“WASHBOURNE”

[Donw]

Mikkel while you are enjoying your vitual walks around here may I suggest you look at Bratton, Selworthy, Allerford and Bossington. I wont add more details or I shall take over the thread.

 

Don

[St Enodoc]

19 minutes ago, Donw said:

Bossington

A nice little layout, operated to a tape-recorded commentary as I recall.

[Northroader]

It sounds like a good walk if you get lost and find a pub, Mikkel, can I come next time? It is a lovely area for just pottering about and .....https://thelioninntimberscombe.com

It’s another day where it’s too hot to do anything but sit around with all the doors and windows wide open, so I might as well wrap up the saga of building model MGWR locos. In describing the 2-4-0 locos (page 69) the main group in Victorian times was the “D” class, which became renewed and added to as the “K” class. However six of the D class which had been built by Beyer Peacock went into Broadstone works and were rebuilt as 4-4-0s. There are several instances in Victorian times of four coupled passenger engines being built especially for long secondary routes with difficult curves and gradients with a leading bogie, the NER had the “Whitby bogies”, the Highland had the “Skye bogies”, the GS&WR had the “Kerry bogies”. The Broadstone rebuilds were known as the “Achill bogies” or “D bogies”, and became GSR/CIE class D16. There’s a drawing for one in the Tim Cramer series “Irish Miscellany” in “Model Railways” magazine in the late 1970s. The first appeared just as Martin Atock was retiring after 28 years as the MGWR loco chief, and he was persuaded to abandon the “flyaway” cab for something more modern. It was turned out in emerald green, but for the next his successor Cusack chose the new blue livery, highly attractive but weathering badly.

When I made my model I was aware of the long wheelbase compared to previous efforts, and the need for flexibility, so it was built as a double bogie engine. The driving wheels were placed in an independent frame, with a cross stretcher placed fairly central to form a pivot point, and the motor raked up at an angle to give the clearance. The superstructure had this unit and the leading bogie mounted on vertical screws, just the same as a BoBo diesel. There was very limited rotational movement for the drive unit, as the motor was banging against the firebox sides, but it was sufficient for the curves, and as it could rock slightly, it rode very well.

Otherwise the construction was done in brass sheet as usual, and it proved to be a good runner. Here’s the finished engine as a “cover girl”

 

However, to prove the perversity of human nature, it’s now back on the workbench being rebuilt. Why so?

a) I implemented a policy of “pinch an inch”, trying to shorten the layout and trains as much as I could, and as part of this only three axle tender engines are to be permitted. If you think pregroup 2-2-2, 2-4-0, 0-4-2, 0-6-0, there’s quite sufficient range to be drawn on (I have tried a 4-2-0 but the outside valve gear beat me!)

b) Washbourne/Ballycombe is a small layout, working it with two, three, four locos is quite adequate, anymore is just plain silly, and I was up to a fleet of five MGWR locos. There are deep implications in this for planning your fleet, to be really selective, but also to try and go for engines capable of varied lighter duties, rather than say, express passenger and heavy freight. In my case I’m very fond of 0-4-0T locos, but they’re really more suited for a yard rather than the passenger carrying branch I’m trying to model.

Never fear! It’s getting rebuilt into a 2-4-0 for another line, and starting to look even more delectable. Now then, where’s the map of West Somerset?

[Donw]

Now if you want a 'possible'  Consider the Mineral line which ended up with a huge incline at Comberrow. Now supposing the owners decided to try to avoid the incline and turn  right towards Luxborough climbing at a more sensible rate  and collect mineral traffic from the Chargot Wood and Kentisham area.  There is a park at the cntrace to Chargot wood  and some relics of the old mineral line and some abandoned works good place for a ramble. The line proper could continue to wards Weddon Cross perhaps a shade lower than the village and head on towards Exford

 

Don

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Northroader]

One walk I did crossed the West Somerset mineral railway at Pitt Mill, Don, just west of Sticklepath. I seem to recall some old limekilns there. This is just below where the incline starts, although presumably it would be all overgrown these days?

The walk was from Stogumber to Luxborough that day, and sticks in my mind mainly because the bl**** bus never turned up at the end of the walk, one of the rare times that has happened, thankfully, and you’ll realise the service is thin to Luxborough, mainly for school kids. Sooo.. I had to leg it down to Washford, luckily getting a lift off a kind farmer type in a Land Rover.

