The EWR.

[Bufferstop]

Just got round to reading through your thread. My wife's parents retired to Betham and her brother worked at Croppers paper mill which had it's own private siding off the line to Windermere. They had there own small diesel shunter and PO waggons with "James Cropper and Sons, Kendal" on the sides. So there must have been a pickup goods train that would work them down to Carnforth or Lancaster. Someone on here was working on the diesel quite recently, I think it went the usual rout of sent to the scrap yard, bought and used by another company, back to the scrappers and into preservation.

[captrees]

Just got round to reading through your thread. My wife's parents retired to Betham and her brother worked at Croppers paper mill which had it's own private siding off the line to Windermere. They had there own small diesel shunter and PO waggons with "James Cropper and Sons, Kendal" on the sides. So there must have been a pickup goods train that would work them down to Carnforth or Lancaster. Someone on here was working on the diesel quite recently, I think it went the usual rout of sent to the scrap yard, bought and used by another company, back to the scrappers and into preservation.

Interesting stuff, Bufferstop. I had to look all that up.

Burneside Paper Mills Tramway

The Burneside Tramway was a narrow gauge and a standard gauge industrial railway serving the James Cropper paper mills around Burneside, Cumbria. The tramway was built in 1879-80 as a 3 ft 6 in line to connect the paper mills run by James Cropper and Co in Burneside and Cowan Head. Wagons were hauled by horse power, it was converted to 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in in 1924, in the same year, the Motor Rail and Tram Car Company in Bedford provided an 0-4-0 Dorman Petrol locomotive called Rachel, used to transfer wagons between the mill and Burneside railway station. In 1951 Rachel was replaced by a diesel Ruston 48 No.294266. The line to Cowan Head closed in 1965, with the section between Burneside Mill and Burneside railway station still operating until it closed in 1974. Rachel is preserved at the Lakeside and Haverthwaite Railway; the Ruston was named Flying Flea at Carnforth before moving south to Sir William McAlpine's Fawley Hill Railway where it was named Sir William, in more recent times it moved to the Mid-Suffolk Light Railway

I have space to expand the layout, and a line to Windermere is a possibility, with a paper mill en route. Food for thought there. Thanks.

[captrees]

The EWR has been inundated with small people. Small foreign people. No, not pigmies, just smaller people than I expected when I ordered what should have been the correct size of people to sit in railway carriages. I cannot afford these people at the prices normally charged by hobby shops, although a few have crept in, well arrived in plastic packets actually, because she who tries to oversee the household expenditure has given me some when Christmas and birthdays come around.

For example, see Frank Calderhead, in centre of picture, with lawn mower. He's actually metal. Next to him is of course Postman Pat, courtesy of Peco. But for less than the price of those two you can buy about a hundred seated figures, as per unpainted packet. But you gets what you pays for. If they were 00 gauge, they shrank in transit. I put some in a carriage to test if they were passable but you could barely see their heads above the window sill unless you put them on cushions. And who wants to paint things that small?

The next attempt was better. These things are available in the UK very cheaply too, I see, but postage to the antipodes was 10 times more than the product. So I elected to purchase them from an unpronounceable and unspellable city in their country of origin, via the South China Sea. This meant the total cost was about the same as a cup of tea. Some of them are big enough, but may need a few cushions. And there are too many young ladies in pink frocks and old ladies in bright yellow trouser suits. They do not look very English. I suspect if I use them in my carriages without some degree of paint modification, my passenger trains will become more Orient Express than Caledonian.

[captrees]

There has been poltergeist activity at East Westmorland HQ. Locomotives are randomly derailing as they come into Oxenholme Station. The 4-6-0 locos are fine, but the Fairburn and Fowler 2-6-4 tank engines sometimes derail, and the 3F comes off nearly all the time. It happens on a set of points, and this should be straightforward to fix. But whatever I did, the 3F persisted in derailing.

I could list all sorts of things that I tried to fix the problem. I took out all the ballast, straightened things, flattened the rails, and even cannibalised the points in case anything underneath was catching on the points. (see pic). But whatever I did, the 3F was steadfast in its determination to derail itself.



Now I like my 3F. It's a gutsy little workhorse, and the line it runs on is a continuous loop that my goods trains run on. It needs to run perfectly. I am beginning to think that there is something supernatural in play here. I almost posted a plea for help on here, aware that I might appear as a moron, and prepared to cop appropriate shame for my ignorance. But I am not a quitter. In frustration I visited my train shop, with photos, to see if the resident guru could help. I listened to all his theories, and had tried them all already. So, he said, if all else has failed, just put in a new set of points. That'll fix it.

It didn't. In all fairness, the 3F did three laps towing a dozen trucks without derailing. I was beginning to think there was a god after all. On the next lap I reverted to agnosticism again. The little black horror derailed on the new points. Hoping that it was just a one off aberration, I tried again. And again, and again...(ad infinitum.)



Well that was it. It had to be poltergeist activity. There was no earthly explanation now. I was all set to post on this forum that my railway was haunted and I went and took photos of it all happening. That's when it all became clear. You'll need to take note here and pay attention. I saw the light.



It wasn't the points at all. One front wheel of the 3F was coming off on the (3rd radius) bend about 2 feet before the points. It didn't slow the loco down at all, or make any noises, but it was forcing the 3F to veer left at the points when the points were set straight ahead.

