Mid-Cornwall Lines - 1950s Western Region in 00

[St Enodoc]

6 minutes ago, Neal Ball said:

 

I'm feeling Grange envy - I only have the one :-(

So did I for a long time, until the Hornby model came out.

[Tankerman]

39 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

Robin @gwrrob, Kevin @KNP and  John @checkrail have been showcasing their Grange fleets recently, so I said I would do the same. I have six, all 83G Penzance engines, shown here in numerical order:

 

6800 is a completely standard Hornby model. Apart from fitting a decoder, fitting a DG coupling and renumbering/renaming I haven't done any work on it yet (which is also true of most of the others, I'm afraid).

 

6809, on the other hand, involved a lot more (too much) effort.

 

When I was on a weekly commute between home in Polesworth and work in Croydon, over 25 years ago, I wanted something to stop me going to the pub every night. I'd bought a K's Grange Bodyline kit some time earlier and in those days Bachmann sold loco chassis as spares. So I bought a Manor chassis and built the Grange body to fit. What a palaver that was, because the firebox wasn't wide enough inside to clear the Bachmann mechanism. Even after thinning the cast sides as much as I dared, there wasn't room. In the end, I had to leave a gap between the firebox halves and fill it later.

 

That wasn't all. Back home, I painted the loco but it didn't look very good, so I stripped the paint and primer with Nitromors. Unfortunately, that stripped out all the filler I'd used to fill various gaps as well, so I had to do the filling, priming and painting all over again.

 

6809 is in lined black. I'd seen one photo of an unidentified Grange in this livery at St Austell. I've no idea whether 6809 itself ever carried it but I like it, so there.

 

6824 is another standard Hornby model, which used to be numbered 6825. Read on...

 

6825 is one of the later Hornby models with a small tender, which is where the decoder lives. I've got photos of 6825 in this form and colour so I pinched its identity from what is now 6824.

 

6836 is another original Hornby model. I see that the cylinders have gone seriously cock-eyed. I'll have to fix that.

 

6860, finally, is also a standard Hornby model, which like 6824 came factory weathered.

 

This has brought back memories of my train spotting days at Truro. They started when I was 10 and went there by train from Penryn, my parents didn't know about it for 18 months.☺️

[Keith Addenbrooke]

I hadn’t realised that the 68xx class included both Llanvair Grange (6825 as above in @St Enodoc’s collection) and Llanfair Grange (6877 as below, long since sold).  My understanding, which could be wrong, is they are the alternative spellings for the same house in Monmouthshire?

 

 

A very nicely detailed locomotive, though from memory mine had very little pulling power?  As I mainly ran three coach trains on this never-finished layout, that wasn’t a problem.  Nice to see the photos (all much better than mine) of the Saint’s six, Keith.

[checkrail]

Great to see the Granges John.   The building of 6809 sounds like quite an epic struggle!

 

Handsome (and capable) locos.  Seeing them all side-on as here confirms my preference for the small tender in aesthetic terms - looks a bit more 'balanced'.  

[St Enodoc]

1 hour ago, checkrail said:

The building of 6809 sounds like quite an epic struggle!

Yes, that was the short version.

[Nick Gough]

2 hours ago, Keith Addenbrooke said:

I hadn’t realised that the 68xx class included both Llanvair Grange (6825 as above in @St Enodoc’s collection) and Llanfair Grange (6877 as below, long since sold).  My understanding, which could be wrong, is they are the alternative spellings for the same house in Monmouthshire?

 

Yes, according to part 14 - Locomotives of the GWR (RCTS).

[John Besley]

Mind you when 7802 Bradley Manor first was on the main line she ran with a tender off a Hall I believe and kind of looked Grange like... long before the 6880 Bretton Grange project stated

[St Enodoc]

I added some droppers and feeders to the Pentowan spur today, so apart from adjusting various siding lengths when I fit the stop blocks Pentowan trackwork really is now complete.

[16Brunel]

GWR 0089 Penfold's Grange...

[John Besley]

10 hours ago, 16Brunel said:

GWR 0089 Penfold's Grange...

 

Didn't know they had them down under...

[Rugd1022]

On 29/07/2023 at 09:29, Tankerman said:

 

This has brought back memories of my train spotting days at Truro. They started when I was 10 and went there by train from Penryn, my parents didn't know about it for 18 months.☺️

 

Well there's a nice coincidence - last week I was doing a ballast job down Banbury way and I got chatting with the Engineering Supervisor, he came from Truro and started spotting there as a nipper, he said he could just about recall the end of steam in Cornwall.

