the Dorking Garden Railway

[mick]

Great video Andrew. Looks like you all had a good time. Sixteen coaches is a hefty load - I find the problem isn't just hauling them but trying to keep them on the road when there's such a trailing weight behind. Did the couplings play up at all?

[Andrew]

Thanks, Mick. Yes, trying to haul trains of 15 or more coaches was fun but fraught. The unintended trackbase undulations don't help things stay coupled together as they exacerbate the problem with those annoying differences in coupling height between different makes or vintages of coach, so that often only one of the two Tensionlock hooks is holding. And of course coaches with couplings which extend as the bogies swivel tend to misbehave when they are part of a heavier load, so one trick is to marshall them towards to back of the train, thereby minimising the tension and the sideways pull on their couplings. Altogether, what you see in the video - 15 bogies, I think - was the maximum we could manage. However, a determined effort to run a longer train would probably work, providing enough time was spent on matching couplings etc as discussed. Maybe next time...

[cleanerg6e]

I have found when hauling long trains of coaches 16-23 that it's best to try and keep to one manufacturer. But if you're going to use a mix of coaches from say Bachmann and Hornby then I've found that putting the Bachmann mark 1's first (closest to the loco) as they are heavier than Hornby coaches. When I've tried it the other way round the weight in the Bachmann coaches pulls the Hornby coaches off the track particularly on curves.

Roy.

[aussietmrail]

HI Andrew, that is pretty awesome 15+ coaches my longest passenger train has 16 passenger cars plus one auto wagon which need to be replaced with brass one as it is too light to go up front and two locos, going to my train club on Saturday will take a pic on my Indian Pacific. With the Indian pacific in peak holiday season the train has 26 passenger cars, normal times 16, at Sydney Central the train has to be split what I am modelling ,Peth terminal is very long and will take the whole train, longest platform in Australia.

I plan to run with my Flying Scotsman 11 maroon passenger cars, at the moment can only pull 8, to solve that the second water tender will be powered, working on that now, has to run on its own , don't want any wires coming from the other tender.

There I another member in my train cub that has pulled 107 freight cars behind two Big Boys, waiting to get his permission to put his video on the forum and another friend that models Military trains , his train is on the same link has three locos up front not as long a the Big boys train, keep an eye on my post.

Tony.

[aussietmrail]

Hi Andrew , as promised, I put my Indian Pacific on my club's layout, a pity I couldn't run the train would of been awesome as my club has a length limit on the layout of 10 feet, my layout a different matter, I had 17 carriages one auto carrier plus the two locos, the station platforms on my layout is 15ft and will fit 16 coaches.

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I am going to have to invest in a wide angel lens for my digital SLR camera does have has that fitting to fit other lenses, great for taking long train pics.

If you go and have a look on my gallery I just posted 17 pics of todays club running day was pretty good, there is another few pics of my Union Pacific 10 car passenger train those coaches are pretty long 11 inches and my newest loco Bachman centennial DD40AX 6900 DCC on board, can also run on DC with no problems, pure awesome, more Bachman locos on the wish list.

Tony.

[traingeekboy]

I would say that extra weight never hurts. Even if you have decent couplers that hold together there is always the chance for string lining and the middle coaches will hop off the track on curves. The NMRA publishes info on car weights by length, but my preference is to do tests on ones own layout to find out what works.

[Andrew]

Tony, Those are great shots of your Ind Pac set, thanks. Most impressive, and nice looking locos. If I understand correctly, you were just doing a static pose on the club layout as you weren't able to run there. But it does look like a great setup, even without stretching to the 26 cars consist. I'm wondering if that is you that we can see on the edge of one of the photos. I'll go and have a look at your other pics in your gallery/album. Good luck, A.

[aussietmrail]

Hi Andrew, thanks for the comments, yeah 26 cars for the Indian Pacific is very long, we have two other famous passenger trains, the Ghan and Southern Spirit, the Ghan locos are red with the white Ghan with the camel logo on the side of the loco, the Southern Spirit has a two tone colour scheme, I have the two Ghan NR's and one Southern Spirit NR, will take some pics of them

The first Ghan to Darwin pulled about 30 passenger cars a quarter mile long, the new line from Alice Springs Northern Territory and Darwin opened in 2004, starts from Adelaide, the Southern Spirit runs between Brisbane and Melbourne.

I have a good you tube on the Indian Pacific pulling into Sydney Central and splitting the passenger cars and shunting the auto carrier to the loading dock with I will be modelling, that is what got me modelling Sydney Central for.

Tony

[Andrew]

Nice weather on a long weekend after getting back from holidays, so just the time to dust off the railway and run some trains.

By the way, there's a 4 minute video of the North Yorkshire Moors Railway made on our travels during what was supposed to be a strenuous country walk but which somehow turned into a railway afternoon, at:

While on that walk along Eller Beck in what we thought was the middle of nowhere, we really did stumble upon a model railway dealer situated in farm premises - The Model Centre http://www.themodelcentre.com/ - who invited us to inspect their stock and showed off some impressive results of their weathering service for models. The weathering can be customised to your requirements; well worth looking at.

As for my operating session, here are a couple of the resulting pictures (the video as always takes longer).

