St Enodoc

Thanks Rick. On the new layout there will be a (dummy) ATC ramp for the Trewoon Junction Up Distant, just where the Up main line enters Tremewan Tunnel. But I'm getting ahead of myself... Applies everywhere if you know what's good for you.

Up early this morning Baz? I used white in the fiddle yard to mark the fouling points on each track, so I had to use a different colour for magnets. As they are activated by yellow push buttons, that seemed to be the obvious choice. With regard to your last point, as we all know there are just two rules. Rule 1 - your other half is always right. Rule 2 - if she is wrong, see Rule 1.

Our first home in Sydney was a rented unit (flat). The spare bedroom was fitted up with bookshelves along one wall, which left a space of just over 9’ x 7’ in old money in which I decided to build a layout. Obviously this was too small for any sort of decent main line layout, but it was a nice size for a simple oval. I therefore started work on exactly that, the third St Enodoc, which is a through station with a trackplan based on Bugle albeit with single track instead of double at the Up end. The Carbis branch leads to the off-stage china clay dries. Nicktoix of this parish might recognise some elements of his old Buckden layout in the design. During my furlough from active modelling I had been following the development of DCC and after joining the North Shore Railway Modellers’ Association (NSRMA) I was able to get some hands-on experience, the club layouts being powered by NCE equipment. At last I could see a simple way to separate the roles of driver and signalman on a layout, so I decided that my own new layout would be powered by DCC from the start. As a digression, I had previously worked out a way of connecting analogue controllers to different track sections without the use of manual switches but by routing the power through the point and signal controls, using PO key switches with their eight sets of changeover contacts. I called it Cascade Section Switching, and the idea was that depending on which points and signals were set the track would be connected to the correct controller at the receiving end of the movement. It worked on a trial set-up but would have been fearsomely complicated for an actual main line layout. In parallel with building the layout, I started chipping my existing loco fleet. This was by no means as hard as some people had led me to believe, even with old-style chassis where the wheels were only insulated on one side. Fellow members of NSRMA and of the British Railway Modellers of Australia (BRMA) provided, and continue to provide, valuable advice and support for this and many other aspects of the layout’s development, not least in making up the operating team. They also provide suitably caustic comments when things do not go exactly to plan during running sessions… Once the layout was operational, I suddenly had a sort of crisis of confidence. If, as I hoped and planned, I were to build a larger and more complex layout in the future, was there any point developing this version of St Enodoc any further if it was going to have to be scrapped at some stage? Resolution came after a lot of doodling, when I worked out that given a reasonably sized layout room I could incorporate St Enodoc station itself into the branch line on a future layout. Armed with this assurance I carried on (I recall reading that the late David Jenkinson went though some similar thought processes with regard to Garsdale Road and the Little Long Drag). The easiest way to describe the layout in detail is to quote the description I wrote for the NSRMA website: “St Enodoc represents a station on the British Railways Western Region Newquay branch in Cornwall in the 1950s, modelled in 4 mm scale 16.5 mm gauge (00). It is the third layout to bear the name St Enodoc - the first was a simple branch terminus, and the second a double-track main line junction. St Enodoc was in reality a Cornish saint whose church lies half-buried by sand dunes opposite Padstow on the Camel estuary, and which is the resting place of the late Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman. The layout is based on the real-life Bugle station, with its passing loop and branch to the local china-clay works. This is one of those relatively rare locations in Great Britain where express passenger trains can be run legitimately over a single-track branch, Newquay being a popular holiday resort with through trains on summer Saturdays to and from all parts of England and Wales. At the back of the layout are two dead-end fiddle yards linked by a single through track for continuous running. The entire layout measures 2.8 m x 2.2 m with a central operating well and can be dismantled, which allowed the room in which it used to be sited to be used as a spare bedroom. Baseboards are made from ply, with 1/8 inch cork as a trackbed. The track itself is SMP, with hand-built points using printed-circuit board timbers and operated by SEEP point motors powered through DCC Concepts Masterswitches. The ballast is from Chuck’s Ballast. St Enodoc is fully signalled with the signals being built from Ratio kits fitted with Scalelink etched brass arms. All the signals, including the ground discs, are operated by memory wire actuators built using Bic Clic ballpoint pen parts. St Enodoc signal box lever frame is made up from 30 ex-Post Office key switches, which provide full electrical (although not mechanical) interlocking between points and signals. The rolling stock is a mixture of kit built and modified ready-to-run items, and is fitted with DG delayed-action autocouplings. These are operated by home-made electromagnets consisting of fine enamelled wire wound on sewing machine bobbins. Structures and buildings are made from plastic kits or scratchbuilt from plastic sheet, but landscaping is yet to be started. The layout is operated by DCC using NCE equipment, allowing the roles of driver and signalman to be separated. Operation follows a sequence timetable derived from the real-life working timetable for a summer Friday in 1952. Goods trains are run using a system based on playing cards and dice to determine the destination for each wagon on the layout. St Enodoc has recently been re-erected following a house move, and will form part of a new larger layout including the main line junction and branch terminus as well.” That “new larger layout” will be the Mid-Cornwall Lines themselves. To close this episode then, here are some pictures of the current St Enodoc in its old home. The fiddle yard tracks have been laid and are waiting to be cut at the baseboard joins. This shows clearly the arrangement of the two dead-end fiddle yards – Up on the left, Down on the right, with the linking crossover in the middle. In the background are the two china-clay works sidings. The curve at the Up end of St Enodoc towards the Up fiddle yard. Ballasting was done “in the usual way”. A job that I dislike and which seems to take forever – not sure which is cause and which is effect. All the signals are standard Ratio GWR products fitted with a selection of Scalelink arms. Memory wire motors operate all of these, including the ground signal. The lever frame is built up from three banks of ten PO keys ready wired and mounted in steel frames. These were salvaged from a telephone exchange when it was converted to digital. The diagram is drawn in Microsoft Word. This ground disc is the only signal not operated by memory wire, but by a Viessmann damped solenoid. These are superb, but too expensive to use for all the signals on the layout. The trap points are dummies, before anyone asks, and the dabs of yellow paint on the rail mark the location of the uncoupling magnets. This condensed version of Bugle station building is scratchbuilt from plastic sheet, with Peco canopy valances. My partner Veronica thinks that the lady sitting on the bench looks like the Queen. Who am I to argue?

