A canopy for St Petrock station

At long last Mr Walter Tregaskis, St Petrock's long-standing and long-suffering dental surgeon, may keep himself dry as he awaits the 6.24pm departure to Tregarrick North.

He could, of course, relax in St Petrock Station waiting room, but Cornish gales have a habit of blowing fumes from the old fire back down the chimney and patients of his, waiting for the same train, are wont to engage him in long conversation about their many ailments.  Better the fresh air.

Not that it rains that often in St Petrock - or so the local hoteliers and shop keepers will tell you. But even so, no self-respecting station should be devoid of a canopy, should it?  St Petrock folk aren't like the less privileged mortals of St Kew, Port Isaac, Otterham or Egloskerry; dear me no. There's is a proper station. 'Twaddn't till racent like... but 'tis now.

This particular canopy was knocked up in Plasticard, with etched brass valances from I know not where (Peedee Models do some nice ones), ornate ironwork on the pillars from GT Buildings (sadly soon to be discontinued) and a roll of corrugated copper strip that's been in my bitz box since time immemorial. It is based on the canopy that once graced Whitstone & Bridgerule station on the Bude line, having horizontal planking at the ends (see photo).  It's a little different to ones on the North Cornwall 'main' line, which have vertical planking and less ornate valances.  For me, such subtle variations are part of the fascination of railway modelling. If they send you to sleep, I apologise.

Turntable Tribulations

MetalSmith Ltd market a very nice range of turntables. Cheap, they are not (£117 for the 60ft kit, plus motor) but the quality is superb.  However, thinking I could save both money and time, I elected to buy a Peco LK-55 turntable.

I'm sure Peco have many, many happy customers, and it's not my intention to knock a perfectly respectable product, but I soon realized that, for me, it was probably the wrong decision.  Firstly, it's 300mm in diameter (equivalent to an unprototypical 75 feet) and secondly it's made of plastic. Okay — I knew all that before I bought it, 75 feet isn't that much bigger than Padstow's 70 footer, and plastic bearings surely shouldn't have been a problem... but read on.

I assembled the basic kit, then set about motorising it, using the recommended Meccano parts. I wanted the turntable to automatically stop when it aligned with the approach tracks, so invented my own solenoid 'lock', using parts of an old H&M point motor.  The photo shows the arrangement.  Amazingly (for me) it worked! Energising the H&M solenoid withdraws the plunger and also depresses the microswitch, which energises the turntable motor. When the next slot comes round, the plunger drops into it, thanks to the spring on the microswitch, which de-energises the motor.

Elated, I installed the completed turntable on St Petrock and set about laying the approach tracks.  Then disaster struck. The main bearing had been emitting some ominous noises, but a drop of oil seemed to cure the problem... until one day the whole lot jammed and sheared the plastic stem clean off the table base!

I toyed with consigning the broken remains to landfill, but couldn't bear the thought of writing off rather a lot of hard work, so I stripped the whole lot down and carefully substituted a metal bearing and spindle.

The bearing is the centre of an old Meccano cog wheel. Great care was taken in opening up the original hole to accommodate the new bearing. If it was off-centre, the whole thing would be ruined. 

This is the new spindle, mounted in another old Meccano cog middle, locked tight with the Meccano grub screw and fixed in place with epoxy resin. The tri-square ensures that it remains vertical as the 'poxy sets.   

Before reassembling, I also lined the turntable wall with brick-embossed Plasticard, to make it look more like the turntables at Padstow and Camden. This, in turn, meant that I had to trim the table length a bit to fit the now slightly smaller well.

(www.britainfromabove.org.uk)

The Peco model is clearly a scaled-up model of a smaller manually operated turntable.  All the 70 footers in my collection of photographs are vacuum operated, so the finishing touch was to extend the table deck and add the vacuum control apparatus.

The irony is that St Petrock didn't really need a 75ft turntable, or even a 70ft one. A 60 footer would have been adequate to turn a T9 or N.  Unbeknown to me, the Southern Railway obviously planned to run Bullied light pacifics into St Petrock, perhaps hauling the Atlantic Coast Express, so now I shall have to get one.  Is Father Christmas reading this?

Finally, just to prove that it really does work, here's a short video...

So... will I replace this turntable when time and finances permit?  Probably not. I'm actually rather pleased with the modifications I've made – particularly the brick lining and the vacuum apparatus – so here it stays.

Daddy's Shop

Here is my first home — mum and dad's shop in Argyle Street, Bognor Regis. That's little me in the pushchair, probably being propelled by my cousin Margaret.

Within a couple of years, mum and dad had sold up and moved to Newquay, and a further 52 years were destined to pass before I returned to Bognor Regis.  By then, the shop had become an Indian Restaurant, and very good it was too.  When I showed them this photo and told them the story, they gave me a free aperitif with my meal.  Lovely folk!

It didn't take me long to decide that St Petrock must include a model of dad's shop, with his name proudly displayed over the front door. I've changed the proportions of the building slightly, to fit the available space but, despite my questionable modelling skills, it is, I hope, easily recognisable. To dispel any lingering ignorance when folk visit the layout, a print of the original photo hangs on the wall above it.

I will eventually get round to bedding down the building properly, to get rid of that 'orrible black line at pavement level. One of next door's chimneys needs attention too, I see. It, by the way, together with the rest of its building, belongs to that august firm of St Petrock solicitors, Messrs Swindle & Cheatem. Personally, I prefer to spend my time in the Cornish Arms, across the road. With beer at one shilling a pint, who wouldn't?

The Fiddle Yard

Prior to building St Petrock, most of my railway layout plans had been centred on through stations, with a fan of partially hidden sidings for off-scene storage of trains. This configuration had the dubious advantage that trains could be round round-and-round the room, though such operation is hardly prototypical.  The only examples I can think of are the 'merry-go-round' coal trains supplying power stations, and London's circle line.

Operationally, a terminus-to-fiddle yard configuration has a lot more potential than a simple through station. "The great thing about a terminus," as the ticket inspector told the old lady, "is that everything stops... or else there's a very big bang."

Early posts on this blog have described the terminus end, as it takes shape. Until this week, though, the track from St Petrock ended beneath a road bridge on the estuary section.  I had toyed with building a cross between a Peter Denny-style rotating storage unit a sliding traverser, but in the end decided to keep things simple and have storage cassettes.  These have been well described in the model railway press and mine are nothing special... but they do work.  A train arriving from St Petrock runs onto a cassette, which is then unplugged from the approach track, rotated by hand, then either set aside so that another cassette can be inserted, or reconnected for the return journey. Simple!

Now, for the first time since commencing St Petrock, I can run trains properly and thoughts are turning to developing a timetable.  However, there's still an enormous amount of modelling to undertake, so for my next post I'll return to the houses on Station Road.