“WASHBOURNE”

[richbrummitt]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

 

An excellent little layout, very entertaining considering that it consists of next door to nothing modelled very well - subtlety rules!

 

I have seen this in the flesh and it is indeed very good. Far too much activity compared to the real thing though, confirmed by a delightful chat with the owner. He could legitimately set it up and walk around the show all weekend for a more accurate portrayal, I feel. However that would be mean considering the beautiful stock that has been produced for it. 

[F-UnitMad]

2 minutes ago, richbrummitt said:

Far too much activity compared to the real thing though,

The thing to do with layouts like that is view each train as the one-train-a-day service it probably was in real life. When it disappears into the fiddleyard and the next train appears, we have moved on to the next day.

[Nearholmer]

Yep.

 

When I exhibited my old H0 layout, which represented a quiet harbour-side in Maine, I used to display the day of the week, not the time of day. Sundays were coffee and cake time!

[Caley Jim]

When the late Richard Chown exhibited his (7mm) scale size layout of Kyle of Lochalsh he ran it to the time table to actual time! Very few trains ran on the Saturday and on the Sunday of the show nothing ran at all! 

 

Jim 

[Donw]

4 minutes ago, Caley Jim said:

When the late Richard Chown exhibited his (7mm) scale size layout of Kyle of Lochalsh he ran it to the time table to actual time! Very few trains ran on the Saturday and on the Sunday of the show nothing ran at all! 

 

Jim 

 

Very laudable Jim except I would not be happy as a show visitor. 

 

Don

[webbcompound]

The tank engine appears also to be interesting for the fact of it being what you might call a "half cab", except that instead of the half being front to back it is side to side, with consequently only one window on the spectacle plate.

[F-UnitMad]

1 hour ago, Caley Jim said:

When the late Richard Chown exhibited his (7mm) scale size layout of Kyle of Lochalsh he ran it to the time table to actual time! Very few trains ran on the Saturday and on the Sunday of the show nothing ran at all! 

 

Jim 

 

1 hour ago, Donw said:

 

Very laudable Jim except I would not be happy as a show visitor. 

 

Don

Agreed; that is taking things a bit too far.

[Regularity]

4 hours ago, Caley Jim said:

When the late Richard Chown exhibited his (7mm) scale size layout of Kyle of Lochalsh he ran it to the time table to actual time! Very few trains ran on the Saturday and on the Sunday of the show nothing ran at all! 

 

Jim 

Did he turn up early on the Saturday to run the trains which operated before the opening hours of the show?

[F-UnitMad]

1 hour ago, Regularity said:

Did he turn up early on the Saturday to run the trains which operated before the opening hours of the show?

And what about the last train of the day, after the Show had closed?

[Western Star]

A friend is sorting out a future MPD based upon a mineral area...  he tells me that he shall work all of the locos off of the shed before a show opens....  and then works the locos back on-shed just before the show closes.

 

Reality in the extreme.

[Northroader]

6 hours ago, webbcompound said:

The tank engine appears also to be interesting for the fact of it being what you might call a "half cab", except that instead of the half being front to back it is side to side, with consequently only one window on the spectacle plate.

Part of the cab is obscured by the safety valves blowing off. The loco is a GSWR class “47”, and according to the Inchicore records, it had motion parts and wheel centres which started life on a Sharpie single from 1846. How do I know this? Well, there is a well constructed and informative book published in Ireland towards the end of last year called “Locomotives of the Great Southern and Western Railway” which fills a large gap quite well. I must finish off my version of a 47:

 

I looked up the trains on the Valentia Harbour branch in my Summer 1953 CIE timetable, a souvenir of the trip I described. If you were coming from Dublin, you routed via Mallow and Killarney (another rum station) and changed at Farranfore, although the branch trains started from Tralee another ten miles further on. Farranfore, An Fearann Fuar, “the cold land” (although there is Kerry Airport there now) The branch was forty miles long, and the preserve of J15s, as there were long stretches of 1in 50. It was opened in stages which explains why the last stop before Valentia, Cahirciveen, had the engine shed, so there were short trips to Valentia to get things rolling or wrap things up. There was a shed at Tralee, so crews changed over at Glenbeigh or Killorglin if running late.

Down from Tralee 12:15 and 15:30 arr VH 15:10 and 18:45, plus a trip Killorglin 9:07 Cahirciveen 11:10.

Up from VH 7:30, 11:15, 14:35; arr Tralee 10:11, 14:15, 19:26.

plus short published trips Cahirciveen 10:40 to VH, VH 15:25,19:00 to Cahirciveen.

back in the 1950s the “Railway Modeller” did Cahirciveen in its Prototype Layouts series, no. 3.

Edited March 31, 2021 by Northroader

[CKPR]

0-4-4WTs are probably my favourite type of steam locomotive and this is a really nice example.

[Nearholmer]

I’ve seen a very good film of a day’s operations at Cahirciveen, but being me I can’t remember where! It might be on YouTube, or it might not.

 

Theres a fair bit of the route still visible/traceable, and well worth it. The scenery is wonderful, and I’d say even better that the Tralee & Dingle route.

