Annie's Virtual Pre-Grouping, Grouping and BR Layouts & Workbench

[Northroader]

Here’s a photo for you, Annie. The loco is a Stephenson long boiler single, and just look at the goods stock it’s pulling, and a three way point. It would make a great model.

 Here’s an engraving of what happened during the build and there was a right of way dispute.

[Annie]

I think whoever did that engraving/woodcut image might have been smoking something.  

 

I do seriously like that 1865 picture you posted Northroader.  The goods wagons are certainly of interest as there's a good few types I haven't seen before.  The Holland Railway was much influenced by Brunel so it wouldn't surprise me if some of the goods wagons were a close match for those being used on the GWR.

You are quite right though it would make a great model.

 

A Dutch Stephenson long boiler of an earlier kind.  The Dutch forum member over at NGRM is still digging through his library and scanning things as he finds them.

[Annie]

The engine in Northroader's photo.

 

[Annie]

Perranwell progress.  Still fluffing about with getting the goods shed in the right place as well as properly sorting out the goods yard trackwork.  As you might have guessed the original goods yard was entirely wrong for any era so it's been a bit of a process getting it somewhere correct.

The goods shed is two Ashburton goods sheds joined together which is about the closest approximation I could come up with.

 

[runs as required]

4 hours ago, Annie said:

A Dutch forum member over on NGRM has been telling me about the Holland Railway (1839-1866) which was laid to a Broad Gauge of 1950mm (6ft 4 ¾).  The engines were very 'Patentee' like.  Unfortunately no photos are known to exist except for the photo I posted below.

 

 

Aha! Obviously this beautiful Dutch tank  "the Hope" as well as speed built by Longridge & Co of Bedlington (Northumberland) must be a broad gauge forerunner of the better known later 6 wheeled Terrier

  

[Northroader]

Nope, it’s this one, Annie. Funny how the Holland Rly copied the GWR in just giving the locos names, no numbers.

[runs as required]

I forgot in posting the above, that I'd really wanted to say that I do agree with your historical de-forestation of C19 Cornwalll. All the photos and engravings of early railways show  far fewer trees than there are nowadays. I suspect they were ruthlessly set upon for carpentry and for fuel. 

dh

[Annie]

Ah thanks for that Northroader.  The Dutch chap over at NGRM must've identified the drawing incorrectly.

 

A very nice engine it is too.  Now if I could just find someone competent to make me one...........

[Annie]

2 minutes ago, runs as required said:

I forgot in posting the above, that I'd really wanted to say that I do agree with your historical de-forestation of C19 Cornwalll. All the photos and engravings of early railways show  far fewer trees than there are nowadays. I suspect they were ruthlessly set upon for carpentry and for fuel. 

dh

Once I started hunting out old photos of the area I'm attempting to represent that fact was brought home to me very quickly.  The original layout builder used Goggle earth extensively while building the layout which of course led him astray in so many details as to what the region was like, - even during his claimed time period of 1930.

Present day modern error town planning documents greatly trumpet burying everything in trees in order to 'soften the landscape'.  (A soft landscape to go with their soft heads no doubt.)

[Charlie586]

One member of the dutch scale 7 group, who are doing gwr broad gauge,  has also done a model of the Dutch broad gauge. There's some lovely looking models on the site.

 

https://dutchscalesevengroup.blogspot.com/2014/05/dutch-scale-seven-group-report-nr-15.html?m=0

Edited September 13, 2019 by Charlie586
Fix link

[Annie]

Thanks very much for that Charlie.  They are seriously nice models and those coaches are interesting and different,

[Annie]

I was out and about with the amazing 4-2-4T 'Sharpie' No.5 (Increasing sales of personal defibrillators to BG purists everywhere) this morning on track testing duties and all was good with just a couple of small leveling adjustments needed to be done along the line.  I took some snaps, all of which involve the crossing of Brunel viaducts, but I'm sure you'll forgive me.

 

Carnon viaduct looking to the north.  Believe it or not this picture was taken after removing 75% of the trees in this area.  I might remove a few more yet, but it's certainly getting close to what I want.

 

Ringwell viaduct also looking north.  (I don't think it's North Facing Day, - that's just how it worked out)

Some of the thick processional walls of trees still need to be thinned out, but overall this area isn't too bad.

 

Carvedras viaduct Truro looking south.  I had to look south this time because there's nuffing to the north side of the viaduct.  This is post devastation Truro.  One fell day three quarters of the town just vanished, - pop! - gone just like that. 

I was in a bad mood that day so I must confess I did enjoy playing Martian invaders for half an hour.  Faced with an absolute and inexplicable mess on the far southern corner layout board I simply deleted the whole board (Horrors!).  Doing that means that I can concentrate on the wedge shaped part of the old town that pointed towards the railway station with a high chance of making a decent job of it.  Most of what you can see in the picture will need to be hugely shifted about as I properly align the streets into their correct places and any remaining modernist taint that I've missed will also be purged at the same time.  The deleted layout board may get refitted, but as a hidden fiddle yard at the end of the Newham branch, but I'm not going to worry about that at the moment.

