Mid-Cornwall Lines - 1950s Western Region in 00

[Stubby47]

43 minutes ago, gwrrob said:

 

He certainly doesn’t look like a professional sportsman.

Apart from an American Footballer, weight lifter, hammer thrower or shot putter.

 

[St Enodoc]

2 hours ago, Stubby47 said:

Apart from an American Footballer, weight lifter, hammer thrower or shot putter.

 

Darts player?

[Keith Addenbrooke]

6 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

I've had a bit of a blitz on ballasting and earlier this afternoon I laid the last section to complete the main lines and Porthmellyn Road station except, of course, for the curve and points on to the branch, which aren't built yet.

 

 

Tomorrow I'll start tidying it all up - filling in any missing bits, vacuuming up all the loose stuff, clearing flangeways and point blades, touching up the brown paint and cleaning the rails. Then I'll be able to run some trains again.

 

Last night I watched the Waratahs against the Rebels, which was a waste of time, then the first session of the 3rd England v West Indies Test. I've taken a liking to Rakeem Cornwall - with a name like that he obviously can't go wrong in my book - who looks a decent tweaker. Of course he fields at first slip, which isn't a surprise at all given his body shape. It's good to see someone playing at the top level in this day and age on the basis of his cricketing skills rather than just athleticism.

Could I ask how wide the baseboards are at this point - from the wall to the front edge (before the lever frame) in the first photo with the goods shed, and the plywood roadbed from the wall to the edge in front of the siding buffer stop in the second photo (the plywood roadbed rather than the frame)?
 

I’m working on two layout projects at the moment - a micro layout with 1’ wide boards (which seem quite narrow, but are OK for a micro-layout) and a larger layout with 2’ wide boards which seem massive by comparison.  
 

Yours look nicely balanced visually in the photos so I just wondered.  Thanks, Keith.

[St Enodoc]

8 hours ago, Keith Addenbrooke said:

Could I ask how wide the baseboards are at this point - from the wall to the front edge (before the lever frame) in the first photo with the goods shed, and the plywood roadbed from the wall to the edge in front of the siding buffer stop in the second photo (the plywood roadbed rather than the frame)?
 

I’m working on two layout projects at the moment - a micro layout with 1’ wide boards (which seem quite narrow, but are OK for a micro-layout) and a larger layout with 2’ wide boards which seem massive by comparison.  
 

Yours look nicely balanced visually in the photos so I just wondered.  Thanks, Keith.

Thanks Keith.

 

The main station boards are 710mm wide. With the tops a fraction under 1200mm above the floor, this is as wide as I can go and still be able to reach comfortably to the back. You would have to adjust according to your own height and reach. The Paddington and Penzance storage loop boards are the same width, which lets me fit 14 parallel tracks on them.

 

The board with the temporary spurs on it is 500mm wide. When the branch is built this will become a curved open-top section leading towards St Enodoc station.

 

For completeness, the section on the extreme right is 350mm wide but I will probably cut this back as far as possible to get the maximum length in the Polperran fiddle yard, which will sit at right angles to these tracks.

 

Finally, if you look at earlier posts you will see the lifting flap, which is 300mm wide.

 

Hope this helps.

[Keith Addenbrooke]

7 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

Thanks Keith.

 

The main station boards are 710mm wide. With the tops a fraction under 1200mm above the floor, this is as wide as I can go and still be able to reach comfortably to the back. You would have to adjust according to your own height and reach. The Paddington and Penzance storage loop boards are the same width, which lets me fit 14 parallel tracks on them.

 

The board with the temporary spurs on it is 500mm wide. When the branch is built this will become a curved open-top section leading towards St Enodoc station.

 

For completeness, the section on the extreme right is 350mm wide but I will probably cut this back as far as possible to get the maximum length in the Polperran fiddle yard, which will sit at right angles to these tracks.

 

Finally, if you look at earlier posts you will see the lifting flap, which is 300mm wide.

 

Hope this helps.

Thanks - I like the look of the 500mm (20”) boards: room for a layout to breathe but for the kind of portable layouts I tend to look at wouldn’t be quite as cumbersome / heavy as a 610mm (2’) board.

The narrower 350mm (14”) board also has that little bit extra space than the typical 305mm (1’) that some old-school compact Cyril Freezer plans and modern micro-layouts, including my own, use.

I guess I still need to train my brain to think in terms of multiples of ‘mm’ - rather than sticking to the rigid 1’ grids drawn across layout spaces still embedded in my subconscious from long, long, ago.  Thanks again, Keith.

[St Enodoc]

I started to tidy up the ballast today.