I ran the 3F backwards and forwards until I found the spot. It was derailing at a join, but there was nothing visible to the eye to cause it. I scraped and vacuumed a lot of the ballast away from the sleepers and pondered anon. When I pushed the 3F over the area I found an imperceptible rise in the rails that forced the front left wheel to ride over the rail while the rear four wheels remained steadfast on track. Why is this so, I asked myself? Well to explain, my base board is what the hardware shop calls pinboard. It looks like hardboard a centimetre thick but you can stick drawing pins in it. Then I have a neoprene underlay between the pinboard and the rails. The neoprene allows some movement up and down as the train passes, not to mention expansion and contraction with temperature. The little nails that were hammered into the rails to secure them to the base were often popping up in places and I used to hammer them back down. When I ballasted the tracks, I simply superglued the little nails onto the sleepers. That'll fix the b*******s I thought. Yeah, right. It had caused the rail to rise.

So I cleaned off any ballast that might have snuck under the sleepers, and screwed the rails down. See pic. Note horrible screws and superglued nails. (Sacrilege, cried the pundits!)



How did we go? Perfick. The 3F is a happy little loco again now. I think I should give it a name. Any suggestions? And I'm still unsure of the existence of poltergeists.

[aleopardstail]

"Elwood"

[Ex-Pat]

How about "Pointbuster"?

[glencairn]

Glad the problem was sorted, captrees.
As for the figures. Been there.

Glencairn

[captrees]

"Elwood"

Of course. And on a mission from God too.

[captrees]

Glad the problem was sorted, captrees.

Well... I put Elwood through his paces again last night and running flat out through that bend he derailed once. This needs to be foolproof, so might try giving that bend a bit of camber.

(Calling Elwood a "he" in this context sounds wrong, but its not a "she" or an "it." Oh well....)

The bend can wait until my next ballasting session. I am wrestling with a new problem. I think the layout needs a coalmine, even if geographically incorrect. The obvious place to put it would be next to the Shap lime quarry, but I'm sure that is a geological impossibility. I may have to extend the table and have it near the Ribblehead viaduct. At least in the West Yorkshire sector.

[Ironduke]

Well to explain, my base board is what the hardware shop calls pinboard.

AKA "Sundeala" in the UK.

Are you going to scratch-build the pit head?

[captrees]

Are you going to scratch-build the pit head?

That's a probably. I might be able to pick something up at the Perth MR Show in a month. If not, I will scratch build.

[Bufferstop]

If you lay your track on any sort of compressible underlay it pays to check the points vary carefully on a flat surface with a straight edge from side to side going across the frog. There is a tendency for both Settrack and Streamline to "dome" at the frog, you'll need to swap your underlay to something non compressible beneath the points and probably use some extra fixings to keep the point flat. The Peco person I mentioned this to at the NEC was aware of the problem. He said it was down to moulding stresses in the production of the base, and that if it wasn't fixed by extra pinning at the point, to either take them back to the retailer or send them back to Peco. He thought that the "hollow sleepers" of the current production should allow the effect to be cured with another pin through the plastic behind the point of the V.

[captrees]

Thanks Bufferstop. When I replaced the original points I ran a steel ruler along the side and above to ensure everything was straight and flat, as I had observed that the original points were very slightly out of line. As a beginner when I started this layout, I probably should have taken a bit more advice. I thought a neoprene underlay was a necessity. The underlay I used was Australian Trackrite as per pic.



I fell for the advertising guff that said...

Trackrite underlay is made from a very good quality weatherproof foam and is resistant to UV light decay (making it suitable for inside or outside layouts). It is not effected by solvents, glues, oil, etc, which makes it ideal for model railway use. It also deadens the annoying "drum board" noise of passing trains due to its foam texture. Trackrite is manufactured in Australia.

As it turns out, this underlay reduces the depth that you can nail the track in and when it is nailed in, the track is then lower where the nails are than midpoint between the nails. It doesn't impact the general running much, but the springy material also contributes to the nails popping out. Cork would be an entirely better option. As a beginner, I thought that the shape/profile of this particular underlay looked good, but it has been a real pain when I started to ballast, because the ballast wants to run off the shoulder because its not a flat surface. And as you see, the rather ugly solution, particularly with flexi track, has been to use screws. Ideally there would be more holes to accomodate more nails, but longer nails would help too.

[GeraldH]

There has been poltergeist activity at East Westmorland HQ. Locomotives are randomly derailing as they come into Oxenholme Station. The 4-6-0 locos are fine, but the Fairburn and Fowler 2-6-4 tank engines sometimes derail, and the 3F comes off nearly all the time. It happens on a set of points, and this should be straightforward to fix. But whatever I did, the 3F persisted in derailing...

That looks like a Hornby point. I had a similar problem on my layout. Replacing the Hornby point with a Peco Setrack one resolved the issue in my case. The Hornby point has shorter checkrails and coarser clearances causing some stock to ride up over the frog and derail when taking the curved exit. There's a bit more background on my layout thread.[/quote][/quote]

[captrees]

Thank you Geraldh. You are correct. They are Hornby points. And I replaced Hornby with Hornby to ensure an exact fit without pulling up too much track. I enjoyed reading some of your thread, and will continue reading it. Checking the last page I found what I could relate to!

The Re-railing Team got fed up with being called out every few days and the Operations Department found it increasingly difficult to work out which locos would safely negotiate the points.

You may have solved another little mystery. I have 2 loops on my layout. The Outer loop is composed of Peco flexi and Hornby 3rd and 4th radius curves. This is primarily for running passenger traffic, and runs clockwise. The Inner loop (Peco and Hornby 2nd and third radii) runs smaller passenger trains and mainly goods, and of course generally runs anti-clockwise, (even in the southern hemisphere. ) If I run clockwise on the inner loop, I sometimes get derailments on another set of points. The answer is not to run this line clockwise, of course, but I shall investigate further...