Much further on the walk follows the WSMR on the high moorland above Exford, rather like the C&HP.

Edited July 20, 2021 by Northroader

[Donw]

5 hours ago, Northroader said:

One walk I did crossed the West Somerset mineral railway at Pitt Mill, Don, just west of Sticklepath. I seem to recall some old limekilns there. This is just below where the incline starts, although presumably it would be all overgrown these days?

The walk was from Stogumber to Luxborough that day, and sticks in my mind mainly because the bl**** bus never turned up at the end of the walk, one of the rare times that has happened, thankfully, and you’ll realise the service is thin to Luxborough, mainly for school kids. Sooo.. I had to leg it down to Washford, luckily getting a lift off a kind farmer type in a Land Rover.

Much further on the walk follows the WSMR on the high moorland above Exford, rather like the C&HP.

 

Well there you are then that could be your railway route.

Stogumber to Luxborough is a fair old walk so I can understand you were not pleased to have extra to do. 

 

you may find this interesting were these the kilns? 

https://www.curioustrails.com/historic-trail-routes-brendons/

Edited July 20, 2021 by Donw
adding a link

[Flying Fox 34F]

17 hours ago, Northroader said:

One walk I did crossed the West Somerset mineral railway at Pitt Mill, Don, just west of Sticklepath. I seem to recall some old limekilns there. This is just below where the incline starts, although presumably it would be all overgrown these days?

The walk was from Stogumber to Luxborough that day, and sticks in my mind mainly because the bl**** bus never turned up at the end of the walk, one of the rare times that has happened, thankfully, and you’ll realise the service is thin to Luxborough, mainly for school kids. Sooo.. I had to leg it down to Washford, luckily getting a lift off a kind farmer type in a Land Rover.

Much further on the walk follows the WSMR on the high moorland above Exford, rather like the C&HP.

The scary bit with this incline is the Double Slip on a curve at the bottom!

 

Paul

[Regularity]

5 hours ago, Flying Fox 34F said:

The scary bit with this incline is the Double Slip on a curve at the bottom!

Almost worth modelling for that reason alone!

[Northroader]

That trackwork does look very- er, messy! Horizontal curve combined with a vertical curve, and a sideways pull on the winding rope for the wagons.  Don, you’ve got me digging out a map and a walking guide, and struggling to recall what I did see. The site I was thinking of was in a valley about a half a mile or so west of Sticklepath. The kilns in your link look very good remnants, they’re just north of Treborough, a bit further on, and well away from the WSMR. I was just looking where the railway did end up, and it strikes me that there must have been quite limited mineral resources there, a few adits, pits, quarries, and tips in the Gupworthy /Goosedown area. Iron ore, I believe.

[AdamsRadial]

On 20/07/2021 at 17:02, Northroader said:

The walk was from Stogumber to Luxborough

If you rummage in the trees at the right spot around Luxborough road, the ruins of the station are still there, although if you didn't know there'd been one you'd never guess it from what's left.

[Northroader]

On my railway bookshelf I have several books by J.I.C.Boyd, who was the author of a load of books on narrow gauge railways in the British Isles. He was a man in the right place at the right time, being able to travel around in the 1940s, taking notes and photographing, not just the favourites such as the Talyllyn, but also the remote ends of Cork and Donegal. He did a two volume history of the Festiniog as the preservation movement was getting going, and his works on the Isle of Man are worth mentioning.

Was his love of railways influenced by his schooling? I have just come across references to the Downs Light Railway, a miniature railway run by a private school at Colwall in Herefordshire, where Boyd was a pupil. The railway has been there for 96 years, and forms a vehicle to teach the pupils engineering sciences. So, there’s nothing like a trundle round to feed your inner train nut....

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=6266463476713188&id=133359693356961

Edited July 25, 2021 by Northroader

[Donw]

19 hours ago, Northroader said:

On my railway bookshelf I have several books by J.I.C.Boyd, who was the author of a load of books on narrow gauge railways in the British Isles. He was a man in the right place at the right time, being able to travel around in the 1940s, taking notes and photographing, not just the favourites such as the Talyllyn, but also the remote ends of Cork and Donegal. He did a two volume history of the Festiniog as the preservation movement was getting going, and his works on the Isle of Man are worth mentioning.

