Entry posted by Gingerbread
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It's now about 9 months since my initial blog entry, describing plans for a 2mm reconstruction of Market Drayton (on the Wellington to Crewe GWR line) around 1905, and nothing has been reported since then.
Broadly work has fallen into two categories - armchair modelling (research and planning), and building some of the rolling stock that I want for the layout.
On the planning side I now have track plans and drawings of the buildings at various dates, so that I can interpolate and produce something fairly plausible for the date range that I want to model (probably 1900-1910). Unfortunately the line was closed in the 1960s, so there are few colour photographs, leaving me with plenty of unanswered questions. If I don't manage to find any better references, I will rely on notes I took from studying a colour photograph of Winchester Chesil, built in the same "French Renaissance" style, which used a mixture of red and blue bricks. Kidderminster station, on the Severn Valley Railway, is built in the same style, and seems to use the same pattern of red/blue bricks.
The complete station is rather too extensive for a first project, so I am tempted to follow Mikkel's example with the Farthing Layouts, and start with a small portion of it (the main platforms, and a couple of adjacent loops/sidings), the rest being conveniently "off-scene". Not only will this save space, it will reduce the number of sets of points required (probably to about one) 
.
I have also been looking at some of the available "alternative histories", where different lines had been built nearby, resulting in different patterns of traffic. This would allow me to justify running it with purely GWR traffic, rather than the mixture of GWR and North Staffs Railway ("Knotty") traffic that actually existed. For example, there was a proposal for a Wellington to Drayton line extending to the western side of the Potteries at Wolstanton, which would have become a GWR subsidiary and might have dissuaded the Knotty from building their Stoke-Drayton line. This wasn't approved, and the Wellington to Drayton line was subsequently built without the Wolstanton extension. There were several proposals for the Potteries, Shrewsbury and North Wales line, which would have run through Market Drayton, but it wasn't approved until too late (1918?) and only about half a mile of it was built before funds ran out. It seems quite plausible that one of these proposals could have succeeded, but run into financial difficulties and been taken over by the GWR. Apart from eliminating the problem of building Knotty stock, these options provide justification for running different rolling stock through the existing Market Drayton station - GWR branch line passenger train behind a '517, mineral traffic such as limestone from North Wales to the Potteries iron industry and china clay from Cornwall for the pottery industry.
Switching back from other alternative histories to this one, I have been looking at the GWR main line freight traffic. Based on a timetable from 1898, there were five northbound freights from Worcester which passed through Market Drayton each night, with the corresponding returns passing through southbound, also overnight. Although either unspecified or described as "vegetable", I think they would actually have been carrying fruit, and would therefore have been seasonal. The second batch of GWR fruit vans, the Y1s, were being built around my proposed date for the layout, so there would have been somewhere between 120 and 220 fruit vans available. Assuming that approximately 1/3 of the fruit traffic passed along this line, with the remainder going south and eastwards to Birmingham, London, Bristol, South Wales, etc, this means that 40 to 80 vans would be used, split between 10 trains. That makes the trains rather easy to model, but I am not convinced that a 4-van express freight is very plausible, so I assume that other vehicles would be added if needed, such as siphons or cattle wagons. I am also trying to find out what locomotives were used on such trains - I've seen suggestions that it would be Dean Goods, or that it would be one of the various 4-4-0 passenger locomotives. Fortunately the fruit vans should be quite easy to make - Richard Brummitt has made available a basic etch for the chassis (16 feet long, 10 ft wheelbase, coach wheels, 8 brake blocks) and the Association Mink is close in appearance to the Y2 fruit vans (though it is unclear from Atkins et al whether the sides were solid or louvred). Livery is still to be determined, as the red/grey question is unclear and under active discussion in a thread elsewhere on RMweb. Similarly coupling method undecided - I know Richard is a 3-link supporter, and therefore doesn't make the usual provision of DG couplings on his chassis etch, so I am currently proposing having a rake of 6 (or however many I finish up producing) with internal coupling using 3-link and DGs on the ends to attach to whatever other vehicles form the train.
I believe there was also one meat train per day from Birkenhead to Smithfield, though I can't identify it on the timetable. Similar situation for the composition and livery of this train, probably with X1 non-refrigerated Micas (possibly the N gauge Society bodies on more of Richard Brummitt's chassis) for the vans, but in what livery and behind what locomotive...?
There's a couple of northbound broccoli trains, which pass through Market Drayton in late afternoon/evening - I assume these would probably have originated in Cornwall, or perhaps in the Vale of Evesham. I only see one return train - not sure if there is another not shown in the timetable, or whether the stock was combined for the return.
There was a late night train carrying potatoes from Market Drayton (9.45 pm) to Wellington (10.30 pm) for onwards conveyance to South Wales - this was worked by locomotive from the passenger train from Crewe (8.10 pm) to Market Drayton (8.30 pm), which indicates that at least in this instance a passenger engine was used, though this may have been a convenience to work the engine back to the Wellington shed.
