steve howe

I've just found and read this thread and I must say its inspirational to see an old layout brought back to life with renewed vigour. And good to see the old ply and rivet trackwork still alive and well! I have an old P4 one to tackle that I built over 30 years ago using those methods which subsequently went through many (some not very careful) hands before it came back to me by a chance coincidence a couple of years ago. Despite its rough treatment, the track is still spot-on which I think underlines the durability of these 'old' techniques. Great work Derek, some of the scenes remind me of the late David Jenkinson's last 4mm epic. Steve

Your'e quite right Sandy, the chairs have been a problem from day 1 and I have fettled most of them, just a few still need attention. It was the first time the layout had had an intensive running session, and its interesting how unexpected things crop up, like the power leads to the cassettes not being long enough when a short engine cassette was used on its own.... By and large, given it had only been rather hurriedly tested with one loco and a couple of wagons, it performed pretty well, (especially considering most of the stock running during the Show had not turned a wheel in anger for over 20 years!) and has thrown up a list of minor fettling jobs which, collectively should make a huge difference to the general running. The main job before it ever goes out again is to get rid of the 3 link couplings in favour of AJs, I find that not only do 3 links cause fatigue and stress especially towards the end of the day, it also seems as soon as you start fiddling about with a hook, people lose interest and walk away. Auto coupling and uncoupling maintains the attention and helps the 'suspension of disbelief' as Cyril Freezer once put it (although I doubt he ever built any AJ couplings!) A most enjoyable weekend and thanks to those RMWebbers who came and said hello. Progress on LRG will slow somewhat over the Summer as gardening (my main passion) takes over, but watch this space!

In between wiring and struggling to get anything to run over my battered rails, I've been amusing myself with a few small buildings to adorn the yard. As Lower Rose is a pretty nondescript sort of place, the buildings have been deliberately kept low-key - no fancy good sheds here! the basic facilities comprise lock-up sheds and a weighbridge based on the remaining example at the site of Shepherds station where the Treamble Branch left the Chacewater - Newquay line. Standard GWR lock-ups. based on drawings in 'Great Western Architecture' (Vaughan OPC) and thanks to Tim Venton for sending me a dimensioned sketch of the goods shed at Camerton. Nothing to say really about construction - Slaters corrugated styrene sheet throughout. The coal merchant's office, I wantd to get something that suggested a pre- War timber and asbestos framed building which I seem to remember being still quite common into the late '50s and '60s. Basic construction in 0.5mm card with paper overlays and sticky label window frames. Finished in watercolour. The coal merchant has gone into Kerosene distribution requiring a set of sheds for storage of cans and housing the pump. Here the Can Store. Construction as for the GW sheds. I'm not sure that a rural outpost like this would have had such an elaborate storage facility, there was considerable discussion on this when I raised it on the Scalefour forum recently, and the general consensus was that most merchants would have taken delivery of oil in 50 gallon drums which would then have been dispensed into smaller cans. Although someone did send me a drawing dated 1919 for a small oil depot selling both Kero. and petrol at Newport and I used this to base the tin sheds and the hose arrangement used for pumping out from tank wagons. My excuse is that the numerous hotels and Guest houses around Perranporth would have placed a heavy demand for oil so the merchant installed a tank for bulk deliveries......the tank is an old boiler which I'm told would be quite prototypical before Regulations were tightened up on bulk storage. Quite whether the Inspectorate would have been so happy about the close proximity of the tank to the rails is another matter..... All the buildings still need bedding in and final detailing and weathering. And finally, some stock has actually arrived! One of the regular locomotives and the weigh bridge in the background. The lack of time before the Helston Show this weekend has meant a few decisions had to be taken, namely the planned installation of Alex Jackson couplings on the stock and magnets on the layout was just never going to happen, so this has meant that we are still fumbling around with 3 links, this in turn has meant that operation from the front is not possible due to the narrowness of the viewing slot so the control panel has been adapted for operating from the rear; the consequence of which means the planned backscene cannot be used, so unfortunately the layout will not be as 'contained' as I would like. Hey Ho...

Thanks for that Mark. As someone remarked earlier, its a lot of trouble to go to for three sidings...! but I rather like the very 'ordinary-ness' of the period railway scene, and the fact that there were scores of these wayside yards and sidings all over the system; often neglected, largely overlooked, but going about their everyday business quietly serving the local community. Lower Rose Goods owes more than a nod towards Wenford Bridge which I discovered in the last years of its working life, very weedy, rusty rails and a couple of solitary wagons sitting rather forlornly in the sidings, but absolutely reeking of atmosphere. Impossible to recreate on a preserved railway, it was the balance of gentle dereliction against a still functioning utility that created a delightful picture of the last vestiges of a fast disappearing railway system. One train a day... I don't think Lower Rose will ever be exactly gripping to operate, or even to watch... but as Talking Heads put it: 'Heaven is a place where nothing, nothing ever happens' Whatever floats your boat I suppose! Steve

Ah yes, but I still need to find out if it works....

