Tankerman

23 hours ago, TrevorP1 said:

 

From memory of a news article I think the gas cylinder chap was in Penryn but same applies...

 

The same article, which was concerning the 'Mid Cornwall Metro',  also quoted a chap a saying that the new service would make no difference to folk in the Falmouth area because if you lived in Falmouth why on earth would you want to go to Newquay!*

 

*Don't shoot the messenger please! :) 

In my teenage years and living in Penryn, now very long gone, the reason for visiting Newquay in July and August was to meet the 'young ladies' from the Midlands and North.😀 

On 03/03/2024 at 08:53, St Enodoc said:

 

 

Don't forget that Pentowan is inspired by Newquay, so "refined" probably isn't the correct term.

Especially during the Liverpool and/or Glasgow weeks.

On 20/02/2024 at 09:03, Chamby said:

 

Clearly we are not alone… it doesn't say much for the manufacturers quality control, it is a simple enough thing to check.

My experience, in other electrical fields, is that there is no Chinese language equivalent for the words 'quality control'

3 minutes ago, kevinlms said:

Isn't parking so close to an intersection/junction enforced in the UK? It seems so blatant in UK videos.

There's no chance of enforcing illegal car parking, even if your home is burgled there's no investigation, the most you will get is a Crime Number so that you can make an insurance claim.

23 minutes ago, Metropolitan H said:

My own take on a Minories inspired style terminal - with roundy-round through roads - going under the working title of "Gutter Lane" is "O" gauge Coarse Scale, is gradually growing in my 11.5 ft x 7.5 ft railway is shown below.

Gutter Lane Buildings etc 1a 002.pdf 2.96 MB · 7 downloads

 

It is cramped, but it gives me enjoyment - including just watching the trains go by.

 

Regards

Chris H

Quote "it gives me enjoyment"  Big or small, very scenic or just trackwork to run the stock on, that should be the main reason for building any model railway.

16 hours ago, big jim said:

Went shopping earlier, came out to this clown in a mini…

 

note how empty the rest of the car park is!

 

In the 1970's I lived in Taunton for a couple of years and sometimes we, me, wife and two sons used to go up to the Quantocks on a weekend. On one particular trip we went quite early on a Sunday morning and I parked the car in the middle of an open space about 8 to 10 acres in area. 

We went for a walk over a low hill which hid the car from view and returned about an hour later. With all that space to spread out in, the subsequent arrivals had first lined up parallel to our car and then made a second and third line behind the first one.

22 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

The problem with HGVs is that once they're that close, they can't see your brake lights anyway, and may well be busy with other things...

 

Like texting on their phone or watching a programme on their tablet?

On 13/01/2024 at 07:43, Barry O said:

And there's me thinking a Shacketon fly past... oops!

 

Baz

Talking of Shackleton flypasts, I grew up on a small mixed farm in the 1950's which was about 10 miles north of RNAS Culdrose. We were used to the Gannets and Westlands flying around and didn't take much notice. However one summer evening we became aware of a very loud noise which rapidly got even louder. This turned out to be a Shackleton and four Gannets flying in formation almost directly over the farm buildings at less than 1,000 ft altitude.

I was thrilled at the sight, but my parents were less happy when the hens laid a lot less eggs for a few days and the cows were similarly very twitchy at milking time.

19 hours ago, Andy Keane said:

Ah yes - that book on coach workings would be interesting to thumb through.

My real issue with operating Helston in a realistic fashion (for say a show) is trying to map the known 1930's timetable into a sensible set of movements.

The main 1935 timetable does something like this according to Jenkins, where if there is a 1 in the activity column it means that service has passenger and / or goods vehicles:

T

The day starts with an engine, a B set and some goods wagons in the station overnight and finishes in the same way. The way this works there are never two sets of coaches in the station at once (unless a double B set is in use on a single train) but there are two sets of goods vehicles there most days. Maybe this refers to a run of wagons and vans as one and a collection of "brown" vehicles as the other? (After the war there is a photo showing a 45xx leaving with three carriages and a further set still in the platform, though I have no idea why.)

