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Thanks to everyone who attended our open day, we hope you had a good time. Some pictures from the day can be seen by clicking here Falmouth Society of Railway Modellers - Open Day.

We are holding an open day on Saturday March 25th 2023 at: St Mary's Roman Catholic Church, Killigrew Street, Falmouth, Cornwall, TR11 3PR. FREE ENTRY Opening Times are 10:00am to 4:00pm Come along and see what we do. More details of the exhibition and our activities can be seen on our website: https://fsrm.weebly.com/ Open Day Webpage: https://fsrm.weebly.com/open-day-march-2023.html

Following the lifting of Covid restrictions on Monday July 19th, we have now resumed our normal weekly meetings. We are also welcoming new members to the society. We would ask that you contact our secretary before paying us a visit, please see the contact details on our website. Like all clubs and societies, the last seventeen months have been a challenge, in many ways. Hopefully we are now on the road to recovery and better times ahead. More information on our society can be found on our website: https://fsrm.weebly.com/

Picked my copy up at WHS in Falmouth on Friday afternoon. A superb issue with many great articles and interesting layouts (as already mentioned), for me I was hooked by the Swindon Cl123 Inter-City DMU, absolutely brilliant.

I don't generally find too much problem using tools left or right handed, with one exception, and that's those Swann-Morton scalpels. Try those in your left hand and the blades will fly off, so I adapt to that situation. When I started school (1967), I picked up the pencil with the left hand and naturally smudged any writing, the teachers didn't get physical, they just said "if you write with your right hand that won't happen". All that meant was I became a painfully slow writer. Drawing I can do with both hands, as with writing now, but not quickly. Spatial awareness is useful to be able to visualise how things will fit in a space. The whole thing is down to brain dominance and nothing to with birth issues, left brain dominance is RH, right brain dominance is LH generally. It's the way your wired. That said, my right eye is stronger and the sighting eye. Right brain dominance means your likely to be more subjective, more responsive to pictures and more arty, that's me, I see the things in the picture tests that most people miss. I also see colours and light in a different way, colours which a lot of people don't see. Did I follow my desire to have a career in the arts, no, I followed adult advice at the time (the late 70s) and got stuck in a job which I hated. Being able to read upside down is an advantage as I can see what's been written about me before the teacher/boss read it out, I could also fight back very quickly and catch them off guard! I often wonder if handedness will even itself out in the modern world, now that we don't have the traditional views about "sinister" connotations, after all there's nothing evil about it, even animals display a preference to handedness (or should that be pawedness?). The best bit is driving, we drive on the left apparently, because your right arm is your sword arm, but this means the clutch and all the gears and central controls in the car are on the left hand side for the driver. Winner!

Falmouth Society of Railway Modellers - Open Day 2018 We will be holding an Open Day on 17th March 2018 (St Patrick's Day) with a number of model railways in various scales and gauges from O to Z. We will also have modelling demostrations and our sales stand which will have a good selection of second hand models on offer. FREE ENTRY Date: Saturday 17th March 2018 (St Patrick's Day) Opening Times: 10:00am – 4:00pm Venue: The Athenaeum Club Kimberley Place FALMOUTH Cornwall TR11 3QL Click here for our Open Day webpage

Very nice little layout, looking forward to seeing more of it. Most clay production is now concentrated on a few big sites and the clay trains are longer and less frequent, so it's nice when someone recreates a small operation in model form. I wouldn't worry about the fact you didn't build the original, after all you've credited the builder and he did decide to sell it. I did the same sort of thing with a small layout in EM gauge, which I have turned into a Scottish scene to allow me to run my class 17s, 26s & 27s, etc. On the subject of the Land Rover, from what I read in the news I think it would have been "restored" by now.

6201 is roughly six inches longer than 46233, so wouldn't fit on the turntable at St Blazey. 46233 was over hanging the bridge when she was turned, quite a sight to watch.

The layout which impressed me when I first saw it at a Bristol exhibition (Whiteladies Road I think) was Borchester Market, wonderful stuff. Frank Dyer then wrote some highly detailed articles covering model railway operation for MRJ in the late eighties, well worth reading. It was the operation of the railway which made a pleasure to watch, quite simply it looked like the real railway. Sadly Frank is no longer with us, but the layout lives on in the care of Newhaven MRC.

An intersting one from Glawster Oldspot's photostream on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/68861278@N03/8426393569/in/album-72157628064899044/

In 'Branch Lines to Falmouth, Helston & St Ives' by Vic Mitchell & Kevin Smith (Middleton Press), there is a picture Swindon Cross Country DMU No: LA500 at Penwithers Junction in August 1969. My bet is these units are one of the same. I can remember seeing this livery, because it was so unusal, the bulk of the stock at this time was green (SYP) or standard blue (FYE) in Cornwall. The Falmouth line had Swindon units regularly as it had to have the 1st Class facilty, laterly for Golden Rail passengers, although this wasn't introduced until 1971.

Here's one I favourited from 'The KDH Archive' on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/96859208@N07/12748835625/in/faves-79600589@N02/ The scene is Falmouth (now Falmouth Docks) shortly after most of the station had been demolished. There is some superb stuff on the KDH Archive, enjoy!

You're right about the points being worked from the box, the levers were Nos:14/15 according to the signalling diagram. The point on the approach to the bay platform was fitted with a F.P.L. plunger & bar, while the point in the Dock Siding only had a bar. There was also a treadle on the bay point, simply labelled 'A'. From 1939 the dock siding was provided with a ground signal (dwarf arm yellow - if you want to be technical) operated by lever No:12. From this time the goods shed road was also fitted with a catch point (No:22) and a ground signal (No:19), and wait for it, track circuiting to point No:22 proper. It certainly must have kept the signalman busy during shunting operations.