Halvarras

I used to visit St Blazey in diesel-hydraulics days so picked up one of these from KMRC's trade stand at a show in Swindon, oddly enough........well, not that odd, I was living there at the time!.........not knowing that I'd end up moving to within walking distance of St Blazey depot on retirement. When I got it home I was a little disappointed the discover the certificate was missing, but never mind. This then prompted a search for the matching BR vent van with middle off-white stripe, Bachmann 38-160Y and also a KMRC limited edition (one of a pair, the other being 38-160X sans stripe), and found one only recently on the 'Bay. Being an older model the weathering on this is just the sprayed-on dirt type so not a patch on the steel open (if you'll excuse the pun), I agree with @hmrspaul the finish on this is really quite impressive.......in a grotty kind of way 😁!

Pathfinder (Nissan) / Explorer (Ford) / Crusader (Clan) / Ranger (Ford) / Warrior/Challenger/Lancer (Mitsubishi) / Trooper (Isuzu) / Ambassador (Austin......and Hindustan!) / Prefect (Ford). Just the ones which come to mind, I think some other names like Sovereign and Viscount appeared on cars in the 1950s (??)

Latest info received since last post is that the Rocks/Goonbarrow - Fowey CDAs will run Monday/Tuesday/Thursday with the last run from Parkandillick to Fowey on Friday (interesting, I saw 66150 pass Carlyon Bay Golf Course* one Friday afternoon two years ago on CDAs but didn't realise they were still used from that location........). I've been warned trains from there can run early too - eek! Trouble is, when one is close to the start point Realtimetrains doesn't get updated fast enough (hence Monday's missed opportunity). No service scheduled for Wednesday then, but non-activations or cancellations are not unusual, a cancellation happened last Thursday. Presumably one day soon we'll find out how the bogie JIAs are being uploaded at Fowey using discharge equipment designed for 4-wheel CDAs. However it's being achieved it's a good job that it can, as I wasn't the only one concerned that the cost of rebuilding the discharge facilities to take a different wagon type may have ended this traffic. Mind you there's a lot of china clay in 38 CDAs, the usual formation up 'til now, and moving that lot in lorries on Cornish roads would have been a total non-starter. *I happened to be crossing the Merthen Farm overbridge at just the right moment, not playing golf - tried it once, definitely not my thing!

I had one of these when they first came out, resprayed it green full yellow as 210 'Empress of Britain' in 1971 condition (even applied the blue stripe below the running numbers, something to do with modified traction motors). The only modification I made was reducing the gap between the bottom of the nose and top of the bufferbeam with 20thou and filler filed to shape. Got a photo or two somewhere.......it's still the only Class 40 model I've ever owned as I've had no need for one since 😬! The secret was moulding the bogies out of a material Trix called 'graphite-filled nylon', which was also resistant to the axlebox-drilling Tri-ang bogies suffered from with extended use.

It appears to be official - this is the last week of CDA operation in Cornwall, meaning that this coming Friday 11th August will mark the final working*. Since I believe the first working occurred on 11th February 1988 that will mean exactly 35 and a half years of faithful service. I intend to get some final photos myself and I'm hoping last Friday's loco, 66199 which I planned to record but something else came up, will stick around as it's still in full EWS livery! Word of warning to anyone else intending to record the final week, the loaded train from Goonbarrow appears to be consistently departing around 30 minutes early these days (as I found out last Monday 🥴) *It also marks 55 years since the end of BR steam but I concede that that event was of somewhat greater historical significance 😊!

This was one of the greatest of all known diesel-hydraulics workings, even more remarkable because it happened just weeks before The End, on 20th January 1977. D1013 worked the (1E54) 07.30 Swansea - Leeds throughout believed to be due to the rostered loco failing on Landore depot. The Western should have come off at either Birmingham or Derby but there were no spare locos at either location, so it went all the way, with an ER conductor on board. After arrival at Leeds D1013 worked 5E54 ECS to Neville Hill and 5V94 ECS return before heading back home on the (1V94) 14.43 Leeds - Plymouth. (Info from 'Cast of Thousands' by Adrian Curtis, pages 146/7)

I reckon the crimson Gresley is Victor's version of Cuneo's mouse.......without the fun of having to look very hard to spot it 🤭!

Yup, accepted - that wasn't the weirdness I was referring to 🤓!

I had no idea it lasted that long. 15 years after your bunking experience I visited OOC on 6th August 2000 for the Open Days that weekend and the signage made it quite clear that such activity would land one with a £1000 fine (it's the same at St Blazey just 10 minutes down the road from my home). It was fun while it lasted - which can be applied to a great many things these days sadly........

Has to be the best livery - and similar to that applied to the production Deltics so in illustrious company! Those brand new Type 3s weren't half hammered on those South Wales services though.....although the sound effects must have been glorious!

