Freight on street tramways in the British Isles

Is the title of the book that arrived today, courtesy of eBay. It's by prolific tramway author David Voice and does exactly what it says on the label. Although there are a couple of lines that to my mind stretch the definition e.g. the Glyn Valley Tramway, it contains a wealth of ideas to spice up operations on a model tramway. Some of these I knew about already - anyone who's visited Crich will have seen the Blackpool steeplecab for instance - but there were many more I was unaware of.

Manchester parcels tram. Same day delivery of parcels was guaranteed anywhere in the city provided it was posted by 3.45 p.m.

Two trains of tin ore on the Cambourne and Redruth in Cornwall.

One operation I knew less about was in Glasgow, where freight locomotives were used to deliver main line wagons to a couple of shipyards in Govan (avoid Rab C. Nesbitt reference...). Glasgow tramways, like a few others, were laid to 4' 7 3/4'' gauge so that main line wagons could run on their wheel flanges on the grooved tramway street track.

And of course, the ideal locomotive to model such operations in n scale would be the tiny Deki 3 from Tsugawa Yokou.

Things I never knew about Tomix turnouts...

Most of what I know about wiring was gleaned many years ago from careful study of the works of Cyril Freezer, especially the iconic 60 Plans for Small Railways, which I pretty much wore out as an early teenager. Reverse loops were tricky, necessitating something called a DPDT switch, otherwise short circuits would occur, the universe implode - you get the picture.

As far as I knew, this was still the case today - even the new fangled DCC seemed to struggle - I notice Bachmann make a special reverse loop module for their Easy Command line. Not a massive problem when you're modelling a railway perhaps, reverse loops being quite rare beasts, but tramways are a different matter. Most of my favourites, the Silesian system I 've discussed previously for instance, have a fair number, so naturally I wanted one too. Whatever CJ said.

Googling around at the weekend for information about Tomix insulated railjoiners, I came across a message on the excellent Tomix and Tomytec model railway group on Yahoo, by Nick Kibre (message 872 if you're interested) that said the Tomix turnouts were power routing and no extra railgaps were required for a reverse loop.

To be honest, I doubted it would work - it went directly against the world according to Freezer, but I dutifully set up a quick test rig in the kitchen, using my 6 volt battery controller so that the consequences wouldn't be too dire when the whole thing blew up... Only to find it worked. Perfectly.

Thankyou Nick Kibre and thankyou Tomix!