The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by ge_rik » Mon Jan 21, 2019 8:32 am

I was really impressed with your daughter's drawing. At first, I thought it was the stonework around a tunnel mouth, but a climbing frame makes a lot more sense. I do hope your hair has calmed down a bit in the past ten years :D

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by Andrew » Mon Jan 21, 2019 9:35 am

ge_rik wrote: Mon Jan 21, 2019 8:32 am I do hope your hair has calmed down a bit in the past ten years :D
It's a fairly accurate depiction of how it looks this morning actually after walking to work wearing a bobble hat...

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by tom_tom_go » Mon Jan 21, 2019 11:23 am

I like the smug face she has drawn of you. Dad standing next to his railway looking very proud.

My step daughter use to manufacture paper cards and drawings when she was a similar age, that was a long time ago...

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by Andrew » Mon Jan 21, 2019 12:23 pm

My wife wants to know why I was wearing a dress on the day Daisy drew my portrait. Good question - I wouldn't want to get steam oil on my best frock, must have been artistic license on her part.

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by FWLR » Tue Jan 22, 2019 11:55 am

Andrew wrote: Mon Jan 21, 2019 12:23 pm My wife wants to know why I was wearing a dress on the day Daisy drew my portrait. Good question - I wouldn't want to get steam oil on my best frock, must have been artistic license on her part.
:laughing3: :laughing3: :laughing3:

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by Andrew » Wed Mar 06, 2019 9:08 am

Hello!

No, no actual progress to report on the (WH)WHR, although I'm hoping to make some in the Spring, and have charged the batteries on my RH Bertie and transmitter so may even run a train soon-ish, just another aside, I'm afraid...

Anyone who's followed this thread for a while will be familiar with the MOTTLITTs, the Manky Old Trucks That Live In The Tunnel. Whilst perusing the Glos Warks line's excellent blogs yesterday I was amused to see that they also have a rake of MOTTLITTs - and they don't look dissimilar to mine:

Image

This lot usually reside in the otherwise disused tunnel at Cheltenham Racecourse and have been dragged out to allow the tunnel to be inspected. Unlike mine, they aren't in regular use - in fact the blog mentions that many of them are awaiting removal from the railway.

My own MOTTLITTs were due to come in from the cold this winter but didn't in the end - I'll brush them down for another season soon... One option I'm considering is to construct a plastic covered van and guards van to replace the ones currently in the rake - those are wood and metal bodied and fare considerably worse than their plastic counterparts. I've got two Faller E-train covered vans which could be a good starting point for conversions - the rest of the rake are mostly Faller-based, so there'd be a good family resemblance...

Cheers,

Andrew.

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by Andrew » Sun Apr 21, 2019 7:36 pm

Hello!

The Bank Holiday weekend has seen a fair bit of progress in the garden. Most of that hasn't been directly railway related, but I did clear the line as far as Penlan and re-jig the point there which had been causing derailments.

Naturally, that needed testing, so Russell was steamed, the perfect loco for the job given that its pony trucks can be somewhat reluctant to stay on the line when faced with iffy track. The run didn't go entirely smoothly, I struggled to get an even flow of gas (partially blocked jet?), but I enjoyed myself and did manage to get my testing done, starting with the MOTTLITTS, seen here heading back down to Trefechan:

Easter goods.jpg
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I managed to push and pull those through the pointwork without problem, so then thought I'd try a bigger challenge, the lightweight rusty tippers... Such a grotty train ought to be beneath the dignity of my flagship loco really, but I told myself I was recreating Russell's post-WHR industrial days on the Fayle's Tramway...

Easter tippers.jpg
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The tippers negotiated the pointwork about as well as you could expect them to, so I'm declaring my trackwork a success - a return to passenger working (originally scheduled for this weekend) edges ever closer...

Finally, I couldn't resist setting up this little scene once the run was over - Happy Easter!

Easter bunnies.jpg
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Cheers all,

Andrew.

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by Andrew » Sun Apr 21, 2019 8:18 pm

As a post script to the above, when I was packing things away after the run I noticed and photographed this rather poignant scene:

Lost soul.jpg
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A week or two ago my RH Little John was the subject of comment when it was spotted running without its driver. This is the chap in question, borrowed today to drive Russell, and seemingly forgotten about when Russell went back in its box - from a driver-less loco to a loco-less driver...

Andrew.

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by tom_tom_go » Sun Apr 21, 2019 9:52 pm

It's nice to see Russell again Andrew, looks good on your line.

Did the burner keep going out or was it fluctuating?

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by Andrew » Sun Apr 21, 2019 10:11 pm

tom_tom_go wrote: Sun Apr 21, 2019 9:52 pm It's nice to see Russell again Andrew, looks good on your line.

