Progress Report 87

The Northwest of England seems to have suffered the worst of the country's winter weather since my last update. Cheshire was particularly badly affected by flooding and, although this didn't affect the Peckforton Light Railway directly the canal adjacent to where Beeston Market station would have been located was breached after Storm Christoph blew through the area. This is reminiscent of the Big Wind which affected the area when the railway would have been in existence. In addition, we have had more snowfall than we have had in previous years which was eventually appropriate for a partial running session.

On a personnel front, the Chairman /  Chief Operations Officer has celebrated a significant birthday which resulted in the acquisition of a secondhand Bachmann Lyn which has been on the wishlist for many years. The day after my birthday, it was converted to battery power and radio control.

Rolling Stock

Bachmann Lyn

Having been offered a secondhand Bachmann Lyn for a reasonable price, I was anxious to convert it to battery power and radio control to see it running on the railway. Despite the weather, she was given a test run together with the new Southwold Railway goods stock described in my previous Progress Report.

The Lyn is one of the earlier designs and so the motor block is suffering from the adverse effects of the poorer quality brittle plastic from which the clamshell casing is constructed. One of the lugs for the screws holding the body to the block had disintegrated as had one of the lugs for the outside frames and, more significantly, one of the lugs for the screws holding the clamshell together. 

Having now given it a test run on the tight curves on my railway alongside my rolling stock I have realised it is not really appropriate for the PLR in its present form. After searching about for a suitable prototypical loco to convert it into, I have settled on a hybrid of two Cork and Muskerry locos - an 0-4-4 side tank loco with outside frames.

 As you can see, I have decided to model this loco as a 3D print. This is a bit of an experiment, as I have not modelled anything quite so ambitious from scratch. I have found it a bit of a challenge to design the loco so that it can be broken down into parts suitable for printing on my 3D printer. I am reasonably optimistic that it will work - as they say, watch this space!

Southwold Cleminson Open

I am steadily working my way through the variations in designs of Southwold freight stock. The various versions of the three plank open have now been catered for and, in time, I will print out at least one of each variant.

I have now turned my attention to the Cleminson six wheeled open wagons. As with the four wheeled opens, there was a range of styles, each of which will eventually be catered for. In the meantime, I am working on redesigning the undercarriage using my experiences of working on the six wheeled coach as a guide.

Operations

Partial running session

For the past five years we have had very little snow, so to have three generous falls of snow this winter has been quite a treat. I managed to have a partial running session with two trains running around the continuous circuit - a passenger train running twice and a pickup goods running down and back up the line. Shunting was kept to a minimum as the sidings were Snowbound.

In addition, I was able to run a passenger train on the circuit on New Year's Eve while we had an al fresco barbecue.

The weather forecast for the next few days is particularly awful, so it's doubtful I will be able to get out into the garden for a while. But in the meantime, I seem to have a few projects to keep me occupied indoors.

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