In my first year at primary school we had to turn our chairs upside down, place them on top of the desks and sing 'Away in a Manger' before we went home - every day, not just at Christmas. I don't recall being confused at the time as I was only 5, we didn't sing carols at home and we didn't have a TV so never heard anyone else singing them, but I got more confused about this bizarre ritual as the years passed. Who instigated this weirdness? Miss Evans I presume........

Ever since I clapped eyes on the rather crude illustration of D7000 in the 1966 Tri-ang Hornby catalogue I've been a fan of the Hymeks. 1966 was the year I got interested in railways little and large so everything was a learning curve, but although I subsequently discovered all of the other types the Hymeks remained my firm favourite - to start with at least it had nothing to do with its transmission system and everything to do with the way it looked, no doubt about that! Yes, of course the Westerns were lookers too but I saw them every time I went lineside in Cornwall so familiarity did breed a little contempt I'm afraid. I made a full recovery in subsequent years though 😉! Needless to say I was overjoyed when a Hymek very occasionally appeared down there in the late 1960s. However D7000 itself was to remain rather elusive for me and by the time I eventually caught up with it, seen on an eastbound freight from a west-bound passenger service at Chippenham on 29th July 1970 - itself 53 years ago almost to the day - it had only recently emerged from Swindon Works in blue livery; I was always a bit disappointed I never saw it in either version of green with yellow (plain green was before my time). By 1973 I was located near Swindon and made the occasional foray to Oxford, as much to see the Hymeks on the Paddington - Worcester - Hereford services as anything else, although pairs of Class 20s on MGR coal trains to Didcot Power Station were a welcome distraction. It was at Didcot that I would capture 7000 on a couple of occasions, just weeks from its unfortunate demise. The first was parked on the stabling point on 19th May 1973: Shhhhh, don't tell anyone but I snatched a sample of its blue paint while taking the close-up photo, my little chunk of 7000 is somewhere in the loft (with some maroon paint off D828!) Four weeks later I was back again and this time caught 7000 doing something useful - 16th June 1973: I wonder what those two impressed lads are up to these days, and whether they recall ogling this celebrity! I wasn't to see 7000 in service again after this. On 17th July it failed at Exminster while working the 4V03 21:22 Curzon Street - Plymouth from Bristol and was dumped at Exeter. The cause was a wiring burn-out including the B end cab lighting circuit and a full rewire was required. It was also due a 'D' exam but after Class 31 5803 had towed it back to its Old Oak Common base on 26th July the decision to withdraw it was made and it was officially retired on 31st July - as I type this 50 years ago tomorrow. There would be no further Hymek withdrawals until 7001 fell on 11th March the following year, that loco also in need of a rewire. The Hymeks seemed to have reached a certain age....... I found 7000 silently parked outside the Old Oak Common 'Factory' during one of those sneaky visits through the hole in the canal boundary wall at the rear of the depot (how many of us took advantage of that back then? We could have found it blocked off at any time yet it seemed they just couldn't be bothered! Brilliant!!) The above photos were all taken with a Kodak Instamatic but by this time I'd 'upgraded' to 35mm......and downgraded the results in the process! Wrong camera choice alas. Anyway for what they're worth, two views of a still intact (including cast numbers, although they wouldn't last long......) 7000 on 13th October 1973 - it looks like it's ticking over, but the Western behind was responsible for the blue exhaust haze: I was back again on 8th December, less than two months later and the cast digit robbery was already well under way. Interestingly here it was sandwiched between 7044 on the right and 7100 on the left - first and last Hymeks end-to-end. Although 7100 is known to have visited Penzance on at least a few occasions in the mid 1960s, due to it being locally allocated, and 7044 is now believed to have been the actual last Hymek to be seen there, on 22nd September 1972 (not 7032 on 19th April that year as claimed by.......er.......(ahem) myself🙄), 7000 has never been recorded as crossing the Tamar, although it did make it to Plymouth a few times, including as an exhibit inside Laira depot during the Open Day there on 26th September 1970 - photo attempted, didn't come out.....shame it wasn't parked outside, maybe with 7093 which was out in the sidings that day! 7000/16/31/32 arrived at Swindon Works for cutting up on 19th November 1974. Three of them were dispatched during the next few months but 7000 was still just about clinging to life in the 'Con Yard' when the Works Open Day of 13th September 1975 came around, with only 7055 for company amongst all the Westerns. It was finally scrapped the following month: What a pity 7000 couldn't have hung on for a couple of months longer - the (slightly premature) 'Hymek Swansong' farewell tour of 22nd September 1973 could have had 7000+7001 at its head instead of 7001+7028. Ah well, that's the way the cookie crumbled, it's all history now. I'm glad I got to see them all - well, 99 of them! - and ride behind a few. Gone but not forgotten!

