Elton Crossing - A small bit of the NSRly Wheelock branch in 7mm

No probs about responding later Jowen... I do it all the time but it's just great to chat with someone who remembers this place as it was. Now yes I know about the goods siding south of the gates access to it was by No 7 point lever and locked by 8 FPL, the Up line stop signals 13 and 15 read through it, 15 was the cantilever bracket in rear of 11 crossover next to Foden's works and 13 was the signal up by the gates and carried an offset subsidiary arm which read into the siding (in effect the Ettiley heath loop). The south end points of this siding was released by the Tyers Number 5 tablet disc for the single line section to Hassall Green, the tablet was placed into an Annets Lock on this ground frame and when the point lever was reversed the tablet was locked in and couldn't be released until the points had been set to normal position again. This frame was near the Elton Down Distant which was fixed. The other frame at the Wheelock Goods station was located by the warehouse shed, this frame was again released in the same way but the point lever when pulled reversed two separate pairs of points and a set op traps... that had to be a hard pull.

The asbestos shed was a lamp room and was something BR installed somewhere before 1960 or after the old wooden McKenzie and Holland signal posts were replaced with steel upper quadrant ones.

Thanks for the info on the coal porters loading stage... I think I may well have built this model incorrectly... may I take a few photos of what I have for you to interrogate as I'd love to get this bit correct. It may well be this model goes in the bin and I have to start again with making a new one.

Anyway thanks ever so much for all your helpful advice, knowledge and information.

regards,
York Paul

 

This old railway property plan shows the Co-op coal siding which is shewn in red next to the branch line at Elton, the siding is marked as being 78 yards in length to the clearing point by the crossover road to Foden's and Pring's sidings. Note at the end of the red marking a single blade trap is evident, I think this was a manual hold up lever worked under local arrangements governing shunting moves from many years ago, the crossover road was worked by number 11 lever on the Elton frame with number 14 and number 4 shunt signals.

 

The original McKenzie & Holland Type 5A hook cam and soldier frame was reinstated inside the box at Cheddleton, in preservation the functionality of the levers changed with much of the frame out of use and a King lever No 9 replacing the former Down line points FPL, this was so the box could be switched out if needed... remember this was only a demonstration exercise for the public.

What I found interesting was that the locking table remained totally intact still containing many soldier tappets in original positions (all marked with a white flash) which made certain moves redundant from the 1968 signalling rationalisation plan. Obviously this work was never carried out. Another funny thing was the amount of weighted double locks the frame contained... this feature would allow two other levers to be locked in a reverse position by one other lever when that was reversed in the frame but not at the same time, these features were found controlling the number 11 point lever, 13 warning shunt disc and the jam jar lock lever governing the gates. I suspect now this dated from a time when the siding leading down to the Foden's and Pring's sidings was worked as a single line. There was also lever contact studs fitted to Nunber 5, 6 and 9 levers with Number 5 lever being cut down in size for electro control via the track circuits with Sanbach box, these stud contact boxes made circuits which energised two H locks with controllers fitted underneath the floor beams in the locking room, again a feature of the electrification program for Elton becoming a fringe cabin to Sandbach.

 

Well it seems the attachment won't open but the image contained is on show in Post 73 posted by Jowen not long ago.

 

Hi there Jowen, I noticed the map picture is not uploaded into the media section of Platform 1 so therefore the Platform 1 server does not recognise the attachment file as being in the Platform 1 media library, it could be that the way you created the attachment has somehow timed out and thus the image evaporates into cyber space. Admin Dundee Paul will be able to clarify and help with such issues... I'll mention it to him or you could start a conversation as a private message his user contact is Paul_L... you will be able select him as recipient from the drop down box which automatically appears when creating a private conversation.

Alternatively to upload a picture into "your media" in the media section here you need to ensure the image is resized to 1000 x 800 pixels size and is less than 150 kilobite in weight... use a free picture editor such as https://picresize.com/ to do this for you. Once resized you can upload the image into the media library here which will ask you to create a folder, once saved your image is permanent and you can choose who sees it and who can comment on it too.

To get the image to show on a thread you can either select it from the camera icon located on the menu bar at the top of your thread post or do as I do and open the image in Media and then click copy ... you will need to go back onto your thread again but then just right click paste and a super large shot of your resized image will instantly show otherwise by choosing the click on camera option you will only get a small image which can be difficult to see detail.

Hope this helps you.

cheers York Paul

 

I'm posting this here because it seems most relevant as a model maker focussing on things North Stafford. The other day I had another really lucky find this time from an antiquarian seller who had this on sale for £25. now you've all heard the expression "rare as hens teeth" well this purchase of an original Manifold book from 1952 in mint condition is even rarer.