Mid-Cornwall Lines - 1950s Western Region in 00

[St Enodoc]

3 hours ago, Chamby said:

 

Via Birmingham Snow Hill, I presume? 

Sorry, Phil, you've lost me with that one!

[The Stationmaster]

2 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

Sorry, Phil, you've lost me with that one!

Sounds to me as if it was a lot more lost than you (or me) 👀

[St Enodoc]

Here's the outcome of the last few weeks' work at Pentowan, for the record.

 

This view includes, just, the whole of Pentowan from the end of the headshunt on the left to the stop blocks on the right. It's the view that you get when you enter the railway room from the workshop.

 

Looking the other way, you can see that I've reinstated the temporary backscene between Pentowan and Polperran, ready for next week's running session.

 

I think that the extended head shunt will give a good illusion of double track. Once the final backscenes are in place you won't see this view, unfortunately, as the backscenes will be about 450mm high.

 

Likewise with this view, which is a shame really, because the more than 180 degree sweep of the curve through Treloggan Junction means it's one of my favourites.

 

Pentowan goods yard with the wagons that arrived yesterday. The van on the left is where the goods shed will go and the cattle wagon in the centre is, funnily enough, where the cattle dock will go (roughly). The white pins show the uncoupler locations and the blue ones the signal locations - provisional in each case.

 

Finally, the carriage sidings with as much stock as is available at the moment stabled there.There are 34 coaches on view although five, the Lima Mk1 set, are only temporary so I will need to build about another ten before all the sets that start from Pentowan are complete (I can and will, of course, run some sets short in the meantime).

 

In other news, Veronica bought some celery at the supermarket this morning - what for, I'm not sure but as far as I'm concerned it's a jolly good reason to mix a couple of Bl00dy Marys before dinner, which will put me in a mellow mood for the first session of Day 3 at Headingley.

 

I also plan to record South Africa v Australia from Pretoria overnight to watch in the morning.

 

Hours of fun ahead.

 

 

[Chamby]

20 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

Sorry, Phil, you've lost me with that one!

 

Sorry!   It’s a combination of my sense of humour and because you call your fiddle yard “Paddington”.

 

If a short freight is being diagrammed from London Paddington to deepest Cornwall, why not send it via an equally unlikely route for good measure...?

[Chamby]

1 hour ago, St Enodoc said:

...Once the final backscenes are in place you won't see this view, unfortunately, as the backscenes will be about 450mm high.

 

 

Backscenes don’t have to be vertical.  You could perhaps preserve much of the view by angling the backscene over Polperran? 

[St Enodoc]

1 hour ago, Chamby said:

 

Sorry!   It’s a combination of my sense of humour and because you call your fiddle yard “Paddington”.

 

If a short freight is being diagrammed from London Paddington to deepest Cornwall, why not send it via an equally unlikely route for good measure...?

Ah, your sense of humour is even worse than mine.

[St Enodoc]

1 hour ago, Chamby said:

 

Backscenes don’t have to be vertical.  You could perhaps preserve much of the view by angling the backscene over Polperran? 

That's an interesting thought. I might mock something up. It could only be about 30 degrees from the vertical so as not to impinge in the gangway between Polperran and Penzance but it might be worth a try.

[St Enodoc]

2 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

I also plan to record South Africa v Australia from Pretoria overnight to watch in the morning.

That plan hasn't survived contact with reality.

 

Under the current agreement between Rugby Australia and Channel 9, only home Wallabies matches and all Bledisloe Cup matches are being shown free-to-air. For everything else, you have to go to Nine's streaming service, Stan Sports, which I refuse to do on the basis that I would then be paying three separate fees to watch.

 

The modern world? You can keep it.

 

And, of course, it's raining at Headingley.

 

Grrrr...

[Tankerman]

18 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

That plan hasn't survived contact with reality.

 

 

And, of course, it's raining at Headingley.

 

Grrrr...

 

Cricket and Wimbledon on at the same time. A much better rain producing system than the Hopi rain dance.

[Chamby]

8 hours ago, Tankerman said:

 

Cricket and Wimbledon on at the same time. A much better rain producing system than the Hopi rain dance.

 

And the British Grand Prix qualifying, and England v Spain under 21’s are all live on free-to-view today...  doesn’t happen often these days :(

[ianathompson]

19 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

And, of course, it's raining at Headingley.