In the underside photo the embossed 'REPLICA' name was clearly visible on the bogie keeper plates. It was not described as being motorised. If the seller knew what he had surely he would have described it correctly and could have asked say £50, so I assumed that he priced it up on the basis of a quick assessment, unaware that Replica Railways never made a BR Mark 1 GUV. Surprised though that he didn't wonder why it was a bit heavy for a GUV and wasn't very free-running....! If he had described it correctly at £50 and sent me a bog-standard GUV, now that would have been a different matter - but then I wouldn't have bought it in the first place, it was only because I thought it was a bargain I couldn't ignore. I'm with @The Johnster - I don't buy that much off eBay and have never bothered bidding for anything, just settling for 'Buy It Now' (if available). I keep a regular eye on certain pre-owned sellers and can usually make an on-the-spot assessment of whether the price shown is reasonable or not. If really undecided about something (generally, not just on eBay) I have often used the ruse 'If it's still available [e.g.] next Monday I was meant to have it' - does anyone else do this? The cooling-off period very often results in a cold-light-of-day reassessment and rejection of the whole idea - at which point my bank account heaves a sign of relief! 🥴

A few months ago I was looking for a Replica Railways Mark 1 FO for a specific purpose, ended up on eBay of course and came across a 'Replica Railways BR maroon GUV parcels van' (or words to that effect), on offer for £16.50. Er......Replica never made a GUV so what was this? Examination of the photos revealed a Lima GUV fitted with a Replica 57' powered chassis! These normally cost around £65 - quick, grab it! After a fortnight or so's waiting it arrived.........as a bog-standard Lima GUV (I thought the parcel seemed unexpectedly lightweight......) I suspect the seller had belatedly realised what he had and had spent 10-14 days finding the one he sent me, to fulfil the order. I suppose I could have returned it as 'not as advertised' but decided I'd be on a sticky wicket with that so, since the model was in excellent condition, the price was OK for a tidy Lima GUV and (luckily) I didn't already have a maroon one I kept it, bolted on a spare pair of Triang-Hornby BR1 bogies fitted with Hornby metal wheels and small Bachmann couplings, fitted Lanarkshire Model Supplies coupling hooks, repainted the black plastic ends black (to hide that moulded plastic swirling effect) and applied some old MTK dimensional data transfers, which Lima omitted from their model (I think I know why - they referred to the photo of W86470, the one they modelled, in the late 1970s David Larkin/Bradford Barton softback book on BR parcels vans, which shows a vehicle so filthy the dimensional data was almost invisible. Almost......) So I'm happy with the outcome. Oh well, TBH I had no real purpose for a powered 57' chassis.......and anyway I keep telling myself that I should actually complete a few projects (preferably all of them!) before I take on any more, so I dodged that one.....but the temptations seem to keep coming! 😜

Notable that at the time of naming these locos retained the 3-part fixed radiator grilles despite being built with train air brake equipment (D1660 named in June 65 was the same) - they didn't look like this for very long, within the year all those newly-built Brush Type 4s sporting this combination (D1631-81 from Crewe, D1782-1806 from Brush) were modified to twin thermostatically-controlled Serck shutters, before winter set in threatening to freeze their radiators. D1664's condition in Oct 65 proved that having an illustrious nameplate was no guarantee of preferential treatment! The centralised position of 1612's number on the cabside shows that it had new digits applied during deletion of its D prefix (I can't say "prefixes" as a loco's four cabsides were not necessarily treated the same way - OTOH I can recall at least 1745 and 1947, and 1924 I think, carrying different number styles at each end); the absence of patch-painting indicates a repaint of at least the Sherwood green area. Most of the staining near the cab door handrail was probably due to repeated emptying of tea cup dregs out of the cab window!

Entirely agree, one really cannot argue with their clear explanation of the circumstances. Since Rapido themselves mention the laser scanning option I'm sure their Drewry Class 04 will arrive at some point, but in the meantime all those Bachmann split-chassis models and Airfix/Dapol motorised kits will just have to soldier on a while longer.....

Oooh 'eck! End of an era looming fast (and leap-frogging over the local semaphores and 'Castle' HSTs, never saw that coming 😲!) I wonder what the chances are of getting all three - CDAs, semaphores and HST - into one photo........Lostwithiel probably the best bet 🤔. I was only there 2 days ago, but not on my own (if you know what I mean......🥴)

