D820

Thanks to everyone who attended our open day, we hope you had a good time.  Some pictures from the day can be seen by clicking here  Falmouth Society of Railway Modellers - Open Day.

We are holding an open day on Saturday March 25th 2023 at:

St Mary's Roman Catholic Church, Killigrew Street, Falmouth, Cornwall, TR11 3PR. 

FREE ENTRY

Opening Times are 10:00am to 4:00pm

Come along and see what we do.  More details of the exhibition and our activities can be seen on our website:

https://fsrm.weebly.com/

Open Day Webpage:

https://fsrm.weebly.com/open-day-march-2023.html

Following the lifting of Covid restrictions on Monday July 19th, we have now resumed our normal weekly meetings.  We are also welcoming new members to the society.  We would ask that you contact our secretary before paying us a visit, please see the contact details on our website.  Like all clubs and societies, the last seventeen months have been a challenge, in many ways.  Hopefully we are now on the road to recovery and better times ahead.

More information on our society can be found on our website:

https://fsrm.weebly.com/

Picked my copy up at WHS in Falmouth on Friday afternoon.  A superb issue with many great articles and interesting layouts (as already mentioned), for me I was hooked by the Swindon Cl123 Inter-City DMU, absolutely brilliant.

I don't generally find too much problem using tools left or right handed, with one exception, and that's those Swann-Morton scalpels.  Try those in your left hand and the blades will fly off, so I adapt to that situation.  When I started school (1967), I picked up the pencil with the left hand and naturally smudged any writing, the teachers didn't get physical, they just said "if you write with your right hand that won't happen". All that meant was I became a painfully slow writer.  Drawing I can do with both hands, as with writing now, but not quickly.  Spatial awareness is useful to be able to visualise how things will fit in a space.

Agree. However, a study recently published, suggested a variant in that birthing issues create left handism. It may be the usual b****cks but daughter one is a leftie and had a traumatic birth due to a cord issue. Daughter two didn't and is right handed!

The whole thing is down to brain dominance and nothing to with birth issues, left brain dominance is RH, right brain dominance is LH generally.  It's the way your wired.  That said, my right eye is stronger and the sighting eye.  Right brain dominance means your likely to be more subjective, more responsive to pictures and more arty, that's me, I see the things in the picture tests that most people miss.  I also see colours and light in a different way, colours which a lot of people don't see.  Did I follow my desire to have a career in the arts, no, I followed adult advice at the time (the late 70s) and got stuck in a job which I hated.  Being able to read upside down is an advantage as I can see what's been written about me before the teacher/boss read it out, I could also fight back very quickly and catch them off guard!

I often wonder if handedness will even itself out in the modern world, now that we don't have the traditional views about "sinister" connotations, after all there's nothing evil about it, even animals display a preference to handedness (or should that be pawedness?).  The best bit is driving, we drive on the left apparently, because your right arm is your sword arm, but this means the clutch and all the gears and central controls in the car are on the left hand side for the driver.  Winner!

Falmouth Society of Railway Modellers - Open Day 2018

FREE ENTRY

Date:
Saturday 17th March 2018 (St Patrick's Day)

Opening Times:
10:00am – 4:00pm

Venue:
The Athenaeum Club
Kimberley Place
FALMOUTH
Cornwall
TR11 3QL

 

Click here for our Open Day webpage

Very nice little layout, looking forward to seeing more of it. Most clay production is now concentrated on a few big sites and the clay trains are longer and less frequent, so it's nice when someone recreates a small operation in model form.  I wouldn't worry about the fact you didn't build the original, after all you've credited the builder and he did decide to sell it.  I did the same sort of thing with a small layout in EM gauge, which I have turned into a Scottish scene to allow me to run my class 17s, 26s & 27s, etc.  On the subject of the Land Rover, from what I read in the news I think it would have been "restored" by now.

Why did they go all the way to Laira to turn the Princess when the turntable at BZ is supposed to be working now?

 

Ed

6201 is roughly six inches longer than 46233, so wouldn't fit on the turntable at St Blazey.  46233 was over hanging the bridge when she was turned, quite a sight to watch. 

The layout which impressed me when I first saw it at a Bristol exhibition (Whiteladies Road I think) was Borchester Market, wonderful stuff.  Frank Dyer then wrote some highly detailed articles covering model railway operation for MRJ in the late eighties, well worth reading.  It was the operation of the railway which made a pleasure to watch, quite simply it looked like the real railway.  Sadly Frank is no longer with us, but the layout lives on in the care of Newhaven MRC.

An intersting one from Glawster Oldspot's photostream on Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/68861278@N03/8426393569/in/album-72157628064899044/

Funnily enough, I can only remember seeing one Swindon Cross-Country in this livery in Llanelli, and it was one of these headcode-fitted ones (were they W515xx?). This variant of the Class 120 was rare down there in comparison with the early style, and the Gloucester 119 sets.