 

Going from this to the actual rolling stock is where I have not yet gotten a plan, or any clear idea on how to proceed, except to base on the few photos I have of the 1930s. The simplest thing is a pure carriage train of one B set for the passenger only workings, but maybe these did have siphons, horse vans or prize-stock vans sometimes? Or when the timetable says a mixed working like the first of the day is that what was meant? Or would the first mixed working have included some braked vans (perhaps even cattle wagons, opens and a guards van to allow for non-braked stock)? There are photos of a string of vans between 45xx locos and the B set on the rear for example.  If I could get this about right I could also set up an Edwardian operation with older engines and rolling stock as well as a later one for immediately post WW2.

 

And I assume there would be days when additional services ran, particularly for the annual show day when I would have imagined lots of prize-stock and additional cattle wagons, plus extra passenger services. And were there additional pure goods workings for the broccoli trade? I do know Helston was allocated a pair of E140 B sets (four carriages in all - 6445 / 6446 / 6461 / 6464) and I have them on order with Rapido along with matching 44xx :-)

 

All thoughts most welcome.

Andy

ps - so a mixed train might form up as:

Although I'm not familiar with the Helston branch, a couple of thoughts which might help and based on the workings I saw at Truro in the late 1950's  .

Re the mileage yard/sorting sidings at Gwinear Road. There was a similar set immediately adjacent to the station at Truro. It's a long time ago now but I'm fairly sure I am remembering it correctly. The wagons for the goods yard at Truro and the Falmouth, Newham, Newquay via Chacewater branches and Chacewater station goods yard were detached/attached from/to the through freight trains at Truro. The wagons for the goods trains for those destinations were then sorted by a Truro allocated 57XX tank engine, it's funny how certain things stick in the memory, but one of them was 3709. 

Given that the storage siding capacity at Hayle, St Erth and Marazion was somewhat limited could it be that the sidings at Gwinear Road served a similar function?

If the photo of the extra carriages at Helston was post WWII it could be that they were for RN personnel based at RNAS Culdrose, either going on or returning from, leave.

17 hours ago, Harlequin said:

Possibly silvery grey wood and fluffy green and cream visible between the slats.

 

I think I read somewhere that the Cornish called Cauliflowers "Broccoli" and the "broccoli traffic" was, in fact, cauliflowers being sent up to London... Or did I dream that?

 

Could CAD something up for printing...

 

No you didn't dream it, us Cornish did call the early spring Cauliflowers, Broccoli. The first time I was served Broccoli, east of the Tamar, I asked what the green stuff was.🙂  We also called what the rest of the Country knew as a swede, turnips and turnips, white turnips.

Cattle wagons were extensively used for the Broccoli and other vegetable traffic. IIRC a lot of them were stored on the sidings at Gwinear Road.

Another fact, now long forgotten, is that even in the 1960's, potatoes were sold by the gallon/half gallon (10lb or 5lb) in the local greengrocers. I was told that this was because at one time they were weighed out using a balance weight with a gallon or half gallon bucket filled with water on one end and a basket or bucket with the potatoes on the other. 

11 minutes ago, mullie said:

Happy Christmas Gilbert, the effort you go to each day is much appreciated. I've not been here from the beginning but it must be quite a few years now. This is a thread I drop in on every day, and look forward to updates in 2024.

 

Best wishes

 

Martyn

Me too.🙂

10 hours ago, Mallard60022 said:

Hate to say it Saint, but Leeds to the X and then Southern to Bournemouth would/could have been a less chaotic trip. Imagine the A4 and then the Merchant Navy experience!

Sorry to say that X Country and Birmingham connections in particular, can often become really 'challenging'. 

All the best.

Phil

It's not just nowadays that changing trains at Birmingham can be challenging, in the 1970's I lived in West Cornwall and I attended South Shields Marine College a number of times to obtain additional electrical qualifications as part of my time as Electrical Engineer Officer in the Merchant Navy.

At the time there was a train which if I remember correctly ran from Edinburgh or Aberdeen, to somewhere on the South Coast. This arrived at Birmingham within 30 minutes of another service which ran, again from memory,  from Glasgow to Plymouth, where I changed to a Paddington to Penzance service in order to get to Truro.

