Garden Railway Forum

Cheers Tom - Yes, he was happy to get away from hanging on the Christmas tree for rides on the Santa Specials at the CHLR as well as having a ride around the Kent 16mm Hopfields last week!

The coach in that livery sits well with your Millie.
Grant.

The colour of the coach livery is really nice and santa should be happy also.

Hope he didn’t get to tipsy. Great photo’s.

Have a brilliant Christmas and All the Best

A few pics from CHLR from recent activities:-

Firstly a pic from todays wood kindling freight trains - looked after today by steam power with Spitfire taking a load down to Junction goods yard Next a pic from Christmas Santa Specials - the big man about to set off up the line - its a shame you can't hear the chatter of the children in the coach ready for him to pop in with their presents at the first stop! And finally a little video of Santa on the move near BBQ End station

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2DIvRVtjp8[/video]

Lubberly!

Rik

Same here...very Lubberly...

HI Mark,

Lovely to see some more pictures of a genuine working railway.

Andrew

Soar Valley Light wrote: ↑Sun Jan 14, 2018 8:30 pm HI Mark,

Lovely to see some more pictures of a genuine working railway.

Andrew

Cheers Andrew - yes the railway is keeping up with kindling supplies which is a task at this time of the year - I have however had to concede on the bird seed flows to missing out the train supply on most days as the birds are just eating so much - I run a couple of token workings a week via train to keep the principle alive but on most days I'm out with the scoop filing directly!

I know the feeling Mark. Our birds are a bit fickle, sometimes the feeder hardly moves all day, others it's gone before my back's turned.

If demand is outstripping supply maybe it's time to rebuild as a double track line. The only other alternative would be to follow the example of Mountsorrel Quarry - lift the line and install a conveyor - that would be interesting in 16mm scale!

Keep the updates coming please, it's lovely to see your line at work.

Anbdrew

A Conveyor - now theres an idea!

Or perhaps a ropeway???????? - heres one in Sweden
By Arvid3D - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.p ... d=12024811

More than happy to share more working photos - maybe some bird seed workings at the weekend!

Now why didn't I think of that! We had one of those up the tip at Harworth Colliery. It was fascinating but a confounded nightmare. A lot of the pits used to have them but more reliable conveyors replaced them in the sixties. There were still detached buckets unreachably stuck in the middle of settling ponds at some pits. Ollerton was my favourite though, we were still sending the dirt up the tip by train in jubilee side tip wagons!

There's a working ropeway closer to home - this one supplies the brickworks at Claughton in Lancashire. No plans to close it either it seems, they replaced the cables last year!
Apparently the last surviving one in the UK?

There you go! I like they had to build a bridge to carry the safety meshing over the road

That's exactly like the one at Harworth pit! There was even a similar bridge where it crossed over the public highway (right over a crossroads). As far as I remember NO protection was afforded to the railway where the ropeway crossed the Glass Bulbs Branch. Maybe the fact that there was only one train a day to the aforementioned factory made the risk of not providing one acceptable.

Andrew

Managed to get out for a short run over the weekend - not many punters for the Easter Sunday service!

A Millie not running like a bat out of hell for change, lovely!

Love the video Mark, it was throwing it down here and has I write this I am at last looking out at blue skies………………..

Working my way through my to do list - 'Luggage for Railcar' had worked it way to the top

To explain, when I fitted the Tesco Express chassis to my Railcar, the battery compartment was used for all the switches/wiring/charging socket etc but left no space for the batteries so they had been placed on the floor of the unit - works well but a bit of an eyesore - see pics below
So what to do - cover'em was my answer - but what with?

I first cut out a piece of plasticard to cover the offending batteries - this was then covered with planking paper to give the impression of the top of a luggage rack - then on top of here various pieces of travelling items were placed

- 2 suitcases and a hat box from Trenarren Models that I'd acquired at tPeterborough and painted up
- A box of beer bottles - same source - £1 bargain box
- 2 Fruit boxes - from the spares box - from a WW1 wagon kit I built a while ago
Once clustered together they were placed into the car
Just need a bit of fettling once I get my passengers sorted - thats a new item on my to do list!

Good solution Mark. Where did the bits and pieces come from, they look nice?