Highbridge and Dartmouth

[Paul Townsend]

Dave gave me enough sky to cover the entire wall behind Dartmouth. The longer roll is now jury rigged to see the benefit. It can shuffle right to curve around the corner and then the other bit will extend past the fiddleyard.

Olton Bridge is removed temporarily for safety while rigging the backdrop. It will stay out for a few jobs to be done on it:
Solving a failed dropper wire, laying the narrow gauge line to Plymouth (South Hams Rly Co.) which passes below the bridge, improving the grass which has bald patches etc.

The overhead led strip lights are not on in these pix. I need to assess glare from the shiny sky before showing those.
The left end (1st Piccy) is the station terminus and is currently cluttered with rolling stock to avoid accidemnts while rigging the sky.

Lots of Merg electronics is exposed, when fully debugged it will all be hidden.
The half-chair gluing down is near finished so onto rail painting soon and then ballasting.

 

[Paul Townsend]

Dartmouth Broad Gauge has some lovely 6 wheel carriages built by a friend and on loan to me.
They have tended to derail in places where the track is OK but complex, eg curves on gradients or complex pointwork.
Most are built from Broad Gauge Society kits.

Investigation revealed that they all have sprung suspension with a single spring wire each side of .013" gauge. Weights are generally in the 60-90 Gram range which is correct for these vehicles.

The static spring deflection was negligible and needed at least 40 grams weight adding to sit correctly.

I am modifying them to individual springs per axlebox using .011" wire for the outers and .009" for the middle axle. This follows advice for CSB locos to avoid see-sawing on the middle axle. One required weight adding as it was < 50 grams.

I also am ensuring the B2B gauge is at the top end of the tolerance range.

Where these mods are done the reliability is much improved.

 

[Paul Townsend]

Moving on...sleepless in the tropical night.

Recent activity for Highbridge is to consolidate the success of the new led strip lighting by removing the previous installatikon of led spots and floods. The ceiling is now decluttered.

Anyone want some MR12 12volt led spots ? ( same fitting as old QI halogen 12v lamps)
I have a quantity of various wattages and beam angles now going spare at a low price. Not more than a few hundred hours use...rated life is many 1000s of hours.

email me if interested.

 

[Paul Townsend]

At Dartmouth the recent progress has centred on my need to do something interesting in between sessions of sticking down half chairs in order to preserve sanity and keep the mojo well.

Decisions have been made and implementation has commenced in several vital areas:

Signalling
What to plant on the model for 1875? There will be a mix of double sided semaphores, disc and Xbars, bobby with a red flag etc.
All servo controlled and pluggable for travelling safety. Ground signals will be capstans. In BG era, bobby went out with a long pole to operate the capstan turning it through 90 degrees to operate a switch. On top was a flag so drivers could see how the turnout was set more clearly than peering at swicth blades.

Lever frame's relationship to the signal box at the station. Both were brand new concepts at the time and so the installations were primitive and "Beta versions". I have a lovely brass well engineered 21 lever frame to which I am adding microswitches so it will talk to CBUS. It already has a full mechanical locking frame for me to use in years to come.

Early design of Saxby and Farmer signal box needs building. It controlled the station.
Thanks to Becasse in another place for info and advice.

Couplers
90% certain to be Dinghams, trials commenced. Fallback is Alex Jacksons of which I have experience at Highbridge S&DJR

Uncouplers
may be servo lifted permanent magnets or electromagnets since Paul Segar just pointed me at a low current coil on Ebay.
Most such coils from our MR traders are too greedy for current in my book.
Whichever actuator I choose I will have several operated from one button since all the UCs in one JMRI block will operate together.
Clearly only one loco moves at a time within a block so any static waggons over a UC won't matter.
Simultaneous is literally true for electromagnets as they will be wired in parallel, hence desire for low current per coil.
If servos, which will be digital, the bunch will be sequenced at say 1/4 sec intervals ( by Merg drivers). This ensures total current is no more than for 1 servo.

6 wheel BG vehicles.
Altering the spring suspensions as mentioned a while ago.

 

[Paul Townsend]

Still here but clobbered by life events!

I have a constant dizziness problem when vertical and lost sight in one eye suddenly last July.

I am no longer able to enjoy operating Highbridge on my own, and can only do it when chums visit to do 3 link couplings, rerailing and routine maintenance.

Sitting at workbench is not compromised by dizziness, but loss of 3d depth perception is challenging so building models is much slower now.

For these health issues Progress on Dartmouth stopped last Autumn but is now resuming slowly. It is relatively easy to extract one baseboard at a time so I am reorganising workspace so I can plonk a 4ft board on it and work on that from a chair or stool. Painting of rails and ballasting can resume.

Due to recognition that my years are running away my time to build BG locos and stock seems inadequate so for these health issues first time in my 76 years of railway modelling I have exercised “check book modelling “.

I was able to buy several locos and rolling stock at a Broad Gauge Society auction yesterday. All came from the bequeathed estate of Dr Roger. White so BGS and some bidders are very happy. Roger was a founder member of BGS in 1980, a heart surgeon in Hartlepool who retired to Hereford. He had experience in standard gauge modelling in EM &P4
Those who knew him won’t be surprised to hear that the models auctioned are all built to a high standard and very well decorated .

Wearing my BGS Committee hat I was disappointed that most items were sold for less than one would pay for the parts today. However Bidders walked away with bargains.

All the locos I bought have problems below the footplate. In some cases EM wheels need replacing either P4 versions. All except one need the B2B opening to meet the standard for BG P4. Some need the suspension modernising.
On test track,running is poor and one is a non runner.

That loco was professionally built for Roger less than 8 years ago and has CSB, HighLevel gearbox and zMashima can.

Separating body and chassis revealed a broken wire joint. Thus 30mins with screwdriver and iron will see it restored to perfection.

 

[Paul Townsend]

This is the second of my locos bought at BGS auction last Saturday.
The 4-2-4WT was a Pearson design, recognised as a classic 9ft single for B&E. 8 were built 1853-1873 by Rothwell & Co.

The model was scratchbuilt by Kay Butler for Dr Roger White who died in late 2024 and bequeathed his models to Broad Gauge Society.

Wearing my 4mm Trade Officer hat I was tasked with assessing 15 locos for quality and condition so bidders has some knowledge.
Roger had some curious ideas about B2B which is so critical for good running.

The wheels are EM but set to a B2B which is just under the P4 spec but too wide for EM. Very odd.
Unsurprisingly it ran OK on plain track but sometimes derails on my BG-P4 test track turnout.

The 9ft driver is flangeless and the actual drive is to one axle of each "bogie"
Here some pix, taken as received.

I now have to open it up to think about either widening B2B or wheel change to P4