Castle Aching

[Edwardian]

Waiting for Edwardian to finish the track ...

[Northroader]

I still pray for her.

[Stephen 28]

A good base text on track building and the basic forming of vees etc is this one, available second hand for around a tenner.

[Stephen 28]

If you want something more in depth this should cover it.

[Shadow]

And this one if you don't get the hang of it.

 

[nick_bastable]

 

although primary aimed at 2mm modelers the techniques and details are applicable to most  scales with lots of prototype information

 

http://www.2mm.org.uk/products/trackbook/index.html

 

NIck

[Edwardian]

Thanks for all the support and suggestions.

 

I have reduced the kink on the second turnout's 'V', but the enlarged photographs show that the work is still less than perfect!

 

Well, I've run out of holiday, so that's that for now. One check rail and the blades to go, then we'll see how close I got to working turnouts! 

Edited January 1, 2018 by Edwardian

[nick_bastable]

Sir 

 

your skills are improving by the hour a gravity shunted  wagon when complete will show up problems to be tweaked

 

Nick

[Talltim]

I hope you are feeling very pleased with that

[Owd Bob]

She still scrubs up lovely so don't be that cruel Lads.

[corneliuslundie]

I wouldn't get too worried about the Vees which you already have. I used to do them like that until I read more on the subject and they always worked fine even in a couple of single slips.

It is in fact easier though to do the them "spliced" way as the angle is greater and the "point" at the end is not so fine and a bit easier to produce.

By the way, you were somewhat disingenuous in commenting that it has taken a year to start track laying. You have done much more on the scenic side than most of the rest of us have managed in total in the last year, as well as giving many people both education and entertainment.

Jonathan

[Edwardian]

I wouldn't get too worried about the Vees which you already have. I used to do them like that until I read more on the subject and they always worked fine even in a couple of single slips.

It is in fact easier though to do the them "spliced" way as the angle is greater and the "point" at the end is not so fine and a bit easier to produce.

By the way, you were somewhat disingenuous in commenting that it has taken a year to start track laying. You have done much more on the scenic side than most of the rest of us have managed in total in the last year, as well as giving many people both education and entertainment.

Jonathan

 

That is kind, though as for being disingenuous, I will say that it has always weighed heavily on me that a model railway should, at the very least, feature a railway, and that the absence of track is a rather fundamental obstacle to achieving that.  Remember, it was only relatively recently that the "layout" took on physical form by means of baseboards.  Cardboard cottages do not a layout make.  

 

What, to me, felt disingenuous was the pursuit of a layout topic for nigh on 2 years without ever producing said layout!  Now I feel that, if I can, as a result of all the help, advice and contributions I have received from you all over the past couple of years, finally produce a functioning permanent way, I shall feel a good deal less of a fraud!

 

Of course, the jury is out on whether any of the track so far attempted will work, but at least I feel that I am finally on my way, which is a good feeling. 

 

I have gratefully adopted Kevin's suggestions for the check rails, and Nick's for aligning the crossings, and I thank you all for your advice and encouragement. I thank DonW in particular, for a very great deal of behind the scenes effort on his part, including the Templot plan, the guides to construction, the components and, perhaps most of all, the patience he has exhibited.  I was going to say that his was a task akin to explaining algebra to a mackerel, then I realised that, actually, it was simply a task akin to explaining algebra to me!

 

Anyway, we're not there yet, not by a long way, so I'm keeping my fingers firmly crossed for the next session, probably at the weekend.  

 

In the meanwhile, God Bless Jenny Agutter and Happy New Year to you all!

[Les le Breton]

        Edwardian, you have embarked on a genuine prototypical project. I may be wrong, but was it KNP of “Little Muddle” fame who remarked that the land was there before the railway? Iain Rice was of the same persuasion I believe.

        Therefore you should be proud of the way you have developed your layout diary, which I have enjoyed for the erudition, humour, honestly and ambition in your “Castle Aching” topic thread.

        I wish you and your followers a Happy and Prosperous New Year.

 

He who hasn’t made any mistakes hasn’t made anything at all.

[nick_bastable]

        Edwardian, you have embarked on a genuine prototypical project. I may be wrong, but was it KNP of “Little Muddle” fame who remarked that the land was there before the railway? Iain Rice was of the same persuasion I believe.

        Therefore you should be proud of the way you have developed your layout diary, which I have enjoyed for the erudition, humour, honestly and ambition in your “Castle Aching” topic thread.