The trouble with experimental modelling is the results are never guaranteed. Sometimes things work out better than expected, other times it can all go disastrously wrong... I had the notion that the coal merchant’s yard (lately expanding into oil sales) would be partially paved with setts (or cobbles depending which side of the North – South Divide you are on) and that these would be relatively pristine at the entrance around the yard office, but would become increasingly buried and damaged the further down the yard you went until in the coal area itself there would be just an occasional hint of them showing through under layers of mud and coal dust. All this seemed a suitably Arty challenge to reproduce something reminiscent of station coal yards of my youth along with ramshackle tin sheds and piles of coal shored up with old sleepers and planks. Recently I have made setts using DAS modelling clay formed on plaster moulds as discussed in the link higher up this thread and they have been quite effective, however the downside of this method is that the DAS sheet has a thickness which needs to be allowed for, and I had already made up my ground levels with card packing before this idea hatched. What was needed was a thin sheet that could be stuck to the card foundation and I hit on the idea of casting the sheets of cobbles in latex rubber which could be trimmed and fitted to suit without adding too much additional thickness. Accordingly liquid latex was brushed over the mould and left for 24 hours. The disturbingly flesh-like membrane was peeled off and left to cure. Latex shrinks considerably over time before it cures fully so I left the casts for a week before using. The shrinkage can be appreciated from the photo. The skins were cut to shape and stuck down with PVA liberally brushed on and the whole left to dry. So far, so good. After applications of thinned Tamiya Buff and black acrylics allowing the natural colour of the latex to contribute, it all looked quite promising. In a push to get the coal yard moved on I applied coal dust and ground pastels fixed with Johnsons Kleer, and when dry, all that was needed was a liberal wash of thinned matt black to blend all together. And here’s where the whole thing went breasts skyward. Within about 5 minutes of application I heard an ominous fizzing and crackling from the rubber sheets followed by each sett individually ballooning upwards like so many fermenting pustules in a scene from Alien. Ten minutes later and the whole sheet had erupted... Clearly the white spirit in the paint had reacted with the rubber and caused it to expand in spectacular fashion. I ought to have known this because it is common knowledge that petrol destroys rubber so presumably other solvents will as well. There was no solution, so it all had to come up including the card substrate and be remade in DAS casts which is why you are reading this now instead of a fortnight ago.... The DAS casts were finally fixed in place and coloured with a wash of raw umber and raw sienna. When dry the setts were ‘grouted’ with dry Polyfilla and the surplus blown off and set with a spray of clean water. Final weathering and grot in the form of finely sieved coal dust, ash and a wash of thinned matt black paint brought the surface to a suitably grubby finish. The square hole is the site for the yard office which is nearing completion along with sundry sheds and lock-ups. Lower Rose yard is not noted for its architectural heritage... And just to show some things do get finished, the road bridge is in place with the first application of vegetation. Hopefully a bit more on the buildings in a day or two.

Good heavens! a Garrett and a VoR loco at Bridport at the same time Lets hope the bridges have been strengthened! Steve

The rock face behind the loading bank is a bit of an old chestnut to overcome a distinct lack of space, however my consolation is that the real location is against a steeply sloping valley side which would have required substantial excavation to make room for the sidings. I decided to use plaster casts of real rock to create the faces. This is a summary of how they were made: The local rock is a slate-shale which if a good piece is chosen has perfect miniature strata. Latex rubber, obtainable quite reasonably from better Art suppliers, is brushed on in thin coats. Depending on local conditions, each coat needs to be dry before the next is applied, in a warm room this is normally about an hour. I had my rock specimens on top of the woodburner where the rubber dried in about 20 minutes! About 8 hours and around 10 coats of latex later. The upper three pieces have yet to be unmoulded, the lower two show the specimen and the mould. Interestingly quite a lot of the rock pigment (iron) soaked into the rubber. A selection of moulds and casts, I used Plaster of Paris for the casts which sets in about 10 minutes and can be un-moulded in less than half an hour. The site ready to receive the casts. The end of the loading bank is curved, just to make things awkward. Making rocks go round corners is a good trick if you can do it.....A suitable mould was trimmed to fit Plaster was mixed and applied as evenly as possible Now begins a waiting game..... There's a critical moment when the plaster is in a 'cheesy' state..... With all the dexterity of a five fingered ferret, the mould and plaster is quickly manouvered into place and pressed gently against the substrate. After a few hours the mould can be peeled away. Various casts in place, I used tile grout to fix and fill the casts The plaster needs to dry before painting. Here a wash of raw sienna and raw umber has been applied as a base coat. Further applications of watercolour and the beginnings of damp and vegetation appearing. Hopefully some more grass might grow soon if this mild weather keeps up

