A December tour of the WTD&PBR

[grumpfuttock]

Well at long last here is the video of a  cold sunny day in December on the Welton, Tumbly Down and Puffin Bay Railway, featuring 2 Roundhouse Argyll's doubleheading, which was the first time we had tried that, so the trip is not at a regular pace! The 3 minute tour starts at Welton station, a teminus station, and runs through Welton Junction station (at the moment just cement platforms), then curve past the small terminus station of Puffin Bay,  through a tunnel (not finished) and then back though Welton Junction and then returns to Welton Station.

Not a fantastic quality video, and as you will see it would have been better filmed on a cloudy day.
2 derailments have been noticably clipped out  :D, a fallen branch disappears like magic, and there are two nasty moments when a couple of pieces of debris cause the train to jolt violently. I had wanted to film it all again, but the light was gradually disappearing and both of our locomotives were needing gas and water. The railway is still very much under construction, and at the moment lacks buildings and railway atmosphere.

The video file has a size of approx 9Mb, I tried to reduced it to a 8Mb .wmv in Pinnacle Studio 8 but the quality was awful. If anyone has any tips about how to produce a small file with good quality, I would be grateful of any advice.

[SillyBilly]

Thanks for that John, great video !

[laalratty]

Nice vid. When i did my drivers eye view, it took 2 wasted tankloads of gases and several frustrating attempts because of repeating derailments, failing cameras, dodgy radioetc
Eventually I did it with my baguley, less stressful but still took a few attempts, one part of my railway does not like having stuff propelled round it!

[mhlr]

Wow, nice video. Somewhere, i saw a small contaption on a wagon for cleaning away debris, if I could find it, i'd show you.

[ACLR]

wow that was great John thanks for that

[steamyjim]

Wow, nice video. Somewhere, i saw a small contaption on a wagon for cleaning away debris, if I could find it, i'd show you.

Wasn't that in Garden Rail magazine ?

There was also one on Mark Founds Garden Railway TV series

[grumpfuttock]

Nice vid. When i did my drivers eye view, it took 2 wasted tankloads of gases and several frustrating attempts because of repeating derailments, failing cameras, dodgy radioetc
Eventually I did it with my baguley, less stressful but still took a few attempts, one part of my railway does not like having stuff propelled round it!

Murphy's law  :lol:

Ain't it amazing how one can drive around a track without the smallest problem, then as soon as the video camera is mounted, snails decide to commit suicide, branches fall from trees etc. I know what you mean "laalratty" ! One advantage that steam trains have over battery elctric in these situations, is that cats don't pounce on the train from under a bush, the hissing and gurgling  seems to make them think twice instead of acting on instinct  :lol:

Thanks to Peter for the mention of the debris cleaner. We had cleared the track before the run with a good stiff brush, but at a later stage some small pieces of twig had somehow managed fling themselves in between the turnout blades and rail in a couple of locations.

[Chris Cairns]

Thanks for sharing that video with us.

It is nice to see that it is not just Mamods that derail.

Are those locos manual or R/C controlled?

[laalratty]

Video camera put a hex on railway wagons i'm sure!

[grumpfuttock]

Are those locos manual or R/C controlled?

They're both radio controlled, Chris.  We had a bit of trouble keeping the speed steady on the filmed run, as it was the first time my friend had driven on my railway, so he hadn't got accustomed to the places where it is neccessary to accelerate or slow down, it was also the first time he had doubleheaded ! There are many steep gradients on the railway a couple of places 1:48, so it is a bit of a challenge.

As for derailments, it became quite a common occurance here last summer, as the garden was infested with thousands of what the Danes call "killer slugs" which kept getting on the track and causing havoc. I am dreading this coming summer, as each of the slugs lays 400 eggs in a year, and when one calculates that we were finding 2000+ of the slimey menaces in the area of the railway, EVERY evening for weeks on end, then there must be millions of eggs hidden about the garden and neighbouring fields waiting to hatch. In August 2006 the "killer slugs" first appeared in our garden just the odd one now and again. In fact it was so bad last summer, there was one point when after rain, it would be impossible to walk outside without stepping on them, resulting in our shoes being covered in a corrosive slimey mess that stuck to everything or more correctly- got everything stuck to our shoes  The slime is so corrosive it removes chrome plating, but it makes fantastic super glue