model of the ffestiniog RR’s Baguley-Drewry MoW loco, ‘Harlech Castle/Castell Harlech’ last sunday. Just before the crowds arrived for our open day - all twenty of 'em - I got the chance to test out the sound system recently installed by my pal Mike Coote of the Kings Lynn Society of Model Engineers. I bought that a few years back from Rod Johnson in Corbeil ONT, when we were up playing trains at the ONR depot near North Bay - but that’s anopther story… Mike is also responsible for a complete re-wiring and ‘re-controllering’ of the loco, so that it complies with the latest PITA H&S requirements. The laser-cut window frames have yet to be installed - a job for a spare day this week sometime.
Internal motive power is a 1.5 rated HP Bosch motor running from two gigantic deep-cycle marine boat motor batteries - each weighs in at around 90 pounds. They are common around these parts as many extended stretches of our local river are prohibited to infernal combustable engines - only electrically-driven boats are permtted. A third battery powers the halogen lighting, two-tone UK-style horn [a REAL set from a big Scania road hauler] and the Dallee sound system.
This actual loco was the prototype of a run of six built by a local piano teacher about ten years ago. Mine is the only one left here in UK - the rest went to Switzerland and points north and south on the mainland. The rather odd scale is a figment of the builder’s imagination - no reason was ever given for a scale that has no rationale in modelling that I can detect. It was as though he picked up a wheel one day, and said to himself…‘hmmmmmmmmmm…now THIS wheel just might be the right diameter for a model of ‘Harlech Castle’, if nobody notices that the scale is somehwat odd…’ What old Reg, whose first language is Welsh, ACTUALLY might have said was this - ‘Tybed beth fyddai hyn yn addas olwyn? Effelai, mae ‘model’ mawr o Gastell Harlech? Gadewch i ni weld beth y gallaf ei wneud, nid oes gwahaniaeth i’r Saesneg yr hyn y mae’r gymhareb raddfa yn.’
It is massively-built on a truly industrial scale - each set of wheels and axles weighs in at just under forty pounds, and the 3/4" plate frames weigh over 100 pounds per side. Add to this the scale-sized rods and counterweights and the complete loco tips the scale at just over 750 pounds - a real load to hanmandle. Neeless to say, it hauls everything we have on the line with contemptuous ease, and on an excursion to a nearby track some years back hauled six 1/3 ton cars with a total of fifty-six passengers on board.
See more at www.fenlandlightrailway.co.uk or, on youtube, fenland light railway.
Oh yes, for this clip, turn up the sound…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEYnTi6uOVE
tac