The road overbridge is the only significant engineering structure on the layout and I wanted to base it on the surviving Cornwall Minerals Railway bridges on the Treamble Branch on the supposition that had the line been extended up the valley, the architectural styles would have continued. The best (and I think only) remaining road bridge on the old branch is situated near Rejarrah and is so well grown in that it is easy to drive over it without realising it even is a railway bridge. My plan was to copy this bridge but enlarge it to a double width arch as it spans the end of the run-round loop at this point. As time was (is!) pressing to get at least something built before the Club show in April, I decided to use my moulded DAS sheets as described in the link a few posts earlier..... http://www.scalefour.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=101&t=3745#p32638 .....rashly thinking the rough dressed stonework would be a good match for the hewn granite typical of Cornish railway structures. A site visit proved this assumption to be quite false as the bridge is built from beautifully cut, squared blocks with dressed granite copings. Unfortunately lack of time prevented me from making a fully scribed version, particularly since the parts for the bridge had already been cut out! The simple elegance belies the craftsmanship involved in cutting and setting these string courses The single-track arch is made up of three rings of blue engineering brick which show the interesting saw-tooth effect of the arch being built slightly on the skew. That the bricks were left proud like this is probably down to economy given the fact that this was a lightly used freight line. On more significant structures the bricks would have been faced flush. Closer examination revealed an interesting anomaly; The bridge would have been built originally by the Cornwall Minerals Railway in about 1873-4 but the brickwork, and particularly the concrete sills under the soffit look more recent and (I think) typical of the GWR. The question this raises is this: did the GWR rebuild the bridge when it took over the line and the rest of the CMR in 1896? it seems a rather drastic move given that traffic on the Treamble Branch by then was already sparse (the line closed in 1916) and curiously, the GWR re-laid and re-opened it again in 1926. Surely the bridge could not have been rebuilt then for traffic which was at best, rather speculative. The lower stonework on the abutments and beneath the arch certainly looks slightly different to the parapets above suggesting older work. Another unusual feature is the use of buttresses rather than wing walls to support the facia, presumably the rocky clay through which the cutting is made at this point was judged to be stable enough not to need retaining. The parts for the bridge cut from the moulded DAS sheet. Used like this in its dry state the material is quite structural although brittle. Painting in progress, the colours are too rich for the final effect but subsequent weathering will blend all together. The parts painted and ready for assembly. The main parts assembled. The incorrect bonding really bugs me now! As the arch was to span two tracks I increased the brick rings from three to five. Setting the arch into the DAS sheet was tricky, in the end I marked out the arch on fine card and scribed the curved courses with a pair of blunt dividers, the vertical courses (known as 'perps' in the Trade I believe) were impressed with a sharpened jeweller's screwdiver every 1mm.......... The arch was then coloured initially with watercolour and soft pastel, and set into the cut-out space made for it in the DAS facia, packed up with thicker card behind and set in place with PVA. When dry, any gaps around the joint were filled with more DAS and the brickwork colouring completed. In fairness it was all a right old faff...and I should have scribed the whole thing properly in the first place which would probably have been quicker! The soffit was reasonably straightforward using Slaters embossed stretcher bond styrene firmly glued with evo-stik. A couple of layers of Mod-Roc over the arch helped strengthen the plastic and hold its shape. The bridge temporarily in place for clearance testing. It is regrettable that the ironmongery of the cassette system is so visible through the arch but it was unavoidable due to lack of room, the old trick of theatrical matt black might help but I'm not confident. Hopefully the addition of 'wings' to the side of the viewing slot will direct the eye away from looking under the bridge! ( ) Rockwork to follow dreckly...

