Mid-Cornwall Lines - 1950s Western Region in 00

[Oldddudders]

The Castle looks fine. I always felt the class was the best, perhaps most balanced expression of Swindon design. Less in-your-face than a King, more puissant, less elegant than a Hall etc. 

[St Enodoc]

Eight days from Cornwall to NSW, with Christmas in between. Well done Kernow and well done Bachmann.

 

I haven't opened it yet, as if I did I'd get nothing else useful done for the rest of the holiday...

[St Enodoc]

I had a big blitz on the sequence this afternoon.

 

One of the features of our renovated kitchen is a large expanse of worktop that serves as a breakfast bar. I finished breakfast hours ago, so I decided to commandeer this to spread out the track occupation planning sheet and a print of the latest sequence spreadsheet.

 

For each train, I decided where it should go and marked this on the spreadsheet in pencil. I had to make sure that it didn't block in any trains on the same loop and also that I didn't exceed the length of the loops. As I progressed with this I crossed off the train numbers on the stickers so that I could follow the progression of each of the core sets through the sequence. In effect, I was having a running session but using the planning sheet to represent the layout, the stickers to represent the trains and my brain to try to visualise it all.

 

I tried to keep the freights in the front (higher numbered) loops and where there was no core set in a train I decided that it should be formed on and/or removed from the layout using a loop close to the front too.

 

In the end it all went remarkably smoothly - worryingly so - and I actually got through all 168 trains in less than three hours. There were a few false leads where I had missed something and had to go back a few rows but nothing drastic. There were also a couple of moments where I thought I was going to run out of loop space at Penzance but a little bit of nifty juggling got me through those. As it turned out, the most complex progressions involved the milk tanks, which crop up in various combinations, and with various combinations of vans, throughout the sequence. For these I broke my self-imposed rule, to keep all sets of three or more vehicles on the layout all the time, at a couple of points by deciding to remarshal set 993 (three tanks) by hand. As they are only 6-wheelers the yardmasters should be able to pick up all three in one go so that should not be a problem.

 

What next? I now need to transfer the pencil notes into the spreadsheet, after which I can finalise the sequence and extract the relevant pages for each of the yardmasters, Porthmellyn Road signalman and the drivers. I also need to work out driver rosters for 2, 3, and 4 drivers as before. Once that's all done, we just need to try it out in a few weeks' time.

 

Wish us luck.

Edited December 31, 2019 by St Enodoc

[Barry O]

Sounds like you enjoyed the 3 hour "shift".

Time to relax before m8snight!

Baz

[Neal Ball]

Sounds like a marathon job, but one that was worth it in the end.

 

Looking forward to seeing the crane in action on the layout.

 

Have a great New Year.

[nerron]

John,

The crane looks magnificent.When was the red livery introduced? I prefer it to the black but suspect it may be too late for my period, so I suppose rule1 may have to be invoked.

[St Enodoc]

2 hours ago, Neal Ball said:

Sounds like a marathon job, but one that was worth it in the end.

 

Looking forward to seeing the crane in action on the layout.

 

Have a great New Year.

 

1 hour ago, nerron said:

John,

The crane looks magnificent.When was the red livery introduced? I prefer it to the black but suspect it may be too late for my period, so I suppose rule1 may have to be invoked.

I'm not sure whether I will actually use the crane on the layout. The reason I bought it is that when I was working at Brighton we had a 45T R&R crane, so when Bachmann announced the model I decided I would like one as a souvenir. I think that the red livery came in during the 1960s so too late for you Ron and strictly speaking for me as well.

Edited December 31, 2019 by St Enodoc
why does my spellchecker think that "woudl" is a real word?

[St Enodoc]

45 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

 

I'm not sure whether I will actually use the crane on the layout. The reason I bought it is that when I was working at Brighton we had a 45T R&R crane, so when Bachmann announced the model I decided I would like one as a souvenir. I think that the red livery came in during the 1960s so too late for you Ron and strictly speaking for me as well.

A bit of googling reveals that the colour change from black to red was announced in 1959 but I would expect that it took a long time for this to be implemented fully.

 

Similarly, the change from red to yellow took place over an extended period from the late 1970s to the mid 1980s. I can't find any official dates for this changeover though.

[Barry O]

12 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

A bit of googling reveals that the colour change from black to red was announced in 1959 but I would expect that it took a long time for this to be implemented fully.

