The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

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Peter Butler
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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by Peter Butler » Fri Dec 02, 2022 2:27 pm

Beautiful images Andrew, a wonderful collection you have every right to be proud of.
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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by LNR » Fri Dec 02, 2022 11:16 pm

You guys are lucky with your cooler temperatures showing nice steam atmospherics, down here they're far less obvious most of the time.
Nice shots Andrew.
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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by FWLR » Sat Dec 03, 2022 6:52 am

Love the photos Andrew, they do show off your Palmerston :thumbright: and the coaches look great too.

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by Old Man Aaron » Tue Dec 06, 2022 3:20 am

It's not just moisture your line is dripping with - it's atmosphere too! :salute:
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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by Andrew » Mon Dec 12, 2022 11:27 am

Hi all,

Over on my Rolling Stock thread, I mentioned that - having just finished another van - I quite fancied running a Christmas mail train. I've not seen any evidence that anything remotely like it ever ran on the Welsh Highland or Ffestiniog, but I was thinking of pictures I'd seen of standard gauge trains, with a passenger brake and a motley collection of vans, or perhaps even the Night Mail - "the gradient's against her, but she's on time!"

With that in mind, I'd prepared "Palmerston" for the run, the closest I've got to a Scot or a Patriot or whatever, on the grounds that it's red and has a tender and, perhaps, a certain gravitas? And then it snowed, and so I really had to run a Christmas train, but there was no way I was going to pit all that new and expensive Roundhouse hardware against the elements - and so "Daisy", my trusty Regner, was rostered instead.

The first task was to clear the line. I don't have a snowplough, but the Regner's cowcatcher sort of works, in combination with its brute strength and robust construction. Accompanied by just a guard's van, "Daisy" charged off up the line, driving growing piles of snow before it until it could go no further, at which point I'd scoop the accumulated heap out of the way, and reverse the loco a little to charge at the next drift - it all felt a bit "Snowdrift at Bleath Gill". Or Ivor the Engine. Fun, either way.

Here's "Daisy" arriving at Penlan:

Snow train 1.jpg
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With the line more or less clear, it was back down to Trefechan to collect the rest of the train - three goods vans and passenger brake No 2. For the first time that I recall, the loco struggled to pull the train I'd coupled behind it. Those vans contain quite a lot of lead, and the line was covered not just in snow and ice, but in leaf slime as well. The train slipped and struggled its way up the hill, finally arriving at Penlan, where I decided to terminate the working - apart from anything else, the loco had been working hard for some time, and must have been running low on water. The good folk at Clarach will have to wait a little longer for their Christmas parcels.

I got cold, and wet, but I had fun. And "Palmerston"'s still fueled, oiled and watered, ready to go. Next weekend, maybe???


Snow train 2.jpg
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Snow train 3.jpg
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Snow train 5.jpg
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Cheers,

Andrew.

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by Peter Butler » Mon Dec 12, 2022 12:35 pm

Beautiful snowy scenes Andrew, I love the wagon train, looks just right!
Yesterday, here in Carmarthen, we experienced 'pebble-dash' ice so solid it wasn't possible to open my car doors. On our journey past Bristol there was snow on the M5, closing one lane, but by lunchtime at Taunton it was cold but clear. You seem to have been 'lucky'? with the snow.
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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by Andrew » Mon Dec 12, 2022 12:40 pm

Peter Butler wrote: ↑Mon Dec 12, 2022 12:35 pm You seem to have been 'lucky'? with the snow.
To be honest, I didn't venture beyond the back garden yesterday! It was definitely the "right kind of snow" as far as running trains is concerned, a thin layer of light and powdery stuff. There was rain in the afternoon, and so there's no snow left today.

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by Soar Valley Light » Mon Dec 12, 2022 8:38 pm

Hi Andrew,

Fantastic pictures of a working railways again. I've always had a soft spot for van trains, so I really liked your photos of the 'Santa Special' postal service. :thumbup:

All the best,

SVLR Andrew
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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by LNR » Mon Dec 12, 2022 11:14 pm

Yes, as Andrew said great pictures and it certainly sounds like fun clearing the line in the first place. Unfortunately something I doubt I'll ever get to do down here.
Grant.