Half term so there ought to be some progress, unfortunately the weather here is beautiful at the moment....so other things get in the way! Here's a brief update, but first to round off the background story to the project, here is an extract from the documents held at the Cornwall Records Office relating to the abortive scheme to link Treamble and Newquay with Truro and reproduced with their permission. The Atlas is a magnificent A1 sized document of some twelve pages that shows the route of the entire proposed line including the lands to be acquired either side (part of which is now my garden!) and full gradient profiles including the approaches to overbridges. The section at Lower Rose where the goods depot could have been sited. The document was clearly produced to a highly professional standard and the whole scheme was thoroughly thought through. Given the cost of undertaking such a detailed survey, it makes one wonder how much was at stake to be potentially made if the scheme went ahead, and, conversely, how much was lost by the promoters in commissioning the survey when it didn't? On more mundane matters, the loading platform has gone in. The usual carton card forms the foundations My DAS moulded stonework as described in the link above in the process of painting The platform surface is 2mm fine card with the coping stones made from a strip of 180gm water colour paper marked and scored at 12mm intervals with a hard pencil, the strip is then scored and folded to give a 4mm and 2mm face which is then glued to the edge of the card. The strip was burnished down hard to give a crisp edge. The whole sheet was then given 2 coats of shellac to seal and harden it, This substance was once commonly used in modelling before styrene sheet came along, it soaks into the card or paper and gives a tough waterproof sheet and because it is spirit based, it does not affect the structure of the card. Many of Peter Denny's wagons are built from this material. It can still be had from artist's suppliers or a very close substitute is knotting sold by decorator's stores. Methylated spirit is the solvent to clean the brush with! The card sheet was liberally coated in PVA and sieved ash sprinkled on. 24 hours later the surplus was brushed off and the platform lightly rubbed down to remove any gritty lumps. The platform in place, final colouring will be done after the adjacent rock faces have gone in. The landscape has evolved in a flurry of activity when the rain arrived! I know basket weaving has long been off the Occupational Therapy agenda, but there is something quite relaxing about fixing and threading the card strips to make the basic landforms. The card is from old cornflake cartons as it has just the right amount of spring to get nice flowing curves - its also free! A couple of hours and we've gone from Basket Land to Winter Wonderland as the Modroc has been deployed. I find this material ideal for making the basic shell because its clean to use (no slopping about with bowls of wet plaster) and can be finished neatly at edges. It can be either applied dry and soaked in situ with a brush and clean water, or small pieces can be pre-soaked and applied, final smoothing done with the fingers or brush. It could get expensive though on large areas and I would consider using old cotton sheet soaked in PVA/water in this instance. Must get on with the road bridge!

Just make your wheels a nice loose fit on the axles so they just slide out to the proper gauge..... Well, they do it in Switzerland!

Well I never said it would be finished........

A little more progress today. I decided I'd had enough of faffing around with fiddly little jobs like trying to stop things falling off the track, and needed to make some sort of a statement of intent suggesting I might be getting something done So the scenic groundwork went in. The basic landscape, such as it is, is created using profiled card formers to which a lattice of card strips will be attached. This will then be covered by a plaster/scrim shell and the earthworks made on that. A nice shot of my new hot glue gun if nothing else! the card profile for the rear of the landscape is set about 25mm in from the backscene. This is for two reasons: firstly it allows a canvas backscene to be set in place after the layout is set up, thus avoiding joins in the sky, and second, the rear profile creates a sort of 'natural horizon' which allows the backscene itself to be just a neutral grey/blue which I think is more effective than painted scenery. The vertical profile in the front will support a rock face, that old 'get out of jail free' card for saving space. My excuse is that the original route of the proposed line hugged the valley contour on the steeply sloping south side, and as such would have required some blasting into the rock to make space for the goods yard... well rock cuttings are quite common in Cornwall....once the basic contours are in place, additional profiles are added about every 50mm to smooth out the landforms. Profiles for the cutting leading to the roadbridge of which more anon. The ones nearest the bridge were miscalculated and will need replacing. The cutting sides turned out to be too steep, so I added a low retaining wall. Good job this card is free, you use a lot by this method, but it is very versatile. By layering it, small variations in the ground forms can be built up, if its too thick - stamp on it! Mod-Roc and muck to follow. Steve