Peter, starting from the end: M = LMR or ex-LMS (other regions accordingly) D = Departmental, i.e. not revenue-earning stock No prefix = Civil Engineers A = Mechanical and Electrical Engineers C = BREL (e.g. works test trains) K = Signalling & Telecommunications Engineers L = M&EE Electrification Construction R = Research T = Traffic (Operations) X = Stores Z = Public Relations (e.g. exhibition trains) No, I didn't do this from memory - they are from the TOPS/POIS Code Guide for Operating Staff, April 1986 (BR2489/51).

But that's the only way we can tell that Tony's superb locos are models and not the real thing!

Fully interlocked I hope?

That's far too neat and tidy for an LMRS layout...

About four hours too far North Ian. I was in Singapore for three years. Carolyn had been there, not HK, in the 80s or 90s, but you are right about Martin. Saw him in Sydney a few years ago looking very hale and hearty.

The next house move offered the prospect of some stability and indeed so it proved, as it was home for over seven years although the last two of those were spent working away on a weekly commute. The loft in this house was of modern style with trusses, but of a steeper pitch than some. This meant that I could stand up without difficulty in the middle part. I worked out that if I could put up with the visual intrusion of the trusses I could get just over 16 ft x 12 ft of usable space, with the layout fixed to the trusses themselves. For the first time in many years this layout had multiple levels and gradients, of about 1 in 50. There were two single-track reverse loops (Paddington and Penzance) at the bottom level, which climbed to meet the twelve storage loops (+ 2 inches), six Up and six Down. The storage loops and junction (St Enodoc again) were in a conventional oval configuration but with the junction at the next higher level (+ 4 inches) so that the reverse loops passed under it. Finally the terminus at Pentowan would be located slightly in front of and above the storage loops (+ 6 inches). The idea was that the terminus could be lifted away in sections in emergency, but that normally trains in the storage loops would not be remarshalled other than for loco changes. Trains running round either reverse loop would present the opposite side to operators and viewers so I could increase the apparent number of trains by having them different colours on each side, for example chocolate and cream or maroon for Mark 1s, or blood and custard and maroon for older stock. At one time I had a Mainline Warship that was D816 Eclipse on one side and D823 Hermes on the other, but this didn’t work for steam locos not only because it was impracticable to have different colours on each side, but also because you couldn’t have different smokebox numbers on the same loco. The reverse loops and storage loops were all laid and the baseboards for St Enodoc built before the next change of job and the resulting weekly commuting left no time for any further progress. Looking back, this was a good thing because the “hands-off” storage loops really wouldn’t have worked and I would have got frustrated and annoyed with the whole set-up. This shows the low-level Penzance loop with 5058 Earl of Clancarty just starting its climb back to the Up storage loops. The main control panel showing the storage loops and reverse loops. The space at the top was for the St Enodoc station controls. The Down end of the storage loops with the space for the higher-level Pentowan terminus in the left foreground. D816 Eclipse and 4206 in the Down storage loops. The baseboards for the unfinished St Enodoc station with the Penzance loop in the background and the Paddington loop in the foreground. St Enodoc station marked out for tracklaying. More boards filling in the gap to the trusses would have carried the goods yard. As it turned out, I didn’t have another layout of my own for nearly ten years, largely due to moving job and home first to South-East Asia and then, because I didn’t fancy going back to the cold and wet of the UK (and that was just the summers), to Australia. However, this time was not wasted as I took the opportunity to build quite a few kits that had sat on the shelf for a good while and also to start acquiring some of the higher quality ready-to-run stock that was now on the market. I also started to spend a lot more time thinking about what I wanted to see in my ideal layout, the fruits of which are now starting to emerge. Edited to amend caption to first photo.

