St Enodoc

Very good Baz. I think the main giveaway is the lining. Hornby's BR passenger lining always looks very dull and the black seems to look more prominent than the orange. edited to correct spelling

In the Northern hemisphere, Autumn marked the traditional start of the railway modelling season. Here in Sydney the first day of Autumn brought temperatures of 36 degrees - the hottest March day for 11 years apparently - followed by a drop of more than 10 degrees, gales and thunderstorms. Not much got built this weekend - only one short L-girder frame that wasn't worth photographing on its own. Next weekend is the North Shore Railway Modellers' Association exhibition at Forestville (http://www.nsrma.com.au/exhibition.htm) so I might get some wagon kits under way, more DG couplings made or even start a copperclad point on the BRMA demonstration stand. On the other hand, I might just spend the weekend nattering and playing trains. After that the rate of progress will be limited during the new rugby season, but I do want to try to get all the frames up and some baseboard tops laid before the BRMA Sydney area group meeting in early May. Moving trains will probably be confined to the current St Enodoc though.

Jez, can you actually see the back when it is in place on the layout? If you can't see it at all then just leave it as plain plastic sheet. If you can "sort of" see it but only at an oblique angle by craning your neck then make it a plain wall with no doors or windows.

Rick, you've got me thinking (dangerous...). The junction for this branch probably wouldn't have been at Grampound Road itself, due to the geography, but more probably near where the main line crosses the River Fal. So some possible names for the junction might be Resugga Castle, Trenoweth, or St Stephen's Coombe. There would certainly have been a station at Grampound itself, so Grampound Road might have had a different name - Trewince, or Ladock Road (in which case Probus and Ladock Halt might have been just Probus). Trewithian would, of course, have been the junction for the aforementioned Gerrans and Portscatho Joint... Back to reality, or my version of it anyway, so out to the garage now to cut up some of the timber I bought earlier. I have to say, though, that today's sausage sizzle wasn't as good as some I've had.

Tony, this is good stuff and very much in line with my own aims, which as you know are more inclined towards operation than construction. For my layout (see the link below) I have generated a sequence based on the Summer 1952 service (= WR-speak for working) timetable for a Friday and Saturday. Even by cutting out approximately half the real trains and applying my rule whereby passenger trains are 60% of the length of their prototypes, I still need well over 200 coaches to work the sequence. I for one would like to see more discussion of why and how we operate our layouts in our particular way, alongside all the excellent constructional conversations that go on. Good luck with the bookazine - and make sure Warner's send enough copies down under!

So what are you waiting for Rick?????

It turns out that the blocks I am looking for are called Fixit blocks, not KD blocks. Either way, they don't seem to be available in Australia so I have just ordered 100 from the UK using eBay. Total cost including airmail is GBP 7.60. Otherwise, little recent progress on account of a week's holiday in Singapore to celebrate the Lunar New Year with Veronica's family. This weekend should see some action though with another trip to Bunnings to buy more wood for L-girders.

Or even St Enodoc he says modestly...

That seems to have been an Oxford trademark. Leslie Eden's Bossington Branch was another layout with commentary.

The L-girder framework now extends round one long side and one short side of the railway room. The long side will form the Paddington loops while the Penzance loops will bridge across the roller door. Each set of L-girders is approximately 2000 mm long, with some varying slightly so that the joins between them are clear of the electrical sockets below. Where the L-girders are against a wall they are screwed to the wooden frame of the building. So as not to rely just on the shear strength of the screws, 42 mm x 19 mm legs also support the joins between these L-girders, being screwed to the web of the rear L-girders and to the skirting board at floor level. Where the L-girders are free-standing the joins are supported by 42 mm x 42 mm legs, suitably braced. The Paddington loops are fixed to the wall throughout their length and at their Down end, but the Penzance loops are only fixed to the walls at their two ends because of the roller door. The two intermediate joins are free-standing at the moment, but once everything is lined up in its final position (which probably won’t be until the ply top surface is installed) the legs will be fixed to the floor. I would like to use KD blocks or similar for this but these seem to be hard to get hold of in Australia. The alternative is small timber cleats at the base of the legs. These two photos show the Paddington loops. For the time being, some of the magazine shelves are stored under here and some spare timber for L-girders and joists is resting on the shelves. The L-girders are 600 mm across their outside faces, but the joist and tops will extend 710 mm from the wall so that I can lay 14 parallel tracks at 50 mm spacing, with an extra 5 mm at the front and the back. The legs don’t rest on the carpet by the way – I cut small sections of carpet out so that they rest on the concrete floor itself. Here we have the Penzance loops, with some of the loaded trolleys underneath. The holes in the carpet are more obvious here, as I had to make them bigger to allow the leg positions to be adjusted. If you look closely at the left-hand side of the first picture you will see some plywood resting on the shelves. This will be used for the top of the Penzance loops. By way of a change, here is a Hornby Skaledale Baptist church, which I have placed temporarily on St Enodoc. In the fullness of time a large hole will be cut in the other end and the building will become Pentowan Lifeboat Station. Finally, this Base Toys Karrier Bantam is on its way to Pentowan station to pick up supplies for the major Coastal Command base nearby at RAF Lanherne.