cA little more on the early stages of the layout. First, a slightly more considered trackplan: There looks to be a disproportionate area of cassette deck to layout, but the intention is to run trains of up to eight wagons plus a Toad to give reasonable scope for shunting, Also the cassettes are designed to have a short section on the ends to allow the loco to be removed and shunted onto the adjacent cassette, in this way the cassettes act as a sort of run-round. I decided early on to stick to a totally traditional method of track making using the Brook-Smith techniques advocated for many years by the Scalefour and EM fraternity. This is the setup for one of the two yard points following in close formation. The sleeper timbers were stained beforehand using dilute black Indian ink, about a third ink to two thirds water seemed about right. A little light reading provided the right level of pressure to keep everything flat during construction The turnouts in place, I used cork as the underlay on this project and the track was fixed using Copydex applied sparingly to the sleepers before laying, I find this is preferable to the sometimes recommended practice of slathering the underlay in PVA and laying the track wet followed by a sprinkling of ballast - all seems too fraught to me - the Copydex may contribute something to noise reduction but its a lot easier to remove if you need to make alterations to the track at a later date. Its only real drawback is its tendency to wind itself around drill bits when making holes for wiring. The Masokits tiebars are a fiddle to make, although they get easier after the first two or three, the etch cleverly folds up around a strip of very thin double sided PCB and includes some useful tabs to solder the switch blades to and which also slide under the adjacent stockrails preventing the toe of the switch from rising. Although they appear frail during making, the solder up into quite robust units. The four little tabs on the top should have been filed off during the construction, but I didn't read all the instructions and then spent quite some time identifying the mysterious short..... I get precious little time for modelling and most of it gets done late in the evening hence the rather moody lighting. The trackwork in the yard is largely complete except for the addition of cosmetic chairs. looking from the back of the layout towards the cassette deck, the crossover is in place and the lead-in sections to the cassettes are installed for testing. The crossover at the yard entrance representing the visible end of the run-round loop. Point rodding is being installed and the basic carcass for the landscape is taking shape. I'm a great fan of carton board for landscape construction, its free, light, very strong, easy to cut and stick with the hot glue gun. This is the approach road down to the yard with a mock-up of the road bridge in the background. The crossover, short run-off siding and its relationship to the overbridge was inspired by the north end of St. Dennis Junction on the Par- Newquay branch. Now completely obliterated. Cosmetic chairs have been added to the track. As this was a sort of 'heritage' project using traditional techniques I used up the last of my stock of MJT cast whitemetal chairs. These were 'state of the art' 30 odd years ago but having cut, separated, fettled and stuck them on individually I can truly say this will be the last layout I shall build using all soldered ply and rivet track; my other Inglenook project (link above) uses Exactoscale plastic chairs glued to ply sleepers with Butanone and I have to say, personally, I'm now convinced this is the way to go for hand built track as it saves so much time and effort and looks superb. And this is what happens when you forget to wash the flux off your track gauges after a session! Some of these are truly antique dating back to Studiolith days! Nearly up to date, with ballast and weeds appearing in the yard. The loading dock and over bridge will be next in a few days.

Thanks for that David, you might like to have a look at my other Inglenook project which follows the 'classic' concept as closely as possible: http://www.scalefour.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=101&t=3745 Siding lengths (or lack of) are disguised by bridges, with auto uncoupling and decent running locos it can be quite absorbing! Steve

