Friday, January 10, 2014

Mangapps Railway Museum, 2013

Deutsche Version dieses Postings

Back to signalling! On the 23rd of August, we visited John Jolly's Mangapps Railway Museum:

Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

Of course, I immediately went to the large lever frame in the main hall, and this time, our children came with me:

Lever frame, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

Lever frame, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

Lever frame, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

Lever frame, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

Here are the lower ends of the levers below the signal box's flooring. You can see that a few levers are connected to signals in the museum:

Lever frame, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

This is a standard tappet frame, where the tappets are directly connected to the levers, like the ground frame at NVR's Wansford. In the upper leftmost tappet, one can see a cut:

Lever frame, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

Here are the two locking beds, with all the levers in their normal position:

Lever frame, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

And here one lever has been reversed so that its tappets have been pushed through the locking beds:

Lever frame, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

It might be that this signal has been pulled down by that reversed lever—but it could be any other of the multitude of signals shown here in front of a gallery of station signs:

Signals and station signs, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

Signals and station signs, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

Signals and station signs, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

Signals and station signs, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

Mangapps has a huge collection of "things" on display—for example, here are many single line tokens ...

Single line tokens, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

... and a few corresponding block apparatus:

Token apparatus, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

On the far side of the tracks, there is a small signal box with a few different lever frames crammed into it (this signal box does not operate the operational points and signals—it would be too far away from the main building for practical operations):

Signal box, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

Inside there is this collection (unfortunately, I did not write down the different makes of frames):

Lever frames in signal box, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

Lever frames in signal box, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

On the left, there is a gate wheel, and below the windows, you can see a few signal wire tensioners:

Lever frames in signal box, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

Here is the gate wheel again. It seems that it once had a direct connection to the locking beds via a sort of lever—however, I do not see that lever here:

Gate wheel and levers, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

The third of the four frames had a sort of tumbler-like locking bed, whose rusty remains can be seen here. If I understood John Jolly correctly, nobody knows really how it is supposed to work.

Update 18.9.2019: This is a McKenzie&Holland locking bed:

, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

Above the levers in the signal box, there are a few block instruments:

Block instruments, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

Block instruments, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

And in a shelf, there are a few of those large British signal relays:

Signal relay, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

Signal relay, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

Mangapps runs a train on a short line stretching into the fields. Here that day's consist pulls up to the platform, with its caboose(!) from Canada(!!), which they brought over a few years ago, at its end:

A Canadian caboose in England, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

A Canadian caboose in England, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

Here is the outlook from the caboose during the short travel:

Going out into the landscape, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

Going out into the landscape, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

At the end of the line, a hare was disturbed by our train—not an uncommon sight on railway lines, as can be seen in a video in this posting on my Austrian blog:

Going out into the landscape, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

Near the platform, there is a small signal box that operates a few points:

Ground frame in a small signal box, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

Many small, nicely painted locos are standing near the signal box (it is always astonishing that a "small loco" has a weight of at least a medium-sized truck, and even a "medium sized" locomotive can be heavier than the maximum allowed weight of a lorry):

Locos, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

If you look closely, you can see an "Einheitssignal" from Poland lying in front of these two nicely painted locomotives:

"Einheitssignal" from Poland, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

Finally, we had a small picnic there ...

Picnic at Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

... and I took a photo of the unsuspecting owner of all this, John Jolly:

John Jolly, Mangapps Railway Museum, 23.8.2013

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