TrevorP1

Message to Command. The front line is undertaking special familiarisation training. Innovative thinking is taking place to make fullest use of the new locomotive. Personnel understand that the task of Command is not an easy one. Nevertheless, they have full confidence in your devotion and skill to create a piece of equipment that will instil pride in its operation. The (model) world is watching. May the forth be with you.

I just wondered if anyone would be interested in these bushes which I’m soon going to install on the layout. Made from string, static grass, various flocks and a bit of patience. No credit due to me for the method but by following Boomer Diorama on YouTube. Link below.

Bushes

Yes, Garsdale Road was at Central Hall. We spent ages watching it too.

The gauge 1 live steam is about the only other thing I can remember. (Unless you count Dad taking me into the Irish pub along the street to enjoy his lunchtime pint!).

Re the conversation on layouts featured in the press ‘back in the day’. It was Garsdale Road that caught my imagination. Reading about it in RM and the standing with my father watching it at the London show. Most of my magazines from those days are long gone but I saved the two copies of RM and still have them.

14 minutes ago, didcot said:

I'm not sure Barrichello was racing following his pirouette along the catch fence. I seem to remember a start incident with JJLehto and wheels into the crowd. I think there was a pit incident as well which brought in the speed limit. 

Yes, that sounds familiar. What a weekend...

13 minutes ago, Reorte said:

Wasn't there also an incident with a tyre bouncing off and injuring someone in the same race?

Yes I think you're right. I believe as a result of an accident involving Rubens Barichello...

20 minutes ago, didcot said:

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.in-tribute-david-brabham-remembers-his-former-team-mate-roland-ratzenberger.1z8PJo5DHfemJis12AkBhy.html

30 years ago Roland Ratzenberger sadly died at the awful Imola weekend in 1994. Often over shadowed by the death of Ayrton Senna the following day. 

I remember it like yesterday. Watching the qualifying live on Eurosport. It was obviously very serious and I just had a gut feeling that it was fatal. John Watson and Allard Kalph (sorry if that's the wrong spelling) were doing the commentary from the same feed. The pictures kept coming and I remember JW almost pleading with whoever was in charge of the TV to cut the feed...

Senna too but was out at the time and only heard later.

8 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

Grocer Heath or Grocer Jack?

Bledy automistake. That’s how rumours start!

41 minutes ago, Mallard60022 said:

So it was you on the floor?

P

Hic...

Before I collapsed a fellow grocer told me they were kept with the strategic reserve of Grange 4-6-0s in that siding inside Box Tunnel.

37 minutes ago, Brinkly said:

 

GWR currently have four weekday diagrams for 2+4 sets. Three of the diagrams are Plymouth-Penzance return workings, generally two round trips per diagram. The fourth diagram is a Plymouth to Exeter stopper, returning ECS to Laira - this is an evening turn. 
 

It has been known recently, due to a lack of units allocated to the west, for a ‘spare’ 2+4 set works up to Exeter from Laira forming a Exeter to Plymouth working (I believe we still have five sets available for use, with two mothballed). This has, however, become something of a rarity as now only Penzance, Par and Plymouth drivers sign the stock. 
 

I doubt they will regain any work, as such north of Plymouth, any time soon as they are looking to withdraw the sets completely fairly soon. I’m quite fortunate that I still have two ‘booked’ turns on them as a guard. However, I doubt that will be for much longer… second to the sleeper, they are my favourite traction to work. Nearest thing we have to traditional train working. 
 

This shot was taken from the rear of a 166 unit (I would like to point out, I wasn’t working said unit) one early January morning. It was forming an Exeter to Penzance working filling in for the booked 158 traction, which had failed the previous evening. A Plymouth driver was on the footplate, with an Exeter conductor working it down to Par. 
 

Best wishes,

 

Nick 

Thanks for the tip. I’m off down there in a couple of weeks so I’ll make sure to take the proper camera and record one for posterity. 

1 hour ago, Mallard60022 said:

I saw one on the ACE at Axminster in 1971. I was drunk.

P

I saw it too…. 🍺

A quick update on the point rodding. At one end I've now soldered two lengths of N/S wire onto the cranks and threaded on some Modelu rollers. All good so far, especially when I remembered to use low melt to fix the wires!

Having been undecided on whether to use Modelu compensators or make up the Wizard ones I had a go at assembling the Wizard ones from the etch. Mmmm.... I might try again but I found this bit too much. Thinking cap on about this. As this small section was a bit of a try out I didn't purchase the 3-roller frames for the other direction but now I feel the job is a 'goer' I'll do this and order a pack of Modelu compensators as well.

A pack of Evergreen strip is due to arrive soon for the roller bases so I'll be getting on with this next. Meanwhile, I'm looking for a 'bigger' job to tackle! Ah yes, the lawn needs mowing...

53 minutes ago, gwrrob said:

I could be tempted by one of these beasts from Rapido, anyone else up for a S160.

 

The Southern had half a dozen at Exmouth Junction. They were normally used in the Salisbury direction but one strayed over the North Cornwall line and got lost in the sidings at Delabole. By the time it was found, the boat for France had gone.  Shame to waste a good engine...

At the limits of my eyesight, soldering skills and S&T knowledge! The first stage in point rodding. It’ll probably make an S&T engineer cry so luckily most of this will be hidden from any normal viewing angle. The main thing is it’s a secure start for the rest. 
 

