With Southern Train’s unenviable reputation, it’s no wonder that mock Southern Rail Twitter account https://twitter.com/BadSouthernRail is doing so well and has more than 3,000 followers.
Here are a few Tweets which Redhill residents may be able to relate to….
Thanks to N Gauge Forum for this gross idea – “Something prototypical I’d rather not model,” with a link to this BBC page. The BBC is a bit over-the-top about the risks – only 10% of UK trains still deposit their toilets directly onto the track. And of course, most sewage treatment works use something similar to ballast for effluent treatment.
However, perhaps we ought to be adding a little extra detail between the rails? I believe that Ratio provide cowpats with their cattle dock. Perhaps a simple conversion project for an evening. (And any comment suggesting any parallel with ‘real coal’ in loco tenders will not make it onto the blog!!!)
Perhaps that’s why passengers were requested not to go to the toilet at stations!
More closed railways. The East Dereham branch was still open for goods in 1964, and the signal box was in very good condition.
The Eastern Counties bus service that replaced DMUs on the line was in the station yard. The single decker in the foreground is an interesting specimen. The blurred Morris Minor on the left is our family chariot. The ‘L’ plates were for my mother – she eventually passed her driving test!
Moving north, Melton Constable in mid-Norfolk had closed in 1964, and the track had gone and things were very overgrown just 3 years later in 1967. Melton was originally one centre of the Midland and Great Northern Railway. It was the perfect modeller’s station – a small junction, with 4 single lines meeting, two from each end of the station into an island platform. There was a fair sized engine shed and works – small compared with most, but large for Melton station itself.
Perhaps the greatest attraction of the M&GN was that the locomotives had a wonderful livery, often described as yellow, but actually light golden brown. The must have looked wonderful running through the Norfolk countryside, with green fields and patches of yellow gorse.
Something of the character of Melton and the M&GN was left, even in 1967.
No report for yesterday’s meeting, I’m afraid. I have the poor excuse that I am sitting in Singapore for a week, having been asked to visit and do a presentation at rather short notice. OK, it’s a hardship posting, but I’m not seeing much of Singapore! I did, however, have a plate of something that would go down well at ESNG, “Indian Railway Lamb Curry.” Very tasty and probably not a small sheep hit by a train…
I also managed to miss a working party last Sunday. Hopefully, we have done a few running repairs on the fiddle yard and repaired some wiring ready for the ESNG show in April. I did get this mail from Allan:
Had a good time with the two Derek’s.
Mr. Apps. Has sorted out the under side of the fiddle yard. Then sorted out Ted’s dashboard so we should be able to use this board now.
Mr. Atfield sorted replaced the third rail on Martin’s N-club boards. These are now being stored by Mr. Apps.
I helped out where I could & made the tea.
The Cha(i)rman was obviously doing his elected job!
No trains to report (apart from the curry.) You can take a train from Singapore to Bangkok, through Malaysia, but the old colonial station shown below has been closed, and the terminus moved up to the Woodlands Border Crossing at the Malaysian border. This is what it used to look like.
The Singapore MRT looks much like the Hong Kong one – probably due to it being built directly after the first HK line – and I think by much of the same team. The lines are extensive and new ones are under construction. Note the “Redhill” station on the green line.
The rolling stock comes from a number of suppliers, but are typical MRT coaches – you can’t do much with a carriage designed to carry the maximum number of people in a realtively small tunnel. I culled these shots from the web – no time to go train hunting.
The Southwold Railway opened in 1879 and closed in 1929. It was a 3 foot narrow gauge line in Suffolk that linked Southwold and the sea with Halesworth on the main Great Eastern line 9 miles away. In 1966, a surprising amount of the Southwold terminus was still (more or less) standing. Some of the trees in the background can be seen on period photos of the line, albeit rather smaller!
If open today, it would make a mint as a tourist attraction line. But it’s not been forgotten. The Southwold Railway Trust work to keep memories of the line alive, with the long term aim of running trains again on at least part of the original track bed. Their site includes this excellent map of the line.
My main memories of that family holiday were walking the old line from Southwold and finding the old loco shed still standing, looking out of my bedroom window and seeing a Pied Flycatcher on the tree outside, and returning home early as my paternal grandfather had died unexpectedly.
I have always been adamant that I wouldn’t model a GWR branch line. Perhaps there were just too many models of them about in the 1960’s and 1970’s when I was developing my taste in railways. I do, however, rather like Panniers (I have a Dapol one in London Transport red livery) and am fascinated by the GWR railcars. I have never really liked the main line 4-6-0’s like the Castle’s and King’s – heresy, I know, but I much prefer the Southern 4-6-0’s.
But I came across this website on the Fairford Branch Line, well put together by Martin Loader. It almost convinces me to build a branch line, and use some of the lovely GWR small locomotives and coaches being released in N gauge.
Fairford was one of those, not unusual, stations that was never meant to be a terminus.
The East Gloucestershire Railway had initially been conceived as a cross country route linking Witney and Faringdon to Cheltenham via Andoversford, indeed earthworks were already underway at Andoversford when the operation was scaled down to a purely local line from Witney to Fairford. In 1869 work commenced on this less ambitious plan, although the layout of the station at Fairford clearly indicates that it was never intended as a terminus and that Cirencester and a connection with Midland & South Western Junction Railway was their ultimate aim. The line from Witney to Fairford opened on 14 January 1873 and the resultant 22 mile branch line was operated by the GWR until that company took over the two local companies entirely in 1890.
