Chemins de Fer de la Vienne

They are indeed...and a jolly nice set too, trains appearing and disappearing with that long snaking out and back run

And many thanks for Carl for acting as technical video posting adviser!

I have noticed that there seems to be an optical illusion that the trains descend into the cutting - in fact the track base is level. We also had a couple of downpours which proved that the drainage works (unlike in the house where the roof leaked...)

The "West Coast Chapter" aka Brian, Van and Phil met at Phil's "Resau Beton" today for our first meet of the year.

Thanks as always to Phil and Dorothy for their wonderful hospitality and to all the girls Caro, Sue and Dorothy for their company ( although they did spend an alcofrolic afternoon indoors whilst us lads played trains )

I have a couple of videos I shot of my Mallet mixing it with Phil's three Corpets.... But I will also need Carl's advice on Video posting as I do not have a clue

GWhizz wrote:

I will also need advice on video posting as I do not have a clue

What do you need to know exactly?

You can upload to You Tube (for example) directly from a camera connected to your PC and/or internet. If not copy the film (and edit if ness.) on your PC - MS Moviemaker is the easiest to use and should already be on your MS PC.
Follow the upload instructions at You Tube for what you want to do and then when it is published on You Tube you can copy and paste the URL of your video into your post here or better still click on 'share/partager' on You Tube then 'embed', copy and paste this text into your post.

Hi guys

Thanks for the info, had a PM from Phil as well!

Apologies but our internet went down just after my last post and despite appearing to be "logged on" had no means of posting but will now try and upload to U-Tube, now we seem to be back in the land of the connected!

Hope this works

[youtube][/youtube]

The Mallet with a Newquida Harz Passenger Car

West Coast Chapter videos, including Brian's Mallet and two interested spectators

https://youtu.be/B2LAyDohmI0

https://youtu.be/1xUellSnglk

And the track defects revealed were later corrected, so that later, the Billard ran just fine...

https://youtu.be/gSoYagoVtec

The railway looks in very good order Phil.

Great to see some activity and rather youthful looking people running trains.

You may recall that I had motorised an Apocopa De Dion using a Bachmann Railtruck chassis. This was simply not up to the weight of the resin body, so I had to build a new chassis. I used 6mm ply and a bogie from a bachmann 45-tonner, taking off the cranks, etc. I had to open the bogie to solder connections for the decoder (Massoth XL); I am no good at soldering but this worked. The chassis had to be stepped to take the bogie. The step is a sandwich of ply strips glued using "Ni Clou ni vis " ("No more Nails" in the UK) held in my Workmate vice while it dried. This was really more rigid than I expected - I was expecting to have to use side pieces to reinforce the "step". The rear wheelset is from the - now useless - Railtruck chassis.

This is what the chassis looked like:



This is the chassis on test:

https://youtu.be/QHicYLVEsAI

The body fits on the chassis using internal partions which "suggest" the baggage compartment and the driving compartment. There are seats, but I will need to look again at putting more details in the driver's compartment which at present is just wiring. This is the test with the body on:

https://youtu.be/aTjdADoe7aQ

I was also constructing a one-axle trailer to run behind it - see

http://www.cgtrains.com/t861-one-axle-trailer?highlight=trailer

This was completed using a piece of old T shirt painted up as a tilt. This is the railcar with the trailer.



This was not a complete success, as the coupling is too close to negotiate R1 curves, so will have to be modified. Too distant and it will not look very realistic; too near and won't go round R1s...but if this hobby was easy we wouldn't do it...

Very good Phil!

May I assume from this that you're back in "La Belle France"?

The Chemins de fer de la Vienne was a pioneer of railcar use. Very early in the 1920s, they accepted an offer from M Laborie to put a petrol engine in a four wheel coach, seen here at the loco depot, where no-one had much idea of how to keep it running 



(A Hartland Woody chassis with part of a Delton coach body)

As the Chief engineer remarked of the way it was driven (it had a road lorry non-synchro gear box): "Ca marche, mais c'est brusque et brutal." The ride was simply awful.

Later in the decade, not daunted, CFdV acquired a railbus from Saurer. This was almost worse than the older one, and it kept derailing, so the fix was to replace the front wheels with a truck - not a real bogie: seen here at a wayside halt (the name board and roof have since been repaired):



(A Bachmann railtruck chassis with a body made from an IP coach kit)

Railcar technology advanced rapidly in the 1930s, and early in the decade, CFdV got hold of a De Dion type ND (a run-on from the order supplied to the neighbouring Charentes system), seen here making its way through the town:



(Apocopa body - first attempt to motorise it using a Bachmann railtruck chassis failed because of the weight of the body - the drive shaft to the rear wheels just kept snapping and the Railtruck has very little grunt; I built a chassis out of 6mm ply, with a USA trains bogie at the front, so it's a Bo-1 not the protypical 2-A, but it runs very well now. )

All the above were single ended (though the prototype Saurer and De Dion did have self-contained turning plates) so when the opportunity arose at the end of the 30's to get hold a a Billard A80D (again as an add-on to a Charentes order), CFdV jumped at the chance - seen here taking passengers at the main station (body repairs have also now been carried out);



(Apocopa - but like all the above, chipped for DCC with front and rear lights (directional on the Billard) and interior lights.

(There's also a Renault RS4 body (Apocopa) - in bits cos I dropped it - awaiting repair, chassis, and chipping. That's the winter job.)

beautiful achievements and nice work!

Great to see your "fleet" of railcars in one "album", plus a little history brings them alive!