On one of the journeys I arrived at Birmingham to find that the train to Plymouth was delayed by at least 40 minutes, so I went to get a cup of coffee and a snack. On returning to the platform there was a train at both platform faces and instead of checking the departure board I asked a station staff member which was the Plymouth train, he replied  "The one on the left." you can guess what happened, I got on the train on my left, not his. As soon as the train departed I realised that it was headed north and not south, luckily it's first stop was Tamworth so I was able to get back to Birmingham in a reasonable time, but I was still over four hours late getting home.

On 09/11/2023 at 20:45, Nick C said:

Mrs C lived in Rhyl for a year, she comments that it was quite normal for the whole town to be empty!

I don't know if it's changed now, but Newquay in Cornwall used to be the same in the 1960's/70's. The local saying was "in the winter you can fire a gun down the main street and not hit anybody"

In the late 1950's/early 1960's there were quite a few ex GWR employees in Cornwall. One was an uncle of mine who was a Ganger in the Camborne/Redruth area and another a ticket collector at Truro who I got to know quite well as he realised, despite my young age, I was interested in the railway, not just the locomotives. Both of them always referred to the GWR as "The Company" and were firmly convinced that the BR management were a bunch of amateurs.

1 hour ago, 30801 said:

Of all the trailers to get stuck with...

 

So this is where the Pilot ended up when he got sacked from the Suez Canal.

14 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

So did I, until I (re)discovered a photo by R C Riley of 4167 in front of 6869 on 9/7/55, being detached at Par from the 0750 Newquay - Manchester before 6869 continued up the main line. Consequently, I checked the Sectional Appendix for the Mid-Cornwall Lines and found that it does indeed permit such arrangements!

 

The photo is in the Transport Treasury collection and can be found in Mitchell & Smith's Branch Lines to Newquay and the Transport Treasury's own Cornwall - Transition from Steam (which also has another photo of the train after 4167 was detached).

Could it be that locomotives with a pony truck were allowed to be the leading one on such lines as Par  to Newquay because the line itself did not permit high speeds?

22 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

That's why it's employed there!

I'm still waiting for my Accurascale model of that loco.

Re the loco, me too. I don't think it will ever happen, with any of the hydraulic Warships, but I can dream.

On 16/08/2023 at 18:31, 30801 said:

Wanted to look for e-bike stuff on YouTube and came across this:

Whole channel dedeicated to riding like a knob. You have to wonder where the enforcement is.

 

 

Quote "You have to wonder where the enforcement is." Looking at a video posted on the web by numerous people, they are too busy illegally arresting autistic teenagers.

22 hours ago, Nick C said:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/14/frightening-rise-in-vehicles-driving-wrong-way-on-englands-motorways

 

Nearly 900 reports of vehicles going the wrong way on motorways in one year... Largely blamed, it seems, on an over-reliance on satnavs. 

 

Speaking of satnavs, I picked up my wife from Gatwick late at night a couple of weeks ago. Knowing that the M25 was shut for roadworks, I decided to use the google satnav in my phone to find the quickest way back, given that there's three or four possible routes and I wasn't sure which'd be best at that time of night. It promptly tried to direct me to take the M25...

 

Needless to say I switched it off and picked a route myself!

I switched to Waze a while ago and I have found it to be excellent. It is interactive, if you come across a problem not reported you can send it, if it is safe to do so, to update the information available.

3 hours ago, big jim said:

Only one from last night coz there was nothing worth photographing!

 

66738 at landor st 

 

one more night of it then a nice little possession turn Saturday and 4 days off again, next week looks to be a weedsprayer on Thursday then a couple of days of hereford to dee marsh 

You seem to have forgotten the almost inevitable "can you just)😀

4 hours ago, Rugd1022 said:

 

Well there's a nice coincidence - last week I was doing a ballast job down Banbury way and I got chatting with the Engineering Supervisor, he came from Truro and started spotting there as a nipper, he said he could just about recall the end of steam in Cornwall.