[Annie]

Jungle clearance on the line to Penryn is going well with not too many scenic fixes to be done.  There's a bridge than needs replacement because it's horrible and somewhere along this section I have to find where the Perran viaduct is supposed to go.

 

So with all that going well I had a look at the line to Chacewater.  I had done some clearance work and scenic fixing work around Penwithers junction, but the rest of it is fairly dreadful.

 

The Modern Uk Amateur Railway Owners Society would love to have a line like this one.  All those leaves on the line! - they wouldn't have to run any trains at all!

Most of it shouldn't be too difficult to fix, but there's some odd stuff going on with retaining walls and embankments that's going to take some thought before I set to and realign it all.

 

And just because I can.  I was just testing the line, -honest guv.  The West Cornwall line is functional and everything does work properly, - it just that most of it looks dreadful while doing it. (One of the rare good bits shown in the picture)

Edited September 13, 2019 by Annie
more to say

[Annie]

Not long woken up after being crashed out asleep for just over an hour.  The problem with that though is that I'd been off in the dreamworld someplace for ages so when I woke up my body clock was telling me that a lot more time than an hour had passed by in real world terms.  Problems with time perception is something most folk who have narcolepsy have to put up with.  I call it the 'endless Wednesday effect' due to it seeming like a day is far more than 12 hours long and it's never going to end.  Tends to get a bit annoying after a while.

 

BUT back to the trainset!

 

 

I think I can call Perranwell done now.  The station building still needs to be changed once I've sorted out making something that looks like the prototype station, but otherwise I'm happy with how it's all turned out.  Old photos of the station show that the bank behind platform 2 was a lot closer and almost touching the back of the platform, but I'm not going to rush into doing anything about it just yet.  The landscape tools in Trainz aren't particularly precise and if the station platform isn't lined up parallel to the mesh grid lines the embankment will break up into a series of sawtooth like ridges which are a right pig to deal with and smooth out.

 

 

Also noticeable from old photos is that the goods shed is sited very close behind the elevated signal box so that the 'empties' siding next to the goods shed lies in what amounts to a corridor formed by the back of the station building and the wall of the goods shed.  I'm reasonable happy with what I've done.  Shifting the trackwork and the goods shed around to get it nicely aligned behind the signal box was a bit of a fiddle though.

 

 

Looking to the west towards the jungles of Penryn.  Though I will admit the 'jungles' are now much reduced to being sporadic gatherings of surly looking shrubs rather than the army of Huorons they were before.

The track layout is essentially that shown on the 1906 25in to the mile OS map, but with a kickback siding shown on the 1888 6in to the mile map still in place and not removed.  Perranwell station yard is a bit shorter than it should be and its overall alignment isn't quite right which led to me having to use a three way point instead of two of the usual kind in order to layout the goods yard somewhere near correctly.  At the stage I was at when I discovered this  I seriously did not want to move everything in the yard, buildings, platforms and all into the correct orientation and bash the landscape around so I used a three way point instead and it works fine.  'Sharpie' No.5 has shunted wagons through it from all directions without any problems so it's done and dusted.  Faye Decomply from up the road looked at it too and said it was fine so that's good enough for me.

 

[Annie]

 

Perranwell signal box.  I finally found some wooden steps that I could use.  

The step models were fairly short so I had to finagle three of them together to make the necessary height.  The prototype steps were steeper, but I'm not going to moan about it and I'm more than happy with this final touch that the signal box was lacking.  I'm not sure what colour the steps were painted so until I find out they can stay grey for now.  As you can see from the picture I got a bit carried away and you can see I put steel support girders under the floor.  Unfortunately I couldn't find anything that would represent the nice wrought iron support brackets in the corners, but if I do find something useful they will get added in.

I'm most probably a bit inordinately proud of this odd fabrication of misrelated bits that looks like a signal box, but with it being such a distinctive feature of the station nothing else was going to do the job.

 

Edited September 13, 2019 by Annie
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[Annie]

Perran viaduct.  That's four done and four still to do.

I had some trouble finding the viaduct site at first because instead of a reasonably substantial stone viaduct across a recognisable valley there was a single arch bridge across a scratch in the ground with a stream at the bottom of it.  Lots of landscape bashing later as well as all the necessary levelling and fettling of the timber viaduct I finally ended up with something much more believable.

All the trees have to stay because they are all part of a forested area marked on the OS maps.  However I did cut them back clear of both the line and the viaduct.  Ballasting has now reached the portal of the Perran tunnel, but I won't take it any further until the last stretch of lineside clearing and scenic fixing is done before reaching Penryn station.