Peter, I sometimes still get asked what I am going to do when I grow up. I answer that I don't know yet. I am 58.

26s were rare on the West Highland when I was there at the end of the 70s, nearly all the passenger trains being worked by 27s and the freights by pairs of 20s. Breakfast at Crianlarich was always to be savoured. The 37s were just starting to appear. Edited to correct spelling.

Wait until I get to the ficititous history ot the new layout. There are a couple of might-have-beens and one almost-was in there. Edited to include missing word in second sentence. It might make sense now.

Yes - scary isn't it?

That's right, and they're all still in service, plus a few Parkside ones now too. You also did the signals for me, fitting Colin Waite arms to the Ratio posts. Plenty more weathering jobs to be done in return for free board and lodging next time you and Mrs BarryO venture South of the Equator.

Thanks Rick, sounds similar to my Epson (different model). I usually scan at 1200 dpi for record purposes or 300 dpi for web uploads. Sorry Peter, we've gone slightly off your topic here.

The only rule with the garage was that I had to leave access through the up-and-over door and from the adjacent garage, so I built another double track terminus to fiddle yard layout. It was U-shaped with the terminus along the long wall and a removable fiddle yard across the entrance from the other garage (I now realise how impracticable a removable fiddle yard was, which was one of many lessons learned along the way). The terminus looked nothing like Newquay, so I gave it the name Pentowan which was the first in the line of what I call “might-have-been” names for places on my layouts. They need to sound plausible (to my ears anyway) and have at least some connection, however tenuous, with the real locations they purport to represent. In this case, the real Newquay sits under Towan Head, and Pen is Cornish for headland. Still Peco track, and still mostly Tri-ang stock, but operationally becoming a good bit more advanced with full signalling (only hand operated though) and a timetable that included some SR trains running over a fictitious link from Grogley Junction to somewhere in the St Columb Road area. The period was beginning to settle at around the mid-1950s, which at that time (unlike today) was quite an unusual choice. When I went off to University I joined the Leeds Model Railway Society and quickly became converted to what used to be called finescale 00. One of the things I learned how to do was to build points, and as a result for about the last 35 years I have never bought a ready-made point for any of my layouts. I had ideas of building a new layout, this time an actual model of Newquay, in the same U-shaped space in the garage but the realities of the removable fiddle yard led me instead to build a small branch terminus to fiddle yard layout with a china-clay works (linhay) hiding the fiddle yard. This layout was the first to bear the name St Enodoc, and purported to be a passenger version of the Carbean branch. St Enodoc was in reality a Cornish saint whose church lies half-buried by sand dunes opposite Padstow on the Camel estuary, and which is the resting place of the late Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman. The colour picture below shows how the layout could be stacked for storage and transportation, while the black-and-white photos that follow were taken by Terry Onslow of Swindon in about 1984. St Enodoc was exhibited a few times and appeared in the Railway Modeller in December 1987, although by then it had been sold to a friend. My next layout was to be a loft layout, about 16 ft x 8 ft in size. The plan was for a double track main line with a junction based on Par and named Porthmellyn Junction. Portmellon is just South of Mevagissey and in old references was sometimes spelled Porthmellin, while there is another Porthmellin on the Roseland Peninsula. The branch was intended to finish in the fiddle yard so Pentowan was off-stage this time. This layout didn’t actually get started due to a house move and it wasn’t until after a further move that I had the chance to begin again.

