Isle of Wight Steam Railway and catch points

[clachnaharry]

I spent an enjoyable few hours on the IOW steam railway yesterday. I noticed that the run round loops at Smallbrook and Wooton do not have catch points protecting the running line, although access to the running line is controlled by a ground signal. This looks very unusual. Are there local regulations governing this, for instance only allowing the train engine into the loop?

 

On a similer vein, there were no catch points between the sidings and running line on the Network rail line at Sandown, and the kick back siding point which could act as a trap appears to be controlled by a hand lever. These sidings looked used, and as there are no operational locomotives or wagons on the Network Rail line on the island, I presume that these sidings are only used by road-rail plant and trollies. Can anyone confirm?

[IWCR]

A run  round  loop  is  not  a  siding  and  both  Smallbrook  and  Wootton  loops  are  at  the  ends  of  single  line  sections,  When  the  loco  is  using  the  loop  the  token  is  in  the  groundframe  hence  no  other  train  will  be  on  that  section.

The  loops   could  be  used  during  shunting,  but  again  only  one  train  is  present.

The  ground  signal  is  strictly  speaking  not  required  but  these  have  been  fitted   to  give  a  visual  indication  that  the  road  is  correctly  set  rather  than  rely  oh  a  hand  signal. 

 

At  Sandown  I  suspect  the  pointwork  is  clipped  and  locked,  it  is  only  used  by  engineers.

As  you  say  this  is  normally  road-rail  plant.

 

Pete

[roythebus]

The only time there's likely to be more than one loco in section I with a double-headed train. It used to be at Wooton that the locos had to uncouple from each other and run round separately. That may have changed since Wooton has been re-modelled. My route card expired quite a while back for the IWSR. ISTR the headshunt at Smallbrook is long enough to take 2 locos couple.

[roythebus]

Of course, catch point are spring loaded points used to prevent runaway wagons running back along  a line (a left-over from the days of unfitted goods trains). Trap points are operated either from a "proper" lever in a signal box or ground frame or by a hand lever adjacent to the trap point. There used to be one for coming out of Crewe DED that caught a few people out!