 

First I went round all the ballasted track vigorously with a scrubbing brush - the sort that is sold either as a nail brush or a laundry brush - to get rid of most of the stones that were loose or in the wrong place. I vacuumed these up and reclaimed them for future use. Next, I filled the more obvious gaps. This included a bit more ballast round the tiebars of the first lot of points and slips that I ballasted a few weeks ago, which has reduced the visual impact of the big dark gaps a lot.

 

After that, i started to clear the flangeways. To do this, I cut a square end on a coffee stirrer (a lolly stick would also do) and ran it along the gauge face of every rail. In most cases any bits of ballast just chipped away but where it was more tenacious the 1/4 inch non-wood chisel came into play again. At the points and slips I made sure that all the flangeways were clear and that the blades moved fully and freely.

 

Once I'd done all this I checked the track again, this time with a wagon. I used an ordinary 4-wheeled open, pushing it with my forefinger pressed very gently on the wagon floor. This meant that I could feel any bumps where a bit of ballast was left so I could clear it with the coffee stirrer or non-chisel.

 

I didn't quite get round the whole layout before it was time to stop, so next time I'll finish off, give the layout another good vacuum and then touch up the brown paint where it has chipped off or worn away. Finally I'll clean the rail heads, again with a coffee stirrer or a Gaugemaster track rubber if more oomph is needed, and run a train or three to celebrate.

 

No photos today as I reckon I've taken enough pictures of ballast over the past few weeks.

[Dr Gerbil-Fritters]

On 25/07/2020 at 08:45, St Enodoc said:

which isn't a surprise at all given his body shape. It's good to see someone playing at the top level in this day and age on the basis of his cricketing skills rather than just athleticism.

 

As my dear old dad would say, he makes a better door than window.

[Joseph_Pestell]

On 25/07/2020 at 08:45, St Enodoc said:

 taken a liking to Rakeem Cornwall - with a name like that he obviously can't go wrong in my book - who looks a decent tweaker. Of course he fields at first slip, which isn't a surprise at all given his body shape. It's good to see someone playing at the top level in this day and age on the basis of his cricketing skills rather than just athleticism.

 

Last cricketer with that physique (although much shorter), was Colin Milburn. He was a brilliant short leg fielder but some of the catches were made after the ball had first hit his ample body.

[St Enodoc]

10 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

Last cricketer with that physique (although much shorter), was Colin Milburn. He was a brilliant short leg fielder but some of the catches were made after the ball had first hit his ample body.

That's right Joseph. I saw Milburn in his prime, before his car accident, and I was trying to remember whether there had been another at that level since. There have been a few of shorter stature, such as Boon and Gatting, but the closest I can think of was Inzamam-ul-Haq.

[Tallpaul69]

5 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

That's right Joseph. I saw Milburn in his prime, before his car accident, and I was trying to remember whether there had been another at that level since. There have been a few of shorter stature, such as Boon and Gatting, but the closest I can think of was Inzamam-ul-Haq.

Colin Coudrey?- cant remember what he was like in the field?

Meanwhile I sit here trying to multitask on RMWeb and Sky Sports Cricket but the Manchester weather is not cooperating!

Never mind, we are promised better weather tomorrow!

 

Keep on modelling whatever the weather or virus situation!!

Cheers

Paul

[St Enodoc]

6 hours ago, Tallpaul69 said:

Colin Coudrey?- cant remember what he was like in the field?

Meanwhile I sit here trying to multitask on RMWeb and Sky Sports Cricket but the Manchester weather is not cooperating!

Never mind, we are promised better weather tomorrow!

 

Keep on modelling whatever the weather or virus situation!!

Cheers

Paul

Cowdrey also fielded in the slips most of the time. He certainly had a "fuller figure" but I never thought of him as fat.

 

In those days, truly athletic fielders were rare. I remember the impression Colin Bland made. Clive Lloyd followed, then athletes at cover and midwicket became part of the general scene.

[St Enodoc]

On 26/07/2020 at 16:55, Keith Addenbrooke said:

I guess I still need to train my brain to think in terms of multiples of ‘mm’ - rather than sticking to the rigid 1’ grids drawn across layout spaces still embedded in my subconscious from long, long, ago.

I went metric when I started the previous St Enodoc layout (the branch through station). I use graph paper with a 1mm grid and bolder lines every 10mm, drawing my plans to a scale of 1:10. To save you searching back, here's the most recent photo of the plan showing progressively the latest stage of development (I've updated it since but haven't got round to taking a picture):

 

Edited July 17, 2023 by St Enodoc
images restored

[Keith Addenbrooke]

39 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

I went metric when I started the previous St Enodoc layout (the branch through station). I use graph paper with a 1mm grid and bolder lines every 10mm, drawing my plans to a scale of 1:10. To save you searching back, here's the most recent photo of the plan showing progressively the latest stage of development (I've updated it since but haven't got round to taking a picture):

 

Thanks - I agree 1:10 is a good ratio for drawing: I use the same (approximately) although in my hybrid fashion* with 3cm : 1’ (or 2.5mm : 1”).  With 1mm graph paper, parallel lines at 2” spacing - standard Streamline geometry - land neatly on 5mm grid lines.