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by FWLR » Tue Dec 13, 2022 6:24 am

Great photos Andrew, love the train with those vans.

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by FWLR » Tue Dec 13, 2022 6:26 am

Great photos Andrew, love the train with those vans.

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by FWLR » Tue Dec 13, 2022 6:48 am

They are that good I commented twice... :lol

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by Andrew » Mon Dec 19, 2022 11:09 am

Hello again,

Having completed another trio of slate wagons, and posed them for their official photos, they needed a test run.

I suppose I could have just coupled the three of them to the battery shunter and given them a quick trundle but I fancied seeing how they'd look in the rest of the slate train AND I still had "Palmerston" prepared from the previous weekend. So here's what the test run looked like:

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There was seemingly no-one at work in the quarry (understandable - working slate when it's minus whatever must be particularly unpleasant...), so the train returned empty. I'm working on that though...

Anyway, I'm pleased to say that the wagons ran very nicely. I'm pretty impressed with the England too - individually those wagons are light enough, but I've packed as much lead as I could into them, and the full rake has 28 axles, but the loco pulls them up my 1:40 gradients and round my 3'-ish curves quite happily...

I'm guessing that will probably be the last train of the year - if I keep up my usual tradition, the next will be on New Year's Day...

Cheers all,

Andrew.

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by philipy » Mon Dec 19, 2022 11:45 am

That is a wonderful looking train, Andrew. Well done.
Philip

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by Trevor Thompson » Mon Dec 19, 2022 12:32 pm

I do appreciate a long train of empty slate wagons! Very Ffestiniog.

Trevor

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by Andrew » Mon Dec 19, 2022 6:08 pm

philipy wrote: ↑Mon Dec 19, 2022 11:45 am That is a wonderful looking train, Andrew. Well done.
Thank you! I am pleased with how it looks - I think it helps that every wagon is different, even if only subtly so...

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by Andrew » Mon Dec 19, 2022 6:15 pm

Trevor Thompson wrote: ↑Mon Dec 19, 2022 12:32 pm I do appreciate a long train of empty slate wagons! Very Ffestiniog.
One of the good things about having a small garden is that it makes 14 wagons look like a decent length slate train!

The combined rake does have a very Ffestiniog feel, despite containing some WHR wagons - no doubt the England at the front helps! For New Year's Day I'm thinking I might go for WHR train. I've got 4 WHR "crate" type wagons, but they also used opens for carrying slate, and pinched Ffestiniog wagons too. With the Baldwin in the front and a WHR brake van on the back, I should be able to make a fairly accurate train...

Cheers,
Andrew

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by ge_rik » Mon Dec 19, 2022 8:48 pm

Very atmospheric

Rik
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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by StuartJ » Tue Dec 20, 2022 11:19 am

Very nice. Shades of Princess in the last few months of working in 1946.

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Re: The (Windmill Hill) Welsh Highland Railway

Post by Andrew » Sun Jan 01, 2023 6:48 pm

Hello all - and Happy New Year!

I'm not sure how many years it is now that I've run a train on New Year's Day, but I kept up the tradition this year, and with a first for me too - a reasonably accurate Welsh Highland slate train. Unlike the Ffestiniog, the Welsh Highland used open wagons as well as the familiar "crate" type for the conveyance of slate, which I replicated in my train. I included a "borrowed" Ffestiniog wagon too, another fairly typical feature of Welsh Highland goods trains.

In truth, the train looked better than it ran, with some under-weighted wagons, debris on the line and "Russell"'s rather track-shy pony trucks contributing to some fairly erratic running, but nothing that can't be cured - and it felt good to start the year as I mean to go on.

All the best,

Andrew.

NYD 23 A.jpg
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