Was his love of railways influenced by his schooling? I have just come across references to the Downs Light Railway, a miniature railway run by a private school at Colwall in Herefordshire, where Boyd was a pupil. The railway has been there for 96 years, and forms a vehicle to teach the pupils engineering sciences. So, there’s nothing like a trundle round to feed your inner train nut....

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=6266463476713188&id=133359693356961

 

It is a lovely line I had the pleasure of driving a train round there. It is still there and maintaining the railway would be unmissable lessons.

Don

[Compound2632]

20 hours ago, Northroader said:

I have just come across references to the Downs Light Railway, a miniature railway run by a private school at Colwall in Herefordshire, where Boyd was a pupil. The railway has been there for 96 years, and forms a vehicle to teach the pupils engineering sciences. So, there’s nothing like a trundle round to feed your inner train nut....

 

It's more the sort of thing one associates with eastern European technical schools in the communist period, than an English prep school. But really, every school should have one, if only to teach the dangers associated with crossing or trespassing on the railway line!

[Northroader]

Is it too “political” to say Eton should have one?

[Regularity]

Indeed it should have one: upper class twits in. 
And no outbound traffic.

[Compound2632]

A disturbing tendency towards eugenic policy here.

[Regularity]

A bit of fun, merely suggesting that it becomes an asylum.

The interpretation you put on to it hadn’t occurred to me. Given that my maternal grandfather was involved in the release of one of those camps, perhaps it should, but I just want them put somewhere away from the rest of us, preferably with some sort of computer simulation to make them think they are “running” things. 

 

As opposed to the idea of letting an infectious virus run riot through the older and poorer sections of society, killing and culling those most susceptible to it, eradicating about 1% of the population, which is what the proposals to create “herd immunity” would have done. (The irony of this, in that a “let those who are going to die, die” policy should be applied, is of course that both the PM and probably the new Health Secretary would be pushing up daisies by now, without intensive medical intervention.)

Now that is something to get seriously disturbed about, especially as there is still a lot of support for the proponents of this genocidal concept.

[Northroader]

(Yes, Bob, it was too “political”) ho, hum.

Edited July 26, 2021 by Northroader

[F-UnitMad]

On 26/07/2021 at 17:40, Regularity said:

Indeed it should have one: upper class twits in. 
And no outbound traffic.

 

On 26/07/2021 at 18:19, Compound2632 said:

A disturbing tendency towards eugenic policy here.

I was thinking more of Monty Python.      I suspect Simon a.k.a. Regularity was as well?

[Regularity]

26 minutes ago, F-UnitMad said:

 

I was thinking more of Monty Python.      I suspect Simon a.k.a. Regularity was as well?

Yes.

But I certainly wasn’t expecting the Spanish Inquisition…

[Johnson044]

Cardinal Fang? CARDINAL FANG! Fetch............The comfy chair!

[Johnson044]

If anyone has a sloping garden and fancies modelling the West Somerset Mineral Railway in Gauge 1 there is a reasonably priced Neilson Box Tank on ebay at the moment to start you off...

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/294300906629?_trkparms=aid%3D111001%26algo%3DREC.SEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20160908105057%26meid%3Dc22e2907f78243efa8234cb9a2b37e23%26pid%3D100675%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D15%26sd%3D294300906629%26itm%3D294300906629%26pmt%3D0%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D2380057%26brand%3DUnbranded&_trksid=p2380057.c100675.m4236&_trkparms=pageci%3A4b714651-f104-11eb-87cb-7ac3048d862f|parentrq%3Af639f4ca17a0a7b21cc9348fffed661e|iid%3A1

[Johnson044]

The box tank is listed as "narrow gauge" but I'm not convinced that it is.

[Northroader]

Well, the WSMR was standard gauge, but it was sufficiently “primitive” that you could be a bit fast and loose on scale/gauge without many folks being able to spot where it wasn’t right. G scale is like Humpty Dumpty:

[Northroader]

 

Slow progress, but not much to show yet, so in keeping with posting links to Model Railways which I really like, and I thought this one is excellent. Paul Rhodes 4mm. “Old Parrock”, which I came across in this months MRJ:

 

 

Edited August 18, 2021 by Northroader