        I wish you and your followers a Happy and Prosperous New Year.

 

He who hasn’t made any mistakes hasn’t made anything at all.

n'y a que ceux qui ne font rien qui ne font pas de bétise

 

as a French manager once told me after I had dropped a rather large ball................

 

Nick

[Edwardian]

On snow drifts ...

 

Let us start with good old Wiki:

 

A snowdrift is a deposit of snow sculpted by wind into a mound during a snowstorm. Snowdrifts resemble sand dunes and are formed in a similar manner, namely, by wind moving light snow and depositing it when the wind has virtually stopped, usually against a stationary object. Snow normally crests and slopes off toward the surface on the windward side of a large object. On the leeward side, areas near the object are a bit lower than surrounding areas, but are generally flatter.

 

The impact of snowdrifts on transportation can be more significant than the snowfall itself .... Snowdrifts are many times found at or on roads, as the crest of the roadbed or the furrows along the road create the disruption to the wind needed to shed its carried snow.

 

Emphasis added.

 

In Murder on the Orient Express (1934), the westbound Simplon Orient Express comes to grief in a show drift between Vincovci and Brod, in former Yugoslavia.  

 

Yesterday I visited the locus in quo via Google Earth, and it set me thinking about snow drifts.

 

So far as I can tell, there is nothing of the old station left, indeed, little of antiquity seems to have survived in the vicinity of the railway. I note that the proximity of the station building to the track and the canopied shelter would have lent support to Poirot's first proposed solution; the murderer could have passed between the platform and the train undetected with relative ease.

 

Vincovci, or Vinkovci, in Croatia, is not now a location that is notably picturesque.  The landscape is relentlessly flat "agri-desert"  and the only feature between here and Brod is a wooded area, which may or may not have been there in the 1930s.  I would have thought the trees might have prevented a snow drift as surely as the open ground, but I wonder whether anyone here can say whether a significant snow drift over the line was likely or even possible in such a landscape?

 

The modern images are copyright of Google Earth.

 

 

Edited January 3, 2018 by Edwardian

[Donw]

I have had a fair bit of experience with snow drifts they can vary according to the wind speed and the sort of snow and how wet it is. Small dry flakes are more likely to produce the more spectacular than large wet flakes. On a flat area the drier snow will tend to be blown off. I have seen after a blizzard but the wind has continued fields showing hardly any snow but it is all piled up against the hedges buildings etc. On the Wenlock Edge where the road runs along the top  with hedges either side I have seen it full from hedge to hedge. Indeed I had to abandon the car because others had stopped ahead and within minutes it was buried halfway up the windscreen we meanwhile had reached the pub.  Often one finds the drifts start where there is a gate and the snow is blowing through as the wind speed rises it is lifted over the hedge and starts to fill the road. Where the hedges either side are atop high banks the road can fill to quite a depth. I would suggest that the most likely place to get stuck is in a cutting where the snow is filling the cutting in.  Of course if the is a lot of snow it can impede the train without a drift and once stopped more snow will collect around the train.

In those days I had a Citroen Ami which had a flat sheet under the chassis which was good with coping with short drifts  with enough speed it would act like a toboggan . In the vans for work we would place a large lump of concrete or a bag of chippings over each wheel arch to improve traction although it didn't do much for braking. 

On the occasion on the Wenlock Edge above it was half a mile from our house so after a drink we walked back and I then as the snow had stopped I returned to the car by which time they had got the big excavators out from the quarry and were pulling them out before clearing the road. According to locals in the winter of 1947 with no such assistance the Wenlock Edge road was closed for months George Esp, one of the local farmers, as a young man would ride a horse over the Edge to the railway station to collect bread and other staples for the village each day. 

 

Don

[Adams442T]

In Lyonshall, Herefordshire, where l lived for many years, the local pub had some photos on display, showing snow up to the windows of the pub, and the windows were sited quite high up, probably 6 feet at least to the lower cills.

 

Local farmers were unable to get their usual milk collections, so they donated the milk for free to the village from the backs of tractors.  Oh, and sheep walked out of the fields over the hedges!!  Those that didn't die from being buried in snowdrifts, that is.

Edited January 3, 2018 by Adams442T

[Edwardian]

I would suggest that the most likely place to get stuck is in a cutting where the snow is filling the cutting in.  Of course if the is a lot of snow it can impede the train without a drift and once stopped more snow will collect around the train.

