G-Wizz, North West G Scale lands "Consultancy Job" by Allan

John Hulse (G Scale Society) recently received a phone call from a lady appropriately called Mrs Damsell whose garden railway was causing her some distress. This is no ordinary garden railway however, this railway belongs to Blackpool Model Village.

The Dansell family took over the village about fourteen months ago and have been franticly trying to restore the many buildings and features that make up the display. John contacted the Fylde Coast based G-Wizz group to see if they could help sort out the problems with the railway on behalf of the North West G Scale Group as they were already on the doorstep.

I made a preliminary site visit to see the railway on April 24th. The following week a working team of myself and fellow NW member Roy set out to try to get one of the three lines running in time for the May Bank holiday weekend. A detailed examination was carried out both physical and electrical to identify the extent of the problems. The village has a continuous run around a fairground scene and two lines running as a shuttle one serving a mine and one as a tramway. The continuous line was intact and an intensive cleaning and pruning session got that running at least for the weekend.

The other two lines are a different case, the mine has had some track removed along with the controller, whilst the tramway had lost its mains feed due to a fire in the supply pillar. In addition the controller had failed and subsequently gone missing, and the tram, which consists of LGB LCE running gear with a scratch body had seized up. Having got the continuous line running for the Bank holiday we formulated a detailed plan for the next phase of the restoration. An urgent task will be to provide waterproof housings for all controllers and power supplies, the later to be fitted with RCD protection. This is a priority and will be completed by the time you read this report, as up to present controllers have simply been placed on the ground under houses and are not weatherproof!

On our first visit we were told that they had only one loco that was serviceable, this turned out to be a Bachman Rio Grande which on testing was found only to require a bit of lubrication, which Roy did on the spot. We had returned to the office to list the parts needed to complete the job and someone remembered a pile of old railway bits in the model village workshop which the new owners were still trying to sort out. We carefully picked our way in and eventually came out with six big boxes of bits including locos and controllers many of which had been buried in there for many years. The locos were taken to Roy's workshop and the controllers my workshop, after a few days out of this dusty mess emerged three serviceable locos, one seized Stainz loco and lots of bits of various locos.

The serviceable items were delivered back to the site for operation that weekend, much to the surprise of Mrs Damsell, how's that for service! Mean while I was working through a tangled mess of cables, and controllers trying to sort out the good and safe from the bad and dangerous. In the end I did end up with three good units, one dead one and one repairable unit. It is intended that at the end of this season all the track will be re-laid on a concrete foundation, (the concrete work will be done by the village staff), with the track laying and rewiring being done by the G-Wizz Team on behalf of NW G Scale.

We have already ensured that advertising material for the G Scale Society is to be displayed at the Model Village thereby gaining valuable publicity. The Model Village web site is www.blackpoolmodelvillage.com

© G-Wizz Group 2002