First, a scene caught on camera around 1954 at Throstlebeck Sidings in the West Riding (now called West Yorkshire for those unfamiliar with previous English county names) with a Jubilee on a London-bound train passing a BR Standard tank in the sidings.

Then, much further south, passing Northdown Sidings near Dorking in fact, we see a Southern Region passenger train in the charge of a BR Standard Class 4 loco.

[traingeekboy]

Looks good! Seems you are enjoying your summer of train running.

[Andrew]

On second thoughts, and in homage to the renowned railway photographers of the 1950s, and recalling the scarcity of colour film in those days, those photos may look better in black and white...

Throstlebeck Sidings

Northdown Sidings

[Andrew]

I had a day out last week at the Great Cockcrow Railway - a 7.25 inch miniature railway in Surrey which has a complex and fully signalled layout running through wooded countryside, all very pleasant. Some fine locomotives, including this Stanier Pacific, "City of London":

Details of the railway are here:

http://www.cockcrow.co.uk/

and my short video is here:

For those who can, it's well worth a visit

[Richykay]

That looks like an awesome miniature railway, thanks for posting never knew it existed!

[Andrew]

New engines come rarely to the Dorking Garden Railway. An Ivatt 2-6-0 tender loco has been visiting for the past year courtesy of friend Robert, and he had noted that what the layout really needed was a Southern Mogul, preferably an N Class of the sort that used to haul the North Downs passenger service in its final years of steam. Without a model of suitable period currently available, this seemed like a difficult ask, but I had reckoned without Robert's persistence. He eventually phoned to say he'd found and bought a new N Class in BR early livery, and did I want it?

Originally designed by the SE&CR in 1917, it's a handsome little beast and, having spent more than a decade asleep in its box between being manufactured and delivered to the DGR, seemed glad at last to show its paces with a recently expanded rake of green coaches. It runs well and seems very much at home in Dorking. The picture here shows number 31862 posed with Robert's own Mogul, LMS-designed Ivatt number 43018 (which, as he points out, is arguably one of the ugliest engines ever to run in Britain). Unfortunately the camera has captured a dreadful breach of operating regulations in the form of a fuel tank wagon coupled directly to a steam loco. Now who let that happen?

[aussietmrail]

Hi Andrew, is the first steam loco your friend is talking about being ugly, I hate that too when a friend beats you to it first and buys a heap of them especially on eBay.

I am only interested in a couple more steam locos now mainly American, finely got my duel tender drive tenders working together on the Flying Scot, had to end up permanently wiring them together, was having too much of an issue with the pick up on the tender wheels to get the tender torn on it's own with out the help of pick up wheels from the main drive wheels on the boiler.

Pics in my post with the Flying Scot pulling 11 coaches one restaurant car in the middle and a parcels and break coach plus 8 coaches, could of pulling 16 cars, was staring to have trouble with the different couplers, be easy to change just two of the ones on the coaches as they have that box push in type coupler. (page12)

You can go straight to my page at the bottom of this post Camdale Layout.

Makes sense with not having the tank car up close to the steam loco, had a look on the net and what I saw the tank cars were a few cars back, you can do what you like on your own layout ,here is a link of a pic I found., probably the best way to go when sending bigger pics on the forum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_freight_transport#mediaviewer/File:Carnforth_wcml_geograph-2188751.jpg

[Andrew]

Here are few photos from last weekend of the N Class engine. Dorking would have been familiar territory for the Ns latterly:

From Wikipedia:

"The N class was used to haul services over most of the SECR network and became a familiar sight on the difficult cross-country route between Tonbridge and Reading, on which the steep gradients had taxed the company's 4-4-0 and 0-6-0 designs. The success of the 2-6-0 in traversing this route was due to their higher-capacity tapered boilers that produced an ample supply of steam, and the small 5 ft 6 in (1.68 m) driving wheels that delivered considerable tractive effort when climbing gradients such as the 1 in 100 between Gomshall and Shalford."

[mick]

I like the new addition Andrew and I see you have telegraph posts too.... I keep seeing those along the lineside of several layouts on here now and realise that's just what I need for mine.

[Andrew]

If you're going for telegraph poles, Mick, they would be better if glued into place. I haven't done that as there's not enough space on my track base (got to allow for double tracking in due course), but the result is that sometimes it's too much effort to get them out and plant them before a photo session, so sometimes you see them...

[Andrew]

While a billion people were celebrating 1st October over in China, here in Dorking a more modest commemoration of the full opening of the DGR two years ago was under way. This saw a couple of engines in steam and marked the delivery of further items of rolling stock (which tends to occur at this point in the calendar) expanding the collection of 1950s blood-and-custard coaches.

The first photo, Northern Encounter, shows two passenger trains passing Throstlebeck Sidings in Yorkshire, both hauled by 4-6-0 engines:

In the second picture, Northward Bound, we see the BR Standard Class 4 with the same train but further afield somewhere in a wilder part of the country:

[Andrew]

A few days later, David came to visit with his Terrier, which we see shunting at Northdown Sidings with some suitably Southern rolling stock:

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More recently, Sycamore Cottage has arrived (from a local charity shop) to give its occupants an excellent view of the railway from the front sitting room. Let's hope their resin-built abode stands up to the winter weather as well as the north country stone prototypes do. Perhaps one day I'll paint it a slate roof to look more authentic.