Lower Rose Goods Background The idea for this layout was born out of the need to devise an ‘interactive’ exhibit for our Club show that gave visitors the opportunity to ‘play trains’. The result was a classic ‘Inglenook Sidings’ using some spare Peco track and a 4’ x 1’ offcut of ply lying about in the Clubroom. The layout went to the show as a bare baseboard but was designed totally ‘by the book’ with the classic 5 – 3 formation of wagons and a 0-6-0 tank locomotive to push them. A selection of suitably identifiable wagons was photographed to make a set of laminated cards and a carefully doctored controller made sure visitors only drove at a sedate pace. I have to confess to a certain scepticism about the ‘shunting puzzle with cards’ concept but on its first outing it proved very popular with the visitors – the biggest problem was keeping the Dads off it so that Junior could solve the puzzle alone! In a quiet moment I had a go myself and found it really quite absorbing, sometimes the puzzle could be solved in a few minutes, other times it could take up to half an hour to work out the moves. It occurred to me that it would be fun if the idea were to be adapted into a P4 version with rather more realistic siding lengths, suitably detailed trackwork and surroundings displayed in a ‘fish tank’ cameo which could serve two purposes: one to provide a setting for my GWR rolling stock which had not seen the light of day for many a year, and two, to give me the opportunity to get to grips with the issue of DCC and Alex Jackson couplings which I have been skirting around for far too long. To maximise the length available, and what I could fit into the car, I decided to make the layout on two 1.5m boards but to limit the width to 400mm with a view to displaying it at eye level on a set of bookshelves. I also deviated from the true Inglenook concept by making the headshunt split into double track representing the end of a supposed run-round loop situated largely ‘off stage’ beyond an overbridge. The roads of this loop run under a bridge to a pair of train cassettes which function either as storage roads or to facilitate running round. The track layout was largely inspired by the terminus of the Treamble Branch, an obscure goods-only line off the old Chacewater – Newquay branch in mid-Cornwall. As is the fashion with such things, I suppose some kind of ‘prototype rationale’ is called for to explain the layout’s hypothetical location. The Location The model is intended to represent a rural goods depot during the inter-War years, since this is the period most of my rolling stock represents. The much loved and much missed Chacewater to Newquay line was the ‘poor relation’ of the two railways that went to Newquay. Many would argue that when Beeching swung his axe in 1962, he cut the wrong route and that in many ways the Chacewater line serving the popular resorts of St. Agnes, and Perranporth, and the various halts in between, which are now surrounded by numerous holiday campsites, would have been the more economically viable of the two branches against the steeply graded route from Par which now constitutes the modern line to Newquay. The point is rather academic now and sadly the passenger figures (taken from a survey conducted in February) gave a false impression of traffic compared to how heavily the branch was used during the summer season. The line had its origins way back in 1849 when Joseph Treffry (1782-1850), a local land owner and entrepreneur, built a horse operated tramway to convey minerals from the important mines of East Wheal Rose near St. Newlyn East to the coast at Newquay, then little more than a huddle of cottages perched above the stormy North Cornish coast. The Treffry Tramways became a disjointed network of horse worked mineral tramways which at their maximum extent, consisted of two separate main lines. One of these sometimes called the Par Tramway, linked Fowey and Par on the south coast with Bugle in the central Cornish china clay district. The other, known as the Newquay Railway, linked Newquay on the north coast with lead and copper mines near St. Newlyn East, and with St. Dennis in the china clay district. When these two routes were joined under the auspices of the Cornwall Minerals Railway, Treffry had effectively created the first ‘coast to coast’ route. The Cornwall Minerals Railway rebuilt the tramways to make them suitable for locomotive traction and an extension to Treamble and the iron mine at Gravel Hill was opened on 1 June 1874. The section from Treamble to Gravel Hill closed in 1888 when the mine had been exhausted. This area contained the largest commercial ironstone mines to be worked in Cornwall and latterly opencast workings in the vicinity sent ore to a loading point at Treamble to be conveyed away by rail. The Treamble Branch closed in 1917 and the rails were lifted and sent to France to help with the War effort but due to an upturn in the mineral market, the line was reopened by the GWR in 1926. The ironstone deposit was never as productive as had originally been hoped, and in the early 20th century a Fullers Earth refinery and a gunpowder mill was established at Treamble to capitalise on the extensive reserves of iron oxide associated with the workings. The Treamble Branch was officially closed on 1 January 1952 although there had been no traffic over it since 8 August 1949. The track was not removed until 1956. I have a certain interest in the Treamble Branch as the site of its terminus lies a mile or so down the valley from where I live and I have spent some time exploring its heavily overgrown remains. This valley, like others around the Perranporth area, has seen considerable mining activity over the years, some of which continued into the early 20th century. About a mile and a half south of Treamble and higher up the valley, lie the remains of Wheal Hope, a speculative copper and lead mine begun before 1820 and worked intermittently during the first half of the 19th century. With no commercial success, operations ceased sometime in the 1870s. Fictional Location This is all documented fact. However in my scheme of things I imagined that Wheal Hope had lived up to its name and become a somewhat more prosperous concern than was actually the case. So much so that the Cornwall Minerals Railway extended its Treamble Branch up the valley to service the mine’s needs. Curiously my fictional history turned out to be closer to fact than I had originally realised. Quite late on in the layout’s planning stage, I learned of ‘The Truro & Perran Mineral Railway’ a scheme proposed in 1872 to construct a railway from Treamble to Truro to convey iron ore directly to the Truro River at Newham. The line would have passed through the Treamble valley, crossing the Truro – Newquay road at Goonhavern, passing Zelah and heading south through Kenwyn parish to a junction with the Cornwall Railway at the east end of Carvedras viaduct. The Act empowered the Company to lay a third rail on the Cornwall Railway’s broad gauge to allow it to run through to a junction with the West Cornwall Railway at Penwithers (later Penwethers Junction) The T&PMR would have had running rights over the West Cornwall route down to the river at Truro (Newham) where it intended to construct blast furnaces on the banks of the Truro River and ship finished steel out by sea. The Cornwall Minerals Railway however had already staked its claim on the Treamble iron mines by opening its Treamble Branch (known as the Perran Extension) in 1874. Accordingly the T&PMR revised its scheme and proposed a deviation from near Zelah to a triangular junction with the CMR near Shepherds. This would have allowed trains to run direct from Treamble or Newquay to Truro. Had these schemes come to fruition, the advantages of a direct route from Truro to Newquay are obvious and the railway map of mid-Cornwall would have looked very different to that which subsequently evolved when the GWR opened its connection to the mainline at Chacewater in 1905, with interim stations at St Agnes and Perranporth. My rationale takes elements from the earlier scheme but assumes that the line was only extended as far as Wheal Hope in 1874 before it became clear that the fortunes of the mining industry in the area were in serious decline. The remote and rural area around Goonhavern and Rose, though not densely populated could have warranted a goods depot to service its domestic and agricultural needs. Accordingly public loading facilities were constructed at Lower Rose where the line crossed a public road, and the branch continued a further quarter of a mile to Wheal Hope itself. The GWR took over the Treamble branch along with the rest of the Cornwall Minerals Railway in 1896 and the yard facilities at Lower Rose were upgraded along with improvements to the track. A weighbridge, identical to that built at Shepherds station at about the same time, a lock-up store and office, lightweight crane and loading gauge were provided and the points to the runround loop were connected to a small ground frame. As the branch was always operated ‘one engine in steam’ signals were not provided. Part of the yard was quickly leased by the local haulage merchants – R. J. Trevail & Son of Rose, as a location for a coal depot and a yard office and various storage sheds built. The convenience of being able to supply the outlying district from a central railhead proved highly lucrative, to the extent that Trevails decided to expand their business into oil supplies. Much of the district at that time relied on candles or oil for lighting or cooking including a number of substantial hotels and boarding houses near the coast. Consequently in 1912 a 3000 gallon tank was erected in the coal yard with attendant pump house, stand pipe and can store. The oil was dispensed in 1 or 5 gallon cans or 50 gallon drums and was sold either from the yard or from the delivery lorry. Trevails were also aggregate dealers and loads of crushed roadstone, bricks and cement were regularly delivered by rail. This additional traffic may have prevented the Treamble Branch from closing in 1917, continuing as a freight-only line serving the remote rural area into the late 1920 – early 30s which is when our scene is set. Those who know the area will by now be chortling into their beer at the sheer improbability of it all, but Cornish mining is a fickle thing, and there is no reason why Wheal Hope could not have been as prosperous as nearby East Wheal Rose, but for the vagaries of the local geology, and had this been the case, extending the Treamble Branch was indeed a distinct possibility. The remoteness of the valley and narrowness of the local lanes could also have justified the continuing need for delivery of goods by rail. The railway from Chacewater to Newquay came late on the scene when the GWR’s route from Blackwater Junction via St. Agnes and Perranporth, linking up with the old Cornwall Mineral Railway’s route to Newquay at Shepherds opened in 1905. Modest goods facilities were provided at Perranporth and the existing small goods yard at Shepherds was upgraded by the GWR. Goonhavern, situated mid-way between the two, and even then a reasonably sized village, only ever had a simple halt. Presumably the GWR considered the goods facilities at the stations either side to be sufficient for the area’s needs. The Treamble Branch slumbered on quietly until after World War 2 when it fell into total disuse and was finally dismantled in 1956. I don't propose to do a 'blow by blow' account of the layout's construction because, in reality, there is very little there that has not been well documented before elsewhere, but as it progresses I will bring a few issues and ideas forward for discussion. Currently we are just completing the track fettling stage and I hope to post a few images of progress so far in the next day or two now that I've found the secret formula (change theme to 2013 mode) which actually lets me post pictures!

