PGH

No, Craig Lelo was south of Ruthin on the line to Corwen, approximately 2/3 of the distance from Ruthin. The quarry you are thinking about is the Ruthin or Craig-y-Ddywart Quarry. By the time of my first visit in the early 1960s the quarry had been closed for some time and the loco was securely locked in the shed, so I never did get to see it. However it was a Motorail Simplex loco Works No.2021 of 1920. It was supplied new here and replaced a rather mysterious 0-4-0 vertical boiler loco, of which a drawing (probably more of a sketch from memory) appeared in a letter to the Model Engineer Magazine in 1943. The photo of the track was in a letter by J.I.C.Boyd to the Railway Modeller in July 1956. You must have a good memory 5050 to remember that, I've got the actual page !

There was a second loco similar to 2262, also built for stock as Works No.2263 of 1923. It was sold as Works No.4169 of 1927 to Agwi Petroleum Corporation Ltd., Fawley Oil Refinery, Hampshire and converted from petrol to diesel in 1939. It was sold to dealers Joseph Pugsley & Sons Ltd. at an unknown date before 1957, then to Shakespeare Simpson & Cook Ltd., Somercotes, Derbyshire in 1959. So it could well have been used by demolition contractors after it left the oil refinery. A third standard gauge loco Works No.2293 of 1923 was ordered by agents Jones Burton & Co.Ltd. and despatched to Iquique, Chile. The fourth 65hp loco Works No.4208 of 1928 was built to metre gauge and of slightly different appearance, although the same 16t weight as the previous standard gauge locos, again through agents Jones Burton with the shipping destination Antofagasta, Chile. (Info from Industrial Railway Society Records)

Works No.3730 of 1925 at Craig Lelo Quarry, Gwyddelwern near Ruthin, in 1965 Disused since rail traffic ceased here in 1954, it was painted green with red buffer beams Delivered here from new it appears to be unmodified as original and complete with the starting handle. Works No.3786 of 1925 at A.P.C.M., Dunstable Cement Works in 1969 Not ideally placed for a photo, it was painted with a blue frame and end castings; yellow cab; black block buffers and buffer beams and fitted with Gardner 4 cylinder diesel engine. According to IRS Records it was originally ordered by the GWR in 1923 but not delivered. It was scrapped shortly after this photo was taken. This really is a shed on wheels !

Details are in the book by W.J.K.Davies referred to in Post #10: It covers both narrow and standard gauge locos, its apparently still available from Plateway Press and well worth getting for anybody interested in these locos. According to the book Works No.2262 was built for stock in 1923 as a prototype for a new design which may have proved too expensive for customers who wanted a cheap standard gauge shunter. It was eventually sold in 1929 (W.J.K.Davies speculates it may have gone rather earlier in 1925) to the Cornforth Limestone Co.Ltd. in Durham where it was converted to diesel in 1934. In 1949 it was sold via dealer G.W.Bungey to the Dunlop Rim & Wheel Co.Ltd., Coventry. It went to the Foxfield Railway in 1968. At Foxfield in 1994. It was later (maybe still is ?) painted yellow.

Works No.1944 of 1919 at Synthite Ltd., Alyn Works, Mold in 1980 It replaced a similar loco (MR 2033/20) which had originally been Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway No.3 and still carried the oval L&Y plate on one side. Comparing photos MR 1944 seems to have acquired the cab top extensions with windows from MR 2033. In 1966 MR 1944 was noted painted green with brown (or faded red ?) frames. In 1980 it was painted with red frames and buffer beams; black buffers; orange body above footplate; red oval Motorail plates on ends; silver roof and radiator (inside cab); dark blue inside of cab. It was acquired for preservation by Ian Jolly. RS9 Works No.2024 of 1920 at ICIs Smalldale Plant, Peak Forest in 1965 Painted cream; black numbers; red buffer beams (this also applies to MR 460 in the previous post). The adjacent hopper wagon gives a good indication of the small size of these locos. Note that the end castings have been cut in half and refitted at 90 degrees. Works No.2036 of 1920 at Ashwood Dale Quarry, Buxton in 1967