 

I propose that once it’s Covid-safe, the entire readership takes a long holiday exploring the railways of Ireland (open and closed). I’ve done a fair bit of that, but there’s still a great deal I haven’t seen.

 

 

Edited March 31, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Northroader]

A week on fry-ups and Guinness? I can’t do up the buttons on my clothes now, Kevin. We were tripping round in my student days, go in a small cafe, start off a plate of sausage, bacon and eggs, then the cook would come in with a frying pan, “I’ll put a bit more on, lads”. Wonder if it’s still like that?

[Nearholmer]

My system when going on bog railway safaris was to eat the blow-out breakfast offered, carry a snack for lunchtime, and have a pretty modest dinner, unless I'd walked-up a big-enough appetite for a bigger dinner. Given that the humungous breakfast is part of the B&B tariff, this is a good system for cheapskates.

[Compound2632]

Not this film, made up of still images:

 

 

Having always had a touch of vertigo, I've never been very happy on paths or roads cut out of the hillside above a cliff into the sea. (I went on a coach trip round Madeira in a state of terror!) That stretch of line high along the coastline gives me the heebie-jeebies just looking at the photos!

 

Is there such a thing as a Pictorial History of GS&WR 6-wheel carriages?

 

We had Valencia Harbour at our little local exhibition a few years ago. IIRC it includes a representation of the building in which the transatlantic cable comes up.

 

[Nearholmer]

10 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Not this film, made up of still images:

 

Not that film, no, although there are some very good pictures in there.

 

At c4:19, did a T&D loco photo-bomb the event? I have a suspicion that it did.

[Donw]

1 hour ago, Northroader said:

A week on fry-ups and Guinness? I can’t do up the buttons on my clothes now, Kevin. We were tripping round in my student days, go in a small cafe, start off a plate of sausage, bacon and eggs, then the cook would come in with a frying pan, “I’ll put a bit more on, lads”. Wonder if it’s still like that?

 

That is a bit like digs I stayed in in Manchester. A plate covered in a thick layer of chips followed by a good layer of peas then a fish in batter with the ends overhanging the plate  acouple of slices of bread and butter by the side and just in case you might have a bit of room left a fishcake on top of the fish. Lovely people.

 

Don

[St Enodoc]

1 hour ago, Donw said:

fish in batter with the ends overhanging the plate

"It's fish every Friday, it's fish two-foot wide
Covers up your plate and hangs over the side
You can tell that it's Friday just by the smell
'Cause the fish have all done time in the Strangeways Hotel"

 

Mike Harding

[Northroader]

12 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Is there such a thing as a Pictorial History of GS&WR 6-wheel carriages?

 

 

 

I would recommend this book, Stephen, still available and very good value:

 

The one on the cover is a GSWR brake third. Your practised eye will spot that the cantrail and waist mouldings have a full radius curve, slightly different from them generic coaches. The other snag is the GSWR liked sixcompartment thirds, like the GER, although they may have had some five compartment early on. Worsley Works keep promising them in 0, but it ain’t happened yet.

The Valentia Line had an instruction in the working thingy of the 1930s that bogie coaches weren’t allowed unless they had elliptic or large head buffers. The Railway Modeller article of the 1950s shows the branch set made up of six wheelers, including a brake third just like the book cover, and others with the toilet tanks on the roof, all looking really attractive in the two tone green bus livery and the flying snail. I thought the later Black and Tan scheme was a big step backwards.

bye the bye, the GSWR carriages were “lake”, so you can use up all your MR paint, too?

Edited April 1, 2021 by Northroader

[Compound2632]

54 minutes ago, Northroader said:

GSWR carriages were “lake”, so you can use up all your MR paint, too?

 

As seen here - the same (design of) brake third with that appealing combination of flat-topped duckets and birdcage:

 

 

[National Library of Ireland on The Commons, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons]

 

 

[Regularity]

A few pictures taken at Uckfield in October 2017:

[Northroader]

Thanks for those pictures, Simon, they give a very good impression of the layout. The backscene looks as if he’s attempted a rainy day, a very brave thing to do, I don’t think I could try it, and getting the pale grey streaky effect well. I was very intrigued by the engine, 0-6-0ST no 475, which looked a Really Useful Irish Engine, so I looked it up. Well suited to the West of Ireland, if not the GSWR section. They were a class of five, delivered in penny packets to the Cork, Bandon and South Coast from 1881. Built by Beyer Peacock, one of their standard designs, and the same as LSWR 330 class apart from the gauge. Taken into GSR stock as their class J24, and it looks as if they all went in the thirties.

 

Edited April 1, 2021 by Northroader

[Mikkel]

9 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

As seen here - the same (design of) brake third with that appealing combination of flat-topped duckets and birdcage:

 

 

[National Library of Ireland on The Commons, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons]

 

To hell with progress, that scene is just superb.

[F-UnitMad]

I'm rather enjoying this Irish Excursion. I've ridden on a lot of the NIR network, and the Belfast-Dublin Enterprise, and been to the transport museum at Cultra, but I don't know much about the railways of Ireland itself.

I did know about the Tralee & Dingle; there was an RM article many years ago by someone who scratchbuilt the locos and cattle trucks. It must've been his writing style as well as the modelling that made it a fascinating read.