Dunalastair

The Durener Eisenbahn was a metre gauge tramway in the Ruhr Rur in Germany which used transporter wagons to move main line wagons to various industrial operations in the city of Duren. Two electric locomotives provided the motive power. https://eisenbahnstiftung.de/bildergalerie/Privatbahnen?search=&br=&page=2 (many more images of the DEAG here) I have been working on a simple partly 3D printed diorama to represent this interesting operation, the exceptions being the Chinese trees, the German van, an HO product from Piko, bought on ebay, and the British occupation RAF truck, a Base Toys model, slightly overscale at 4mm for this 3.5mm scale diorama. The northlight factory unit is a resin casting reused from an earlier layout. The Durener Metallwerke was indeed one of the companies served by the tramway. Edit : Corrected 'Ruhr' to 'Rur'.

The Cottenham FP diorama now lives in a box, siimilar to the Weedon diorama, but this time fabricated from foamboard (not very neatly) with a perspex diffuser and a perspex front window. It might have worked better with an internal frame like with the Hobbycraft frame used for Weedon. As it is, you can see around the edges too much. All part of the learning curve ...

Found my copy of the IRS Record special edition on the railways of York which describes and illustrates this obscure railway. The article on York Gasworks majors on the SG locos, but includes a photograph taken through the gate showing the NG electric loco with its two wagons on the gantry. The gauge was 2' 3" and the power was 500V from an overhead cable. It lasted from about 1915 to 1959 when the works were demolished. As this was a simple end-to-end line with one train and no points, it would make a rather minimal layout with limited operating potential! Reference is IRS Record number 139.

Found my copy of IRS Record with an article by Bob Darvill describing the Electric Construction Company locos (there were apparently two, one at either end of the tunnel), with another image of the Rivelin end of the tunnel - this time of the NG works yard, with a splay of sidings and buildings. Looks modellable, albeit an eclectic choice for most. It is possible that these locos were re-used in a later tunnel contract at Ewden, completed in 1929. Reference is number 197 from June 2009.

Hope she recovers quickly. There seems to be more of it about lately.

Interesting story. I wonder where that plan ended up? There is another plan in the book. My model of the Raasay pier and tramway has also seen some coloured ink - and paint - and now looks like this. The ship design has been updated and reprinted, and now has masts. The current weather system seems to be making itself felt on Raasay as well as here in the south.

Unless remastered, the moulds must be well used on that - I remember having one of those back in the sixties. I wonder what happened to it when I downsized to N gauge?

I think this was it: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-47628185 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridgeshire_Autonomous_Metro Described as 'trackless' but I think that was just our erstwhile mayor ...

The Weedon Depot diorama has now been 'boxed', using a Hobbycraft 'deep frame' extended with a 3D printed spacer and a frosted perspex screen behind - frosted using a sanding block. I'm still not sure about this approach - perhaps it needs some more (multiscale) life?

It was never very clear to me - though there was talk of it stretching over the Suffolk border as I recall.

I have just been spraying the Raasay prints grey, battling a wind rather stronger than ideal in the garden as solvent smells in the house are not popular. Though I have not been to Raasay, I have looked across the channel to the island from the hills on Skye. This is a view in the opposite direction, from the remains of the iron ore installations towards Skye. There cannot have been many railways with a better view. https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/5761169 Although this was a cable worked railway, there were two substantial viaducts, one on the main line and one on the branch to the unproductive No 2 mine - although there was also some opencast working in that area. Though the girders and deck fell victim to the scrapman, the tall stone piers apparently remain. https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2182289

For anybody interested in the Raasay iron mine and its cable-worked NG railway (even though it is about as far from a GWR BLT as you can imagine) I would recommend this book. Last week it was available for pennies - that one must have sold as an extortionate pricetag now appears. Abe currently has a more reasonably priced copy. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Raasay-Iron-Mine-Enemies-Friends/dp/0951487000 The mine was worked by Bairds, who also owned the railway at Dalmellington in later years, a celebrated SG and NG industrial railway complex in the Ayrshire hills. David L Smith wrote an inspiring book about that enterprise.