Cattle traffic on the line appears odd. According to the 1898 timetable, on Monday a cattle train heads north from Market Drayton to Crewe (I think the Crewe cattle auction was on Mondays), leaving at 8.30 am and arriving at 9.30 am. There is also a somewhat ambiguous entry suggesting that a similar Mondays-only train runs south from Crewe at 7.30 am, arriving at Market Drayton at 8.30 am, and continues southward to Wellington, and perhaps onwards to Victoria Basin, Wolverhampton. It's not clear what those cattle wagons are going to do for the rest of the week, or how they get back to their starting position (Easiest assumption would be that the wagons are worked back empty from Wellington/Wolverhampton to Market Drayton, but that means that they spend the rest of the week idle. Perhaps that is just the default position, if nothing more profitable comes up during the week).
As far as stock-building goes, I now have lots of part-finished wagons (so nothing ready to reveal here). Main reason/excuse is livery - I don't think there are any transfers available for my period, which involves 6 inch lettering on the older wagons, some of which would be on cast plates, and 25 inch lettering with 6 inch numbering on the newer (and repainted) ones. I think standard GWR lettering is 16 inch, so perhaps combining 3mm sheets for "G" and "W" with 2mm/N sheets for the numbering might solve the problem for the newer wagons. I also have some white "print-your-own" transfer paper, but will need to match colours suitably for the red/grey background when I try these. What I propose to try first is a couple of wagons with cast plates, which I should be able to print myself in black and white onto paper, then glue onto the wagons (though at less than one mm high, I am not sure how legible it's going to be at normal viewing distance).
Another interesting challenge has been putting DC brake levers onto the wagon chassis - the hole in the lever is considerably smaller than the wire it is supposed to fit onto, and enlarging the hole offered a challenge, as I couldn't find anything to fit into the hole to open it out. Advice from Noel Leaver on the VAG led me to a smaller set of cutting broaches, the smallest of which can be used to open out the hole (though the size of the lever is not much wider than the wire, so it is easy to get carried away with enthusiasm and finish up with a lack of metal around the hole...). At least I now have a couple of levers soldered in place now, and a substantial batch reamed out and ready to fit when I switch back to more modern stock.
A further sticking point is the "hybar" tarpaulin support system. I have bought six etches for my five-plank opens, but pictures of the GWR version and of the association etch don't look quite the same, so those have been put onto one side until inspiration strikes and I can see how to finish them. A possible solution is to stick tarpaulins onto some loaded wagons, with or without a supporting rail, which brings me to the next problem - I've not bought any tarpaulin sheets yet, and haven't found enough details of the markings to make my own (nor do I have the required cigarette paper to hand either ...).
Another interesting project "in-progress" is the footbridge. As is widely known, GWR footbridges were of two designs, with sides either of solid plate girders or of open latticework. However, Market Drayton, according to all the pictures I have seen, did both - with latticework outside solid plate sides... See http://www.the-ginge...ionphoto002.gif for a picture from about the right period, with http://www.the-ginge...ionphoto051.gif probably showing the situation after the line was closed to passengers, awaiting completion of the dismantling. I have therefore obtained from Worsley Works a "latticework" style footbridge, which is a 2mm etch reduced from 3mm, and based on Radley, and started assembling that. Unfortunately the etch appears to have some of the diagonals running the wrong way, so it needed to have two parts snipped off and turned round, then soldered together. That has been painted dark/light stone, and glued to a thin layer of plasticard (painted in light stone) which now looks good for the bridge sides (apart from overgenerous glue application, but perhaps a bit of enthusiastic weathering will hide that...). Next come the floor, steps, roof, pillars etc...
The one part of my building project which is close to being photo-worthy is a small selection of PO wagons. Whilst this line did not have the heavy mineral traffic seen on most GWR main lines, there was of course some limited local traffic to the coal merchants in the station itself. One of my source books has an excellent illustration of one such wagon - a 4 plank wagon dated 1904, lettered for one "S. Woodcock", coal merchant of Market Drayton. I am a bit sceptical about four plank wagons at that date, but the photograph suggests that the wagon was built as such in 1904, and it does have the advantage of less planking to draw/scribe, and no diagonal strapping. Unfortunately the photograph is monochrome, but I have been informed that most PO wagons were either black or red lead, and it's clearly not black, so it must be red. I decided to experiment with card sides, with printed paper overlays from my inkjet printer (using Inkscape, which I have been recommending to colleagues, without actually using it much myself, so here was a chance to remedy that). One unanticipated advantage of the method is that the sides acquired their own mild weathering during the construction - I assume that the ink, being somewhat water-soluble, ran and discoloured slightly when glue was applied to the paper. For the chassis I used the Association 8 ft 6 in RCH version (2-326), but I used small blocks of plasticard to represent grease axleboxes rather than folding up the etched ones, which I think represent oil ones.
The initial model had two main problems - the dimensions were slightly too large, and it bowed out noticeably along the sides, so I moved on to version two (for which I found the name of another coal merchant headquartered nearby, with a branch office in Market Drayton, and re-worded the painting on the wagon to suit, at least in my imagination). I used plasticard instead of cardboard, which fixed the bowing problem, and changed the design slightly to create the buffer beam as an integral part of the end of the wagon, rather than the chassis, which avoids the length problem. The remaining minor annoyance is that I have difficulty getting the paper to lie square at the corners, it tends to be too rounded, so the next iteration will have a slightly different design - instead of paper sides and ends being a single piece, I will have separate paper sides and ends, not worrying too much about the actual joint, then overlay a short strip of L-shaped plastic moulding to create the corner piece (rather than painting or printing it onto the sides directly).
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