Railways Blog

A blog about trains, covering photography, railway history, transport politics and modelling, in no particular order.

Coaching Stock Dilemmas

Posted on March 17, 2013 by Tim Hall

I’ve already replaced my older BR Blue and Grey Graham Farish coaches with new “Blue Riband” models, since the improved detail and close coupling mechanisms are a vast improvement. So now I’m considering doing the same with the WR chocolate and cream set used when running the layout in 1960s mode, and sell on the older coaches. One thought was a formation that could double up as a charter set when the layout is running in “present day” mode.

Unfortunately if you want to duplicate the real-life formations, that approach runs into problems. Here’s a photo of the Torbay Express behind King Edward I in 2010.

There doesn’t seem to be a ready-to-run RBR (Restaurant Buffet Refurbished) anywhere on the horizon, and I’m not expecting a model of that ahistorical Mk2 in chocolate and cream, but a representative 9-car formation behind modern-day steam power could be something like this:

BCK-FO-FO-FO-RMB-TSO-TSO-TSO-BSK

Meanwhile, the late-50s “Cornish Riviera” west of Plymouth was this nicely-modellable 7-car formation, all runnable with stock in the current Farish range (The RU isn’t out yet, but is imminent)

BSK-CK-FK-RU-SK-SK-BSK

Spot the similarities? This is looking like two totally separate formations. Especially when you look more closely at the present-day set and realise they all have Commonweath bogies rather than B1s.

Posted in Modelling Projects | Tagged Graham Farish | Comments Off

Goodbye to The Hillside

Posted on March 17, 2013 by Tim Hall

Photo by Network Rail

Part of my childhood has disappeared. A few weeks ago, as part of the Great Western Main Line electrification project, Network Rail demolished Trenches Bridge, about half a mile west of Langley station.

I spent the early years of my life living very close to this bridge; whatever it’s official name might have been, we all knew it as “The Hillside”. Quite why is anyone’s guess, although it was probably a reference as much to the embankment as to the bridge itself. Where the embankment leading down from the bridge met the road there were three impressive elms that, to a five-year old, were like a forest. Sadly those fell victim to Dutch Elm Disease many years ago.

As for the bridge, it crossed the busy four-track Great Western main line out of Paddington, which as much as now was an endless procession of trains, with far more variety than you see today, especially freight. I have memories of long summer evenings after school watching the busy evening rush-hour. I was too young to remember much of the final years of steam (at least too young go there unsupervised), although I do have one strong memory of an ex-GWR pannier tank shunting the Stadex siding on a frosty morning. The strong memories are of the heyday of the WR diesel hydraulics, the Westerns and Warships in their distinctive maroon livery, and what was always a childhood favourite, the Hymeks. Often the highlight of an evening would be a Blue Pullman, one of the WR’s multiple unit Pullman sets working the down Bristol or South Wales Pullman.

We moved house early in the 1970s. by which time the diesel hydraulics were in decline, and green and maroon liveries had given way to corporate image BR blue. But the love of trains has never left me.

Posted in Travel & Transport | Tagged GWML Electrification | 4 Comments

If Journey were British, he would have caught the midnight rail replacement bus…

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Tim Hall | Comments Off

Placeholders

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Tim Hall

On Steve Jones’ late lamented Electric Nose blog, he came up with the context of “placeholders” – models you know bear little or no resemblence to the real thing, but stand in for want of a better model. These two beasties are examples.

The china clay slurry tanker on the left is an old Peco wagon repainted in ECC blue with some Fox transfers. It’s not that close to the converted caustic soda TUA it’s supposed to represent, but ironically it’s as accurate as the Peco tank I repainted – that was supposed to have been a representation of those original caustic soda tanks.

On the right is one of the Graham Farish Tullis Russell PAAs which they made in the mid-1990s. The prototype is supposed to be one of the eight wagons used to transport china clay between Cornwall and Scotland for use in the paper industry. Although they’ve got the livery right, the actual model is something of a compromise, being one of their existing aggregate hoppers with a lid.

If you look at a photo of the real thing (from Paul Bartlett’s excellent website), you realise the model looks nothing like it apart from the fact it’s the right shade of blue and has four wheels.

These wagons were signature items for Cornwall in the 1980s, given the rarity of the prototype I can’t see anyone coming up with a better version any time soon, and scratchbuilding replacements would not be an easy job. For the time being, they’re going to have to do.

Posted in Modelling Projects | Tagged Electric Nose, Graham Farish, Peco, Wagons | 2 Comments

Fiddle yard and more oldies.

Posted on February 17, 2013 by Tim Hall

Now I’ve taken delivery of another shipment of Kato Unitrack, all the track in the main line fiddle yard is down. It it’s current incarnation there are six roads using Kato #6 points and some 282mm radius curves to keep the track spacing tight. The tracks are in excess of ten feet in length, meaning there’s space for two trains in each road at least when running in British-outline mode.

Experience will tell if this formation will work; it’s accepable for a parade-of-trains approach but won’t allow realistic timetabled operation because it lacks the ability to reverse trains. I’ve drawn up an alternative scheme with eight roads and trailing crossovers at each end which will allow end-to-end style operation as well. That may end up reducing capacity slightly because all the additional pointwork at each end will take up more space, but will gain a lot in operational flexibility.

The three locomotives are again CJM models acquired during the 1990s, repainted and detailed Farish shells on CJM Saturn chassis. The trains are three iconic (for me at any rate) late-80s Cornish trains, the “Night Riviera”, the West of England TPO and the afternoon St.Blazey to Gloucester Speedlink.

Posted in Modelling Projects | Tagged CJM, Kato Unitrack | Comments Off

Tracklaying by Salvador Dali?

