Anyone Seen Way Out West?

[Mountain]

Has anyone else been watching these? A narrow gauge railway used for practical purposes on a smallholding in Ireland. No doubt you can all look it up for yourselves to follow the various goings on as things progress, but here is a link to one of their short films.

https://youtu.be/yxAyUcE4Tok

[Free_at_last]

Only saw Way Out West with Laurel and Hardy.

[Ex-Pat]

Quite fascinating - must investigate where it is.

[ChrisGreaves]

https://youtu.be/yxAyUcE4Tok

At the 1m30s mark an interesting view of the coupling's lateral movements. It shows (me) how such a sharp (big lateral throw in a short time) could bring about derailments.
Consider where the wagons leading coupling loop was at 1m30s and where its trailing loop is at 1m37s, then "copy" this to the following wagon's couplings positions.

I thought the puppy was good, stealing coffee and all, but the donkey stole the show!

At 6m40s a comment on "it took a long time". I would like to have heard an estimate of (a) how long it took to effect the changes and (b) an estimate of how much time will be saved through non-derailments. Also embarrassment during a display.

Cheers
Chris

[Mountain]

Quite fascinating - must investigate where it is.

It is somewhere in the western shores of Southern Ireland.

[Ex-Pat]

That's what I gathered - I was in fact over in County Limerick last week walking part of the new Greenway which will eventually run from Limerick to Tralee. I just managed the Newcastle West to Barnagh section and return.

I just wonder how near I may have been to the subject "railway".

Edit: I see it is in West Cork, so I wasn't anywhere near it.

[Bufferstop]

What struck me was, first how hard they were making it for themselves trying to set out a switch on unmown grass, and second how much fun they were having!

[Mountain]

What struck me was, first how hard they were making it for themselves trying to set out a switch on unmown grass, and second how much fun they were having!

Their main Youtube channel shows the earlier builds and experiments. Worth looking at are their doughnut machine, their circular saw and their stationary diesel engine that powers a home made tree shredder... All interesting projects in themselves!

[Mountain]

This is their first start to their railway.


https://youtu.be/NfSK_sKBhTg

[ChrisGreaves]

A narrow gauge railway used for practical purposes on a smallholding in Ireland.

It seems to me that one can get away with a single straight-line point blade providing that everything that travels it is
(a) relatively short wheelbase and
(b) two-axle (four-wheel) stock.
Such vehicles will jerk and wobble, but the transitions from line to point, and from point to line, need always and only be negotiated by a single axle.

There is probably a good geometric way of explaining this, but my tangible mind thinks of rolling just a single axle along the rails; with no wagon or loco being supported, the axle is just a straight-line segment rolling along.
A bit like a rolling track-gauge measurement thing.
Cheers
Chrios

[Mountain]

A narrow gauge railway used for practical purposes on a smallholding in Ireland.

It seems to me that one can get away with a single straight-line point blade providing that everything that travels it is
(a) relatively short wheelbase and
(b) two-axle (four-wheel) stock.
Such vehicles will jerk and wobble, but the transitions from line to point, and from point to line, need always and only be negotiated by a single axle.

There is probably a good geometric way of explaining this, but my tangible mind thinks of rolling just a single axle along the rails; with no wagon or loco being supported, the axle is just a straight-line segment rolling along.
A bit like a rolling track-gauge measurement thing.
Cheers
Chrios

Actually quite a few lightweight narrow gauge industrial lines used points like this. They were more common then one may think. I believe even the Manx tramway used them at one time and those were bogie electric trams? (Maybe someone can confirm this as I am going by memory of a photo I saw online).
The Ratgoed tramway which fed into the Corris used these points. Locos can negotiate them if they are short wheelbase lightweight locos. These point blades were commonly kicked across with ones feet. Many underground mine railways used these points with various small locos negotiating them, and not all were 4 wheeled, though most were.

The main advantage to this design apart from them being very simple to build and maintain and very cheap to make was that railways which either didn't have a loco or only had one, and the rest of the hauling was done by horse or manpower tended to prefer these points because they avoided dangerous rails crossing the centre of the path where their feet go (Be they human or animal) which were seen as a trip hazard and an inconvenience with conventional points. It was rare to see conventional points down mines due to this. Only modern mines which are well lit and have much larger tunnels will use the more conventional points with frogs, as with the older mines when the lighting was not up to much and the tunnels small (They used small tunnels because it was silly to make them large when the seams were small as to make larger tunnels one has to shift a huge amount of waste material which does not earn one a penny! It is the ores that made their money.)

[b308]

I've no doubt you are right, Mountain, but I can't say I remember any loco hauled lines using them, they'd knacker the loco in no time! As you say it's more for simplicity, though you can still buy ready made points and track (set-track?) in 2ft gauge (it's a development of the Decauville WW1 stuff) so there's no real need to build your own unless it was purely a money saving exercise in which case I'd just buy some old used set-track! For modelling I'd avoid it like the plague in smaller scales.

I'd be tempted by stub points though!

https://yourmodelrailway.net/view_topic ... forum_id=6

[Mountain]

In the past I made a single bladed point in 0-16.5 and it actually worked well.

[Bufferstop]

I've actually ridden in a bogie vehicle over just such a point. It was no worse than the kicks and jolts at various other points on the line. It is, or was at that time, the point on the double track Snaefell Mountain Railway, where it comes down to a single headshunt at the summit of the line.