The track layout is interesting for a small branch terminus, with its goods yard beyond the station, and the engine shed at the very end of the line.
Track plan: Stanley C. Jenkins
And the station itself would make an attractive model. The road bridge at the platform end makes a perfect break to enter the fiddle yard.
Fairford 1961. Photograph: Paul Strong
And the photograph below is a good ‘prototype for everything’ moment. Move the plane off the tracks, so the trains can still run, and it could make an effective scene for a layout.
Photograph: Martin Loader collection
Oops! On 28 November 1946 an Avro York MW168 belonging to the Transport Command Development Unit at RAF Brize Norton failed to become airborne and instead crashed onto the railway line between Brize Norton and Carterton stations, coming to rest in a field, as pictured above. Needless to say the line was closed for several days while the RAF effected recovery.
Of course there was another Great Western Railway Railroad.
And I really do prefer the Isle of Wight railways to any GWR branch line – it’s just there are very few models available, without scratch building.
Came across this little N-gauge micro-layout by Mike Holly on the Model Railroad Hobbyist forum. It’s only 43.5 cm x 17.5 cm in size (I guess about 18″ x 7″.) Operation is made possible by two short traversers at either end of the layout.
It gives a fair amount of operation in a tiny space. The whole layout is in a ‘picture window’ and this tidy presentation helps it look bigger. And the photos below show that the close attention to detail make a realistic scene.
Another inspirational little layout to show that you don’t need much room to run trains.
Another fine layout at the Alton show was Dock Green, an O gauge shunting layout set in East London in early British Railways days. Full marks, too for the layout name, bringing back memories of watching ‘Dixon of Dock Green’ on black-and-white television on a Saturday evening.
As usual, I enjoyed the sheer, ‘mass’ of O gauge models. And the retaining wall scenery and weathered models made a for very satisfactory layout.
In contrast, ‘Loch Tat’ used N gauge to capture the sweep of the Scottish highlands, with mainly blue-era British Rail running through it. Lots of scenery to look at, and a constant flow of trains to inspect.
There were plenty of other layouts to enjoy. ‘Banbury’ was in attendance….
Some fine scenery in an On16.5 freelance narrow gauge layout….
And every ‘Terrier’ you ever wanted, running on Hayling Island.
After another busy week at work, a little railway therapy was called for. Derek Atfield suggested a visit to the Alton show, and this seemed altogether a good idea. We arrived at 10am and wondered why there was no queue outside – easy, it opened at 10:30am. At least we got one of the last car park spaces, although the smell of frying bacon from the kitchen was cruel, to say the least.
It turned out to be a very worthwhile visit. Some very good layouts, and good trade support (and even better, I only bought some very cheap wagons.) My show highlight was Wyandotte Siding, a Southern Pacific Californian branchline in HO.
I very much liked the sense of identity and location in the model – you knew it was SP without a train on the layout. In the photograph below we have palms, a fruit growers association shed, citrus trees (in the background) and sugar beet being loaded in the foreground. Along with the parched ground cover, and the backscene showing flat land with distant mountains, it could only be SP in Ca.
Further down the layout was a grain silo and a small depot building – again with the correct local character.
They were operating the layout to a timetable, UK style, and the first train to arrive was a pair of ‘covered wagons’ in ‘Black Widow’ livery. A little later a short steam hauled goods passed in the other direction.
It’s interesting how people’s perceptions are different. I loved this layout, and could stand and look at the detail even when there were no trains. Derek thought it was very sparse and that there was nothing to look at…. Funny how we all see things differently and have different aspirations in our modelling. I did agree with Derek, though, that a little work was needed to disguise the join between layout and backscene. Always difficult to do with a flat landscape, as there are no convenient bumps to hide the join.
However, as we walked around the show a second time together, we were rewarded with this meet of two goods trains. I also noted that things had been happening, as there were more reefers spotted in the fruit growers association siding.
My other favourite was Merstone, an accurate model of the Isle of Wight station in Southern Railway days. Lots of lovely IOW stock, including some models of its unique passenger and goods rolling stock. This is certainly my favourite part of the UK for railways, with intense holiday passenger service run with antique cast-offs from the mainland.
Next post, I’ll look at some of the other layouts.
Another Thursday meeting, and despite the Chairman and Secretary being cream-crackered, and the Treasurer being sick and mental, we soon had a circuit up and running. The usual suspects are seen hard at work playing trains…..
A good turnout of 10 members were present, and it was especially good to see Ian Sparshott, who seems to have done nothing but work for the past year.
It was American night at ESNG, even without me contributing a train. Simon’s Santa Fe mixed train looked the part, and Grahams Kato Illinois Central rake (far right) was doing its usual high speed circuits.
Derek was trying out some US stock he had bought with a collection way back. I’m not sure of this rake’s parentage….
Although goods trains with a mixture of stock types are more prototypical and perhaps interesting, there’s much to be said for 4 or 5 identical vans, as with Simon’s train here….
But you can never escape the Great Western – Phil’s Large Prairie and Pullman rake looked very smart.
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