Mid-Cornwall Lines - 1950s Western Region in 00

[Stubby47]

Thanks, yesterday went superbly. A glorious sunny day for the outside ceremony,  and lots of good company to help celebrate. Even my speech went ok.

[Barry O]

Rain doesn't always stop the game..it can make them longer though

[St Enodoc]

16 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

I didn't get into the railway room last weekend at all, for sound reasons though.

 

On Saturday morning I popped in to the local St Luke's Model Railway Club show, which is always worth a look to see what RosiesBoss of this parish has been up to - scratchbuilding, kitbashing or modifying RTR stock to make yet more obscure GWR pre-grouping locos, coaches and wagons. He said that his next project is a Mersey Railway 0-6-4T, which will be worth looking out for.

 

After that it was off to our monthly BRMA meeting, an hour or so south of Sydney at Picton. We viewed a very nice work-in-progress model based on Bournemouth West, where our host was born. The terminus runs out, prototypically, via a triangular junction to a double track continuous run. There is also a reversing "short cut" and a fiddle yard so plenty of scope for operation.

 

On Sunday we went to an interesting concert which featured a showing of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" with the Henry Mancini soundtrack played live by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Something different and an excellent afternoon's entertainment.

 

So, today I got back to the layout and achieved a nice milestone - all the track in the Penzance loops is laid (although the points are not motorised and I haven't wired the new track up yet). I'll carry on with that after next Saturday's running session, which I am fairly confident will be the last before we can run an expanded sequence.

 

Here's the completed layout at Penzance Down end...

 

...and at the Up end.

 

For good measure I laid the short piece of track connecting Paddington 210 point (the king point for loops 8 to 13) to the rest of the layout. Again, no motor or wiring yet but it does mean that there's no outstanding track work to be done, so I'd better get on with building some more points.

Having slept on it, I think that in the excitement I overestimated my confidence a little. I'll need to build nine more points, lay them and the associated track, fit the motors, wire it all up and program the Mini Panels. After all that I'll need to work out the expanded sequence and label up the extra coaching stock sets. All that in two months of very limited spare time? Probably not.

[St Enodoc]

Another good running session today, with all the electrics behaving themselves this time.

 

Our two new team members, Bill and Dave, got the hang of driving very quickly so we got through the sequence in fine style with four drivers, two yardmasters and a signalman/fat controller. There were only a couple of minor snags. 7711 somehow got a pickup wedged in the spokes of a wheel, like a sprag, and like a sprag it brought the loco to a sudden stop. Very odd that this should happen with no prior notice. Otherwise, I think a good clean of the track, wheels and pickups is due before the next session in July. The air here is quite clean so I only need to do this about once a year.

 

I pretended, just for fun, that the AC Cars railbus was unavailable due to maintenance and had been replaced temporarily by the GRCW single power car. That ran very nicely and once the Pentowan/Polperran section is built it will do a good job on the passenger service alternating with 1419 and its trailer. In the meantime it's back in its box pending sorting out the numbers, fitting a driver (and possibly some passengers), fitting the detailing parts and fitting the Pentowan/Polperran destination blinds.

 

Overall a good afternoon, enhanced by some "democracy cakes" bought this morning from the cake stall at our local Federal election polling station.

[St Enodoc]

I didn't do much actual work on the layout at all this weekend, other than to rearrange the stock after last weeks running session, assemble some Cobalt point motors ready for installation and empty the last box of boxes - which has freed up a good deal of space in the railway room. I just didn't have the urge to start filing up point blades.

 

I haven't been idle though. My hotel thinking time last week was given over to thinking about the expanded sequence that will come into use once the rest of the Paddington and Penzance loops are commissioned.

 

I needed to update the master sequence anyway for several reasons, not least the fact that I've bought a few locos since the last full update. I therefore started by working out what I wanted to achieve in the update, including (if possible):

 

- each loco to start its day's work from the end of the layout corresponding to its home depot.

- assign locos to working based on written or photographic evidence.

