Between a rock and a hard place

Cuarto de Pulgada’s shunt loco has been helping to test the new shed tracks, propelling a train of hoppers over the turntable to check the alignment.

I was paying attention to the hoppers rolling across the turntable rather than watching the caboose at the other end of the train.

That was when this happened.

You’re going nowhere matey!

I’ve completely replaced the front two tracks but the third has only been relayed at the turntable end. The derailment was caused by rocks loosened when the old tracks were lifted.

 

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No foundations?

Built a new bridge for your model railway?
Can’t be bothered bedding it into the scenery properly?
No problem, just rest it on top.

There’s a prototype for everything!

End of the line

Cuarto Sheds was built as a storage area for works in progress. Though the tracks on the diorama are wired up it has never been used as an active model.

The diorama has sat on a bedroom windowsill since it was made but is to be added to the main FCPyF layout as the final section of the “2016” rebuild.

There is space between Cuarto de Pulgada and the front door of the garage to mount the loco shed scene on the wall so that it can become part of the operational layout.

I have started work on the project, the shed board now latches on to the end of the station but a supporting bracket needs fixing to the wall to hold the other end. The running shed has been dismantled and will be relocated closer to the workshop, allowing for the curved approach tracks from the turntable. A coaling stage will be built to disguise the baseboard join between the station and the sheds, possibly with the scenery extended to make the shed board match the width of the station.

Bargain box revisited

I posted a week or so ago about a bargain box of OO trains found in a charity shop. As I don’t model in OO much these days the contents of the box were always intended for re-use in On30 scale.

So far the “Smoky Joe” style loco, red van and two open wagons have been bashed for use on the FCPyF. Saddle tank #3 has been rebuilt using the mechanism from the charity shop loco, freeing up the 6 wheel tram mechanism previously used for reuse as a diesel or as a powered tender chassis.

When seen from a low angle it looks front heavy but this is not noticeable from a higher viewpoint.

The chassis still needs weathering, this will be done when I touch up the loco’s paintwork where the body has been altered to fit the shortened chassis.

The van and open wagons have been widened to match the earlier Tri-ang conversions. The new wagons are being shunted under the mine tipple in the photo above.

Job prospects

It’s been a some months since I last had an enquiry about employment opportunities. It must take a very small minded person to want a job on an On30 scale railway. About 1/48th of a full size mind in fact.

Does Manuel LaBora want some help unloading the coal wagon at Grande?

The request was intercepted by my spam catcher over a week ago, but I hadn’t checked my email for a while.

 

Bargain box

I walked to Sandbach this morning, travelling faster than the traffic on Crewe Road because the M6 was bunged up and that has a knock on effect on the local roads. When I got to town I bought a paper and had a quick look around the market before going to work.

Passing one of the charity shops I noticed a box of model railway stuff for sale, at the price I thought it might be worth buying so I went in.

On getting home after work I’ve emptied the box and sorted the jumbled contents out. I reckoned there were half a dozen wagons, the count is actually eight. They’re OO but suitable for conversion (or reuse of the running gear) as On30 wagons. There’s also a badly damaged BR MkIII coach, only good for scrap but I have salvaged its axles. I counted three locos in the shop but there was actually another hidden at the bottom of the box. Two of these are in working order. One is a Smoky Joe type pug suitable for conversion to On30. The other, a class 45 diesel, is not really much use to me but might be cleaned up and sold on to recoup some of my outlay for the mixed lot.

Of the other two, non-running, locos one has an old Mainline mechanism. It looks as if the rear driving axle has split so it’ll probably not be worth repairing but the bodywork may provide some useful spare parts. The other non-runner is a model of “Evening Star”. This is a tender powered model but lacks its tender. However it may be possible to rebuild it as an On30 loco to share #117’s motorised tender or use the motor bogie from the diesel to make a new tender.

In addition to the trains there are a couple of buildings that are suitable for conversion to O scale and a full circle of curved track, quite a few straights and four sets of damaged points. It may be possible to get one or two decent sets by cannibalising the damaged sets but Hornby points are not the best in the world so I don’t think I’ll bother.

Add to the above a couple of bags of scenic scatter-matter and an, as yet untested, mains controller. All in all not a bad impulse buy, and the price was right.

Passengers must cross the line

The usual rule is that passengers must NOT cross the line, not so on the FCPyF.

Passengers travelling on loco hauled trains to and from Grande may be puzzled by the short platform adjacent to the carriage shed siding but its purpose becomes clear when an autoferro is working the train.

Converted road vehicles like 27 and 28 only have doors on one side, not necessarily the right side for station platforms.

At minor stations this means that passengers may need to alight at ground level but larger stations have a short secondary platform like this one.