I can't say I'm as enthusiastic about these locos as others obviously are, the descriptions "motorised wagon" or (particularly in the case of some modified locos) "shed on wheels" come to mind. However - moving quickly on ! - I have seen and photographed several over the years and perhaps the following photos may be of use to intending modellers. RS12 Works No.460 of 1916 at ICI's Smalldale Plant, Peak Forest in 1965 Works No.1942 of 1919 at Tarmac Roadstone's Topley Pike Quarry in 1970 Supplied new here probably as a 4wPM but I noted it was fitted with a Gardner 4 cylinder diesel engine. It was painted green including the frames. By the time of my visit rail traffic had ceased and all track had been lifted except for the connection to the BR line. The loco was dumped off the track and disposed of shortly after, presumably scrapped. The sidings were later relaid and rail traffic resumed in 1974 with a couple of Ruston 0-4-0 locos. Interior detail taken from the opposite side I can post more photos if these are of interest.

A quick skip (and I emphasise quick as it may not be comprehensive) gives the following info from Industrial Railway Society records: The NCB in South Wales inherited 4 Wolverhampton 0-6-0PTs, the last survived until 1961. 2 similar locos were acquired by the NCB in 1956 The first of the later 0-6-0PTs were acquired in 1959 - 1600, 7714 and 7754 The first ex BR diesel seems to be D2182 acquired in 1968 via the dealer A.R.Adams of Newport. If you're interested, further details of ex BR diesels can be obtained from the Industrial Railway Society's publication: Ex-BR Diesels in Industry Price £9.95

Yes Andy, we packed it up slightly above the felt with plastikard. As long as the centre of the hinge pin is above the top of the rail it should be OK.

Well two can play at that game ! Just to clarify a couple of points from the photos in Post #2144 - despite the impression given in the 4th photo, the plungers do actually line up with the contact plates. When the flap is closed they make a slight wiping contact so that power transmission to the rails on the flap should be reliable. The sprung plungers were salvaged from an old bayonet bulb holder - they even have a handy screw in the bottom for attaching the wire, and are set firmly in a hardwood frame. The hinge at the open end of the flap is a solid brass one, and these should be very tightly fitting - more so than the usual rolled variety. The pin was driven out, with some difficulty, and the diameter reduced slightly so it was still firm but capable of being removed easily once the hinge was in position, and it was then replace in the hinge. With the flap down in its required position the hinge was then fixed to the underside of the flap and the support, the pin removed and discarded. The flap is now located exactly at the open end every time its lifted and lowered.

and the bloke on the left is thinking - I hope he isn't going to post that photo on his thread

The kit instructions advise fixing the strapping to the doors and then fixing the brass cotter pins for holding the doors shut to the ends. However as the position of the cotter pins are fixed horizontally (fore and aft) by the ends I was worried that they may not line up exactly with the holes in the curved end strapping if that was fixed first. So I decided to fix the cotter pins first and then adjust the strapping to suit. The door planks and strapping held temporarily in position while the cotter pins are fixed With the tops of the end strapping now fixed on the cotter pins the strapping and bottom plank are adjusted and fixed with 12BA bolts. The holes for the pins in the top plank were then marked and drilled and that also fixed in place. The interior strapping at the end of the doors just cleared the 4½ mm angle on the end plate. 12BA Hex head bolts were used to fix the planks and cotter pins with the heads thinned down instead of the 10BA round head bolts provided in the kit. The fullersite would have been carried in thick paper sacks so presumably the bolt heads were thinned down to avoid damage to the sacks during loading and on the journey down to Port Penrhyn. No chain was provided for the cotter pin wedges but fortunately I had some suitable in stock, which has approximately 20 links per inch. It was chemically blackened before fixing in place. The finished result I am quite pleased with the results from these kits and I think the extra work was worthwhile. 7/8" scale is great for detail - "just like the real thing" - especially if you like small locos and small wagons, but not so good if you have ambitions to build a layout (which I haven't) unless of course you have a suitable large garden (which I haven't got either). However they do get an occasional airing at layouts of local members of the 16mm Narrow Gauge Modellers Association. Now I seem to vaguely recall that I have a 7mm scale layout on the go I must blow the dust off that sometime.