- ensure that locos didn't reappear too quickly after going off stage.

- avoid glaring anachronisms within trains (for example, don't roster a Star on the Mk1 TPOs).

- assign locos based on any operating restrictions such as power, weight or route restrictions.

- assign locos so that each loco only works one class of train, allowing the lamps to be fixed in place.

 

I very quickly worked out that to do all this would need a lot more locos than I have, some of which would work very few trains over the course of the sequence, so while keeping the goals in mind I had to compromise to cover all the workings within the current fleet.

 

It was easy to assign the locos to the SR workings, the Polperran branch trains, the china clay trains and the class K freights, as these are all self-contained.

 

I managed to assign some of the locos to the same class of trains, mainly the diesels so that I can keep headcodes and discs constant.

 

The rest of the assignment followed an iterative path, starting with the freight workings, then the Class C parcels, milk and ECS, the ordinary passengers and finally the expresses.

 

One of the big challenges to rail operations in Cornwall is the load limit. Using my usual formula of passenger trains being 60% the length of the real thing, this means that any main line train over 8 coaches long and any branch train over 4 coaches long has to be double-headed. As on the prototype, finding paths for these extra locos between Porthmellyn Road and Pentowan was quite a challenge but in the end the whole thing seems to have fitted together quite well.

 

Of course, when we eventually come to try it out we will definitely find a few anomalies - despite all my checking we have in the past sometimes found locos that need to be on two different trains at the same time; locos that need to start their next run from a different place from where they finished their last; and other annoyances. Fortunately, they can usually be fixed without a wholesale rewrite of the sequence (famous last words...).

 

So that's it for this weekend. Next weekend our BRMA group is visiting Jesse Sim's Brighton Junction for the first second (I missed the first as I was away on holiday) time, which should be good fun. I also hope to start installing point motors at Penzance and, if the mood is right, to start the next batch of points.

Edited May 27, 2019 by St Enodoc
Forgot the gang had been to Jesse's once before

[The Fatadder]

3 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

- each loco to start its day's work from the end of the layout corresponding to its home depot.

- assign locos to working based on written or photographic evidence.

- ensure that locos didn't reappear too quickly after going off stage.

- avoid glaring anachronisms within trains (for example, don't roster a Star on the Mk1 TPOs).

- assign locos based on any operating restrictions such as power, weight or route restrictions.

- assign locos so that each loco only works one class of train, allowing the lamps to be fixed in place.

 

 

I like the logic behind what you are doing, I think I am going to need to make some adjustments to my working timetable file along similar lines.   Although my significant lack of storage roads will always mean running a full 24 hours will mean a lot of moving stock on / off the fiddleyard.  I like the idea of assigning locos based on their class of train, going to need some work but will be well worth it.  

Mentioning having locos set up to work in the direction of their home depot has given me a thought, I don't actually have any Plymouth based locos to run the first Plymouth - Exeter local. 

 

edit:  I have gone through and added the classification, now I am now trying to match locos to workings,

like you I am finding that I don't have nearly enough locos to have enough.  I think I need more 4-6-0s to allow for duplicates for different category workings... 

 

At the moment my biggest shortage is working out what to power the Class D & E workings of which I don't recall any photos saved down so far...

Edited May 26, 2019 by The Fatadder

[Sharky]

15 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

- avoid glaring anachronisms within trains (for example, don't roster a Star on the Mk1 TPOs).

 

What's wrong with a Star on MK1 TPOs?
If that's the only motive power a shed master's got available then that's what he'll use.
He might have to find Doc & Marty's Delorean to make work prototypical as well, but that's besides the point...
 

Edited May 27, 2019 by Sharky

[jcm@gwr]

2 hours ago, Sharky said:

 

What's wrong with a Star on MK1 TPOs?
If that's the only motive power a shed master's got available then that's what he'll use.
He might have to find Doc & Marty's Delorean to make work prototypical as well, but that's besides the point...
 

 

I thought the Star on (any) MK1's indicated their route availability! 

