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Whitland & Cardigan Railway, 1930s (OO Gauge)


petejones
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55 minutes ago, DavidCBroad said:

My doodle is based on the 2nd post here and seeks to maximise train length (3/4 coaches) while keeping all sidings available for both directions of travel. It is based on 100mm squares.  The home made turntable with the deck n hanging over the edge of the board is a strategy I have used in the past.

 

Thanks for the suggestions, David. The turntable idea sounds good. I will be using a maximum of 3 coaches.

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On 17/08/2019 at 14:47, Pacific231G said:

The visible yard effectively stands in for the junction yards at both ends of the branch. Contrary to what we tend to model I suspect that rather more branches were cross country lines between  junctions than those that ended at a terminus but there's no reason why some trains shouldn't terrminate at your main station.

 

I may go back to this idea and drop the station terminus - just looking into various configurations at the moment. Having said that, when I look at the ends of the Cardi Bach, there is Cardigan at the one end (a terminus) and Whitland (West) at the other (a junction with station, up/down sidings, carriage sidings, cattle pen sidings, loco sidings, a turntable, loco shed). The other one I looked at was Neyland, which was a terminus, but had a similar array of railway infrastructure as Whitland.

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Tidied up the sidings a bit and extended the station platform to fit a station building. Passengers will exit stage left - I won't show a ramp that end. The baseboard for this measures 44cm deep now (I constructed it after lunch today and will post a pic later).

 

Yard.jpg

Edited by petejones
Removed 1 signal
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This is the baseboard I constructed today for the terminus/fiddle yard. As you can see, it's a simple ladder frame and then I added a few small blocks to help support the sections of craftfoam. It fits nicely on the racking I have along this wall:

 

2019.08.19-01.jpg

 

And then this is the craftfoam dropped into place. I won't fix it until I fit dowels and fixing bolts, which should be with me later this week (had to order some longer bolts than the ones I already had). I will also drill some holes in the cross-braces for the wiring.

 

2019.08.19-02.jpg

Edited by petejones
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Does this look better for the scenic fiddle yard? This is loosely based on the loco depot and sidings at Whitland, which was south of Whitland station, so I wouldn't need to model a station terminus at all.

 

Yard.jpg

Edited by petejones
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This is where I got the idea of an "alternative" route for the Whitland and Taf Valley Railway line:

 

aireys_map1881.jpg

 

The proposed line (the red-white dotted line from Crymmych Arms to Newport) looks like it would have passed near to Eglwyswrw (roughly where the two red-white dotted lines meet and it looks like where the A487 Fishguard-Cardigan road now runs), which is near to where I live (it's part of my address, although it's about 3 miles away). So my fictional branch line is more of a what-if, rather than totally made up. My idea was to have my main station named Eglwyswrw, with the goods yard handling cattle, sheep, wool, farm machinery, and locals/tourists passing through on their way to sunny Newport. The halt was going to be very close to where I live, a hamlet (chapel and a few farms spread around the area) named Penygroes (i.e.: Penygroes Halt). Having Whitland as the scenic fiddle yard makes a lot of sense.

 

Here's a current OS Map of the area:

 

534929668_OSRouteMap.jpg.b6c62677b4f45ecaa6db42e334db89b7.jpg

 

Sound reasonable?

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  • petejones changed the title to West Wales Branch Line (OO Gauge)
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7 hours ago, petejones said:

Does this look better for the scenic fiddle yard? This is loosely based on the loco depot and sidings at Whitland, which was south of Whitland station, so I wouldn't need to model a station terminus at all.

 

Yard.jpg

 

I quite like that. I'm a bit surprised that Whitland had such primitive coaling facilities for such a sizeable loco allocation. 

 

Ian. 

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This is slightly tangential but if you're interested in the Cardi Bach you might like to follow "Login Railway Station" on Facebook.

 

They regularly post photos of locations on the line from Whitland to Cardigan and other material.

 

They also have a collection and they regularly host Cardi Bach related events.

 

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35 minutes ago, tomparryharry said:

I'm a bit surprised that Whitland had such primitive coaling facilities for such a sizeable loco allocation.