Baz, I thought that quite a number of the MMRS gang did that - John Langan is another name that springs to mind. Before our time of course, but DHT might recall some others. The motors were wound for 24V dc as well I think. By the way, we had an excellent evening with Mr & Mrs Judith Edge Kits yesterday.

That would have been Scotsgap Junction. I wonder how many of these are still around in mint condition? Perhaps I should put it on eBay, or offer it to the AIRMEC project...

I had exactly that problem with a scratchbuilt model of Dunster signal box (from the Ericplans book) which I made many years before the Hornby one came out.

All very well drooling over the W&H catalogue but did you ever try getting your local model shop to order anything from it? They weren't nicknamed Wait & Hope for nothing...

I've now found a reference to a letter in the Model Railway Constructor, Febuary 1962, which stated that the following Mk 1 BGs were in chocolate and cream: W80657 W80662 W80664 W80714 W80724 W81015 - branded "Return to Plymouth - Millbay".

Peter, 39-264 is an RMB - I think that is what you meant to type.

2 - Birkenhead Joint by H Eric Fisher, RM October 1963. 3 - I was a member, briefly, of Renfrewshire MRC in the late 1970s. Elderslie was a great layout, but even more so when connected to Greenock Prince's Pier at one end and St Enoch at the other (St Enoch was generally referred to as St Eunuch, as only one of the two train sheds was modelled).

According to a list I downloaded from somewhere - probably Robert Carroll's BR Coaching Stock Yahoo group site - as at 1/1/62 only W80713 and W80714 were in chocolate and cream. I agree with Coachmann about the windows. The fixed sidelights look too tall and the door droplights look too short.

I did try a local timber merchant, which I won't name, and they were the most unhelpful mob you could imagine. All the wood was in random lengths, mostly 4 m or more, and if you had it cut you had to pay for the whole length including the bit you didn't want. Bunnings also cut sheets and panels - $1 per cut with the first one free. That's where the ply for the trolleys and shelves came from (usual disclaimer). Andy, I should have added that one good thing about L-girders is that if you select the pair of battens carefully, they will straighten each other out.

Won by the late D N E Smith of Didcot fame as I recall, with a fine structure bearing the inscription " I K Brunel, Engineer, 1859" (so there is a Cornish connection!). Finished? No such thing for a model railway. I hope to have the basic double track circuit running by the middle of the year, then I will add the storage loops and move on to the junction. That's when it will get interesting as I will then need to modify and integrate the existing St Enodoc station before continuing down the branch. But again, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Andy, it came from Bunnings, which is the equivalent of B&Q. I went through the racks to get the best lengths - probably rejected 4 out of 5.

