NeilHB

It is suspected that some of the staff had been circus acrobats in a former life, owing to their ability to enter/exit the tram locos without any form of steps...😆

Plenty of progress to report on “St Machan” over the last couple of days. All beading was completed, and (thanks to a suggestion from Mr Young), No.4 was used as a prototype to trial some steps out: These worked nicely so I started retro-fitting them to No.2 “Sigrid”: Just the other side to do, before a trip to the paintshop and then No.1 can be sorted. No.3 will be tackled when she returns from being sound fitted. Having got all of the major bodywork completed on No.4, it paid a visit to the paintshop this afternoon for its first coat of ETCo Indian Red: Next comes the fun task of sorting the roof out, but that will have to wait until my restock of glue has arrived.

Sorry to hear that Annie, look after yourself please and I hope that you and your daughter are both feeling better soon.

Thanks John, I'll source some suitable size plastic strip/section and get cracking with building the train shed. It'll sit on a low wall to support the non-platform side so that the legs are all the same length, I just need to order some more platform edge sections from 422 Modelmaking to do this. Last night was our bi-monthly zoom meeting, so I actually did some modelling, and made a start on ETCo No.4, "St Machan". This was the largest and final design of the Hatt tram locos, being an enlarged version of No.3 "Gerda", and having a six-coupled wheelbase: At lunchtime today I cracked on and got the basic bodywork sorted, and then added a few of the details so that you get an impression of how it will look: Having felt a bit flat and meh for the last couple of weeks it feels good to be doing some modelling again. Next step is the oh so fun task of adding all the beading!

So effectively it needs the small angled timbers at the top of each post then, rather than the large cross-bracing? That would at least enable the trams to be a bit more visible. What sort of size do we reckon for the timber uprights/framing etc? 12inch square?

Thanks Tom, they’re very useful dimensions.

Tom, That freelance BP 2-4-0T is rather delightful - would it be possible to ask for the key measurements please as I'm wondering now about a scratchbuilt 7mm version. Thanks, Neil

The Brake Van looks quite similar to those supplied to the Rother Valley Railway (before it became the K&ESR) along with their 4-wheel coaches. I must get on and build up the pair of coaches I've got to run on Ffarquhar Road. That Nidd Valley saloon is really rather delightful! I feel a new scratchbuilding project coming on 😄

Lovely work Ade.

Lovely work Linny, the Horsebox looks delightful. I like your idea with the door and commode handles, very sensible with what could otherwise be fragile areas of the print.

The inspection saloon is quite delightful John, a lovely piece of work. I rather like the Persian carpets, they had a nice touch to it.

Don't worry, it took me long enough to get going with Ffarquhar Road John, and that wasn't actually the first part of the ETCo that I'd intended to model either. This all sounds very interesting, and lots of scope for what I think will be a very nice layout.

I like the converted Jubilee wagon, that's a rather nifty idea! I think the resin wagon body was by either HMRS (Historical Model Railway Society), or possibly Hobby Holidays. I have a couple of them somewhere, but I modified mine to remove the curved top plank.

I did a bit of doodling yesterday to sketch out a design for the train shed at Ffarquhar Road: Its a fairly basic affair, but will do to give passengers and rolling stock a bit more protection from the elements. There then followed a lengthy discussion with my fellow co-conspirator of silly ideas regarding some changes I’ve been thinking of making to Ffarquhar Road for a while…which I then put into motion earlier today! I’ve had some issues with the siding behind the platform for some time now, as it was too close to the backscene and the platform to enable me to fit in the goods shed which should have been located there. So that got promptly removed as the first step. This meant that I could then shift the whole platform along closer to the fiddleyard, which meant that it was contained on one board and not crossing the board joint. Therefore that can now be fixed down permanently (one less thing to forget to take with me when the layout does go out!). There’s enough room at the end for the local omnibus to sit and wait for the onward connection to Ulfstead, which makes for a nice little scene: The water tower and associated bothy could then be relocated to the other end of the platform: Which I think works quite nicely there. The next step was very drastic, and the track cutters and scalpel came out to play and the moths flew out of the wallet… Ffarquhar is getting an extension! Albeit a very narrow one. Two additional 900x200mm boards have been ordered to extend the layout to 600mm width, which then allows me to fit in a new siding along the front edge of the layout: As mocked up here. The coal merchant will be relocated on to this siding, and the railways goods shed will go where the coal merchants currently is. Hopefully the new plan helps to makes sense of the changes. It also means I can fit in the station masters cottage too, which will do nicely as the view blocker to hide the entrance to the fiddle yard. I’m feeling a bit more enthused now about cracking on and finishing the layout off :D

Glad to hear that you've had a bit of a breakthrough with the scheme for Severnbury (Riverside) John, I look forward to seeing the sketches over on your L&H thread. For those of you not aware of John's thread it's here:

Thanks Annie, definitely shades of Wantage with the overall roof. Add to that a good dash of Lambton Town (O-16.5 steam tramway - RM May 2016) which had a big influence on the trackplan.

Thanks Sam, something along those lines is probably what it will end up looking like.

The interior is quite spectacular, more church than train shed really! Oh yes, the American 4-4-0 with conventional buffing gear is rather delightful. If I remember correctly there was an article in one of the now long gone modelling magazines in the 1980s' about converting one of the Rivarossi 4-6-0's (I think) into one of the 2-6-0's as supplied to the Midland, Great Northern and Great Central Railways. No reason to suppose that a brace of 4-4-0's weren't supplied alongside the 2-6-0's in your own version of reality. After some deliberation this morning I think Ffarquhar Road will be getting an overall roof/train shed, although a very short one. I had a quick play about with the roof from the station building which is about as long as it needs to be: Need to work out the right height etc, but a corrugated iron and timber structure (open sided) will work quite nicely here.

