PGH

Many thanks for posting the photo, it should be very useful.

More than 4 months on and no response to the above request, so we must assume that Minerva are not willing to supply details of the missing reversing lever to enable anybody who wishes to produce their own. One hopes that future Minerva models don't have any missing parts.

I assume you mean the Wickham on Holyhead Breakwater shown in Post #188 as this is the only one illustrated in this thread. The photo was taken in September 1967, so it must be TR33 Wickham 7692. This was scrapped in April 1975 and replaced by TR23 Wickham 7516.

I also have a copy of the drawing referred to but, from what the original builder - who has the copyright - told me at the time, I think he would not like to see the drawing published on this forum.

When I photographed it at Smalldale in August 1967 - as shown in Post #2 above - I noted the livery as blue with black underframe and buffer beams; red buffers, handrails and coupling rods. Officially it was "RS 154" but there was no evidence of that on the loco or any other lettering.

Seaham Harbour - that certainly takes me back. The first time I travelled to the North East in June 1966 was a two day industrial "bash" and included Seaham Harbour and 12 colliery systems. A total of 89 steam locos were seen of which 45 were working or in steam, plus one solitary diesel and the Westoe electrics. Magic indeed - Happy Days ! I've had another go with the video, with I think a slightly better result. Bear in mind of course that in the prototype the wagons would be moved under the screens by gravity rather than by the locomotive. https://youtu.be/vG1ZrMuEPUY

Previously the colliery screens have only loaded wagons on the centre road but loading facilities have now been provided on the front road, the track nearest the edge of the baseboard. There wasn't enough room heightwise available within the screen building for the fixed hopper and vibrating trough arrangement used on the centre road so I used a vibrating hopper, possibly a similar method to that used by Ruston on his Royd Hall Colliery layout. A sensible method for building the hopper would have been in Plastikard or similar material. However I had none of suitable size in stock, but what I did have was a large and rather tarnished sheet of 0.020" nickel silver which had been given to me some time ago, so I decided to use that. The hopper would be sat on 4 springs, one at each corner, and vibrated by a 12 volt motor with an out of centre flywheel fixed to one end. Discharge would be via a small opening and 'spout' at one side into a chute to direct the flow into the wagons below. To make the hopper discharge fully the bottom would have to slope in all directions to the discharge point. To give some rigidity the top edge of the sides and one end were turned over through 180 degrees. The bottom edge was also turned over but using more material which was shaped as required to support the floor. Thicker brass plate was used for the end to which the motor would be attached. Before fixing the motor tests were carried out with it temporarily clamped to the completed hopper and it was determined that fixed horizontally as shown gave the best result, in effect vibrating the hopper up and down rather than side to side. The relationship between the height of the discharge opening and length of 'spout' is important, too big an opening or too short a spout would result in some of the contents of the hopper discharging without operation of the vibrator as shown in the sketch below. Brackets were provided at each corner for the springs, mounted top and bottom on turned brass spigots The springs were located on MDF blocks to raise the hopper clear of the existing trough feeding the centre road. The inside of the building is unusually clean because it has been thoroughly vacuumed to remove any coal dust from previous operations The Hopper in position Wired up and filled with coal ready for operation, the contents will comfortably fill 8 wagons. Control is via a changeover switch between the two loaders and a DC controller to regulate the motor speed. Operation is reasonably quiet as shown in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxEHCtAh-g8 Not the most exciting of videos - and you can barely see what's happening despite the fact that a torch was taped to the top of the camera trying to illuminate the action, but it might give some idea of the loading operation.

Hi Rich, Thanks for the info, but with only two wagons to do and part of the lettering available it didn't seem worth commissioning special transfers. However its worth bearing in mind for future projects, although it probably won't be for wagons - with 50 wagons available now the layout is just about full ! With regard to operating the point - Yes it probably would have been possible to work the point remotely, but a bit of finger poking doesn't worry me and it doesn't seem much different to operating 3 link couplings or end door catches. A "finger from the sky" is out of place but so is the absence of a little scale person to actually operate the lever.

Lines in the Landscape - Lines can change but so can the Landscape. A Class 47 on a Holyhead to London train at the West End of Colwyn Bay in 1980 Taken from the same view point, a footbridge, with a wider angle lens, the same scene in February 1983 during construction of the new A55 road through the town with 40106 on a Bangor to Manchester train. The overbridge in the left distance is the same although the properties on the right of it in the earlier view have been demolished and all the trees on each side of the line removed. The wide railway formation (it was originally 4 tracks here) was used for the new road and the railway moved over to run alongside the new wooden fence on the right.