Thanks for that, its exactly what I've been doing but it won't play. I'll try again in a few days in case its some glitch, it has happened before and then mysteriously disappeared

I've tried several times to update this post but I can't add images in the text - (or emoticons for that matter, so I've given up, the post is continued on the Scalefour forum. I can't even copy and paste the link here. I give up on RM Web!

The Hard Stuff I feel a bit of a fraud describing this project here because it is so basic, but, as the man said "I've started so I'll finish...." The overall dimensions of the layout finished up at 1220mm x 330mm (4' x 13" in real money) I decided to abandon the curved frontage as it made unnecessary complications and contributed nothing other than add a bit more landscape to the overall scene. The plan is to display the model on a set of bookshelves and the widest shelf that fits the average shelving system is about 14" so the scheme was pared down to suit. Nothing new to say about the baseboard - 9mm ply on 25 x 50 softwood frame, took all of half an hour to construct. I added the refinement of adjustable feet to the frame with the idea of playing trains on the kitchen table. If the layout is ever exhibited seriously I will probably make a mini-subframe which will stand on a table and bring the scene up to nearer eye-level. The tandem turnout ready for testing. It was built entirely traditionally with rivet and ply and steel rail which I still think gives superior electrical continuity despite the problems with stray flux causing rusting. Washing the finished piece is easy enough before its laid, but how do you wash flux off after everything's stuck in place? The turnout set in position, the underlay is a dense foam sheet about 3mm thick which I came my way as packing, but I think it is virtually the same stuff that Exactoscale (and now C&L presumably) used to sell as underlay. As the layout is all about experiment I gave it a go as a change from the traditional cork and it seems to be working very nicely. I think a simple jig makes plain track so much easier and less tedious, this is just card strips of the appropriate width stuck to a half-meter length of melamine and liberally shellacked to prolong its life. Clamping the first few sleepers while the solvent sets helps stop things moving about when positioning the rest of the chairs. Burning the midnight oil..... In the cold light of day, the track fairy has been and laid a few sidings. These were all made by the glued-chairs-to-ply system which was new ground for me but I like very much - at least for plain track, if nothing else it alleviates the glorious job of sticking all those half chairs on afterwards... Point control next.... You can't wait can you?