No worries. A mock up sounds like a good place to start, and is something I'll probably do with Elsbridge when I get to it. Your layout will be nice and compact then, look forward to hear more about it in due course. Yes far too hot to do anything really, modelling is definitely on the back burner as the train room is sweltering at the moment. Ooh now that's a rather impressive train shed, and all to serve a cemetery as well! Some good info about it here for those of you not familiar with the Rookwood Mortuary Railway

Yes, one of my long term aims when planning the ETCo has been to include an overall roof, although I'm still not sure if Ffarquhar Road will have one as I think it may overpower given the relatively small size of the layout. I'll have to mock one up and see how it looks, though perhaps something akin to a shortened version of Callington may be suitable as it would still allow the trams to be seen: A lot of my thinking has been influenced by Wantage, Corris, Fintona and Dave Holman's 7mm scale 'Loose End' and Giles Barnabe's 7mm scale 'Stratford Waterside' etc. I'd not seen a photo of the one at the Zetland Hotel, that's rather cute and compact. I particularly like the ironwork on the gable end. Have you got any plans for your Severnbury (Riverside) please? Quite interested to see how other freelancers approach station design etc.

Thank you very much. Still a long way to go and plenty to do but I am happy with how it’s coming together. The 422 parts are great, and Andrew is quite happy to mix and match bits from different kits as well which is great. Yes I would agree about the “Pickering” look of the saloon centre brake. With a bit of cutting and shutting you could probably combine a couple of them together and it would make a nice short bogie coach. I’ve not managed to do much modelling over the last couple of weeks, other than pondering over a further WSR coach. This one is from a set of resin O-16.5 coach sides. I’d originally bodged it into a short bogie coach, but this was too big for Ffarquhar Road, so it’s been cut down into a short 4-wheel 1st/Third Saloon Composite. Just could do with the train room being a bit cooler so I can get on with actually sticking the sides together and building the rest of it: I’ve not been entirely idle though, and have been doodling a multitude of ideas for the next phase of the layout. After much discussions I’ve got permission now to convert the far end of the garage into a home for Ffarquhar Road, and incorporate it into a larger layout, which is exciting! I’ve got 12’6”x10’6” to play with, which will give me plenty of room I think for what I want to do. Ffarquhar Road will reside on the right hand wall, with an additional scenic board to complete the station loop and rear goods siding. On the left hand side will be my version of Elsbridge. The plan is still being finalised, but here’s the current iteration of the plan, and some thoughts about why it’s laid out as it is: Elsbridge was the original top terminus of the Elsbridge Tramway Company (ETCo) until the opening of the extension to Ffarquhar in 1895. Due to the location of the station in the town, direct onward extension to Ffarquhar was not possible, so the extension utilised the short branch to the wharves on the River Els as a starting point (other industries were also situated along here), which ran out of the station to the SW before swinging round almost 180* and crossed the River Els via the Town Bridge of 1779/80, running down the middle of the road on its route to reach Ffarquhar and ultimately the stone quarries on Anopha Fell. The wharves on the river remained in use, and were served by a pair of sidings off the extension. Elsbridge was therefore a fairly busy station, with plenty of movements during the day. Trams from Knapford arrived and ran into the loop, whereby the loco ran round and then propelled the train into the platform road to enable passengers to disembark etc. It then drew forward into the loop, and waited for the incoming tram from Ffarquhar Road to arrive, which ran into the other side of the loop (nearest the goods sidings). Once the tram from Knapford had departed to Ffarquhar, the tram from Ffarquhar would run round, and propel into the platform road ready to continue on its way to Knapford Junc. The main loco and carriage sheds were located on the outskirts of Elsbridge alongside the main line to Knapford, so the Elsbridge duty shunter did not have far to travel at the start of the day. This loco had responsibility for shunting the goods yard in the station, and also shunting the river wharves and St Pedroc’s Dairy, along with the flour mill which sent and received traffic by rail. The duty shunter could also be utilised to give trams departing to Ffarquhar a helping push up the grade over the Town Bridge, with its notorious hump in the middle which sometimes proved problematic to loaded trams in either direction. The gradient, combined with the sharp curves on this section of line, limited the length of trains that could be run. Four-coupled tram locos were limited to a maximum of four wagons, or two tramcars and luggage van, whilst the six-coupled trams could manage five to six wagons, depending on the load, or three tramcars and luggage van. The first and last trains of the day were usually passenger only, the rest throughout the day ran as mixed services. The only exception to this was on Market Day, when a number of passenger trams were run in order to cater for demand. The Elsbridge plan will allow me to model a longer time period as well, covering from the opening of the tramway in the 1870s, right through to the late 1920s/early 30s (my chosen cut off point), with only a few changes to stock etc. What do you think please folks?

A nuisance of cats sounds about right, or in our case a nuisance cat! Tigger likes to make a circuit of our bed in the middle of the night (usually about 3-4am), climbing over my head, onto the windowsill and then jumping out through the gap in the curtains on to the bed again (usually right where I’m sleeping). He’s currently in ‘butter wouldn’t melt mode’ in the youngest dog’s bed: He’s a fluffy hellion (and he knows it) but I wouldn’t change him one bit!

She’s a lovely looking loco, look forward to reading more about her construction in due course.

The new wagons are coming along a treat Mike, they look great. I can thoroughly recommend the boards from Grainge & Hodder, having used them for a couple of projects now.

Brilliant work Alan, its coming along very nicely now.