make those buildings. Don't think much of the flock powder in the last photo, not very realistic!

Thanks Andy. It was good old-fashioned dyed sawdust. Not really state of the art even in 1968.

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Where and when?  Cornwall has been pretty well covered in OO to the point of if you could join them all up, you'd have the complete Cornwall railways.  Perhaps a bit better as most are pre rationalisation!

Interesting project though, as always.

 

Brian.

All will be revealed Brian, but essentially it will be the Newquay branch plus a bit of the main line. Watch this space!

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Newquay gives plenty of scope.

 

In my own little world the main line ran from St. Austell out to Newquay then Truro rather than through the middle of nowhere much.  Pre-Beeching I also have a timetable which includes through trains from the SR North Cornwall lines via Padstow and the model of the fictitious station at St. Mawgan.

 

Great hobby this - we can be as accurate and precise as we want or as creative and inventive as we can.  

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While there's truth in that I have yet to see some areas represented at all.  Who, for example, has brought us a model of the Gerrans and Portscatho Joint?  The beautiful Roseland area is so often overlooked in real life and in model format.

In the July 1969 Railway Modeller Julian James described timetable operation on his fictitious 00 St Mawes branch. You are right about Roseland. Two of our favourite beaches were Portholland and Pendower, and we had some good walks around St Anthony Head.

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I meant the real grass and bushes in the bottom photo. LOL.

Ah, I thought you might have meant that after I posted my reply. It's not quite what most people mean by a ground-level garden railway.

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Hello John, a very nice read so far and some very nice layouts. These little "life stories" in modelling are always fascinating because they show the development over "the long stretch", I think. That said, Cwm-Don looks really good for an early layout, I really like the compact no-nonsense look of it.

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I reckon with these projects in Sydney which need a little inspiration all of us from "Mexico" should hop on the next flight up and take a sabbatical ;)

I don't think it is a question of lack of inspiration,RMweb alone provides that in buckets, it is more in my case  the delay caused by house moves and the preparation of the layout's accommodation.Nonetheless you would be most welcome to visit if you can get through border control! BTW Rick ,tho' not my area of interest I find your layout very motivating.

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now then John.... Kirk china clays... probably my first ever weathering "commission".....

 

Baz

That's right, and they're all still in service, plus a few Parkside ones now too. You also did the signals for me, fitting Colin Waite arms to the Ratio posts.

 

Plenty more weathering jobs to be done in return for free board and lodging next time you and Mrs BarryO venture South of the Equator. :)

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Love all these Cornish models miles away!  Presumably most have memories of the area and the trains and so keep them alive on the layouts.  It appears to be quite common with ex pats although I would find it difficult with my tinplate layout!  Always get a lot of pleasure from looking at others on this group though.

 

How about a connection to the Redruth and Chasewater down to Devoran; there's a stretch, or the Liskeard and Caradon up to Cheesewring in GW times!

 

Brian.

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Love all these Cornish models miles away!  Presumably most have memories of the area and the trains and so keep them alive on the layouts.  It appears to be quite common with ex pats although I would find it difficult with my tinplate layout!  Always get a lot of pleasure from looking at others on this group though.

 

How about a connection to the Redruth and Chasewater down to Devoran; there's a stretch, or the Liskeard and Caradon up to Cheesewring in GW times!

 

Brian.

Wait until I get to the ficititous history ot the new layout. There are a couple of might-have-beens and one almost-was in there.

 

Edited to include missing word in second sentence. It might make sense now.

Edited by St Enodoc
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The next house move offered the prospect of some stability and indeed so it proved, as it was home for over seven years although the last two of those were spent working away on a weekly commute.

 

The loft in this house was of modern style with trusses, but of a steeper pitch than some. This meant that I could stand up without difficulty in the middle part. I worked out that if I could put up with the visual intrusion of the trusses I could get just over 16 ft x 12 ft of usable space, with the layout fixed to the trusses themselves. For the first time in many years this layout had multiple levels and gradients, of about 1 in 50. There were two single-track reverse loops (Paddington and Penzance) at the bottom level, which climbed to meet the twelve storage loops (+ 2 inches), six Up and six Down. The storage loops and junction (St Enodoc again) were in a conventional oval configuration but with the junction at the next higher level (+ 4 inches) so that the reverse loops passed under it. Finally the terminus at Pentowan would be located slightly in front of and above the storage loops (+ 6 inches). The idea was that the terminus could be lifted away in sections in emergency, but that normally trains in the storage loops would not be remarshalled other than for loco changes. Trains running round either reverse loop would present the opposite side to operators and viewers so I could increase the apparent number of trains by having them different colours on each side, for example chocolate and cream or maroon for Mark 1s, or blood and custard and maroon for older stock. At one time I had a Mainline Warship that was D816 Eclipse on one side and D823 Hermes on the other, but this didn’t work for steam locos not only because it was impracticable to have different colours on each side, but also because you couldn’t have different smokebox numbers on the same loco.

 

The reverse loops and storage loops were all laid and the baseboards for St Enodoc built before the next change of job and the resulting weekly commuting left no time for any further progress. Looking back, this was a good thing because the “hands-off” storage loops really wouldn’t have worked and I would have got frustrated and annoyed with the whole set-up.

 

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This shows the low-level Penzance loop with 5058 Earl of Clancarty just starting its climb back to the Up storage loops.

 

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The main control panel showing the storage loops and reverse loops. The space at the top was for the St Enodoc station controls.

 

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The Down end of the storage loops with the space for the higher-level Pentowan terminus in the left foreground.

 

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D816 Eclipse and 4206 in the Down storage loops.

 

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The baseboards for the unfinished St Enodoc station with the Penzance loop in the background and the Paddington loop in the foreground.

 

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St Enodoc station marked out for tracklaying. More boards filling in the gap to the trusses would have carried the goods yard.

 

As it turned out, I didn’t have another layout of my own for nearly ten years, largely due to moving job and home first to South-East Asia and then, because I didn’t fancy going back to the cold and wet of the UK (and that was just the summers), to Australia. However, this time was not wasted as I took the opportunity to build quite a few kits that had sat on the shelf for a good while and also to start acquiring some of the higher quality ready-to-run stock that was now on the market.

 

I also started to spend a lot more time thinking about what I wanted to see in my ideal layout, the fruits of which are now starting to emerge.

 

Edited to amend caption to first photo.

Edited by St Enodoc
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St Enodoc, on 07 Jan 2015 - 12:28, said:

 

As it turned out, I didn’t have another layout of my own for nearly ten years, largely due to moving job and home first to South-East Asia and then, because I didn’t fancy going back to the cold and wet of the UK (and that was just the summers), to Australia.

"The Hong-Kong mafia" comes to mind? Didn't Carolyn Griffiths have time there, and maybe Martin Brown, AM at Brighton?

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