 

I draw small layouts but I can fit anything up to 8’ x 6’ very comfortably onto a piece of A4 paper at 1:10 (IIRC 8’ x 6’ was the size Cyril Freezer used as a maximum for small layouts).  

___________________
 

* With trains that are nominally 4mm : 1’ I guess I haven’t tried to move on from hybrid maths...yet!

[St Enodoc]

On 28/07/2020 at 07:59, St Enodoc said:

athletes at cover

Speaking of whom, the finest I ever saw was Paul Parker of Sussex (and England - only 1 cap in the 1981 Ashes series).

[St Enodoc]

On 28/07/2020 at 17:45, St Enodoc said:

here's the most recent photo of the plan showing progressively the latest stage of development (I've updated it since but haven't got round to taking a picture)

When I realised that that photo was well over two years old I decided it was time to take another.

 

Not much has changed really, except for including the extended Chapel Sidings on the top right and a new alignment for the branch, which will bring St Enodoc closer to Porthmellyn Road and give me more room to play with at Treloggan Junction and Pentowan in due course. This will squeeze up the space for the Porthmellyn Road and St Enodoc signalmen to sit but I think it will be OK when I sort it out in full size. I've also started to firm up some details of Polperran fiddle yard.

 

Near the top left you can see some faint arcs. These show the minimum gangway width of 600mm between St Enodoc and Porthmellyn Road, the lifting flap and Pentowan. I've drawn them in so that I can finalise the actual position of St Enodoc itself. There is quite a complex relationship between the three 180 degree curves and the Treloggan Junction triangle that I'm still working through on the draft plan with separate pieces of paper Blu-Tacked together. I'm nearly there but not quite ready to draw it on the final plan yet.

 

I've just realised that I haven't added the dummy trap points to the plan yet...

 

While I had the camera out I took a photo of progress on the E147:

 

Painting is finished and I've applied the transfers. The first class and Guard signs are Pressfix but for the number I used a ready-made number from a Modelmasters sheet. I still have trouble hiding the backing film on these but after some good dollops of Micro Sol I think it will be OK when it's varnished. With luck the cold and damp weather of the last week or so will have gone by the weekend so I might be able to get the matt varnish sprayed on then.

 

The shiny edges are a trick of the light by the way, not bare metal showing through.

Edited July 17, 2023 by St Enodoc
images restored

[Joseph_Pestell]

On 27/07/2020 at 22:59, St Enodoc said:

Cowdrey also fielded in the slips most of the time. He certainly had a "fuller figure" but I never thought of him as fat.

 

In those days, truly athletic fielders were rare. I remember the impression Colin Bland made. Clive Lloyd followed, then athletes at cover and midwicket became part of the general scene.

Cowdrey always seemed rather over-rated. Seemed to have plenty of friends in high places at MCC though.

 

Dropped quite a few catches at slip. Also spectacularly left a ball against Pakistan that shattered his stumps for a duck.

 

Very capable captain though. Certainly knew the game.

 

Cover is, to me, simply the best fielding position. Bland had a great reputation for run outs. I have managed the feat just a few times and I think that it gave me more pleasure than taking a wicket when bowling or scoring an elegant boundary. For all the great bowling yesterday (and some poor WI batting), the turning point of the innings may well have been the run out by Dom Bess. What a promising all-round cricketer he is.

[St Enodoc]

On 23/09/2019 at 22:28, St Enodoc said:

I certainly will Martin. I haven't had a chance to try a new, larger, magnet yet as I've been rather busy and what train time I have had has been spent on tracklaying as you can see. I think that for Modelu lamps the small magnets will do as, being plastic, they shouldn't need so much force to hold them in place. That would be good, as being closer to scale the big magnets probably wouldn't fit anyway ("big" is only by comparison with the "small" magnets - they are all bl00dy small in reality). I think the big magnets will be OK for the whitemetal Springside lamps.

It's been a while since page 103 but tonight, for no particular reason, I decided to try out one of the new magnets. I took a Springside GWR head lamp, filed one side flat and drilled a 1.5mm diameter hole until it was just deep enough for a magnet to sit flush with the surface. A dab of UHU held it in place.

 

When I tried it on a loco it was very firmly attracted to the lamp bracket but at the same time was easy to position and remove using pointy-ended (technical term) tweezers. I'll touch the lamp up with a dab of white paint, fit it to 7446 and try it on the layout. If, as I think it will, it stays in place then that will be the way forward. I've got several more lamps in stock and some more packs on order from Wizard Models, so fitting the magnets will be a nice little occasional spare-half-hour job.