The fullersite wagon kits included laser cut ply for the frames; ready cut wood door planks; one piece brass floor and ends; cast whitemetal strapping, axleboxes and hinges and cast brass couplings and door catches. The prospect of painting the whitemetal "ironwork" without touching the wood after assembly was quite daunting so I decided to paint it before assembly, this would leave only the screws, nuts and any chipped paint to be touched up at the end. There are a total of 32 whitemetal parts in each wagon and the prospect of holding and brush painting each part was also quite off-putting. I therefore attached the parts to pieces of scrap timber with holes, double sided tape or wires as appropriate - an example of the set up for pieces of strapping is shown below. This took some time, but once done the painting was a simple matter of a series of 5 minute spray jobs - primer and 2 coats of paint. The frames went together very well and just needed some minor adjustments at the corner joints to get them to lie perfectly flat on a glass sheet. When gluing them together I didn't follow the instructions which advise fixing the frame to the brass floor. Instead after checking they were square I left them overnight under weights on the glass sheet. On the first of the two wagons the axlebox fixing screws had been soldered into the floor with the heads filed flat and fitting the floor on to the frame then required some adjustments - enlarging the holes in the frame and even slightly bending some of the screws - but after the axleboxes and wheels were finally fitted I was relieved to find that all 4 wheels sat perfectly flat, all touching the glass sheet. The brass sheet forming the floor and ends had a slight but noticeable difference in height across the ends. This could have been levelled by filing but would then have left the ends too low. So on the first wagon I removed the ends from the floor and provided new ends from similar thickness brass sheet. The second wagon was done slightly different in that I replaced the floor with a new 0.7 mm thick brass sheet. New ends were then provided as on the first wagon. The axlebox fixing screws were fixed directly into the frame. On both wagons the floor was fixed to the frame by epoxy and a series of 9 steel pins along the edge of each side. The prototype wagons have 2½" angle along the bottom and sides of the ends and this was provided with 4½ mm brass angle. The couplings were fitted before fixing the floor, not after as described in the instructions, as the countersunk screw heads are under the floor. The prototype wagons have a ½" thick steel buffing plate so I used 1mm thick brass strip. The brass floor and ends were grit blasted and painted, and the frames painted and stained before assembly. Just the doors to fit now.

Fullersite is slate waste ground to a fine powder and has various uses as a filler material. The fullersite wagons were used for taking this material in sacks from the plant on Red Lion Level to Port Penrhyn and either had lift out sides or hinged sides. Some wagons were provided with eyelets for fixing tarpaulins over the sacks in wet weather. Two wagons adjacent to the fullersite plant in 1963, the first with hinged sides the second with lift out sides. Fullersite wagon on Red Level in 1964. In the background is Red Lion Loco Shed Wagon No.77 at Penrhyn Castle Museum. Several of these wagons have been preserved but in the latter days at Penrhyn Quarry paint seemed to be absent with rusty ironwork and unpainted weathered timber. Possibly when built the ironwork was originally painted black.

The axleboxes supplied with the last production of slate wagon kits were brass castings rather the previous whitemetal. I would have preferred the latter as there was some shrinkage in the brass castings and they required a fair amount of work. The small pivoted oil cover had to be removed with a piercing saw so that the front of the box could be flattened. I did wonder whether to pivot it like the earlier whitemetal ones but thought it would be less bother just to solder it back in place. The 8BA bolts supplied for attaching the axleboxes to the frames were retained but I used 10BA nuts drilled out and tapped 8BA. A finished wagon apart from weathering, which it may get later. The brass was grit blasted and then primed with an etch primer. The slate wagons were painted light grey so I used Humbrol No.64 matt enamel. The frames were painted matt black. The completed set of 4 slate wagons

