Stock Take

Without rolling stock, a model railway is a diorama and the situation for ‘Wheal Ponder’ was one of feast and famine. As the photo below shows, there are plenty of locos to choose from and a nice rake of carriages. 

However, the wagon front was one of famine. With just three chivers opens and a gunpowder van available, all built for other projects. 

You might think that the gunpowder van was an unlikely candidate for a china clay railway. But, the branch that goes off behind the cottage at the front of the layout leads to both a brickworks and eventually a granite quarry so it can be run quite happily. 

The wagon supply is looking much healthier now though, with this little lot forming the basic needs of the layout.

When I first saw ‘Trerice’ in MRJ, I thought that it was an ideal layout for using the Chivers four wheel wagon range. Easy to put together, like Airfix plastic kits from my youth, it is great to see these are becoming available again. I’ve now got to the stage when I can assemble one in fifteen minutes!

Of the Chivers wagons, the steel bodied opens will bring in coal. The two and four plank wagons will take china clay out in barrels. Whilst the vans will carry bagged china clay. Having made up a sack load for the two plank wagon for our old TVAG group layout, the two plank wagons can also be used for bagged clay to ring the changes. 

There is a trio of EDM Models Snailbeach hoppers for the granite traffic. I found that whilst they look nicer than the Bachmann couplers, the thin wire coupling loops on ‘Sir Jasper’ and ‘Quarry Maid’ have a tendency to ride over or under the wagon couplings on some of my lumpy bumpy track when shunting the clay dry. But they will be just fine on either the granite wagons as the reverse on their way to and from the granite quarry or on the passenger train. 

For some added variety, I have a stash of Port Wynnstay Ffestiniog inside bearing wagons. Having built  gunpowder wagon (incorrectly for the nit pickers) on one of these chassis and found it ran well, I’ve built two of the low sided goods wagons for use on the brick works traffic. The theory being that they are an earlier design which has been largely replaced by the more modern wagons on the clay traffic represented by the Chivers wagons. 

I’ve also been making some loads up to go in the wagons. A couple of coal wagons, a brick load made up of individual 1/48 scale bricks I picked up a while back and several barrel loads. China Clay at one time was widely transported in barrels and they make for a very easily moveable load for model railway wagons. Two sizes of barrels from Skytrex have been used for this and glued together into a full wagon load. 

Whilst building the layout, thoughts had turned to operation of the layout. Having built in a couple of isolating sections, I wanted to be able to have the tramway loco resting by the water column and a second loco from the brick company to be able to come in, swap wagons over and return to the brickworks. This needed a smaller industrial loco. In time, I have a Branchlines Busy Bee loco to rebuild (made a mess of the chassis in my youth and has languished in a drawer ever since) and it could be a useful role for a cabless Hunslet when the Bachmann examples arrive. 

But I needed something quicker and it gave me chance to resurrect a model I first built as a teenager. Early volunteering visits as a youth were on East Midlands Area Group winter working parties. Led by the late Chris White, he was a trustee of the museum so often we would be working on museum exhibits. Other times, we would do whatever jobs Chief Engineer John Bate would direct us to do. If this involved going up the line then No 5 ‘Midlander’ would be the motive power. Through these working parties I gained a liking for these Ruston workhorses and I went on to drive many miles on No 5 as the first diesel I drove. 

One of my teenage models was a Wrightlines kit for No 5, complete with the Talyllyn style bufferbeams. Was quite pleased with how it came out and unlike some of my other models, actually ran! Fast forward thirty years, I retrieved it from the drawer and blew the dust off. Before Kay finished the Wrightlines business, I’d bought a pair of normal Ruston buffer beams castings and the Talyllyn design ones were quickly swapped over for these. The paint job was a glossy green and black with some parts picked out in red, as No 5 was. I wanted to avoid destroying this as I was quite pleased with it at the time. The answer was to repaint the black parts with matt weathered black and give the whole loco some weathering to fit in with the rest of my fleet, complete with a smattering of an appropriate brick dust colour. 

The combination of a white metal body and some added lead have helped tame the greyhound tendencies of the tenshodo spud chassis and it pleases me to have given this old model a new lease of life. 

There is now sufficient stock to run the layout at Burton. After Burton, I intend adding to the stock now that I have a layout to run it on. The stock will use three of the four fiddle yard cassettes I have for the layout. So there is room for a little more stock to be added after Burton. I’d like a mixed train to add to the sequence and there are a few other small tank engine locomotives kits (plus a couple of infernal combustion locos) waiting in the wings that would be at home on ‘Wheal Ponder’ and would give me more options / failure cover should I take the layout to an exhibition or two. 

Painting stock has seen me return to using enamel paints having used acrylic paints on the layout build. These have been an assault on the nostrils, to the extent that now that my confidence in acrylic paints has grown, I shall be looking towards using acrylic paint on most stock where I can and phasing out my use of enamel paints.