[St Enodoc]

Main line ballasting is officially complete. Eight weeks after starting, I went round with the vacuum and gave the rail heads a final polish this afternoon, before tidying up the railway room a bit.

 

A few posts ago, I said that once I'd done finished ballasting I'd run a few trains, so I did. First I just ran a light engine through all the pointwork to make sure it was OK, which it was except for one point with an unsoldered point blade at Porthmellyn Road Down end (which needed a whole new tiebar as the copper had delaminated), and then, rather than running some random moves I decided to start a dry run of the Saturday timetable - main line trains only so no railbus and no china-clays - to see if it worked. It's a good job I did, as I'd only run about half-a-dozen trains before train 509, the Down TPO, collided head-on into train 532, the 0627 Falmouth - Plymouth that was already in Penzance loop 3L waiting to depart.

 

This was a bit perplexing, so I looked through the sequence to see what I could do. In the end I moved the Falmouth to loop 6L, which I hope will fix the problem. If not, I'll need to go back to the Track Occupation Planning Sheet and work it all through again.

 

Other than that, I got through 16 trains - interrupted by: point 208 at Paddington Down end not throwing because the fulcrum bar on the Cobalt had slipped out of place; a nameplate falling off 6911; and 1021 refusing to go at all. A bit frustrating but that's what dry runs are for.

 

I'll play trains some more tomorrow and then during the week start to think about building signals. The first will be simple single-post, single arm signals, to get my hand back in. These are likely to be Porthmellyn Road Down Main Starter (4), Up Main Advanced Starter (49) and Up Main Home (53). I'll follow those with the Down Main Home (2 and 17) and then the Down Main Advanced Starter (6), which will be a banner repeater rather than an actual signal.

[Sharky]

1 hour ago, St Enodoc said:

It's a good job I did, as I'd only run about half-a-dozen trains before train 509, the Down TPO, collided head-on into train 532, the 0627 Falmouth - Plymouth that was already in Penzance loop 3L waiting to depart.

 

Sounds like you might need to incorporate some Track Circuits into the Interlocking...

[Oldddudders]

39 minutes ago, Sharky said:

 

Sounds like you might need to incorporate some Track Circuits into the Interlocking...

And let's hope we don't get some clever-clogs telling us it can be avoided by using DC! I have certainly found using cheap CCTV in my small fiddle yard eases such issues. 

[St Enodoc]

1 hour ago, Sharky said:

 

Sounds like you might need to incorporate some Track Circuits into the Interlocking...

 

58 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

And let's hope we don't get some clever-clogs telling us it can be avoided by using DC! I have certainly found using cheap CCTV in my small fiddle yard eases such issues. 

It's all line-of-sight in the off-stage areas. I had a perfect view as I drove the Postal into the road I'd set...

[Clive Mortimore]

1 hour ago, Oldddudders said:

And let's hope we don't get some clever-clogs telling us it can be avoided by using DC! I have certainly found using cheap CCTV in my small fiddle yard eases such issues. 

You called.

 

Ah DC and track circuits. When I first joined the Witham Club almost 40 years ago one of the then members had built some hand controllers that had an LED which indicated you had a loco/train on the section of track under your control when no power was being applied to the rails. This was basic track circuiting. The LEDs could have been located on the control panel instead. There was no DCC in them days.

 

Having said the above I didn't understand how he done it so for my train set I use a very simple system to monitor my fiddle yards. I look and see where there is an empty road. When that system fails I hope my guide dog will be able to tell me.

[St Enodoc]

3 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

the fulcrum bar on the Cobalt had slipped out of place

I'll need to take 208's Cobalt off the baseboard as reaching it is a bit awkward with the L-girder in the way. A dab of UHU will fix the fulcrum bar.

 

3 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

a nameplate falling off 6911

Another dab of UHU will fix that too.

 

3 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

1021 refusing to go at all.

That was easy. One of the crossheads had slipped and jammed on the slidebars (nothing to stop it). Didn't even need to take the body off.

[St Enodoc]

Just now, Clive Mortimore said:

I use a very simple system to monitor my fiddle yards. I look and see where there is an empty road. When that system fails I hope my guide dog will be able to tell me.

That's what I do too. Unfortunately the system failed today - I looked but I didn't see - and I haven't got a guide dog.

[Clive Mortimore]

1 hour ago, St Enodoc said:

That's what I do too. Unfortunately the system failed today - I looked but I didn't see - and I haven't got a guide dog.

I too have that problem, relating which is the empty track on the layout and what line of the control panel represents it ......by the time I realise something isn't right .....BANG!!!!!

Edited August 1, 2020 by Clive Mortimore