The slate wagon kits are intended to be assembled with 1/16" diameter rivets. The heads of these are well over scale so I reduced the size of the heads by turning them all down. With 4 kits and 80 rivets per kit that was a total of 320 ! The sides and ends were all soldered so the rivets served to locate the parts and were then cut off on the inside so that no actual riveting took place. There was a limit to the amount the rivet heads could be reduced in diameter without dropping through the holes, but in retrospect I think I could have managed a little more reduction. The hook and shackle coupling castings by Talisman are very nice and clean up well with the loop on the hook closed with silver solder. New pins fixing the shackles to the buffers were provided as the full size ones on the Penrhyn wagons have a tapered head. On the full size wagons they are fixed only by a split pin but I did provide a washer. The couplings were chemically blackened which gave them a dark brown finish. The model couplings look OK but in actual fact are smaller than the real thing, which to me look too large and the bottom of the hook when uncoupled is below rail level.

There were several different types of slate wagon on the Penrhyn Railway but these are two examples that closely resemble the kit: Slate Wagon No.389 photographed on Red Lion Level in 1964, this is similar to the kit except it has brakes. You can just about pick out the difference between the light grey body colour and the weathered black of the underframe. The corner angles are grey down to the bottom but the intermediate slats are black below the top of the underframe. In the original photo from which this is cropped there are 10 wagons visible on the two tracks and no less than 5 are equipped with brakes. Slate Wagon No.219 - this is a blow up from the corner of a photo of LINDA about to leave Coed-y-Parc so excuse the quality. This also has a black underframe but on this example the corner angles appear to be black below the top of the underframe.

I have a particular interest in the Penrhyn Railway because many years ago I had a return trip on the railway in one of the quarrymen's coaches. In the late 1950's to early 1960's some of the school summer holiday was spent with a like minded school friend exploring the railways of North Wales, travelling on many of the BR lines closed by Beeching, visiting quarries still using narrow gauge railways or walking long abandoned quarry tramways. On a visit to Port Penrhyn we were told that a school party would be travelling up the railway to the quarry later that day and we could travel with them. The date was in August 1958, long before I started making proper notes or taking photographs, and only recorded because at the quarry we were taken through the mills on Red Lion Level to see the production of slates and were each given a slate as a souvenir on which I scratched the date of the visit. I made more than a dozen more visits to the quarry, some official others rather less so, before the rail system finished completely in 1967. My involvement in 7/8" scale began with the acquisition of two Accucraft Quarry Hunslets and these were modified as required to represent the Penrhyn Quarry locos HUGH NAPIER and EDWARD SHOLTO. To accompany these locos David Bailey produced a number of Penrhyn wagon kits and I built four of these - 2 slate wagons, a fullersite wagon and a coal wagon. Unfortunately these kits didn't sell as well as expected but before they were finally discontinued I managed to purchase another four slate wagon and two fullersite wagon kits. The slate wagon kits comprised a brass etching for the sides, ends and underframe; cast axleboxes - originally whitemetal but brass in the later kits; ready shaped floor planks,; cast whitemetal buffers and cast brass couplings. To complete the kits Slaters wheels were required and the correct pattern were available, produced I believe specially for these kits.

Oops - No it was worse than that, it was actually taken in 2005. City of Truro was there again for the Gala in 2009 together with this lot -

The photos of Carrog recently posted by Steve Fay and Steve Naylor are excellent given the circumstances (i.e. weather) and well worth posting on this thread.

