West Shropshire Mineral Railway, was Blank canvas W.I.P.

DVT Dweller · Post by **DVT Dweller** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 7:19 pm

Today's jubilee express:

DVT Dweller · Post by **DVT Dweller** » Tue Jun 19, 2012 9:52 pm

A few little updates, nothing major to report really. However the lines 2 engineers R.Huff, R.Cess, have been out and about making use of some recyclable materials (the pallet wood from the block deliveries) and have constructed 2 temporary bridges on the high level line allowing this line to run upto the start of the triangle:

Id trust anyone’s loco on those……

In all honesty the VoR has run across them a few times with no movement what so ever. I hope to be placing the order for the recycled plastic boards this week that will allow the bridges to be constructed properly.

Also at the far end there has been more construction carried out:

A temporary track bed for a terminus on the patio:

This will also be on plastic boards so that there will be nothing on the patio when the railway is not in use. The terminus has allowed some services to be run, with the VoR taking a freight service with 2 L&B vans, L&B brick wagon and the L&B bogie brake, but guess who forgot to take his camera out.

A couple of steam services ran yesterday before work, a kind of late Fathers day/Birthday special using my first ever live steam loco (predictably a Mamod) “Miffy” named after my great grandfather who bought me the set for my birthday back in 1985 and started my dad and I off in 16mm with his “Rose Leigh Light Railway” in Bunbury:

Finally a staged photo with my Kenversions Mamod, which needs the gauge glass replacing and abit of TLC carrying out on it:

Mike PVLR · Post by **Mike PVLR** » Tue Jun 19, 2012 10:55 pm

best get the engineers train out mate. Get those weeds out before they attack the railway. You should have staged triple headed mamods. Looking good though. Hurry up and plan the next building day.

DVT Dweller · Post by **DVT Dweller** » Tue Jul 10, 2012 10:23 pm

Not put an update on here for abit, then again nothing major has been going on. Holiday, weather and work getting in the way.

I’ve had a go at putting in abit of scenery but in all honesty I wasn’t to happy with it:

There has been progress when the weather has allowed with the low-level terminus:

Some shuttering made up and a concrete section cast to take the track from the “step-over” section to the terminus:

Last Saturday dad came over to give a hand before I had to head into work, after much scratching of heads and moving of stone, laying, lifting and relaying we finally came up with this on the right hand side: (thoughts and ideas a please)

I completed the low-level area boarder and laid out a basic track plan:

And we found out it’s a good job we don’t live next door……

Now in all honesty I’ve buggered up abit, the plan was to use paving flags in the low-level section to form the track bed and then fill with ballast to cover everything and make it look tidy. However in a moment of madness all the edging blocks are at the track bed height, meaning the concrete flags would be level with these and there is no retaining edge to keep the ballast from spilling out (any ideas as I’m pulling my hair out on this one

).

Finally you might have noticed a name change. I’m currently reading through Peter Johnson’s “An Illustrated history of the Shropshire & Montgomeryshire Railway”. The line originally started as the “West Shropshire Mineral Railway” in the 1800’s though the company actually never ran a train. Now my thought is, what if they had decided that 4’81/2” was a little to expensive and that down scaling to 2’ would be a much more viable option. This might just have given the company a much better financial start in life and allowed the railway to continue to the present day. I need to continue reading that will allow me to continue the story of how the line continued to exist.

dougrail · Post by **dougrail** » Thu Jul 12, 2012 7:32 pm

Good God, you're a very lucky chap indeed!

Love the photos, a brilliant diary of 'In the beginning, there was only darkness and grass..." to "let there be Light - and rails." Looking forward to seeing it finished - and what work does the Kenversions Mamod need if I may ask?

DVT Dweller · Post by **DVT Dweller** » Thu Jul 12, 2012 9:04 pm

dougrail:72729 wrote:Good God, you're a very lucky chap indeed!

Love the photos, a brilliant diary of 'In the beginning, there was only darkness and grass..." to "let there be Light - and rails." Looking forward to seeing it finished - and what work does the Kenversions Mamod need if I may ask?

Thanks Doug, it's getting there slowly, I've got abit of work on the low level terminus done before setting off to work. The Kenversion mamod needed a new sight glass. I've managed to find a spare one to replace that, however she then struggled to raise steam so the wicks need replacing (when I find where I've put it) then she needs detailing work and a repaint. Bit of a long term project in all honesty.

DVT Dweller · Post by **DVT Dweller** » Tue Jul 17, 2012 10:21 pm

Latest updates:

It all started last Friday……..

The shout of “I want my kitchen back NOW” was loud enough to stir me into action and start unpacking, work got in the way Friday evening and rain = work made sure nothing happened on the Saturday however after the show at Telford on Sunday dad and I made the most of the good weather:

By 18:00 the first train had made a complete circuit of the low-level. After abit of playing around (and running my VoR dry) we called it a day.

Last night I took some time to complete the patio terminus:

The track work all needs cutting so that the boards can be lifted in sections but at the moment its nice to have a running line:

Tonight whilst I got on with cutting the grass Evan quite happily watched my Friog run around with 2 vans but guess who forgot to take his phone out….