Soldering on some n/s rodding wire and threading on the Modelu rollers is next. I have some scale size plastic rod to go under the track.

Slowly going cross eyed…

3 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

I managed to build OO rodding with Ratio kits. These Modelu products are definitely of interest here. 

At the moment I've bought the rodding rollers from Modelu and the cranks from Wizard/MSE. My idea being that I can solder the rodding to the brass cranks and then just thread the rollers onto the rodding. Just a small number of parts to see how things go. My signalling diagram is based on Port Isaac Road but I've had to work out the rodding layout. So far it's enjoyable but time consuming. A voyage of discovery!

First I want to install the equipment that is at the side of the platform wall so that the second platform can be built. A lot of Burngullow Lane was built during the various Covid lockdown situations. I bashed on too quickly and one of the things I didn't take into account was the point rodding. 

Excellent! Looking forward to seeing it in position. I’ve walked across the real thing but I don’t care to remember how long ago!

Road overbridges can be a problem. To fix or not to fix! If all goes to plan I will need to face that problem this summer.

3 minutes ago, lezz01 said:

Funnily enough I feel the exact opposite. I found the Lord of the Rings a little tedious and the Hobbit more entertaining. I do like them both enough to have watched them all many times. For some reason the Shire makes me more than a little homesick for rural Buckinghamshire to the point that I get quite emotional.

Regards Lez. 

I can get a homesick for my native county of Hampshire but the county I love is fast becoming more developed and busy. By coincidence we were in Buckinghamshire a few weeks ago visiting Carol’s sister and the area around Aylesbury is becoming developed out of all recognition from the place I knew as a young man. Sadly, sometimes the memories are best…

32 minutes ago, Willie Whizz said:

I had similar reservations, but for once I was pretty well satisfied with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which seemed well-visualised and told to me, even to the extent that much of what they left out was pretty weak or irrelevant stuff in the books anyway (Tom Bombadil et al); the only serious omission being most of the “Scouring of the Shire”. 
 

I can’t say the same for The Hobbit, which stretched and padded what would barely have justified two films into three. 
 

My biggest disappointment in this line in recent years was Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which would have been a passable (but no more) film in its own right - but although telling broadly the same story was emphatically not the ”film of the book”. 

I can’t speak for Captain Corelli but I completely agree about the Tolkien films. I much enjoyed the Lord of the Rings trilogy, being remarkably how I’d visualised events from the book but I gave up after the first Hobbit film and never bothered to see the others.

I had this idea about installing scale point rodding…. Perhaps I should be working in 7mm scale! Nothing like a challenge!

3 hours ago, Barclay said:

Some of the photo's in the magazines do look rather over-processed and over-coloured, and I prefer the more natural look I have to say!

I’m immediately thinking of the average TV add and some of the ‘reality’ shows (in which I have no interest whatsoever!). Has society become used to garish artificial colours?

I love bright colours and wish I had the nerve to dress like Michael Portillo but I find this lurid artificial reality quite awful.

1 hour ago, Miss Prism said:

Tender is slightly odd, with it seems a scratchbuilt Churchward flush-riveted body. It was uncommon to see Granges with late crest Churchward tenders. I understood a new Collett 3500g would be produced for 6880, which is more usual for the class. Maybe the tender they are using has been borrowed (from 3814?).

 

 

Yes, it’s a borrowed tender in order to get 6880 running and earn some hire fees. As far as I know the plan is still to finish building the Collett 3500 gallon tender.

It had been hoped to get 6880 running much earlier in the year but the excessively damp weather we’ve all had put paid to finishing the paintwork any sooner. 

8 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

Many followers of the Mid-Cornwall Lines will also know of @TrevorP1's fine Burngullow Lane layout. If so, you will also probably know that he has recently started a new layout project, Pendoggett Road, which is still located in Cornwall but is based on the North Cornwall line built by the Other Railway.

 

 

 

Now, as you all know, on the Mid-Cornwall Lines, at Porthmellyn Road Down end the main line tracks disappear off the scenic section, into the Penzance loops, under an overbridge. At the moment the road over that bridge has no name.

 

So, given that the Burngullow Lane layout is no more, and that Porthmellyn Road is located theoretically at Burngullow, Trevor has graciously given me permission to name the road Burngullow Lane, to perpetuate the memory of a fine layout that I've always enjoyed reading about. Trevor also pointed out that real life the road is actually called Burngullow Lane, which makes a neat closing of the loop.

 

So, henceforth, the bridge in question will be known as Burngullow Lane bridge.

 

Thanks Trevor.

Thank you John!

Do be careful with the buses though... As we know from the famous photo, buses got to the north side of the bridge but I'm not sure about over it! On the south side there is an impossible (for a bus) hairpin turn or a lane that becomes pretty narrow and tight even in car. There again, Cornish bus drivers are pretty intrepid fellows. 😀

9 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

My first thought was Colin Chapman, the founder of Lotus!

Weirdly, even though I've owned and enjoyed a Lotus that thought never occurred!

'My' Chapman hailed from Bude and studied engineering at Camborne College. If something needed repairing or making from metal Dick - always Richard to his wife - was your man, and if he couldn't do it then you really were in trouble! Interestingly son worked for McLaren and raced his own home built car.

For the motor racing followers among us there was Williams and Chapman Haulage contractors in Delabole. (I'm not sure where this photo came from so if it causes problems I'll remove it).