 

 

[Tankerman]

4 hours ago, Rugd1022 said:

 

Well there's a nice coincidence - last week I was doing a ballast job down Banbury way and I got chatting with the Engineering Supervisor, he came from Truro and started spotting there as a nipper, he said he could just about recall the end of steam in Cornwall.

 

 

 

Cornwall was one of the first areas to be completely converted to diesel traction, from memory it was completed by the end of 1962. BR told the press it was to show that they were prioritising Cornwall's railways, but a railway man I knew told me that it saved a lot of money because it was a lot cheaper to transport diesel than coal.🙂

[Flying Fox 34F]

7 hours ago, Tankerman said:

 

Cornwall was one of the first areas to be completely converted to diesel traction, from memory it was completed by the end of 1962. BR told the press it was to show that they were prioritising Cornwall's railways, but a railway man I knew told me that it saved a lot of money because it was a lot cheaper to transport diesel than coal.🙂

The joys of spinning the news!!!!!

 

Paul

[St Enodoc]

@Michael Edge Mike, what voltage do you run these at, please? The (only) one I've got installed at the moment doesn't seem to have enough guts at 3V (equivalent to 1A), so I turned it up to 4.5V but I think it might get a bit warm at 1.5A. Your thoughts?

[5BarVT]

4 hours ago, Flying Fox 34F said:

The joys of spinning the news!!!!!

 

Paul

Now where have I come across that before?!

Ah well, I’m retired now. 
Paul. 

[Michael Edge]

5 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

@Michael Edge Mike, what voltage do you run these at, please? The (only) one I've got installed at the moment doesn't seem to have enough guts at 3V (equivalent to 1A), so I turned it up to 4.5V but I think it might get a bit warm at 1.5A. Your thoughts?

Mine run at something around 20v, they can get a bit warm if you keep them on too long.

[St Enodoc]

1 hour ago, 5BarVT said:

Ah well, I’m retired now.

Me too - officially as of today, final day at work last Thursday!

[St Enodoc]

12 minutes ago, Michael Edge said:

Mine run at something around 20v, they can get a bit warm if you keep them on too long.

Wow! That would be over 6A. I don't think my power supply would cope with that. Anyway, that gives me confidence to up it a bit. Thanks.

[acg5324]

Welcome to the retirees club John.

[5BarVT]

3 hours ago, Michael Edge said:

Mine run at something around 20v, they can get a bit warm if you keep them on too long.

Is that 20V measured across the coil or a 20V supply?

3 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

Wow! That would be over 6A. I don't think my power supply would cope with that. Anyway, that gives me confidence to up it a bit. Thanks.

20V 6A is a lot of Watts.  I would expect very hot very quickly, hence the question above.  I suspect IR in the supply is reducing the current a bit.

But certainly opportunity to up the Amps a bit.

Paul.

[5BarVT]

3 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

Me too - officially as of today, final day at work last Thursday!

Congratulations.

What will you do with all the extra time?

 

See last photo . . .

Have you been given your ‘to do’ list yet?
;-)

Paul.

[ian]

Of course, now that you are retired you'll have plenty of time to build that Shackleton...

[Barry O]

6 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

Me too - officially as of today, final day at work last Thursday!

Last man working from our uni group..  some of us got out years ago!

 

Welcome to the "wherethehellhasmysparetimegone!" Group.

 

Baz

[St Enodoc]

7 hours ago, 5BarVT said:

Is that 20V measured across the coil or a 20V supply?

20V 6A is a lot of Watts.  I would expect very hot very quickly, hence the question above.  I suspect IR in the supply is reducing the current a bit.

But certainly opportunity to up the Amps a bit.

Paul.

I'll leave @Michael Edge Mike to clarify that, Paul. I measured mine across the coils, which have a dc resistance of about 3 ohms. I'll try them again on a higher voltage but I've had a different idea altogether, which I'll report back on once I've tried it.

[St Enodoc]

7 hours ago, 5BarVT said:

Congratulations.

What will you do with all the extra time?

Obviously I'll have more time for Mid-Cornwall Lines matters but other than that and some long-delayed travel I plan to do as little as possible until I get bored with it, after which I might well do some voluntary work. We shall see.

 

7 hours ago, 5BarVT said:

 

See last photo . . .

Interesting. Ian's Shack is an MR3 (tricycle), whereas mine will be an MR2 (tailwheel).

 

8 hours ago, 5BarVT said:

Have you been given your ‘to do’ list yet?

I've had the to-do list for sometime. I now have fewer excuses not to implement it...