In 'Branch Lines to Falmouth, Helston & St Ives' by Vic Mitchell & Kevin Smith (Middleton Press), there is a picture Swindon Cross Country DMU No: LA500 at Penwithers Junction in August 1969.  My bet is these units are one of the same.  I can remember seeing this livery, because it was so unusal, the bulk of the stock at this time was green (SYP) or standard blue (FYE) in Cornwall.  The Falmouth line had Swindon units regularly as it had to have the 1st Class facilty, laterly for Golden Rail passengers, although this wasn't introduced until 1971.

Here's one I favourited from 'The KDH Archive' on Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/96859208@N07/12748835625/in/faves-79600589@N02/

The scene is Falmouth (now Falmouth Docks) shortly after most of the station had been demolished.

There is some superb stuff on the KDH Archive, enjoy!

Great pic's - thanks for posting.

 

The goods yard layout seems strange. We have essentially a single siding running through the goods shed and terminating in a cattle dock. I can't think what the purpose can be of the short siding between the dock road and the bay platform. It is connected to both, which presumably meant that the connection from the bay needed a FPL and both points had to be worked from the box, and signalled. Lots of complication - but for what purpose? There is a platform face but it looks like it could only hold about one van.

You're right about the points being worked from the box, the levers were Nos:14/15 according to the signalling diagram.  The point on the approach to the bay platform was fitted with a F.P.L. plunger & bar, while the point in the Dock Siding only had a bar.  There was also a treadle on the bay point, simply labelled 'A'.  From 1939 the dock siding was provided with a ground signal (dwarf arm yellow - if you want to be technical) operated by lever No:12.  From this time the goods shed road was also fitted with a catch point (No:22) and a ground signal (No:19), and wait for it, track circuiting to point No:22 proper.  It certainly must have kept the signalman busy during shunting operations.

Strange, that. I could smell the sea air when looking at your lovely COLOUR pix, Nigel!

Well, there not mine, I hadn't learned to take pictures by 1966!  However the rest of the railway set is well worth a look:-

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12549538@N08/sets/

Lovely stuff...

Thanks for posting this fantastic study of Bude station in what was its last year of operation.  The signal box was manned to the very last day of operation, the servicing facilities having closed in 1965.  Through services operated during the summer seasons, there being a Paddington - Bude working which would have had a very short life.  I think the line was served by about eight trains per day at the end, run as a branch from Halwill Junction, with some trains working through to Okehampton.  I would imagine the bookstall probably sold more newspapers to local residents than it did to passengers by 1966.  I suppose Bullied Way is a better name than Beeching Close which stands on the site of Halwill Junction. 

There's a couple more views here you might be interested in:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12549538@N08/6735472423/in/set-72157628649864207

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12549538@N08/6735480259/in/set-72157628649864207

I love the red motorbike in the second view.

On the modelling side, there was an EM gauge layout of Bude featured in Railway Modeller in June 1972. My copy is now well worn with forty plus years of reading! 

Looking forward to seeing this at Hayle. 

 

Nice idea Jon! I wasn't going to, but today I got a certificate through the post from the N Gauge Society. I'd entered Horseblock Lane in the Graham Farish trophy (Class I in the Annual Model Making Competition) and it was awarded gold this year! :-) Might just give it a go now.... I got chance to take a few more pictures today.

Very well deserved.  I like the industrial scale of the buildings, lovely layout.

Our webmaster has been busy again.  There have been some more updates, including some D63xx locomotives on the Truro - Newham branch.  Enjoy!

Nigel, a South African gold mining town allegedly named after Sir Walter Scott's book, 'The Fortunes of Nigel'.

Yellow Furze, where the lady came from in Christy Moore's song.

Drogheda, home of the Boyne Viaduct which used to have interlaced tracks over it.

East London, home to Blackburn Rovers FC.

South Africa that is....

Nipped down to the 'yard' tonight.

 

Light conditions were poor (ha ha), however below is what I saw.

 

Something for the medium term me thinks.........

Wow! A green one on St Blazey, only seven of them to start with. D1004 and D1037 were the last two, both going blue in early 1967. So, given your proposed modelling period, it's 30/12/1966 then..................

That certainly is a cracking shot D820, but the date is lightly out... it's 1st May 1971, at the St Blazey open day, hence 806's immaculate condition. Also present that day were 1056, 6326 and 6330, all equally immaculate having been spruced up for the occasion (probably at Laira), plus 854, 855, 1020, 1596, 1673 (Cyclops), 3526, 4007, 6318 and 6333, in day to day condition. 1020 was particularly scruffy, there's a photo of it on the same day in the OPC book 'Profile Of The Westerns'... it looks aweful!

 

Nidge

I had my doubts about the year, but that was date on the photo and I took the photographer's word for it. I remember going to the open days in the sixties and seventies (1968/9 & 71, I think), but I was just ticking the books in those days...

Absolutely love it!!

 

Definetly St Blazey determined, as you say, by the engineering buildings at the back.

 

Also, isnt that a 600 on the right?

 

What a classic!!!!

The loco on the right is another D63xx, you can tell by the central cooler group grill. The D600s had two cooler groups, one behind each cab.