Did the burner keep going out or was it fluctuating?
A bit of both... It was hard to get a steady flame (more like you'd expect on a cold day), and several times I thought I'd adjusted it down only to find that it went out shortly afterwards. I was using up some old gas, but I didn't think it had a shelf life? Any thoughts welcome!

Andrew.

PS Enjoying the Slomo but still getting used to driving with it - I had a few slow speed collisions when I didn't stop in time!

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by FWLR » Mon Apr 22, 2019 10:38 am

Love the loco-less driver Andrew...Brilliant imagination there... :thumbright: :thumbright:

The photo is rather long..How did you manage that... :scratch:

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by tom_tom_go » Mon Apr 22, 2019 10:41 am

Although the gas itself doesn't expire as such the cansister and seal will so I would try again with a new butane (not propane/butane mix) and try again to rule that out.

It's not a slow speed collision, it's inertia just like the real thing :thumbup:

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by Andrew » Mon Apr 22, 2019 5:09 pm

FWLR wrote: Mon Apr 22, 2019 10:38 am The photo is rather long..How did you manage that... :scratch:
That's just how it came out of the camera/phone. It takes rather long thin shots, perhaps all phones do? In landscape format the work quite well on the forum, I think, but they can come out quite tall in portrait mode. Sometimes I crop 'em, but the format seemed to suit the composition on this one...

Cheers,

Andrew.

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by Andrew » Mon Apr 22, 2019 5:11 pm

tom_tom_go wrote: Mon Apr 22, 2019 10:41 am Although the gas itself doesn't expire as such the cansister and seal will so I would try again with a new butane (not propane/butane mix) and try again to rule that out.

It's not a slow speed collision, it's inertia just like the real thing :thumbup:
Good advice, thanks Tom. Yes, something was definitely up with the can, I seemed to pump more gas into the air than the loco. I'll buy new gas and try again soon...

Cheers,

Andrew.

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by Andrew » Sun May 12, 2019 6:16 pm

Hello!

Progress on the (WH)WHR tends to be somewhat sporadic, but today I bit the bullet and started work on the Penlan station relaying and ballasting.

The first task was to extricate the track from the mind-your-own-business that had completely covered it, and to remove the crumbling remains of the Rowlands mix ballast that is no longer in good repair. Having done that, tidied the lineside and completely cleared the trackbed, I put the track back down again, with the odd new fishplate here and there...

Here it is on completion of the work:

Cleared track.jpg
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It looks good, but the levels are all over the place so I won't be able to run trains over it until I'll ballasted again. I'm going to try to squeeze in a siding behind the station, so I think I'll sort that before ballasting, then do the whole lot in one go...

I'm aiming for a grand re-opening of the whole line later in the summer...

Cheers,

Andrew.

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by tom_tom_go » Sun May 12, 2019 6:29 pm

Now that Russell has a Slomo you may find the track doesn't need to be as level as you think...

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by Andrew » Tue May 14, 2019 8:19 am

Good morning!

I managed to spend an hour in the garden last night so started work on making space for a new siding at Penlan. It will go behind the station and in front of the wood store, which needed pruning back to ensure adequate clearance.

Here's the cluttered corner of the garden before work started, with the point for the new siding placed in the right position:

Wood store 1.jpg
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It's not easy to see, but there's an upright behind the paint pot that's bang in the way, as is the lower shelf of the wood store. My modifications to the store were in line with the original construction technique, ie hack it into roughly the right shape then nail it together.

Here's the modified store, with room for the siding visible heading towards the rear fence:

Wood store 2.jpg
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When finished, the siding should be able to accommodate a full length (WH)WHR train, three bogie carriages or the equivalent, giving Penlan facilities other than just a passing loop for the first time and increasing the operating flexibility of the whole line. It won't be particularly convenient to use, but it'll do...

The siding itself might take a bit of a back seat for a while once I've inserted the point - I need to relay and ballast the line through the station first to get the railway fit for trains again. Then perhaps I'll invest in a bag of Postcrete and Penlan's new platform and siding will emerge simultaneously to complete the scene in this corner...

Cheers,

Andrew.

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by FWLR » Tue May 14, 2019 8:26 am

Thats a great use of a bit of used land there Andrew, did you have to get a compulsory purchase order on it to carry out the work.. :lol:

Seriously, it's going to be so useful to have a siding to hold a train ready for use and sheltered too.

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by tom_tom_go » Tue May 14, 2019 8:32 am

That siding gives operational interest as well as it can collect wood from the sawmill?

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by philipy » Tue May 14, 2019 8:50 am

Much better use of that corner, well done
Philip

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