 

 

Cornwall was one of the first areas to be completely converted to diesel traction, from memory it was completed by the end of 1962. BR told the press it was to show that they were prioritising Cornwall's railways, but a railway man I knew told me that it saved a lot of money because it was a lot cheaper to transport diesel than coal.🙂

39 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

Robin @gwrrob, Kevin @KNP and  John @checkrail have been showcasing their Grange fleets recently, so I said I would do the same. I have six, all 83G Penzance engines, shown here in numerical order:

 

6800 is a completely standard Hornby model. Apart from fitting a decoder, fitting a DG coupling and renumbering/renaming I haven't done any work on it yet (which is also true of most of the others, I'm afraid).

 

6809, on the other hand, involved a lot more (too much) effort.

 

When I was on a weekly commute between home in Polesworth and work in Croydon, over 25 years ago, I wanted something to stop me going to the pub every night. I'd bought a K's Grange Bodyline kit some time earlier and in those days Bachmann sold loco chassis as spares. So I bought a Manor chassis and built the Grange body to fit. What a palaver that was, because the firebox wasn't wide enough inside to clear the Bachmann mechanism. Even after thinning the cast sides as much as I dared, there wasn't room. In the end, I had to leave a gap between the firebox halves and fill it later.

 

That wasn't all. Back home, I painted the loco but it didn't look very good, so I stripped the paint and primer with Nitromors. Unfortunately, that stripped out all the filler I'd used to fill various gaps as well, so I had to do the filling, priming and painting all over again.

 

6809 is in lined black. I'd seen one photo of an unidentified Grange in this livery at St Austell. I've no idea whether 6809 itself ever carried it but I like it, so there.

 

6824 is another standard Hornby model, which used to be numbered 6825. Read on...

 

6825 is one of the later Hornby models with a small tender, which is where the decoder lives. I've got photos of 6825 in this form and colour so I pinched its identity from what is now 6824.

 

6836 is another original Hornby model. I see that the cylinders have gone seriously cock-eyed. I'll have to fix that.

 

6860, finally, is also a standard Hornby model, which like 6824 came factory weathered.

This has brought back memories of my train spotting days at Truro. They started when I was 10 and went there by train from Penryn, my parents didn't know about it for 18 months.☺️

23 hours ago, corneliuslundie said:

In J583 would the brake vehicle just have been for the guard or was there still churn traffic in 1966.

A nice prototype to model, anyway.

Jonathan

Definitely just for the guard, although milk was still being collected in churns from some of the farms, at least in Cornwall, all the milk traffic from the various creameries was transported in tank wagons.

18 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

That plan hasn't survived contact with reality.

 

 

And, of course, it's raining at Headingley.

 

Grrrr...

Cricket and Wimbledon on at the same time. A much better rain producing system than the Hopi rain dance.

2 hours ago, cctransuk said:

 

For those modellers who want AA20 lettering for different allocations, I have the following authentic sets for the AA20 brakevan :-

 

Sheet BL166A - ABERAVON, ACTON

 

Sheet BL166B - BIRKENHEAD, BORDESLEY JUNCTION, BRISTOL

 

Sheet BL166D-G - DIDCOT, DOWLAIS CAE HARRIS

 

Sheet BL166H-L - HARTLEBURY, HEREFORD BARTON, LLANIDLOES

 

Sheet BL166M-O - No.8 TRANSFER, OSWESTRY, OXFORD

 

Sheet BL166P-R - PARK ROYAL, PENZANCE, TO WORK BETWEEN PRINCES RISBOROUGH AND CHINNOR ONLY

 

Sheet BL166S - SEVERN TUNNEL, SHREWSBURY, SLOUGH, SOUTHALL, STOURBRIDGE

 

Sheet BL166T-Y - TAVISTOCK JUNC., WEST DRAYTON

 

These sets include authentic recorded number / allocations, plus all other markings for the BR 'unboxed' lettering era. Each sheets also includes numerous other sets for different GWR and BR 'TOAD' diagrams.

 

John Isherwood,

Cambridge Custom Transfers.

https://www.cctrans.org.uk/products.htm

John, is there any chance of a Truro and/or a St Blazey set?