 

Similarly, the change from red to yellow took place over an extended period from the late 1970s to the mid 1980s. I can't find any official dates for this changeover though.

It was all detailed in the HMRS journal. I leny my copy to a fellow Leeds MRS member and haven't got it back..yet!

Baz

[nerron]

Thanks John looks like rule 1if I do make the investment.

[St Enodoc]

Once again we are nearing the end of a year in the life of the Mid-Cornwall Lines, the fifth since the project started in its present form in January 2015, so here's this year's annual progress report..

 

As always, I didn't get as much done this year as I would have liked but nevertheless some significant milestones were passed - in particular the completion of all the trackwork in the Paddington and Penzance loops, which I finished in November. This included the conversion of all the loop points already laid from H&M to Cobalt motors, which has improved the reliability of operation by an infinite amount. Other construction work included the Chapel Sidings at Porthmellyn Road and completion of the stock shelves at Paddington and Penzance.

 

With the completion of Paddington and Penzance, it was time to expand the sequence to cover all the main line workings, a total of 168 trains as I've mentioned earlier as opposed to the 48 in the previous sequence. The key to this was fitting set numbers to all the stock needed to run those trains, which I also managed to complete. I also brought a few more items of stock into use, notably the Kernow A1A-A1A Warship and the Bachmann 74xx conversion. I also introduced a new Hornby Castle, which also let me make one good 'un out of two defective Airfix ones. Not much increase in the carriage and wagon fleet, although there is more raw material in the "to do" pile than at the start of the year.

 

Although I haven't finished the electrical work at Porthmellyn Road signal box - this will start after the next running session - I have, with the enormous help of The Stationmaster (Mike) and 5BarVT (Paul) of this parish, Graeme from Queensland and of course Harold from Modratec himself, finalised the design of the St Enodoc lever frame and also almost finalised the signalling diagram, although not the interlocking design, for the future Pentowan and Treloggan Junction boxes.

 

What haven't I achieved? Well, I didn't make any more progress on the wagon routing system, ballasting or scenery at all, I'm sorry to say.

 

However, at the risk of setting myself up as a hostage to fortune yet again, here's what I plan to do next:

 

- electrical works at Porthmellyn Road signal box

- uncoupler magnets at Porthmellyn Road, with their associated control panel

- front fences round the non-scenic area

- bring more stock into use

- fit the viaduct guard rails

- ballasting

- start the signalling installation.

 

I intend to do all this for the main lines before I start any construction work on the branch. Whether I get that far by the end of 2020 is doubtful but we shall see.

 

So, from a somewhat unsettled Sydney, with many bush fires burning around the state (and elsewhere in Australia), it only remains to thank everyone for their contributions to the story of the Mid-Cornwall Lines, be they in real or virtual form, and to wish you all a happy, peaceful, safe and prosperous New Year when it comes.

 

 

[acg5324]

And a happy new year to you and Veronica too.

[St Enodoc]

On 31/12/2019 at 16:34, St Enodoc said:

What next? I now need to transfer the pencil notes into the spreadsheet, after which I can finalise the sequence and extract the relevant pages for each of the yardmasters, Porthmellyn Road signalman and the drivers. I also need to work out driver rosters for 2, 3, and 4 drivers as before.

I managed to get through all this in a marathon session today. It's much easier to do it in one go if possible, as you can carry the "picture" in your head from step to step. That's not to say that there won't be a few mistakes - I found several as I went along. None were bad enough to make me retrace my steps, most being typos or transcription errors.

 

For those who like these things, here is the latest version

 

wtt mid cornwall 1952-1957-1958 draft 10 stage 3 main line, railbus, clay master.xlsx

 

All that's left to do on the paper railway before the next running session is to copy the expanded set of train describer PowerPoint slides on to the garage computer.

 

I plan do do that before the end of the holiday, together with changing all the batteries in the NCE equipment and also the computer keyboard and mouse. I might also have another go at chipping 1021 by carving some space out of the cast weight to make room in the boiler for the decoder.

 

In amongst that, of course, is the Sydney Test. This year about 10 of us will be there to watch the first day on Friday. Looking forward to that.

Edited January 1, 2020 by St Enodoc

[nerron]

 

16 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

In amongst that, of course, is the Sydney Test. This year about 10 of us will be there to watch the first day on Friday. Looking forward to that

I'll be there with my usual group of ten on Saturday.