[St Enodoc]

18 hours ago, The Fatadder said:

 

 

I like the logic behind what you are doing, I think I am going to need to make some adjustments to my working timetable file along similar lines.   Although my significant lack of storage roads will always mean running a full 24 hours will mean a lot of moving stock on / off the fiddleyard.  I like the idea of assigning locos based on their class of train, going to need some work but will be well worth it.  

Mentioning having locos set up to work in the direction of their home depot has given me a thought, I don't actually have any Plymouth based locos to run the first Plymouth - Exeter local. 

 

edit:  I have gone through and added the classification, now I am now trying to match locos to workings,

like you I am finding that I don't have nearly enough locos to have enough.  I think I need more 4-6-0s to allow for duplicates for different category workings... 

 

At the moment my biggest shortage is working out what to power the Class D & E workings of which I don't recall any photos saved down so far...

Rich, if you haven't already done so, look at the Cornwall Railway Society website. Despite their name, they have a photo gallery for England (Devon) which, although there probably won't be much from earlier than the 1950s, might give you some clues.

[St Enodoc]

6 hours ago, Sharky said:

 

What's wrong with a Star on MK1 TPOs?
If that's the only motive power a shed master's got available then that's what he'll use.
He might have to find Doc & Marty's Delorean to make work prototypical as well, but that's besides the point...
 

Good job you added that last line!

[St Enodoc]

3 hours ago, jcm@gwr said:

 

I thought the Star on (any) MK1's indicated their route availability! 

The only star I can think of on Mk1 coaches is the one on the solebar that tells you where the vacuum release cord is.

[Martin S-C]

22 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

I needed to update the master sequence anyway for several reasons, not least the fact that I've bought a few locos since the last full update. I therefore started by working out what I wanted to achieve in the update, including (if possible):

 

- each loco to start its day's work from the end of the layout corresponding to its home depot.

- assign locos to working based on written or photographic evidence.

- ensure that locos didn't reappear too quickly after going off stage.

- avoid glaring anachronisms within trains (for example, don't roster a Star on the Mk1 TPOs).

- assign locos based on any operating restrictions such as power, weight or route restrictions.

- assign locos so that each loco only works one class of train, allowing the lamps to be fixed in place.

 

I very quickly worked out that to do all this would need a lot more locos than I have, some of which would work very few trains over the course of the sequence, so while keeping the goals in mind I had to compromise to cover all the workings within the current fleet.

 

I managed to assign some of the locos to the same class of trains, mainly the diesels so that I can keep headcodes and discs constant.

 

The rest of the assignment followed an iterative path, starting with the freight workings, then the Class C parcels, milk and ECS, the ordinary passengers and finally the expresses.

 

Did you leave any written notes behind, or was this process in your head? If the former I'd be very interested in seeing anything of the working-out you went through since a timetable or sequence for my layout has been bumbling about in my head for literally months and I'm no nearer a solution.

[St Enodoc]

5 minutes ago, Martin S-C said:

Did you leave any written notes behind, or was this process in your head? If the former I'd be very interested in seeing anything of the working-out you went through since a timetable or sequence for my layout has been bumbling about in my head for literally months and I'm no nearer a solution.

A bit of both Martin. The master sequence is just a spreadsheet, so by jumping around with filters I could do most of what I needed in my head and directly in the spreadsheet. For some of the trickier iterations I scribbled notes on a piece of paper, mainly so I could remember what I'd done two or three steps earlier. Unfortunately I didn't keep those scraps but even if I had you wouldn't have been able to make head nor tail of them -  a day later nor can I!

 

In case anyone is remotely interested, here's the master spreadsheet. Extracts from this will form the working sequence for the different stages of the layout's development and also for the different roles the operators play - drivers, signalmen and yardmasters.

 

wtt mid cornwall 1952-1957-1958 draft 10.xlsx

[St Enodoc]

Even at the end of a long day, when the urge comes it's hard to resist...

 

.

 

.

 

.