 

They had a covered coal loading bay near the shed - I will upload a pic of it later. I need to pin down a timeframe of what I will be modelling as there were some major changes to Whitland during the 1950s. I'm thinking of going back to the 1940s.

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  • petejones changed the title to West Wales Branch Line, Inter-War Period (OO Gauge)

This is the route the road takes from Crymych to Newport and it roughly follows the line of the proposed railway. I dropped the end of the line at Newport beach - not sure how big Newport was in the 1860s, so a seafront location for the terminus looks good to me!

 

Crymmych-Newport.jpg

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I've not just been fiddling with track plans this past couple of days, I've been working on the two baseboards - I counter-sank all the screws that were on the outsides of the frames, filled in the holes and am in the process of sanding them down. Still waiting for the longer joining bolts to arrive, so once they are here I will look at joining the two boards. I also need to drill holes in the cross-members for the wiring routes, then I can give the frames a couple of coats of medium grey paint. I need to think through how to fit the point motors to the craftfoam - I want to avoid glue, so perhaps thin pieces of ply fitted to the underside between the cross-members will suffice. I also need to work out how a control panel will fit to one of the boards and whether it will be detachable or not.

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Newport (Trefdraeth if you prefer) as you probably know is an ancient place with it’s own Parliament granted by Henry 2nd IIRC, and in the 1860s was probably as important as anywhere else between Fishguard and Aberystwyth with the exception of Cardigan, practically a city by rural Welsh standards.  It is by no means impossible that a railway might have been built to this fishing centre and market town.  

 

The terrain is not encouraging, but it couldn’t have been much easier for the Cardi Bach.  

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Going with the Newport (Trefdraeth) idea, I drew up this plan. The station is facing the front now, which seems more satisfying for the operator (me). I added a bay for loading/unloading wagons - perhaps fish/local produce/beer for the tourists. Not sure if three sidings is too many - if so, I will drop the one nearest the station. I tried to avoid a Newcastle Emlyn clone (but it still looks like a mirror image :blush:).

 

Terminus B.jpg

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Right, the yard plan it is, although I added carriage sidings (and a nice shed) as I will need to store up to six coaches. It's loosely based on Whitland. And now it's nothing like Newcastle Emlyn! Added a couple of cripple sidings - I can use those to manhandle the stock and perhaps one will be the programming track :)

 

Yard.jpg

Edited by petejones
Added loco facilities, straightened out cripple sidings
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I kit-bashed a goods shed last week. It's the Wills wooden goods shed with a cut-down canopy off the Ratio goods shed, mounted on the Ratio goods platform, finished off with some Ratio platform walling and some stone steps from another kit.

 

Track-side view:

2019_08.22-04.jpg.8874b0324796f86c40b93fff1d610c43.jpg

 

Rear-view:

2019.08.22-03.jpg

 

There are a couple of nics in the platform that I will cover up with some rail posts, all being well.

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Maybe it would be worth having a crossover between the two bottom sidings to form a look as at the moment there is no way for a loco to bring carriages in and then shunt them into the sheds as there's not enough room to run around more than one via the turntable. 

 

Or maybe from the bottom carriage siding to the higher of the two storage roads so that at least one road is always free for... storage as would be the end of the upper one.

 

Don't know how prototypical that is but seems logical to me.

 

I like the overall layout design. Shunting space and a roundy!

 

Kind regards, Neil 

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Thanks Neil. I did wonder how the yard will work. Perhaps as follows:

  1. A passenger train arrives from the branch line into the yard, to one of the storage sidings.
  2. Shunter pulls coaches from train back towards the yard entrance (dodgy move?), then pushed them into one of the carriage sidings.
  3. Shunter goes back to loco siding and the crew have a brew!
  4. Loco goes to loco shed for a makeover.

I do think I need a runaround somewhere, but there isn't one at Whitland :unsure_mini: But then they knew what they were doing :blush:

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You made me realise the carriage sidings are too short - thanks. They won't hold three coaches each at the moment, which is the plan. Sounds a bit daft maybe, but after a running session, I want to park all the stock in the yard overnight, like it should be.

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