Author: Simon Wood

Lecturer in medical education, lapsed mathematician, Doctor Who fan and garden railway builder. See simonwood.info for more...

Test Run 4415

Since our last meet up, the Moel Rhos has taken delivery of the parts for a Kerr Stuart 4415-type, designed and manufactured at the RVM workshops and now being assembled by Moel Rhos’ engineering department, who try to make up with in enthusiasm what they lack in ability.

Here is the chassis out on a test run. It is a chain driven 6WD but we think one or more of the chains are slipping. Once it has run in a bit, the engineering dept. will attempt to remove one more link from each to tighten them up and prevent the chain coming off or any slippage.

Wort at work

At last, some fine autumn sunshine has arrived to replace the earlier stormy weather, and as the local area gets ready for the end of lockdown, the Drains Brewery is busily roasting malt to meet the anticipated demand for ales and beers. Wort and his driver are hard at work delivering supplies to the Brewery. Meanwhile the Tramway track gang are clearing storm debris from the line to allow deliveries to go up the valley. Once they have finished their work Wort will be busy taking barrels up the line for the local hostelries …..

Cain Howley Lambak railway

Just managed a quick run around today as I am on a zoom teach weekend at work, quick sneaky lunch break run. Wont be able to chat tomorrow as I am on remembrance parade. These wagons are all Phil Sharples kits just customised to look a bit different and well used. The loco is scratch built on Phil Sharples budget chasis with a loco remote running off of android phone.

A Waterwheel Test


The forecast was for 24 hours of continuous heavy rain! The perfect opportunity for a day in the workshop and what better project to be working on than a waterwheel!
The waterwheel will become part of a watermill that will disguise the outlet from the pond pump pipe for our emerging garden stream. The watermill building will be a modified Pendle Valley kit. The wheel comes from that kit but it was in a basic form and so it was adapted to create closed and larger “buckets” for the water from the leat to do its work. I didn’t know if it would actually work, but this morning the skies cleared a little and the chance arrived to test the wheel using a watering can. The position of the leat where it discharges water onto the wheel and, in particular, the amount of water flowing over both seem critical, but the test has revealed that it can be done! Some of the water from the stream will have to be split off to feed the leat, just as in the real, full sized world. A sluice gate of some sort with a fine adjustment will be needed to regulate the water flow …. and I may have just the thing in the scrap box.
More tests will follow in due course.

Mike Barton
North West Wales 16mm Group Coordinator
nwwales16mmgroup

Website: http://nwwales.16mm.org.uk