The Dapol wagons are now completed and repainted. The lettering caused some problems. The internal user wagons shown earlier in this thread were lettered with a combination of specially made custom rub on transfers, for the small lettering, "NCB" and "X"s, and commercial rub on transfers for the numbers, the latter since discontinued. I just managed to salvage enough from the remains of these old transfers for the "internal use only" and numbers. The "NCB"s are from waterslide transfers of unknown make found on Ebay and the "X"s are self adhesive vinyl letters normally used on model boats. The wagon numbers chosen are fairly significant. The wagons are a useful addition for the operation of the canal tip, as shown in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86VxQfXYGwo One problem to be solved is they don't roll quite as well as the Peco wagons and need a slight amount of assistance (not shown in the video !) to get them moving off the tippler.

LEANDER passing Conwy Castle in 2005:

Osgood, This may be the photo you are looking for. I must have downloaded it some time ago and unfortunately didn't record the source. Its only a low resolution image and it would be nice to obtain a better quality image if the negative is still in existence. I visited Gin Pit twice in 1964 and saw and photographed EMANUEL CLEGG, just the "usual" three quarter front views. Its a big regret that I didn't take more interest in the loco then and I wish I'd taken more photos, detail photos and measurements. Of course at that time there was still plenty to see in South Lancashire and trips to the area were designed to see as much as possible in the day, usually a Saturday. Both the 0-8-0Ts at Gin Pit were withdrawn in 1958. There are published accounts that say MADEN saw further use after that date and repairs were actually commenced, but they were never completed. By that date heavy locomotive overhauls in the Manchester Area were carried out in the newly extended locomotive repair shop at Walkden Central Workshops. The Lowca 0-6-0T T.B.WOOD had been sent from Gin to Walkden for repair in 1957, but Walkden decided it wasn't worth repairing and scrapped it. Possibly fearing the same might happen to MADEN repairs were commenced at Gin. The loco was stripped down and the boiler sent to a private contractor for assessment. The wheels were sent to Walkden where they were noted by Cyril Golding in March 1959. Reports of several visits by Industrial Railway Society (or Birmingham Locomotive Club, Industrial Locomotive Information Section as it was then) members to Gin between 1958 and 1961 confirm that the loco was never re-assembled and in December 1961 it was described as "frame only in shed, other parts outside for scrap". The remains of MADEN were sold for scrap in 1962. EMANUEL CLEGG was also sold for scrap in 1962 to a different scrap merchant but it was 3 years before the loco was actually broken up as Salford Museum had a proposal to preserve it along with a tram. However the proposal fell through, the loco was scrapped and the tram went to the USA. The 7mm scale model of EMANUEL CLEGG shown in the link in Post #4 above on the Preston 0 Gauge Group's website has visited my 'Moving Coal' layout and made an interesting comparison with the Manning Wardle 0-8-0T KATHARINE.

Festiniog Railway at Tan-y-Grisiau in August 2004 with MOUNTAINEER on a Blaenau Ffestiniog train. On the hillside behind the train is the course of the spectacular incline which formerly connected the Wrsgan Slate Quarry to the railway, disappearing into a tunnel through the rock face at top left. Perhaps not quite relevant to this topic (?) but these two photos taken at the top of the incline may be of interest - looking down through the tunnel and the remains of the winding gear. The train now stopped at Tan-y-Grisiau Station. In the right foreground is the Tan-y-Grisau Reservoir, the bottom reservoir of the pumped storage scheme which caused the diversion of the railway, and in the right distance under cloud shadow the slate tips of Blaenau Ffestiniog.

Cliff, Excellent video, if you don't mind me asking - what make/model of video camera were you using ? Philip

Great Orme Tramway - cars about to pass on the top section of the line in July 2016. Centre right is the entrance to the Great Orme Bronze Age Copper Mines and beyond in the distance the town of Llandudno.

