The Dovecote Light Railway Project
By Mark Thatcher
Welcome to the Week 6 Instalment:
Well, the home straight it may be, but the lack of points, plus me spending 2 days in Aberdeen this week followed by 3 days in Spain next week, will seriously curtail our progress. Sort of – so near and yet so far!
Day Twenty
Monday night of week six and it was a running night for the club. Ron brought his Gauge One Flying Scotsman plus two coaches and it ran quite well. I tried our first rake of three carriages to finally run a “proper” train. Firstly with ER Calthrop – who had flat batteries, so I then wheeled out our new Silver Lady, from Roundhouse. And she ran superbly. We started from the sidings at the West of the line. We sent her around the newly completed Tramways loop and all went well. So we coupled her up to a rake of carriages, built, and knocked up about 10 years ago from Garden Railway Specialists. The loco did not miss a beat and the carriages performed admirably – looking quite resplendent behind our Silver Lady. So the loop is finally now really tried-and-tested. We could lift the 1st bridge up an inch or so to lessen the gradient and there is a similar gradient on the Western side of the loop also. But the line will cope even without this subtle adjustment and we know even if we do no more, we still can run a serviceable service – which is nice! We also added our coal office, where apparently you can buy “Nobby’s Nutty Slag” for a limited time bargain offer. Of course the new (old) Tri-ang coal truck sits nicely alongside this building, and there will be more restored trucks of the same ilk to follow.
Day Twenty One
Well – it’s all good news as we press on to the final stretch. Firstly, the talented Martin Wickham, who has designed and maintains this website, suggested SP Models as a possible source of the last remaining radius 5 left hand point. It was a good tip off and I ordered their last one on line today. So there is now no excuse for not finishing the DLR project “on time – and over budget”. Well if it’s good enough for Trans-Manche-Link and Eurotunnel, it’s good enough for us! Secondly, on my last free day before flights to Aberdeen, then Murcia on business, we found some time today to continue development of the line Eastwards towards the Eastway terminus station. You may have noticed our engineering crew has moved along quite a bit. Well, with both Flo & I on the job, the majority of the Eastern side was laid and ballasted by G&T time. This was largely due to Flo doing a mercy dash to Glendale Junction to grab another box of radius 5 curves, which were also needed to complete the job. So all that really remains is to set in the last point, when it arrives, to form the long passing loop around Eastway Station, set in the station platform itself, using stuff called concrete, which I must admit is a complete mystery to me. Thankfully, Flo knows how it works – she’s quite a star, isn’t she? Then we simply add the last of the station buildings, and at last can think about starting to relax and begin to enjoy the fruits of our labours.
Day Twenty Two
I ordered some plants from ebay – called “mind your own business”, which whilst seeming to be pretty hard to find, provide low ground cover very quickly and will hopefully help to stem the tide of weeds already forcing their way through the gravel. Why didn’t I lay a membrane down between the soil and the track? I ask myself!
"a homage to the Wisbech & Upwell Tramway"
Anyhow, between the showers it was a good excuse to check what track we had laid on the Eastern side of the line. And what better loco to do this with, than the last radio-controlled live steamer in our collection? It’s a tram engine, named Crusoe but known as Stanley, from Roundhouse Engineering, but now only available exclusively through PPS Steam Models. It’s a lovely little gas-fired 0-4-0 loco, its only drawback being you can’t see the motion whirring along – although I plan to sort this in the future, by hinging open the three inspection hatches on each side of the body. Anyhow as a homage to the Wisbech & Upwell Tramway, that used to run practically past our front door, I tried an unusual configuration where the loco was in the centre of a two carriage “push-me-pull-you” type of consist. Sort of an SMU - (steam multiple unit). As quirky as this arrangement may be, it looked quite cool and ran well.
"it's a shorter than usual blog this week"
So, with work beckoning, it’s a shorter than usual blog this week, but hopefully, week seven will see the culmination of the Dovecote Light Railway – watch this space!
More to read and see in Week 7's Instalment, click below to read it now!