 

I don't live in the area any more but I do keep "tabs" on the sides that I played for in the local leagues.

Professional cricketers seem to have a different definition of "rain" compared to the local amateurs and the semi-pro leagues.

 

A number of Bradford League games were completed, although the side that I look for in the York League were caled off.

Certain  leagues (such as the long defunct Dewsbury & District) were notorious for playing when it was coming down like stair rods but generally

I often used to be amazed at how we played and got home to find that there was no play in the Test!

 

Incidentally, despite the forecast there was no rain in west Norfolk and all local games reached a conclusion.

 

Ian T

[St Enodoc]

5 minutes ago, ianathompson said:

 

I don't live in the area any more but I do keep "tabs" on the sides that I played for in the local leagues.

Professional cricketers seem to have a different definition of "rain" compared to the local amateurs and the semi-pro leagues.

 

A number of Bradford League games were completed, although the side that I look for in the York League were caled off.

Certain  leagues (such as the long defunct Dewsbury & District) were notorious for playing when it was coming down like stair rods but generally

I often used to be amazed at how we played and got home to find that there was no play in the Test!

 

Incidentally, despite the forecast there was no rain in west Norfolk and all local games reached a conclusion.

 

Ian T

For a few seasons I played for Garforth (not Garforth PC) in what was then the Leeds League.

[The Stationmaster]

On 08/07/2023 at 09:19, Chamby said:

 

Sorry!   It’s a combination of my sense of humour and because you call your fiddle yard “Paddington”.

 

If a short freight is being diagrammed from London Paddington to deepest Cornwall, why not send it via an equally unlikely route for good measure...?

Ah but as it would have reduced its load at Hackney and then again, if necessary, at Tavy Jcn it would have been a short freight in Cornwall.  And even shorter by the time it got to 'Pentowan' than it would have been when it left Paddington.

 

A really amusing one in the late 1940s was the 21.32 Paddington  (Goods) - Penzance which reduced at Newbury Racecourse (then a regular freight marshalling point) and where traffic for stations in Cornwall had to be formed in station order sorted additionally by vac and non-vac as it ran as Class C.  Permitted to convey only vehicles fitted with oil boxes beyond Newbury RC but grease boxes and axleboxes stuffed with horsehair were permitted between Paddington and Newbury RC

[Tallpaul69]

On 08/07/2023 at 11:21, St Enodoc said:

That plan hasn't survived contact with reality.

 

Under the current agreement between Rugby Australia and Channel 9, only home Wallabies matches and all Bledisloe Cup matches are being shown free-to-air. For everything else, you have to go to Nine's streaming service, Stan Sports, which I refuse to do on the basis that I would then be paying three separate fees to watch.

 

The modern world? You can keep it.

 

And, of course, it's raining at Headingley.

 

Grrrr...

Hope you agree with me John that today's result at Headingley was good for the game of cricket as well as (of course!) being good for the England team?

I say this because there is nothing worse than a test series that is dead after 3 games of 5!

 

Meanwhile, your current state of play on Mid Cornwall Lines is great. Soon you will have so much time on your hands you will just have to get on with the scenics!

 

All the best,

Paul

[St Enodoc]

10 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Ah but as it would have reduced its load at Hackney and then again, if necessary, at Tavy Jcn it would have been a short freight in Cornwall.  And even shorter by the time it got to 'Pentowan' than it would have been when it left Paddington.

In the real world it would have started from St Blazey which is all part of the Paddington loops in MCL-world.

 

10 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

A really amusing one in the late 1940s was the 21.32 Paddington  (Goods) - Penzance which reduced at Newbury Racecourse (then a regular freight marshalling point) and where traffic for stations in Cornwall had to be formed in station order sorted additionally by vac and non-vac as it ran as Class C.  Permitted to convey only vehicles fitted with oil boxes beyond Newbury RC but grease boxes and axleboxes stuffed with horsehair were permitted between Paddington and Newbury RC

As none of my stock has axleboxes stuffed with horsehair I should be able to get away with that one.

 

Was the horsehair detached from/attached to the horses themselves at Newbury RC?

[St Enodoc]

8 hours ago, Tallpaul69 said:

Hope you agree with me John that today's result at Headingley was good for the game of cricket as well as (of course!) being good for the England team?

