It is uncertain where, or when, number 4 was built because she arrived on the railway lacking builder’s plates. The 0-4-4T has a colonial look to her but, with a large parallel boiler, she lacks the grace of similar sized American Forney locomotives.
She also lacks a decent coat of paint, but has plenty of rust to compensate, and the railway’s management are hoping that nobody really wants to see such trivia as a boiler certificate, because that’s probably lacking too!
The first trains of the day on the FCPyF this morning.
117 is on the express to Cuarto, assisted by 18 banking as far as Cumbre. 18 then returns light engine to Grande, passing San Fernandez bound 21 at Bodjio. 21 in turn meets the Renault railcars on a southbound train from San Fernandez at Perejil.
A very limited service is in operation over the holiday weekend. Railcars 21, 305, 27 and 30 are shown below as they were lined up in the yard at Grande this morning.
27 was first out, express to Cuarto de Pulgada with stops at Rio Paleta and Cuarto only. 21 followed shortly afterwards with request stops at all stations to San Fernandez. 305 and 30 will not be called for until this afternoon’s departures. Tomorrow’s service will be the same four departures again but the morning train to Cuarto is expected to have much heavier loading than today so it will be loco and stock instead of the autoferro.
Later…
27 and 21 returned to Grande this evening, 27 is now lurking in the gloom of the shed, not required for tomorrow’s services.
22 (having worked this morning’s down train from Cuarto) and 21 are stabled on yard track 2, both will run to San Fernandez tomorrow, 21 in the morning and 22 in the afternoon.
117 has been moved off shed and is being fuelled in readiness for working the morning train to Cuarto. The stock for 117’s train is stood on track 1 with 18 attached in the rear to act as banker as far as Cumbre. The afternoon train to Cuarto will again be worked by 305 which is currently at the upper terminus ready to work the first down train tomorrow.
Early morning operations on the FCPyF. A set of coaches had been left overnight at Cuarto after working a Good Friday excursion but they are needed at San Fernandez for the mid-day mail train.
The On30 layout has been neglected recently due to construction of the 1/55th scale module but that doesn’t stop it still being my main modelling interest.
The sheep grazed undisturbed for a while because the afternoon goods from Ravenglass failed at Boot. A special was run to collect the loaded wagons, it was worked by number 8, light engine from Windermere, propelling a brake van.
The Ravenglass and Windermere Light Railway acquired locomotives 2, 5 and 8 from the USA due to them being readily available at short notice and the price being right. They are reliable workhorses and the railway’s management likes them.
I have spent the morning replacing tension lock couplers on the R&W wagon fleet with Kadees.
The majority of the wagons are wooden bodied opens for mineral traffic but there are also a few for carrying other materials.
The tank wagon is a mobile loco fuelling unit, the gondola is for stores and the side tipper is for ballast. The side tipper is included in the fleet because it is, to me, the archetypal narrow gauge wagon.
The brake van has also been Kadee fitted. Other wagon types may be borrowed from the FCPyF from time to time.
Loco hauled passenger trains are rare on the R&W, this business usually being handled by railcars, but a single coach is retained for use on mixed passenger and goods trains.
On a smaller scale, I had a feeling the OO9 railbus might be the start of a slippery slope. While sorting out the rolling stock for the photos above I found an unused Kato N gauge tram chassis.
I succumbed to temptation, the van will be used during visits to exhibitions instead of the bus because its loading gauge is better suited to most OO9 layouts.
Finally, for this rather productive Sunday, a row of low relief trees has been made to act as a view-block at the halt end of the module.
If there’s one feature common to virtually all my railway modelling it has to be corrugated iron sheds. The station buildings at Park Hall Halt, the bothy at Allt-Na-Ballt, the goods office and stores at Muston Sands and Farrall Sidings, the mine at Lescanby Moor and numerous buildings, large and small, on the FCPyF.
Carters Bridge now has my signature on it too.
The shed is built around a small resin building that’s been used on several layouts in the past but the only bit of the original showing is the stone chimney stack.
It’s just set loosely in place at the moment as I still need to clad the walls at this end of the module with stone paper, a job I’ve been putting off for a few days but it should get done over the weekend.