 

Don

 

You see, this is my problem.  I can quite see a snow drift building up against a stationary train - the Orient Express was more or less buried in 1929, the staff had to dig tunnels through it when the food on board ran out, but I have great difficulty in imagining a snow drift sufficient to stop a train building up on a line crossing the plains of Croatia!

 

The real snow drift incident was further east, in Turkish territory.

 

The film-makers in 1974 clearly understood the need to create a cutting.  The Kenneth Branagh plumped for an even more dramatic landscape.  Contrast with the modern views of the railway in the area!  The black and white picture of the goods train apparently dates from 1975, the year after the Finney film.

 

It seems that Agatha Christie knew the train better than she knew the lineside in this instance!

[Nearholmer]

Perhaps a long series of huge beetroot clamps had been created adjacent to the line, in the lead-up to that particular winter, creating a once-only disturbance to the flow of blizzards across the plains.

[Edwardian]

It would not fit with Agatha Christie's narrative timetable, as we would still be a little to the east of Nish (modern Nis), so, for one thing, the Athens-Paris coach would not yet have joined the train and only one night would have been spent aboard, during which the murder would have had to have occurred, whereas in the book it occurred on the second night, but, if I wanted to strand the Simplon Orient Express, I'd do so here:

Edited January 3, 2018 by Edwardian

[Nearholmer]

Reminded me of a train ride in Tunisia, through the Selja Gorge.

 

Attitude to H&S was remarkably casual, in that the train stopped for everyone to have a wander about on the edge of precipices, then those who fancied it got to ride on the 'balcony' over the front coupler of the loco, through a tunnel or three. This is a tourist operation, using some very olde worlde coaches, on a metre gauge line, the prime purpose of which is to shift vast tonnages of phosphates.

 

No snowdrifts were encountered.

[Donw]

I think Agatha worked on the principal of not letting geography (or probably anything else) spoil a good story. Besides a lot of her readers probably wouldn't know the area well enough  and probably those rich enough wouldn't pay much attention to 'uninteresting' bits of the journey.

 

Don

[Edwardian]

I think Agatha worked on the principal of not letting geography (or probably anything else) spoil a good story. Besides a lot of her readers probably wouldn't know the area well enough  and probably those rich enough wouldn't pay much attention to 'uninteresting' bits of the journey.

 

Don

 

Though, interestingly, Fleming bothers to mention passing through Vincovci and Brod in From Russia with Love.  It isn't at all essential to the narrative, so might be included as a nod to Christie.

 

The attempt to bump off Bond on the train might have been suggested to Fleming by a real murder on the Orient Express, that of US Naval Attaché (spy), Commander Karp. Nasty business. 

[Tom Burnham]

Though, interestingly, Fleming bothers to mention passing through Vincovci and Brod in From Russia with Love.  It isn't at all essential to the narrative, so might be included as a nod to Christie.

 

The attempt to bump off Bond on the train might have been suggested to Fleming by a real murder on the Orient Express, that of US Naval Attaché (spy), Commander Karp. Nasty business. 

RMWeb's French contemporary reports a project by "Chouchou Loco" to model the Simplon Orient Express from Calais to Istanbul and Athens circa 1950, helped by a photo report published in Life.  It ran through France, Switzerland, Italy, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey.  19 different types of motive power were used (thus 20 locos, steam and electric, as the train was double-headed on the final stage in France) and only 2 of the carriages that started from Calais made it the whole way.  The problems of representing the rolling stock grow more acute the further east you go, especially in Greece where antique 4-wheelers and vans converted for use by the military escort were tacked on for local traffic.  The whole thing (31 pages so far, so not yet rivalling CA), is at http://forum.e-train.fr/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=82796

[Edwardian]

RMWeb's French contemporary reports a project by "Chouchou Loco" to model the Simplon Orient Express from Calais to Istanbul and Athens circa 1950, helped by a photo report published in Life.  It ran through France, Switzerland, Italy, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey.  19 different types of motive power were used (thus 20 locos, steam and electric, as the train was double-headed on the final stage in France) and only 2 of the carriages that started from Calais made it the whole way.  The problems of representing the rolling stock grow more acute the further east you go, especially in Greece where antique 4-wheelers and vans converted for use by the military escort were tacked on for local traffic.  The whole thing (31 pages so far, so not yet rivalling CA), is at http://forum.e-train.fr/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=82796

 

Thank you, Tom.

 

I am familiar with the Life set of pictures, but not with this project, so I shall read it with great interest.