Time is very nearly up for the long-time stored CDAs in St Blazey Yard - a clear sign that those in operation won't last much longer either - but there's hope that a dozen of them will live on not that far away. Scroll down through 27th July (the Western at Redruth is D1070 btw) to find the article posted on the 26th: http://www.cornwallrailwaysociety.org.uk/latest-input--news--old-pictures-etc I must get my new phone sorted, get lineside and take some CDA pictures* sooner rather than later. As mentioned above the first one 375000 is still amongst those stored, as are 375001/2, the latter currently in full view of the yard's main gate. At this time of the year the vegetation along the road makes identifying individual wagons parked on the nearest siding difficult if not impossible but many of those stored are the earliest ones - a while back it looked like only 375004 was missing from the first 20 or so, and it may just be one of those out of sight behind buildings. * Back in the days of the diesel-hydraulics this statement would have made no sense! I still remember first reading about the Japanese having mobile phones with built-in cameras, and thinking that was a bit OTT!! Now I wish I had such a thing back then.........but hey, don't we all, wherever we lived 🤔😁

You actually did one then! I too bought a Hornby 46400 even longer ago (circa 1979/80 I reckon) to have a go at this conversion, spurred on by my cherished 1958 edition of 'The Observer's Book of Railway Locomotives of Britain' stating of the 78xxx, "This is the smallest of the BR standard types and, amongst the tender classes, alone possesses a running-plate of moderate height, resulting in the best proportioned engine of all the new designs." It was destined to become one of the first projects, if not the first project, I would alas never to get around to when I realised the steam-roller wheels would have to go, and back then rewheeling a steam loco with valve gear didn't appeal to this mainly diesel modeller.......🥴!

I didn't know cargowaggons went to Moorswater either, until a week ago while reading Bernard Mills' book 'Backtracking Around Plymouth, Liskeard, Looe, Bodmin, Wadebridge and Padstow' (still reading it, got as far as Bodmin so far!) Page 37 shows 66616 at Moorswater with only cargowaggons visible behind it in May 2004. I'm wondering whether that (or those) directly behind the 66 are 2-axle twins, as sold by Kernow (IZA from memory.....) I'd also recommend a trawl of the appropriate sections of the Cornwall Railway Society website, if you haven't already - a fun way to spend an hour (or three 😉!)

87001 was the first carrier of the 'Stephenson' nameplates, from January 1976 - I saw it on an up train near Stafford two months later - got a photo somewhere...... The plates were transferred to 87101 during the Class 87/0 naming programme which followed shortly after.

I've never tried this (although I've fitted Lima motor units into the bogie frames of Hornby 25s, 29s and Hymeks) so I can't say for sure how much work would be involved. However if you'd like to explore the possibility at minimal cost Lendons of Cardiff should be able to help: https://www.lendonsmodelshop.co.uk/index.asp?search=Railways-20OO/HO-20Gauge&showorder=partnumber&check=yes&searchme=Hornby-20Spares-20--20Drive-20Units Drive units here, trailing bogies under 'Bogies and pony trucks' and underframes under 'Chassis' (not 'Underframes'!) Just bear in mind that: - Class 59 and Class 66 bogie sideframes are different (and the same is presumably true of the underframe side detail - not an expert on GMs!) - The Hornby drive units are cheap partly because they have no wiring so are not 'ready-to-run' - some soldering will be involved, to get the 'juice' from the pick-ups to the motor terminals, and from the trailing end. - Beware of trailing bogies being described as 'complete' - you get bogie frame, keeper plate and wheelsets, but no pickups! I'd suggest X6437 for the drive unit, X7335 for the trailing bogie and X9669 for the underframe. For the trailing bogie an alternative is X9668 which is wired with pick-ups but has the large clip-on coupling. Total cost should be around twenty quid (plus postage), which is why I used Lendons to upgrade a Lima 50149 and 47484 to 'Railroad' spec. Both of these use Class 66 bogies with the motor unit and trailing wheelsets swapped into the required bogie frames ordered at the same time (no connection to Lendons other than happy customer!)

This very informative website calls them 'multidoor'.... https://www.bloodandcustard.com/SR-CoachingSets-BulleidMultidoor.html

It was only a problem while I was a Cornish spotter of limited means, and of an age where I failed to grasp that anyone living elsewhere at the extremities of the rail system faced much the same situation. Looking back of course, if one was in that situation then Cornwall in the hydraulic era was the place to be - it just took a while for that to sink in!

I was prepared to do just this, using that reasoning/excuse, when a lone CK came up so I stumped up the extra readies (actually those extra readies would nearly have bought me a third BSK but what would have been the point in that?!) Two coaches is all I required and towards the end of their lives many of these vehicles became 'loose' so it's not impossible that a 'scratch' pair of BSKs could have been put together for a branch service. If this idea catches on it would help shift all that excess stock, although the prevalence of all those 'SR B Sets' on Southern layouts seen at exhibitions and featured in magazines from here on may fool a few future railway historians into thinking they must have really existed but for some reason never recorded anywhere 🤭! Not everyone will go for this subterfuge of course but at the price it would almost be a shame not to, as they're very nice models. I should mention that I have no connection to Kernow MRC other than as a happy customer 😁......