I say this because there is nothing worse than a test series that is dead after 3 games of 5!

Yes. I listened until lunch, at which point I thought that England were making a valiant attempt to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Edited July 10, 2023 by St Enodoc

[Barry O]

Spent 3 of the 4 days at Headingley. Saturday I umpired at Addingham and we managed to get a 35 overs per side match in. I did, however  explain to my colleague why we don't start matches in the rain... he was upset when I said.. no insurance and no reason to come off if you start in the rain. Then he realised he still got a full fee.. so was happy!

 

Baz

Edited July 17, 2023 by Barry O

[The Stationmaster]

9 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

In the real world it would have started from St Blazey which is all part of the Paddington loops in MCL-world.

 

As none of my stock has axleboxes stuffed with horsehair I should be able to get away with that one.

 

Was the horsehair detached from/attached to the horses themselves at Newbury RC?

The horsehair was arriving from Paddington so maybe it had come from the Household Cavalry.

 

Strange that such areference was still around in theh late 1940s.

 

[St Enodoc]

15 hours ago, Barry O said:

Then he realised he still got a full fee.. so was happy!

Must've been a Yorkie then.

[St Enodoc]

Today's running session went well although we only had two drivers, so things seemed to be less intense than usual. Nevertheless, we got through 28 trains which has taken us about 2/3 of the way through Friday's operations. It's about 1700 in Mid-Cornwall now, so all three namers have gone up and only the Royal Duchy is yet to reappear.

 

We used Pentowan as the temporary terminus for the long clay train again, so that it had a slightly longer run and we could see it more more of its journey. I don't expect to have completed working out the movements for the full sequence by next time (September) but in any event if we have more drivers then we'll try some more ad-hoc trains between Polperran and Pentowan, possibly including the two freights (WR and SR).

 

 

[16Brunel]

1 hour ago, St Enodoc said:

It's about 1700 in Mid-Cornwall now

 

Isn't that pre-Grouping?

[ianathompson]

12 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

It's about 1700 in Mid-Cornwall now

 

More advanced and sophisticated than Norfolk then!

 

Ducks for cover.

 

Ian T

[John Besley]

On 10/07/2023 at 03:29, St Enodoc said:

In the real world it would have started from St Blazey which is all part of the Paddington loops in MCL-world.

 

As none of my stock has axleboxes stuffed with horsehair I should be able to get away with that one.

 

Was the horsehair detached from/attached to the horses themselves at Newbury RC?

 

I've come across a few second hand items of stock off Ebay with axleboxes stuffed with hair... defiantly not dog or horse... 

[St Enodoc]

As usual, the day after a running session involved tidying up the layout and dealing with any minor repairs.

 

The main job was to fix St Enodoc 24 signal, which wouldn't pull off (ooer missus). This is the upper of the two arms on the backing signal that controls movements in the Up direction from the Down Main platform line, in this case to the Up Main:

 

I actually noticed the problem on Friday but didn't have time to do anything about it, so yesterday the signal man had to use flags to authorise movements past it (yeah, right...).

 

When I investigated today, I found that the down rod for 24 signal was rubbing against the pivot for 13 signal below it and the friction force was too great for the memory wire actuator to overcome. A quick tweak with tweezers put a slight elbow in the down rod and all is now well.

 

After that I thought I'd do some preparation for the Pentowan uncouplers.

 

When I removed all the H&M point motors from Paddington and Penzance to replace them by Cobalts a few years ago, I took the opportunity to sort my whole stock of SM3s into those that were in good order, those that could be fixed easily (generally with a bit of tweaking to ease the armature) and those that weren't worth fixing at all (mostly due to distortion of the frame or other physical damage). I put these groups into separate boxes for storage.

 

Today I decided to get some motors out of the "NBG" box to cannibalise for the coils (you're getting ahead of me here...).

 

Fat chance. All I could find was the box of good motors, the other two boxes being nowhere in sight. I even looked inside the Shackleton box to see whether they were hiding there but no luck (no I didn't, don't be ridiculous). I'll leave it until next weekend, when the box will either miraculously appear or I'll have to break up a dozen or so motors from the good order box, which seems a shame. We shall see.

[St Enodoc]

10 minutes ago, John Besley said:

 

I've come across a few second hand items of stock off Ebay with axleboxes stuffed with hair... defiantly not dog or horse... 

Short and curly?