Then I plodded on with the low-level terminus by the garage:

I think Im only going to have the 2 sidings in the bottom left hand corner, it looks abit to crammed in with 3, though its always nice to have extra storage space.

Another working day on Saturday is planned so there should be more to report soon.

Mike PVLR · Post by **Mike PVLR** » Tue Jul 17, 2012 10:25 pm

looking forward to the working day mate, or should that be playing day. well ! I might do a bit.
Wont be long before you have that top circuit in as well.

LMS-Jools · Post by **LMS-Jools** » Wed Jul 18, 2012 7:11 am

Wowser, lol keep up the good work.

hussra · Post by **hussra** » Wed Jul 18, 2012 9:38 am

DVT Dweller:72924 wrote:Latest updates:

It all started last Friday……..

This is looking great, well done on getting the circuit sorted. I'm quite some way off that point still! (Must update my own thread...)

DVT Dweller:72924 wrote:I think Im only going to have the 2 sidings in the bottom left hand corner, it looks abit to crammed in with 3, though its always nice to have extra storage space.

That looks sensible - the extra point takes a lot of space, so once you look at where the fouling points are you would have two quite short sidings rather than one longer one, not sure you'd actually gain a whole lot of siding space overall.

DVT Dweller · Post by **DVT Dweller** » Mon Jul 23, 2012 7:05 pm

Latest up dates:

Mike, Jen and co came down for a slightly shorter working day on Saturday but a tremendous amount of work was carried out. The bridge Dad bought at Telford has been fitted to replace one of the dodgy wooden structures. Also the rest of the curve for the house side of the garden has had the track bed built:

This now means the main circuit is complete giving a high level and low level loop around the grass. It also means most importantly that the scenery can progress to tidy the garden so it looks abit more pretty when the wife looks out of the window.

Part of Sunday was spent putting in some of the blocks for flat side of the triangle in and track laying on the curve. This allowed the first loco to make a test run (click on the image for a short video):

Once again big thanks to everyone involved for their help.

Mike PVLR · Post by **Mike PVLR** » Mon Jul 23, 2012 8:39 pm

Jen worked on the new rock face

Then Alice Nutter off the Pendle Valley Railway posed by it with Steve pretending to work in the background

With Cameron driving Evan and Jen supervise

And just to prove Steve does work

Thanks for another great day Steve, can't wait for the next one.

laalratty · Post by **laalratty** » Mon Jul 23, 2012 8:50 pm

Excellent, starting to look good with the rocks and plants

Gremlin · Post by **Gremlin** » Mon Jul 23, 2012 9:26 pm

That looks great, quite an impressive build and coming along nicely.

Narrow Minded · Post by **Narrow Minded** » Mon Jul 23, 2012 9:43 pm

Enjoying following this - keep up the great work gang!

LlanpwllBrynwyn · Post by **LlanpwllBrynwyn** » Mon Jul 23, 2012 10:31 pm

Looking good, as someone who is going to be in a similar situation hopefully soon its been really nice to see a Garden Railway evolve from scratch.

hussra · Post by **hussra** » Tue Jul 24, 2012 10:09 pm

Yay, all the way round. Looking really good!

Mike PVLR · Post by **Mike PVLR** » Sun Aug 12, 2012 10:29 pm

We had a great day at Steve's yesterday, A working party followed by a steam up to test that both circuits of track were fit to run on.
The work carried out was to make the railway more pleasing to the eye which it hopefully now is. Lots of top soil to fill up the beds and plenty of slate.
A bit more trackwork by Steve ment that the platform road in the lower station could be used as the track was cut to length and a point fitted for unning round.
In total (if I remember right) we had 5 loco's in steam.]

Gareth managed to make it after a hard days work at Welshpool

Thanks for yet another great day Steve, can we use lighter boulders next time.

DVT Dweller · Post by **DVT Dweller** » Sun Aug 12, 2012 11:04 pm

Your suspension lasted till you got home didn't it.....

As Mike has posted, there was a massive push on the scenery side to make the railway look alot tidier, and in all honesty both the wife and I are made upwith how it looks out of the window.

Unfortunatly as Dad and I were busy with the BBQ I didn't get my camera out to take any photos but I will try and get some more this week.

Big thank you to Mike, Dad, Mat & Chris for your efforts during the day both with collecting materials and making them look right, Jen, Jane and Cath and Ffi for keeping us fed and watered throught the day, with extra special thanks to the wife for keeping the belief over the last couple of months when all she's had to look at out of the window was a couple of rows of bricks. Evan also for being so well behaved throught the day whilst watching us all in the garden.

Also thanks to Gareth, Neil and Russell for helping test run the line in the evening.

I will get some pictures up this week, busy with a trip to Anfield today and seeing family, but will hopefully get chance to get some done tomorrow.

hussra · Post by **hussra** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 9:40 am

Mike PVLR:73748 wrote:

That's looking great - well done! Wasn't quite sure how the blocks were going to end up looking, but that all blends together very nicely.

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