 

[Annie]

 

Ponsanooth viaduct is next.  139 feet high, 645 feet long, 9 piers.

I had to replace a bridge over a farm road on the way to Ponsanooth because it was a complete mess, but then if I was adverse to bridges remaking the line to Falmouth would have been a really bad choice on my part. 

The first thing I noticed about the valley on the layout that the present masonry viaduct crosses is that there's no river, - the River Kennal is entirely absent!  Rivers can be a bit of a trial to do since they have to be modelled over their full length across the layout boards, but leaving a good sized river out entirely and pretending there never was one is not the way to do it.

I think this viaduct is going to be a bit more of a challenge than the others I've done so far so I'm trying to make up my mind whether to do it now, or continue with the other work on the line and come back to it later.

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

15 hours ago, Annie said:

 

Perranwell signal box.  I finally found some wooden steps that I could use.  

The step models were fairly short so I had to finagle three of them together to make the necessary height.  The prototype steps were steeper, but I'm not going to moan about it and I'm more than happy with this final touch that the signal box was lacking.  I'm not sure what colour the steps were painted so until I find out they can stay grey for now.  As you can see from the picture I got a bit carried away and you can see I put steel support girders under the floor.  Unfortunately I couldn't find anything that would represent the nice wrought iron support brackets in the corners, but if I do find something useful they will get added in.

I'm most probably a bit inordinately proud of this odd fabrication of misrelated bits that looks like a signal box, but with it being such a distinctive feature of the station nothing else was going to do the job.

 

 

Excellent - the stone base to the steps on a wooden platform was a little improbable, mainly due to architectural concerns. Nicely done, will you add any supporting structure? BTW your bridge in the later post over the river is looking rather nice. 

[Annie]

Thanks Malcolm.   The stone steps were only make do stand-ins until I could find something better.  Sometimes it's the small parts that are the hardest to find especially when their makers give them creative file names.  There wasn't any other supporting structures since the stairs and entrance porch were supported by extensions of the steel framework supporting the main floor of the signal box.  My signal box is not exact replica of the prototype since I was limited by what parts I could find and adapt, but it does manage to capture the general character of the signal box at Perranwell.

[Annie]

 

 

 

One immediate issue is that the original layout builder made his version of the masonry Ponsanooth viaduct way too long.  I'd always thought it was a bit odd because it was longer than the Collegewood viaduct which is supposed to be the longest on the line.

Oh joy, - more landscape bashing needing to be done.

 

 

And on a more amusing note once I cleared back the trees I found these.

The lost Cornish Valley of the Kings?  Or has the Metropolitan Pyramid Co been making a bumper sales effort in Cornwall?  In actual fact they are something the landscape mesh will do as a result of being sculpted a bit too fiercely without smoothing everything together properly.  All sorted now, but finding them did make me laugh which is always a good thing.

 

[Annie]

State of play with Ponsanooth viaduct at packing up time.  The viaduct still needs to be properly levelled, but the worst bit was reshaping all the landscape at the eastern end of the viaduct since it was all too low by a considerable amount.  Most probably that's why the original masonry viaduct was too long, - the original layout builder didn't fancy doing it to get the viaduct set in place at the correct length.

Next job is to deepen the valley and put the river in it.  After that I'll need to fudge up some extensions for the viaduct piers since they are too short to touch the ground.

In between things I ravaged the town of Ponsanooth and cut it all back to something like its 19th century size since it had been plainly built up using modern Goggle earth images.  Some buildings are all wrong for the 1880s, but I'll get to those eventually.

 

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

That is good work - I hope you obtained the necessary permits to remove the archaeological remains 

[Annie]

Further work at Ponsanooth.  The viaduct is now levelled and further landscape bashing and work on the embankment has been done.  Delving out the valley for the River Kennal still to come.

 

 

Ponsanooth was the highest viaduct on the line and at least now it's starting to look like it.  Track testing across the viaduct has shown all is good which is a bit amazing really given the amount of shifting about and realigning the trackwork has been put through.   This whole stretch through to Penryn is/was a real disaster with track levelling and landscaping done not at all well and everything covered up with trees, shrubs and weeds to hide it.

There's a bad bit just up the line a short way, but fortunately it's all going to get demolished to install the Pascoe viaduct (70 feet high and 390 feet long on 6 piers.) which is one way of solving the problem I suppose.

 

 

[Annie]

'Hercules' doing some track testing.  Can't half manage to burn some coal on these Cornish hills though.

 

 

[Annie]

Pictures of prototype locations should carry a warning label. 'CAUTION!  Examination of these pictures will completely ruin your day and cause you to completely rework much of what you have already done in making a model of this location.'

 

I'm presently taking scowling lessons, - my tutor says I'm a natural.