To make sure I could move the trolleys and shelves easily I decided that there should be a minimum of 100 mm clearance between the top of a loaded trolley or shelf to the lowest part of the baseboard structure. The general idea for the baseboards is to use L-girders to support joists and the ply track base. The exception to this rule is St Enodoc, where the existing station baseboards will sit on the joists. The current St Enodoc sits on legs that are themselves 1200 mm high, so as to allow reasonably easy duck-under access. With the 98 mm depth of the all-ply boards this gives a baseboard top height of 1298 mm. This, frankly, is just a little too high for comfort. I am 1800 mm tall and the top of the boards is almost at armpit level, making it a little awkward to reach across to the furthest tracks. The Paddington and Penzance loops boards will be 700 mm wide as compared to St Enodoc’s 600 mm, so I decided that the new baseboards should be a little lower all round. I built a trial L-girder frame using 42 x 19 mm wood for both the web and the flange. This did not seem to be quite rigid enough over a 2 m length between legs, so I decided that a deeper flange was necessary and built a replacement using 64 x 19 mm timber for the web. This is a lot sturdier and will therefore become the standard, with 42 x 19 mm joists and 9mm ply to form the track base. This photo shows the difference between the trial and standard L-girders: The result of all this was that if St Enodoc was going to have trolleys under it the baseboard top height would be 960 + 100 + 64 + 19 + 42 + 98 = 1283 mm, which is almost as tall as the existing boards. However, if only shelves are stored under St Enodoc the minimum top height comes down to 845 + 100 + 64 + 19 + 42 + 98 = 1168 mm which is much better. On the other hand, the trolleys will now have to be stored under the main line boards. Will this work? Well, the minimum top height would be 960 + 100 + 64 + 19 + 42 + 9 = 1194 mm. This works out at about chest height for me, which is quite satisfactory for leaning across. I mentioned in post #35 that I want some shallow gradients for visual effect and my starting point for these was to plan them not to be steeper than 1 in 100. This gives a decent tolerance for error and for the vertical transition at the start and end of each gradient. The distance between Porthmellyn Road and St Enodoc is only just over a metre, so a gradient of 1 in 100 giving a 10 mm height difference will be just enough, I hope, to give an impression similar to the Newquay branch dropping away from Par towards St Blazey. This means that the St Enodoc baseboard top height will be 1194 – 10 = 1184 mm and the clearance to the top of the shelves will be 100 + 1184 – 1168 = 116 mm. So far so good, but what about Pentowan? I want the branch to drop more or less continuously from St Enodoc to Treloggan Junction so that trains on the stretch through Indian Queens are concealed at least in part from the St Enodoc signalman. The length of run is about 5 m so at 1 in 100 a vertical separation of 50 mm would result. Now, if the L-girders for Pentowan, Treloggan and Polperran are all at the same height as those for St Enodoc (which will simplify construction considerably) the standard configuration would give a baseboard top height of 845 + 116 + 64 + 19 + 42 + 9 = 1095 mm. This is too low, as the gradient would have to be (1184 – 1095)/5000 = 1 in 56. For a while I couldn’t see how to solve this, but in the end the answer turned out to be to double the height of the joists by adding an extra piece of wood, making each joist 84 mm deep and bringing the top height up to 1137 mm. The drop from St Enodoc to Treloggan is now only 47 mm giving a gradient of about 1 in 105. This will also help when scenery comes along, as I want the curve round from Treloggan to Pentowan to run beside the seaside, so the extra 42 mm joist will allow a low sea wall to divide the railway from the beach. So, in summary, the main lines will run (level all the way) on baseboards with a top height of 1194 mm. The branch will leave Porthmellyn Road, dropping at about 1 in 100 to St Enodoc at a top height of 1184 mm, then drop further at about 1 in 105 to Treloggan Junction. The top height for Treloggan Junction, Pentowan and Polperran will be 1137 mm with level track at all three. A bonus is that Down trains on the branch will indeed be going downhill while Up trains will be going uphill. This will make it easier for operators to remember which direction is which. The final element to consider is the Wheal Veronica branch. This will only be worked by an 0-6-0PT and about half a dozen wagons, so the gradient can be steeper. The plan is for it to rise from St Enodoc, alongside the falling Pentowan line, so that the clay dries themselves are roughly level with the road that crosses the bridge at the Down end of St Enodoc station. The detailed design will be worked out later, but the gradient will probably end up at around 1 in 50. The boxes on their trolleys will, therefore, be stored under Paddington, Porthmellyn Road and Penzance, while the magazines on their shelves will be stored under St Enodoc, Indian Queens, Pentowan and Polperran. In post #48 and this post I have gone into the planning process in some detail, to show how the user requirements were developed into design criteria and then into a concept design for the vertical alignment of the railway, resulting in (literally) a bottom-up solution. If you have stayed with me this far I hope it was all of some interest. Of course, if you gave up before this point you won’t be reading this bit anyway. To end this post, here are some photos of the first completed L-girder frame in place. This will carry the Down end of the Penzance loops as they swing round and join the Up end of the Paddington loops at the bottom right of the block plan in post #35. The frame stands clear of the garage roller door to allow it to be opened if necessary, and also to allow some form of backboard and possibly shelves to be fitted later if I decide to do so.

Won't a power tool be easier than using picks?

The Bachmann and Replica coaches make a nice contrast.

Apart from some very early kitchen cars which used anthracite, all Mark 1s used gas. There were no Mark 2s with real kitchens, and the Mark 3s were all-electric (both HST and loco-hauled).