[St Enodoc]

8 minutes ago, nerron said:

 

I'll be there with my usual group of ten on Saturday.

You might see the end of the match then...

[nerron]

10 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

You might see the end of the match then...

If that is the case it will be no disappointment to be there to witness such an historic and unprecedented? result.

[St Enodoc]

1 hour ago, nerron said:

If that is the case it will be no disappointment to be there to witness such an historic and unprecedented? result.

I think that the increase in use of the word "unprecedented" by the Australian press and media over the past few months is unprecedented.

[St Enodoc]

20 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

I might also have another go at chipping 1021 by carving some space out of the cast weight to make room in the boiler for the decoder.

I just had another look and I think that by chopping about 5 - 10mm off the back of the cast weight, there will be plenty of room to mount an NCE Z14SR decoder vertically on the front of the motor. There will be room to hide the decoder wires either behind the decoder itself and/or on the left side of the motor block. Too late to do that today though.

Edited January 2, 2020 by St Enodoc

[St Enodoc]

On 26/12/2019 at 10:15, St Enodoc said:

 

I connected the Sprog and tried to follow the instructions on "Installing Sprog Drivers on Windows 8/8.1/10" on the Sprog website. I got as far as section 4 and downloaded the drivers but when I opened the Settings menu it looked nothing like that in the installation guide and I can't find any way of progressing further to update the drivers and get the computer to recognise the Sprog.

 

One piece of promising news though is that the latest version of JMRI that I installed last night includes the definition for the Hornby TTS Castle.

 

Enough time wasted for now - I'll await Andrew's response before I try anything else.

 

On 26/12/2019 at 10:28, St Enodoc said:

I actually did waste a little more time. I found a screen that looked very similar to that in the instructions by going through Control Panel to Device Manager but the Sprog didn't show up in the list of Ports and there was nothing listed for Other Devices.

 

That's definitely it for now.

I had a very helpful reply from Andrew Crosland on Tuesday, basically confirming that I was following the right process, so this evening I sat down and had another go at setting up the Sprog on the new computer. This time everything worked fine and the Sprog is now able to communicate with DecoderPro. I tested the combination by running a loco up and down the test track.

 

I suspect that in trying to translate between the two Settings presentations - the one on my screen and the one in the installation notes - I either missed a step or pressed a wrong key somewhere first time round.

 

Excellent service as always from Andrew.

 

Now to copy the roster across and we'll be in business.

[St Enodoc]

Roster duly copied although for some reason I appeared to end up with two different versions in two different places on my hard drive. Once I'd fixed that I chipped and programmed 1021, which is an out-of-the-box Hornby R2211 (1020 County of Monmouth). I'll fit a DG coupling to the tender, and the name/numberplates, but more detailing can wait until another time.

[St Enodoc]

Another short session with the Sprog and DecoderPro let me update the Hornby Castle 5058 to the correct decoder definition. That's all the decoder work complete now until the Hornby Prairie arrives.

[5BarVT]

Glad you got it sorted. Although I don’t use panel pro, I would be lost without decoder pro.

Paul.

[St Enodoc]

Nothing to tempt me in the Hornby announcement today, which is probably, on balance, a Good Thing.

 

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/150159-Hornby-2020-range-announcements/

 

[Clive Mortimore]

51 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

Nothing to tempt me in the Hornby announcement today, which is probably, on balance, a Good Thing.

 

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/150159-Hornby-2020-range-announcements/

 

Wot you don't want an APT or an Azooooomerrrr.

 

I am looking forward to the BR class 2 to share duties with its Ivatt cousin. 

[St Enodoc]

1 minute ago, Clive Mortimore said:

Wot you don't want an APT or an Azooooomerrrr.

 

I am looking forward to the BR class 2 to share duties with its Ivatt cousin. 

An APT-P would be interesting. I was in Scotland at the time it was in trial service, although despite three attempts I never actually got a ride on it. However, as I never had any direct connection, it doesn't fit as part of my "historic" fleet of trains that I've had some involvement with over the years.

 

Zoomers are far too modern and anyway from what I've heard I'd end up with a numb bum if I sat on it too long.

 

The only 2-6-0 I need is a new Dapol one to replace my clapped-out Mainline/Bachmann hybrid.