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Tim Hall

Trains from Doncaster to Goole and Scunthorpe in northern England are currently disrupted due to a landslip. This one looks rather more severe than a mere collapsed embankment, as this photo posted to Twitter shows:

and another pic of the Hatfield & Stainforth landslide twitter.com/sammie_spad/stâ€¦

— Sammie Spad (@sammie_spad) February 13, 2013

Somehow I think this line will be closed for some time.

According to the Landslide Blog, it has the same cause as the Aberfan tragedy of 1969. Fortunately this one hasn’t caused any loss of life. The mess will still take an awful lot of clearing up.

Posted in Travel & Transport | Tagged Stainforth | Comments Off

Oldies

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Tim Hall

Now I’ve got some track down on the layout, a few older models are coming out of storage.

These three class 47 locomotives all carry liveries from the early 1990s, and represented the current scene at the time I obtained them. They’re all hand-finished models from CJM, all three based on detailed Graham Farish shells mounted on the (then) superior Minitrix chassis. Despite having been stored for a decade, all three ran straight out of the box, with only 47708 (the one in Network South-East livery) running slighly jerkily, probably down to dirty pickups.

I’m wondering how many of my old Farish models of similar vintage still run, and how many have died due to split gears. The big question now is how many older models are worth resurrecting, and how many should be retired in favour of newer more accurate products coming from Bachmann and Dapol.

Posted in Modelling Projects | Tagged CJM | Comments Off

Where Nations Collide

Posted on February 10, 2013 by Tim Hall

This is an ambitious project, which is an attempt to combine my British and Swiss modelling interests in a single layout. The idea is for a fixed track plan that will work either as a British or a Swiss outline layout, with scenery and buidings as swappable modules to enable the layout to be run in either mode. Time will tell whether or not this approach will actually work or not, but the intention is an operation-based layout rather than a exhibition-quality display layout.

It centres around a junction station between a double track main line and a single track branch, with a five-road marshalling yard for wagonload freight. In British mode it’s a Par/St.Blazey/Lostwithiel mashup with the yard handling china clay traffic. In Swiss mode it’s somewhere on the Lötchberg line with elements of Frutigen and Kandersteg. The fiddle yard is currently six main line tracks, although I have plans to expand this to eight. I haven’t completely decided how to configure the branch fiddle yard.

It’s at a very early stage of construction at the moment, since the track plan isn’t completely finalised, and nothing’s actually fixed down or wired up. This is the far end of the line, with the junction with the branch and a couple of roads of the yard in place.

What will be the station area, with a Dapol class 122 “Bubble car” looking a bit lost. The Speedlink/Enterprise era freight stock in the goods loop is being used to check clearances and siding lengths, and represents the longest train the yard can handle.

A steam-era freight at the other end of the layout. Despite the mixture of stock while test running, it’s intended to keep to one era during operating sessions, so you won’t be seeing kettles and modern air-braked freight stock at the same time, at least not when anyone is looking.

The track is all Kato Unitrack, some of it ten years old and on it’s fourth layout. No, it doesn’t match hand-ballasted Peco Code 55 in appearance, but that’s not what it’s for. I’m using a mix of #6 and #4 turnouts; all main line points with the exception of one trailing crossover are #6s, while the yard is all #4s. I’m done this because the some older rolling stock with cruder wheel profiles isn’t happy on the lightly-sprung #4s, but #6s don’t give closely-enough spaced tracks for the yard.

More updates will come as construction progresses.

Posted in Modelling Projects | Tagged Kato Unitrack | 2 Comments

Penalty Fares: A PR Disaster in Switzerland

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Tim Hall

It appears as though Swiss railway’s changes to ticketing policy has turned into a major PR disaster, especially for a nation that’s always prided itself on the quality of their train services.

If the BBC report is remotely accurate, it looks as though they’ve introduced a penalty fare system along the lined of that introduced by some train operating companied in Britain, and just as has happened in Britain, it’s had the effect of penalising honest travellers rather than habitual fare-dodgers. As in Britain many are wondering if that’s really an unintended consequence at all. Their system seems excessively harsh; at least British train companies allow their conductors to use their discretion, and make allowances for ticket machines not working. And their penalties are far higher than the British equivalents. Does a broken ticket machine really mean you can’t travel, or is that inaccurate reporting?

Posted in Travel & Transport | Tagged Penalty Fares, Switzerland | 1 Comment

Mini-Module idea – Llugwy

Posted on January 13, 2013 by Tim Hall

image from Google Maps

I’ve been wondering about this location for a mini-module based layout. It’s on the Cambrian line between Machynlleth and Dovey Junction where the line follows the river, and happens to be the exact spot where I used to watch trains on family holidays in 1973 and 74. The rolling stock at the time was a mix of DMUs and loco-hauled trains using class 24 locomotives, and I’ve got as far as acquiring a blue class 24, some Dapol gunpowder vans (the signature item for the line) and blue 101 and 108 DMUs for the project.

Looking at the meander of the river and the track curving in the opposite direction, it does make me think of a corner module. The problem is published mini-module standards use Kato’s #2 curves (249mm radius, about 9Â½”) which in my opinion is far too sharp for scenic modules, although the rolling stock of course has no problems negotiating them.

One option might be to use a much wider radius. The modularity of Kato Unitrack means that if you want an oval, you can build corner modules any radius you like as long as you build the things in pairs. So you could build a rugby-ball shaped layout with two sceniced corners using 381mm (approx 15″) radius corner boards, and two non-scenic 249mm corners. The whole thing will of course be little more than a scenic test track, capable of being set up on the dining room table when required.

Posted in Modelling Projects | Tagged Mini Modules | 1 Comment