Scooting over to Hull

It was good to catch up with Peter Leadley and the Clee Valley Railway today at the Hull exhibition.  Peter has described his O9 project on the NGRM Online forum and this was it's debut show.  Peter has put together an interesting collection of O9 locos, some being one-off scratchbuild's by fellow Hull club member Paul Windle.  Sadly some issues with the Windle 'Bonnie Dundee' hadn't been resolved, even the SMR's chief p-way engineer's input was sought.... Luckily though the issues with his Guest-style tender loco may have been identified, hopefully Peter can have it running on the Sunday!

Peter's has the first completed MG Models steam loco I have seen on a layout - painted in Northern Rail purple!

An overview of the layout, coaches are built from Avalon Line kits I made the masters for some time ago (just don't ask about the bogies...):

I promised Peter a visit from the SMR 'Scooter', here it proves that it, and a wagon, could fit on the turntable together:

Colin

Early in the Day

It may not have escaped your notice that there hasn't been much model railway activity recorded here of late (well, not much activity at all really). That really is because there is nothing to report, so please don't think I'm hiding the construction of a new 30ft extension to 'Shifting Sands' down in the shed ready for a big reveal in the spring - I'm not! Perhaps when I wrote the piece "The last one for now" about the last O9 wagon I had completed I somehow tempted fate?

With other distractions about the house now at a low, I have put some thought to building something.  Not minded to start a layout or item of stock, I have chosen to build a diorama in a display case that can double-up as a photographic background for O9 stock.  After a few sketches and false starts, I have composed a scene that will (for display purposes at least) accommodate my original locomotive and stock from my early days in O9. The name of the piece 'Early in the Day' reflects both this and the depiction of the start of a day's running on a miniature railway:

This use of the early stock in many ways is a result of the ongoing work I am undertaking with the uploading of the content of my old Fotopic site to the blog, if you haven't yet rediscovered this content it can be found at the top right hand corner of the page.

The overall size of the diorama will be 32 cm x 17 cm, giving plenty of depth for photography, a fault I soon found with some of my earlier dioramas:

The shed building is envisaged as something rather understated and may be inspired by a building I photographed back in the summer.  The weekend after re-acquainting myself with 'Katie' at Cleethorpes we headed back to the Lincolnshire coast for a week-long holiday in Skegness. Here is a town with a rich miniature railway history but sadly now without a line.  This shed and a nearby slabbed platform are evidence of the last 10 1/4" railway on the south promenade (and the 12 1/4" tramway that replaced it) now most of the formation was now lost under grass:

Incidentally, a walk on the seafront at Chapel St Leonards proved fruitless for a former site for a railway referred to in two articles in 'The Narrow Gauge', I discovered on my return home that we had been looking at the wrong end of the promenade!  Still intrigued by all these lines I sent a few emails on my return home to those who would know a little more and posted a plea on the 'Miniature Railway World' forum. The results of this brought a few nuggets of information and some vintage photographs. With my curiosity largely satisfied, whether I take any of this research further really depends on the motivation and time to do so, a bit like railway modelling really…

Colin

Pages from Fotopic - shiftingsands.fotopic.revisited

"Shifting Sands is the name of my O9 (7mm scale, 9mm gauge) railway modelling project, an attempt to model a seaside miniature railway in a compact space of 3ft x 2ft, on a modified cork notice board.... 

I have always been interested in miniature railways, which I put down to visits to Fairbourne and New Romney in my early years! The idea of modelling one has been in my head for few years now, but progress has been slow, going through several changes in track plan and locale. Things seem to be progressing now though...."

I wrote the introduction above in October 2005 on the original shiftingsands.fotopic.net website.  Regular readers of this blog will know that I started it sometime after the demise of the fotopic site as a means of showcasing new O9 projects.  I don't think that there was ever a hope of the fotopic site returning and quite frankly I wrote it off as a loss.  It would take forever to reassemble all the pages and how on earth would I know what I had written?

I then discovered that someone had been a lot more thorough than me in his recording of my work and had saved text copies of the Fotopic site pages.  Step forward Mick Thornton, well known 'roving reporter' and photographer of all things narrow gauge in model form.  From Mick's archived pages I am able to reassemble the pages, although each photo requires work to resize and edit as required.  So from a seemingly impossible task it has become simply a lengthy one.  The plan is to gradually reintroduce pages to the blog, where they will be found via the top right hand side menu, rather than as dated blog postings.

What the original site did not include was the background, planning and modelling processes I had gone through to get to the Shifting Sands concept, although bits of my thinking may have appeared on various discussion forums at the time. I have therefore added an introductory 'Path to Shifting Sands' feature to set the scene for the project.

Colin

September Sunshine

The first weekend in September used to mean one thing for me, the Cleethorpes Coast Light Railway's 'Models and Miniatures' Gala weekend, a mixture of model railways on display in the Griffin Hall building and usually at least one 15" gauge visitor running alongside the home fleet. It was always a very friendly event and we took 'Shifting Sands' on two occasions as it was the ideal venue to display and interpret the layout, as indeed was it's period in residence in the 'Rails to the Sands' exhibition for a couple of seasons. As one visitor commented, stepping back outside to see real 15" gauge trains at the seaside after watching 'Shifting Sands' became a little confusing!

'Shifting Sands' at Cleethorpes in 2009, the author and Spongebob-clad helper.

Alas, with the changes to Griffin Hall to accommodate much of the 'Rails to the Sands' content from the display over the road, and the tightening economics of moving 15" gauge equipment between sites, the event has not run in the last few years. As the recent 1940s-themed event featuring 'Katie' from Windmill Farm proved visiting locomotives at the railway are still popular, however it is easy to underestimate the amount of effort, careful negotiation and expenditure to bring in multiple visiting locomotives for a railway-themed gala event. It is hard to imagine now the kind of gala event that the CCLR ran in the mid-1990s being feasible in today's economic climate, with up to 6 visiting locomotives at some events. The September events usually brought some of the last summer sunshine to the coast, an added bonus!