I am just about keeping up with my diorama-a-day with this work-in-progress 3D printed model. On the very remote Isle of Raasay there was an iron ore mine during WW1, served by a cable-worked narrow gauge railway to a pier. Fortunately for posterity, the Geological Survey took a series of photographs. I have rehosted this image as the original is http and will not embed. http://geoscenic.bgs.ac.uk/asset-bank/action/browseItems?categoryId=1118&categoryTypeId=1 And here is a fresh-off-the-printer 1:450 version, using one of the BGS images as a backscene. The ship is very loosely based on a somewhat stretched version of the SS Robin, apparently the last surviving steam-powered coaster of this era, now preserved at the Royal Victoria Dock in London. Apologies to any ship modellers who really know how to capture the curvy lines of such vessels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Robin

Or a high pressure steam engine over a Newcomen engine?

This may well be the last in my 'diorama-a-day' series, though I do have other projects as 'work in progress'. The GNSR built a substantial golf hotel at Cruden Bay, in the manner of those of the CR and GSWR elsewhere in Scotland. A narrow gauge electric tramway was provided to link it to the railway station for passenger and freight traffic - not least to the laundry which served the whole GNSR estate, including another hotel in Aberdeen. The GNSR Association has a short history at http://gnsra.org.uk/cruden bay tramway.htm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruden_Bay_Hotel One of the two trams can still be seen in nicely restored condition at the Grampian Transport Museum. Note the enlarged platform at the far end for golf equipment and laundry baskets. https://www.flickr.com/photos/allanmaciver/26101896130 My much simplified version includes only the front range of the hotel, together with the laundry, the car shed and a nearby folly. Parts and trams were generally 3D printed, but the track was 9mm Peco and the Tram mechs were Kato. Note the historic aviation event on the right - I hope to describe this further in a future post.

Turning the wheels certainly helps. 'Flattening' the tyres a little can also make a surprising difference to how it 'sits' on the road.

I also worked at Caswell - message sent. Indeed, that is where I learned my 3D design skills, such as they are. There is more on the tube tunnel factory here:

I previously posted about my 3D printed diorama of a tunnel intersection on the Chicago Tunnel Railway. I have more recently been working on a diorama based on this photograph in the wiki article on the railway. This shows what was apparently a short-lived service for US Mail, linking the major Chicago rail terminals. The car is an RPO (Railway Post Office) of the Pere Marquette at Grand Central Station about 1910. I know very little about US railroads, and it has been interesting learning about mail operations across the Pond. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tunnel_Company Looking for a more complete image of an RPO of that era I found this, from the Lehigh road. I then struck lucky, and found this joint PM car. I believe that much of the design was mandated by the customer, who wanted safer cars for their employees, many of whom had been killed in earlier train wrecks. https://biblio.co.uk/book/pere-marquette-passenger-pictorial-million-arthur/d/1343138037#gallery-7 Keeping up my 'diorama-a-day', now coming towards the end, I roughed out a 3D design, incorporating a 'low relief' half-section of the RPO. As it happened, I had some suitable six-wheel bogies / trucks, one of which has been sectioned to save the complexity that would otherwise entail. So here is my kit of printed parts. The Bettendorf Tunnel Railway wagon uses Peco NG bogies. And after some painting and assembly, this is what we have. I could perhaps have sourced a better looking commercial RPO model, but I try to minimise cost on my dioramas, and that might have meant spending serious money. I hope that US outline modellers will forgive the liberties I have taken with their chosen prototype. This is still work in progress. Since the photograph was taken, the parts have been glued to a base, with the platform raised a little compared to the track - but not too much as this is the US. I still need a few figures to give a sense of scale and echo the original photograph, and the RPO could do with some under-body equipment.

