Railways Blog

My order of replacement wheelsets arrived this morning, and the recipient of the first set, class 37 no 37671 “Tre Pol and Pen” is now back in working order with brand-new wheels.

No fewer than four of the six original wheelsets proved to have cracked gears – if this failure rate proves typical I’ll need a lot more than that 24 replacement wheelsets I’ve got so far to repair the whole fleet.

Here’s a photo of the full-sized version of 37671, taken at Par, Cornwall back in 1989. The train is a little on the short side, just a single wagon – but the locomotive did return a couple of hours later with seven loaded ones!

David Salo surmises that Tolkein’s Rivendell is inspired by Lauterbrunnen in Switzerland.

The Lauterbrunnental, just like Rivendell, is a narrow strip of land bounded on two sides by nearly vertical cliffs. Over these cliffs several rills plummet in sheer waterfalls, notably Staubbach, all of which make an unceasing noise.

I have been to Lauterbrunnen a couple of times on holiday. Next time I’ll have to imagine elven palaces instead of Swiss chalets. I wonder if Tolkien would approve of the network of funiculars, tramways, rack railways and cable cars that allow tourists to visit the mountain villages of Mürren and Wengen high above the valley. I wonder if Tolkien would approve? Possibly not, although they are all powered by hydro-electric power rather than polluting steam engines.

Those two villages have no road access, so everything has to use the funiculars and mountain railways. I remember seeing a kitchen sink unit(!) being carried up the funicular and then on a little freight wagon coupled to the tramcar to get it to Mürren, and a freight train propelled by a diminutive and ancient four-wheeled electric locomotive slowly making its way up the 1-in-4 rack-and-pinion gradient to Wengen, the main cargo being crates of beer!

A truck driver has removed himself from the gene pool by trying to beat a train to a level crossing. Unfortunately he managed to injure a great many rail passengers in the process. BBC News, of course, reports this as a ‘Rail crash with one death’. Not a road accident, of course. No doubt there will be some clueless idiots who will blame the railway for operating a push-pull train with the locomotive at the back, just like they did at Selby, without placing the blame where it belongs – with the stupidly reckless road user.

I’m always annoyed with the inconsistant attitude towards safety between road and rail. We’re content to accept the equivalent of a 9/11 every year on the roads, but whenever there’s a single fatality on the railway, all hell breaks loose, there are public enquiries, people recommend vastly expensive high-tech safety systems which will end up pushing up fares and forcing people to go by road instead. In contrast, we still consider it a ‘right’ to have a driving licence even if you’re a complete and utter moron.

Thirty more locomotives tested, ten more with split gears. 24 new wheelsets ordered from B.R.Lines, Bachmann’s official spares dealers. Casualties include a 50, several 37s and 47s, and one Western. Anyone that doesn’t like the French will be glad to know that 50013 “Agincourt” is one of the locos still in working order!

Ten more still to be tested, once I find out where I’ve put them!

Just got back from helping out at the annual exhibition of the Maidenhead and Marlow Model Railway Club – a long day, and hard work.

We had a new venue this year. The last couple of shows had been at the Town Hall in Maidenhead, however this time last year the council were considering demolishing the building to sell the site for development. By the time they decided not to, just a couple of months back, we’d already booked a school hall instead; model railway exhibitions take more than a couple of months to organise.

In the event, the school hall proved to be a better venue; slightly more usable space, and far better car parking, and about the same distance from the railway station. We’ll probably be there again next year. The only problem was the amount of school furniture we had to move about; about 100 examination desks that had to go back on the stage, and many heavy tables we’d moved out of classrooms into the hall for the use of traders. Still, breakdown after the public closure at 5pm took only one and a half hours; less than we feared.

I wasn’t totally satisfied with the choice of layouts; all were end-to-end layouts without a single tail-chaser, and too much emphasis on 4mm scale. All but two layouts were steam-era too; modern traction represented by one 3mm line set in the late 50s, and a modern-era French layout. Still, all the layouts were to a high standard.

I did manage to keep my new year’s resolution so far; I resisted the temptation to buy a second Ian Stoate OCA kit (let’s build the one I bought at Warley first!), and purchased only a 2003 calendar, a tin of paint, a bag of imitation scrap for wagon loads, and a book of colour photos of modern wagons. No rolling stock at all!

Patrick Crozier of Transport Blog and says a lot of the same things about Boiling Frog Syndrome as I have, as well as better explaining the term (and the “Ford Factor”). If only Modern Railways had an online edition…

I’ve been test-running some of my British N-gauge locomotive fleet that had been in storage for a couple of years while I’d been living up in Manchester. The results are not happy; more than half the locomotives tested no longer work! The culprit seems to be the notorious problem with later Graham Farish locos; split gears.

Fortunately replacement wheelsets are available, but it still means I’ll have to spend a lot of time identifying the axles with cracked gears, and dismantling and reassembling the locomotives. And to me, servicing locomotives is not Happy Fun Modelling Time, but Tedious Chore Time.

And we’re talking lots of locos here; like many railway modellers I’ve got a fleet many times in excess the number I’d need to operate any conceivable layout I might build in the forseeable future. I worked out the stock requirements for my never-completed Par-St Blazey line, and it came out at thirteen locomotives (including one DMU and a class 08 shunter as the yard pilot). My total fleet is in three figures!

A few of my more recent British-purchases have been from CJM, with detailed Farish bodyshells on Chris’ own flywheel drive mechanisms; the difference in performance between these and the standard Farish mech is phenomenal! I’m now planning on replacing the Farish mechanisms with these CJM flywheel drives on as many locomotives as I can afford over the next year.

(click for larger image)

This picture of class 37 No 37058 at Crewe was posted on the ModMod mailing list, as a comparison with the poorly-received (by the rivet-counters on the list, at least) new Bachmann model.

It’s a fine detail shot for modellers, showing a lot of bogie and front end detail. But it struck me as a good character shot as well; of a old and battered locomotive nearing the end of it’s working life. Here’s another more conventional three-quarter view, departing with a train for the North Wales Coast line, with the front coach (a Mk1 TSO, no less), filled with bashers.

There are a lot more good photos at www.53a-pix.co.uk.

In the January 2003 edition of Modern Railways (dead-tree only, I’m afraid), George Hudson puts the boot into the Strategic Rail Authority:

In short, the SRA has become a bloated, grotesque quango – perhaps the biggest in the country, and certainly the most expensive. It has an appalling split personality; in terms of delivery it is a Soviet-style bureaucracy which periodically produces prolix consultation documents and ten year plans complete with the railway equivalent of tractor production targets. In terms of style and cost, it reflects some of the less attractive characteristics of modern capitalism, with high salaries, a top-heavy structure, and expensive consultancy as a substitute for coherent thinking – no decisions are made without spending vast amounts on advice, in many cases from people with scant knowledge or understanding of the industry; it is consultant heaven!

Of course, the railway was privofragmentised by those with scant knowledge or understanding of the industry. I wish John Major’s liason with Edwina Currie had been uncovered earlier; perhaps then none of this would have happened.

Good article this month about Virgin’s “Operation Princess” as well.

This sat tale got posted to the ModMod mailing list (dedicated to UK diesel and electric era railway modelling)

Anyone want a cat?

On My Workbench: The remains of a 1959 London Underground DMS

The moral of this story is: If you are part of a railway modelling household, and there are one or more cats in the house, do not on any account allow them to watch Japanese monster movies – it will only give them ideas!