Ah, I thought you might have meant that after I posted my reply. It's not quite what most people mean by a ground-level garden railway.

Rick, how long does that take per slide and what file size results?

In the July 1969 Railway Modeller Julian James described timetable operation on his fictitious 00 St Mawes branch. You are right about Roseland. Two of our favourite beaches were Portholland and Pendower, and we had some good walks around St Anthony Head.

All will be revealed Brian, but essentially it will be the Newquay branch plus a bit of the main line. Watch this space!

Thanks Andy. It was good old-fashioned dyed sawdust. Not really state of the art even in 1968.

At last my new railway room is complete and in use, the existing St Enodoc layout has been set up and I am ready to start building the new Mid-Cornwall Lines, but before doing so I thought I would tell you a little bit of history to put the project in context and, I hope, explain why a little slice of Cornwall is taking shape in suburban Sydney, Australia. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin. My life with model railways goes back to when I was about three or four. Not, as was often the case, with Hornby Dublo but Tri-ang 00. My Dad built a very simple but enjoyable layout consisting of a single-track oval, an up-and-over loop and couple of sidings. On one track ran a Princess Elizabeth (with smoke!) and on the other a Transcontinental electric, later joined by a BR 2-6-2 tank. I’ve no photos of this layout but after a house move Dad bought a job lot of stuff from a local enthusiast who was giving up the hobby, which was set up in the spare bedroom. There was double track on two levels, plus two loops giving the option of running as a dumbbell or two ovals, and although I rebuilt it later as a single level line that was probably more realistic, the first layout was a lot more fun. I built a separate, very small, layout called Cwm-Don for a school open day at which it was connected by a long single track around the physics benches to another small terminus called Llangogin, built by my classmate Steve Berry. At about this time, in the late 1960s, we started to go to Cornwall for our annual family holidays, and I found myself captivated by the beaches, the scenery, the weather, the china-clay industry and the railways. Dad then had a small win on the pools, which allowed me to start a new layout that pretty well filled the spare room. It was to be a double track terminus to fiddle yard, with a low level continuous single loop. In my mind’s eye the terminus was Newquay (although the track plan was derived from Cheltenham St James) and the passing station on the loop became Goonhavern Halt. The continuous loop was all that got built before Dad changed jobs and we all relocated to Edinburgh. That was the end of Cornish holidays for a while, but one good thing was that the house had twin garages. As we only had one car I was allowed to claim one garage as a railway room, and next time I’ll describe what I did with it.

Peter, when I was planning the new garage railway room, Harry Howell (BRMA Life Member of Stafford fame, whom you will have met at the 2010 Convention) insisted that I should have aircon installed. I'm glad I took his advice. It's reverse cycle of course so when we get to our perishing cold Sydney winter, with temperatures just dropping into single figures, the railway room will be cosy and snug. Sorry to rub it in for all you Northerners (actually I'm not sorry at all. It's one of the main reasons I decided to come to Australia).

Still well over 30 in Sydney. The only place to be this afternoon was my air-conditioned railway room .

1006 shirley?