Welsh Highland Railway in Aberglaslyn Pass - 6 hours ago:

So down at the "farm" something "evil" (but necessary !) is happening - fitting a Hornby Grange for DCC sound. The instructions were to fit it with a large bass reflex speaker in the tender rather than the small circular speaker its designed to take. This meant removing as much as possible inside the tender including one of the two posts which fix the body to the chassis. Underside view of the tender body as amended - all the coal space below the top plate was removed and the top plate cut back. The top of the tender chassis was cleared down to footplate level. The completed installation - the Zimo MX645 decoder was sited as far back as possible so the two capacitors would be under the highest part of the coal load. All items were located on double sided self adhesive foam pads. No doubt a video of the loco in action at Carrog will appear here before too long (or should I hang on to it until he completes that down platform )

Turbocad Designer 2D

I must have a different version of the list as Peckett 1824 is listed as the standard gauge 0-8-0 for the Christmas Island Phosphate Co. Pecketts 1827, 1828 and 1829 were 'Class B3 Special' 0-6-0Ts for 3'-6" gauge to the order of Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Co.Ltd. and sent in parts to Beira via the East India Dock, London. 1827 was ex works 11/5/1931; 1828 ex works 2/6/1931 and 1829 ex works 26/6/1931. All three were taken over by the Nyasaland Railways. The above information is from a copy of a works list compiled I believe by the late R.T.Russell at Pecketts and there is no mention of 1828 and 1829 being originally intended for the GWR.

The ABS whitemetal brakegear now fitted, with Ambis etched levers and lever guides. Safety loops were from copper wire and nickel silver strip. tbc

I originally intended to replace just the door catches at each end of the horizontal bar at the bottom of the door but there is very little to attach these to so I decided it would be better to replace the complete bar itself in brass. The 'bolts' will be short lengths of 0.6mm diameter nickel silver and the brass will be chemically blackened before final fixing. The existing buffers were quite reasonable but lacked the raised ribs at the door end to retain the floor planks so they were replaced by Slaters buffers. The coupling hooks and plates were spare Ambis etchings. A similar door catch was used to that previously shown on the Peco steel wagons worked by a similar lever. tbc

There has been no recent progress on the layout itself. However following the return to 00 gauge by friend coachmann with his Carrog layout he very kindly gave me two Dapol 0 gauge 7 plank wagons. Now the layout isn't really short of open wagons, there are a total of 48 which can be used for coal traffic comprising a mixture of wooden 7 plank wagons and steel 16t minerals, but what it doesn't have is any 7 plank wagons with opening end doors which can be used on the end tippler. So I decided these Dapol wagons might be suitable for conversion to provide this facility and also generally improved using spare wheels, brakegear, etc left over from previous wagon builds. There has been some comments about certain problems with Dapol wagons in general elsewhere on this forum but I think the basic body/chassis mouldings of these wagons is reasonably acceptable. Wheelbase is OK, overall width about right, height perhaps a touch too high - Height comparison: left to right - Dapol/Lionheart - Dapol/Slaters - Dapol/Parkside They are a touch higher than the Lionheart and slightly higher than the Slaters and Parkside wagons. Overall body length is about 11/2 mm too long. First step was to remove the rather poor representation of brakegear, to be replaced by spare ABS whitemetal brakegear. The wheels were replaced by Slaters which I also had spare in stock, they have a slightly smaller flange depth and better shaped spokes. The outside edges of the 'W' irons were chamfered to make them look thinner. The end door was removed using a craft knife, working from the outside and the inside, giving a slightly tapered opening. The door was hinged with a length of 0.7mm diameter nickel silver. Maybe this should be a slightly larger diameter but I wanted to leave as much material as possible in the plastic hinges. to be continued......

I think you are correct in thinking that the more distant (left hand) loco is No.4 CONSTANCE, the nearest (right hand) loco would be 5 0-6-2T Vulcan Foundry 1342 of 1892. It has the same 14 spoke wheels as the 0-6-2T, although unfortunately the distinctive balance weights on the first and last coupled wheels are hidden behind debris. According to IRS records 5 was scrapped in January 1957 and No.4 circa February 1957 and the photo confirms that scrapping was more advanced on 5 than No.4 at the time of the photo.

1/2500 Editions of the Ordnance Survey seem to be very rare for the Carrog Area - 1875, 1901 and the 1970's. The cattle dock and weighing machine are shown on the 1875 map, presumably provided when the station was first opened. The weighing machine remained until at least 1957, the weighing equipment being housed in a small wooden shelter. The two goods sidings were originally supplemented by wagon turntables and three short stub sidings, probably removed when the sidings were realigned to accommodate the extended platform and signal box at the same time as the loop and additional platform were provided. Altogether quite an interesting little station and with its restoration in the preservation era giving an opportunity of running an endless variety of trains through it.

No, sorry Mike, I only measured Brake Van No.4 which was out of use. The other van was in use at the time but I would guess that it would be a fairly similar size. PGH