'Synolda' from Ravenglass at Cleethorpes September 2008

At one of the last 'Models and Miniatures' events the comment was heard that the circus was about to roll on to the next town for the following weekend. Indeed it did, as the second weekend of the month is that of the Kirklees Light Railway's gala weekend and at that time some of the locomotives, and many of the visitors, would attend both events.  The photo above was taken the week before the KLR's 'Battle of the Atlantics' gala.  The last few years have been a different story, as the KLR team have been able to accommodate larger (and potentially more crowd pleasing) visitors than before. This year will see Romney, Hyth & Dumchurch 'Pacific' no.7 'Typhoon' visit alongside Bure Valley tank no.8 'Thunder'. I'm not sure how they will be able to top that next year, but I've every confidence that they will...

The author aboard BVR no. 8 'Thunder' in 2008

Colin

'Katie's Return to Cleethorpes

It was a perfectly normal Facebook conversation with a member of the Cleethorpes Coast Light Railway engineering team... until...

"Will be worth your time coming to the 1940s weekend to see the guest engine at Cleethorpes for the weekend."
Me: "Is guest engine literal in both senses?" 
"Bring your camera. As it will be a blast from the past."
Me (tongue firmly in cheek): "Very nice of Austin to lend you Konigswinter back..."

Many locomotive names were discussed in jest,  but one was missing and I knew (and I think he knew that I knew) that it could only be Trevor Guest's 'Katie' returning to the railway for the first time since she was resident on the railway prior to being sold to Austin Moss at the Windmill Farm Railway for restoration.

'Katie' has always been a favourite of mine, ever since a visit to the Fairbourne railway in the early 1980s, when she pulled our train to Penrhyn Point:

Katie's re-appearance at the Cleethorpes 'Little Unusual Steam Gala' in September 1994 was both a joy to see but heartbreaking that she wasn't working.  Imagine my surprise to find in February 1995 that she was still at Cleethorpes and in the process of being restored to use!  Several happy years of use were enjoyed by both railway and enthusiasts before her owners, Wigan Council, sold the locomotive to Austin Moss and she left Cleethorpes for restoration.  The last time I had seen 'Katie' was back on 12th April 2008 in the workshop at Windmill Farm:

By Wednesday 7th August it was confirmed, 'Katie' was pictured outside Lakeside shed on both Facebook and the Miniature Railway World forum. Travel plans were in place, so off to Cleethorpes we headed on Saturday 10th August. Arriving at Lakeside station, 'Katie' was ready in the shed area coupled to the Alan Keef 'council' coaching rake, ready for the off. There was only one problem, the timetable was running behind and we had to wait for two trains to head off to North Sea Lane before Katie moved off the shed and into platform 3 at Lakeside.

I stayed with 'Katie' for the full round trip, enjoying every moment of the journey. In may ways it was like the old days at Cleethorpes, other than the fact the the line to North Sea Lane was only a dream when 'Katie' left the railway, and that locos used to face the other way around, oh, and the shade of green is now darker....

Later in the day I took a nostalgic trip to the flood bank by the workshop area, to capture Katie heading along the line from Kingsway station (itself changed in location since 'Katie's departure).

Here's the same view on 8th July 1997, when you could see the Pier and leisure centre from here (and the sun shone brighter!).

All in all a very enjoyable day, thanks to Austin and the CCLR volunteers.  There's only one downside, a model of 'Katie' remains a dream, my skills don't extend to Twining valve gear and outside frames!

Colin

Last one for now...

You may remember seeing this before, it sneaked into my pre-Christmas post regarding Diesel no.3, however since then it parted ways with it's original Black Dog Mining chassis (which reverted to a chequerplate flat top) and seemed destined for life as a grounded body...

The Black Dog chassis never looked quite right balance wise, so it's eventual replacement is a WB01 adaptor from the same manufacturer and a Peco 10ft wheelbase N gauge chassis.  The wider side frames of the WB01 actually looks more balanced than the original chassis and the whole wagon now sits a little lower.

Anyway, that really ought to be the last of the wagon tinkering for now...

Colin

A right pair of mongrels

There has been some mention on these pages in recent months of various bits of tinkering with Black Dog Mining wagons, starting with the creation of two 3-plank 6-foot wagons on the night of Narrow Gauge North and then some (unseen on the blog) tinkering after the 7mm NGA show.

However, something wasn't right, especially with the two wagons created on re-used underframes after Burton.  These two underframes had seen several bodies, the 6 foot one was the basis of the 'Shifting Sands' chequerplate flat then a box van, the 5 foot one various flat wagons amongst others.  The gained new Black Dog bodies in the form of a replacement chequerplate top and 2-plank open.

However, something wasn't quite right with just adding new bodies.  Mention in an email conversation last week with Andrew Blackwell, present owner of my earlier Black Dog conversions (narrowed down 6 foot 2-plank opens  modelled as 'Tops' wagons with end handles) set me on a train of thought, especially as I started to look through old photos of my work and perhaps actually appreciating what I had done.  This then led to some reconsideration of my fleet of Black Dog wagons and by Thursday morning (I had a day off) I had actually pulled the two apart for reconsideration.  The end result was a 5 foot version of the narrowed (by 2mm) 'Tops' wagons and by narrowing and slightly shortening the body, the reconstruction of the 'Shifting Sands' chequerplate flat wagon - including fishing the original overlaid steel solebars from the bin! 

I think I realised that sticking bits together was easy, it's customising and making them your own that is the fun part...

Colin