The double track each side of the access road Loco shed and workshops AMW196 RH 198286 and flat wagon - this was the "wood bodied bogie truck (poor condition)" listed in the sale, although the wood body seems to be just the floor AMW231 RH 203031 with the 5 skip wagons AMW 231 (left) and AMW196 (right) outside the loco shed. Both locos were fitted with exhaust conditioners although by then disconnected. Bogie open wagon. The 4-wheel wagon to the left is one described in the sale as "wood bodied" but were actually just wood slats in a steel frame The Hudson coach is illustrated here: http://amberleynarrowgauge.co.uk/brockham/slides/fauld-bogie-coach-brockham-070282.htm

The MoD system was 2ft gauge. The nearby Scropton Tramway was 3ft gauge and served nearby mines but was unconnected with the MoD system. A brief history of the system and details of the locomotives used are given in the Industrial Railway Society's North Staffordshire handbook, still available on their website. The depot was connected by a 2ft. gauge line approx 1½ miles long to standard gauge sidings on the former NSR Stoke to Derby line between Tutbury and Scropton Crossing. This line was lifted about 1970 but the system remained in use at the magazines until 1980. There was a sale of 2ft. gauge equipment in February 1981 and this included: 5 Greenwood & Batley battery locomotives MoD Nos.180, 181, 233, 234 and 235 2 Ruston & Hornsby 44/48hp diesel locomotives The following rolling stock (description as per sales list) A 4-wheel steel snow plough/salt gritting wagon, with two steel bodied bogie salt carriers and bogie flat wagon A mines rescue carriage, on bogies with timber and corrugated iron superstructure. Built 1940 by R.Hudson, Leeds. Makers No.SD 68211 Two 4-wheel open passenger carriers with wooden bodies and a 4-wheel tool carrier with wood body. 79 wood bodied 4-wheel 5 ton trucks 135 similar trucks in poor condition 1 wood bodied bogie truck in poor condition 39 large metal bodied double bogie trucks 5 4-wheel metal skips Also included were approx 3,000 yards of 24" gauge track, being flat bottom rail spiked to wooden, concrete and metal sleepers (assume bolted rather than spiked to the latter two types of sleeper !), together with approx 900 yards of rail being the outer rail of the line adjoining the camp roadway. To explain this last item, the "main line" of the system through the depot was double track on each side of the main roadway and the inner rail of each track in effect retained the edge of the road surface. The Robert Hudson bogie coach was originally preserved at the Brockham Museum. I visited the site in February 1981 with a friend who was manager of the Llanberis Lake Railway. He was interested in the two Ruston & Hornsby locos and they were subsequently bought and transferred to the Lake Railway. I took some photos but I don't recall seeing the carriages or snowplough. I can post some of the photos if they would be of interest.

I not sure if this is any help - my BR photos thread is mainly in black & white, so no use for differentiating between cream or white, just dark - presumably brown (or maybe black in the case of iron railings ????) and light - cream or white. While Bala fencing was dark (i.e. brown as Larry says), Llanuwchllyn at the other end of Bala Lake was light (Post #49 Photo #4). Also in the cases where fencing was a dark colour the gates and gate posts were a light colour (white ?) - see Bangor-on-Dee (Post #2 Photo #6), Fawley (Post #26 Photo #5), Llandrillo (Post #43 Photo #7), Trawsfynydd (Post #86 Photo #4), Llan Ffestiniog (Post #87 Photo #2) and Blaenau Ffestiniog Central (Post #90 Photo #7)

coachmann, on 17 Apr 2018 - 23:25, said: Like this ? Its also desirable to have a stop which automatically springs into position when you lift the flap to avoid disasters if you forget to drop the flap and start running trains! Ducking under the track every time you enter and exit the shed can be a pain - especially for the old folks (like you and me Larry !)

This is the wrong scale if you are interested in the Langley kit, but it might be of interest as a "background model" on an O scale layout. An American firm, Engineering Model Developments, did quite a nice 1/50 scale diecast model of the 22RB face shovel. It was available in either Bucyrus Erie or Ruston Bucyrus versions, and may still be available - their website is - http://bucyruseriemodels.com/

Colin, In addition to the 8 pin there are 5 other wires - Brown (function output 2 - not needed here); 2 x Purple (speaker) and Blue & Grey, the latter two for direct connection to the capacitor and are at the opposite end of the decoder to all the other wires. Blue goes to the positive and Grey to the negative on the capacitor - this is important ! Philip