I'm sure that there were issues, not least finance, and it might have been a stretch too far, but I do like the idea of 419 simmering in the island platform at Dunblane, exchanging passengers with a 101. Callander was and is a popular tourist destination so it might have worked. I would imagine that us spotty schoolkids would have been given suitably tatty rolling stock to ride in. There were pupils in the school boarding houses at Callander during the week when I was there who would have caught a daily train from Killin in the old days.

Thankyou - though I live not far from Cambridge I had not come across the Circle before. It seems as if it still has at least a web presence. Do you know where / if the article was published? https://www.cambridgerailwaycircle.org/ As to a Cambridge Underground, a latterday version of that was a rather mad scheme of our previous mayor, James Palmer. Given local geology and watertables, it is hard to imagine how it could have been built without Kings College disappearing into a hole in the ground. What my erstwhile colleagues in local transport planning had to say about the economics of that project would not bear repeating. Gove's speech this week, envisaging turning the area into a technology dystopia, seems to have some of the same flavour. There were, I think, tram tracks dug up at the Catholic Church crossyards during recent roadworks.

And here is a video showing the jerky motion. The video camera also got confused by the focus as the 'tunnel hoops' swept by. If I was to revisit this, I would be able to use printed components, as in this scene featuring a CML electric loco.

I am getting towards the end of my 'diorama-a-day' series, so time for an early model which was something of an experiment. In WW2 the Plessey Company (for which I used to work) built a factory to make aeroplane components in an uncompleted tube tunnel in East London away from the attentions of the Luftwaffe. Transport was provided by narrow gauge railway using battery electric locos. As this was wartime, the drivers were often women. https://www.mylondon.news/news/nostalgia/astonishing-london-underground-factory-2000-23954277 My model was a circular pizza, representing one of the production tunnels. The pizza was made to revolve, and the locos were not motorised but instead had a magnet to keep them in place as the scene moved past them. This was not entirely successful as the motion was very jerky - the Roco NG wagon chassis was perhaps just too small. The budget was minimal, so ebay was scoured for cheap Chinese components which could be used to represent factory work stations - this was well before I did any 3D printing. Dolls house and charm bracelets were unlikely sources, as were electronic components. In this image, the microscopes were charm ornaments and the shelving and chairs were I think intended for a (very small) dolls house. The very basic figures put the scale at about 7mm = 1 foot. Lathes came from combining hiliter pen tops with micromotors. All facilities were provided for the work force ... While it was fun to build, it was all very crude. Insetting the track using white blutak and card to try to represent the concrete floor was not one of the better decisions. Photographing the result was also a challenge for focus. I would approach it very differently today. Somewhere I have a video, but it might take a while to find.

I don't know how familiar you are with roads in the Fen, but the likes of this image are not unusual. However, the Wisbech & Upwell managed SG operation in similar circumstances, as did the GER's Benwick freight branch, so it could be done, presumably with more spent on railway ballast than has bene invested over the years on minor roads. And Cottenham is Fen Edge rather than Deep Fen.

Indeed - the rebuild to WDLR gauge was not successful. It apparently did not like curves, with wheels fouling frames, and the track was in any case not up to the combined weight. Given the fen soils in places around Cottenham, I wonder if there might have been stability issues even with 2' 6". Did the W&LR not also plan SG on NG transporter wagons, but run out of money to build them? Sydney Lelux wrote a booklet on the subject, but I think that his definition also embraced NG on SG and NG on NG, like on the Padarn. https://www.diandsaulbooks.co.uk/british-transporter-wagons-by-sydney-a-leleux-4243-p.asp

I have now had the chance to read this and found it most interesting - especially, indeed, the references to the transporter wagons (though they seem to have missed that one of the Manifold transporters was tried at Ashover but not found practical). Lots that I had not previously found. Such transporter wagon trains would have needed more power than the simple tram engine I represented in my diorama. "Well, write CRC members Bob Caldecote and Mike Page, it was one of a number of Cambridgeshire railways' 'might-have-beens' and it almost happened." Can I ask where it came from? I cannot immediately see it on the web. I once worked for Cambridge Regional College, but I think this is a different CRC.