 

so tonight I set to and filed up three sets of blades and vees for the next batch of points. Only a couple of hours' work, but that couple of hours doesn't come round very often.

 

Three down, six to go for the Paddington loops.

[The Fatadder]

6 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

Rich, if you haven't already done so, look at the Cornwall Railway Society website. Despite their name, they have a photo gallery for England (Devon) which, although there probably won't be much from earlier than the 1950s, might give you some clues.

Good idea, I have gone through it before trawling through their 1940s images.  But a quick scan through of the early 50s should help fill in the gaps.

[Neal Ball]

That WTT is terrific, thanks for posting.

 

I too have been thinking that I need to get round to producing a WTT for Henley on Thames and whilst its way too early, the ideas have been floating around in my head for a whiand will now be going into Excel!

 

Thanks for the inspiration!

[jcm@gwr]

21 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

The only star I can think of on Mk1 coaches is the one on the solebar that tells you where the vacuum release cord is.

 

My mistake, you're right,

excuse being that it was a busy weekend and I was tired!

[St Enodoc]

Yesterday we all trooped off to the Wild West (well, the other side of Parramatta anyway) to Jesse Sim's place and had a good look at his Brighton Junction layout. Apart from an intermittent overload on the DCC track bus, everything ran very well and it was good to see some of Jesse's handiwork in the flesh. A nice afternoon tea including cakes and biscuits made by Jesse's sister Ashley, and a nose around one or two of the family's classic Holdens, rounded off the day.

 

Today I had a good working session on the layout, installing the point motors for the eleven new points that I laid a few weeks ago. I got all the mechanical work done and also connected six of them up to the DCC accessory bus and programmed the motors. Next week I'll connect up the remaining five and also connect the frog switches to the terminal blocks feeding each motor. That leaves installing the droppers (which I'll have to make first as I've run out) and connecting everything up to the correct track bus. After that, I'll add the fouling point markers and Penzance will be complete.

 

Next week is also the Queen's Birthday long weekend, which means the Epping Model Railway Society's show at Rosehill Gardens racecourse. That will, as always, be worth a visit.

 

On the sequence front, I sorted out some more minor anomalies, although there are still a couple of places where a loco will reappear a little too soon for my liking. To fix that, I really need (!) one more 4-6-0, so an order for a Hornby Llanvair Grange looks increasingly likely, possibly as a birthday present to myself...

[TrevorP1]

Fouling point markers... That's another job I need to do! What do you use John?

[St Enodoc]

On 02/06/2019 at 18:36, TrevorP1 said:

Fouling point markers... That's another job I need to do! What do you use John?

Trevor, I use wooden skewers that have a wider part at the top, which I add a number to. They fit in a hole in the baseboard:

 

Edited July 18, 2023 by St Enodoc
images restored

[TrevorP1]

18 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

Trevor, I use wooden skewers that have a wider part at the top, which I add a number to. They fit in a hole in the baseboard:

 

Thanks John. I'll keep my eyes open for something like that. KIlls two birds with one stone so to speak.

 

[Stubby47]

They look like they could be quite confusing when the lines are full.

 

Have you considered any electronic methods, which for example, would light an LED when the 'just before the' fouling point was reached ? I appreciate this involves more wiring and complexity, but could be more useful from a longer distance away.

[Michael Edge]

White paint on the sleepers works well enough for Chapel -en-le-Frith.

[St Enodoc]

54 minutes ago, Stubby47 said:

They look like they could be quite confusing when the lines are full.

 

Have you considered any electronic methods, which for example, would light an LED when the 'just before the' fouling point was reached ? I appreciate this involves more wiring and complexity, but could be more useful from a longer distance away.

Too complicated for me Stu. As the drivers generally walk round with their trains, distance isn't really a problem.

[St Enodoc]

30 minutes ago, Michael Edge said:

White paint on the sleepers works well enough for Chapel -en-le-Frith.

I use that as well Mike - in fact a white label with the loop number on it. The posts help when another train is on a track in front of the one you are driving into. They also help drivers to work out which track they are on.