Horsley Lane Goods Introduction Many of us will be familiar with the Inglenook concept; a shunting puzzle relying on deliberately restricted sidings with the objective of making up a train of five wagons out of a possible eight in an order dictated by a random choice of cards. The concept has been around for a long time and those wishing to delve more into its history and numerous permutations are recommended to the 'official' Inglenook website: http://www.wymann.info/ShuntingPuzzles/sw-inglenook.html My involvement in the Inglenook concept came about some years ago through being asked to 'knock up' a hands-on exhibit for our next Club exhibition in response to comments about not having enough 'interactive' exhibits for the young ones to play with... so we built a 'text book' Inglenook on a piece of 4' x 1' board using Peco track and a selection of suitably visually distinctive wagons with a well-behaved Bachmann pannier to push them around. I photographed the wagons and produced them onto laminated cards along with a suitably doctored controller to ensure that visitors only drove at a sedate pace. I have to admit to a certain amount of scepticism of the project but in fact it was remarkably popular, the biggest problem was keeping the grown-ups off it long enough to allow Junior to finish the puzzle! In a quiet moment I had a go myself and found it strangely addictive, sometimes the problem could be solved in a few minutes, other times it could take a head-scratching half hour or so. It was then the idea began to form that the scheme might translate into P4 with all the controllability and discreet coupling potential and overall realism that that standard could bring. The original and 'true' Inglenook was a fan contained within 4 feet, with the longest siding holding 5 wagons and the shorter 3, leaving one empty siding and the headshunt for shunting and I wanted to try to stay as close to the original concept as possible. Playing around with some paper templates and wagons soon showed that the scale length of a reasonably realistic turnout (a B6) would not allow the optimum siding lengths to be achieved. By telescoping the points into a tandem, it became more feasible and with a little juggling, the scheme would fit. I wanted to create a worthwhile model as well as an interesting puzzle, so I continued the industrial theme of 'Horsley Bank' my previous minimum space opus set in the immediate pre-War 2 West Riding. Urban subjects lend themselves to compact layouts with the tracks hemmed in by retaining walls, tall buildings and bridges and by using the device of an overbridge at each end disguising the ends of the sidings, the illusion of a glimpse of what should really be a much larger scene can be maintained. While the idea for the layout was crystalising, I happened to mention what I was doing to one Bendall, T who immediately booked it for Scaleforum as a 'work in progress'. At that time the thing was not even at bare baseboard stage. Work was painfully slow with numerous other non-modelling commitments impacting on progress, but I eventually, over one Christmas holiday, managed to get the tandem turnout completed, and with the plan drawn up full-scale the idea began to take form. So with a little over three months to go, I thought I might record progress (or lack of it) and some trials and tribulations as the scheme fumbles forwards. The layout was, and is, always intended as an experiment, not just in minimal space modelling, but (for me) breaking new ground in DCC control, Alex Jackson couplings, glued trackwork, and better rolling stock. Although I've been playing around in P4 for over 30 years, taking a 'back to basics' approach can make for a refreshing change. The basic scheme is an urban scene between two road bridges with a siding serving a general goods warehouse, another running to a cobbled yard, possibly for coal or building materials, with the middle road continuing 'off scene' under the bridge. All three sidings disappear beneath the road bridge suggesting they continue for some distance. The scene is framed by very ordinary buildings typical of the West Riding; a corner pub on the bridge, part of a mill with its boiler house, and a large three storey warehouse with a loading platform and entry at street level above. I have an interest in (though not much knowledge of) the old L&Y having lived in the Upper Calder valley for some years, and the construction of a large warehouse with the distinctive white on black lettering painted across its façade was one of the early design features of the scene. Hopefully regular updates to follow!