Hi..
Just had a long weekend in Halifax. Among other things I paid a visit to the Kirklees Light Railway at Clayton West. It must be about 15 years since I was last there. Not a lot seems to have altered except I'm not sure if number 7 was around then. In some ways it's a one off style of line for a 15 inch gauge line. No "Express " locomotives as on the RHDR or the R and E. Am attaching some images. Badger, the little green loco hauled our train. Yours truly is seen in front of Owl. I
Hi again.
Back to the A.V.R. When constructing the Aire Valley stock and locos the drawings I used were very simple, not much more than basic dimensions . The early items of stock were built from card and details were drawn straight onto the card. OXO tin locos were built on the cut and fit method..All this is a bit hazy now. It is going on 60 years ago. Anyway stuff did get built to what I considered reasonable for the time..At some point I thought it might be a good idea to make "off
Hi.
Time now to go from the sublime to the ridiculous, "The Liquorice Line". Where on earth did that come from? Rewind to 1995 I was in my second year of retirement and off to Australia with my wife spend a few weeks with her Sister and Brother in law..One of the places we visited was Melaeuca Station. This was part of a Tea Tree Oil Plantation. You boarded a narrow gauge train which took you on a large continiuous circuit. The train stopped at various points and a train crew member explain
Hi.
Bit of an odd ball posting this time, when are they not? The first three photos go back a considerable period of time. The first one is the cover of the first dedicated railway book I bought. Railways had featured in other books such as the Odhams Press publication How it Works and how it's Done. . but this was my first real railway book. As may be seen from the cover it is the script of a B.B.C. broadcast. On the title page it quotes, A dramatisation of events that occurred at a vital
Hi All,
I see it is just over a month since my last blog. Have I been up in the loft again? yes, but nothing to do with this blog. This is possibly my penultimate blog as I have come to the end of "what I built since the Aire Valley". more on the whys and wherefores next time.
This one is about the small 1/1200 scale WW2 warships I started to construct after parting with the last model railway, Cranly Lake.R.R. Incidentally, the new owner of the layout has posted a video on youtube which
Hi.
About more buildings.The last one of any note to be constructed was Danes Crossing Works at Saltaire. As mentioned in the Railway Modeller article of August 1976 the interior of the building was completed after the whole of Saltaire was remodelled. Are interiors of buildings worth doing? I suppose it's up to the builder. I had always wanted to have a go and was pleased I did.Little did I realise then that the works was to be the penultimate article about the Aire Valley. There were couple
Hi everyone
Thanks for your comments. Sorry to have taken a bit longer than intended getting round to this. I had been down to the Porthmadog Model Railway Show with my latest exhibit. It's called Port Maud and is not really a model railway but a model harbour with real water in which the tide ebbs and flows. The basis of the model is a garden potting tray. There is a small element of a railway in it. It's a simple cable hauled car connecting the harbour to the village. It's a total fun thing a
Hi.
Not much to report re the Glyn Valley Tramway. I went to Chirk and to the little industrial estate and made some enquires only to draw a blank. Back at the station I asked a chap who was a local if he knew where there might be any activity re the refurbishment of the G.V.T. He thought there was but couldn't say where. I wandered around a bit but without success. It was real hot so I ambled back to Chirk station car park only to find my car blocked in with a couple of lorries which were
Hi all.
A couple of postings ago (stone walls) I mentioned having a tour of the Burlington slate Quarries. I had hoped to see the slate crusher in action but it wasn't working that day. This visit was in connection with a new layout I was working on. The Little Langdale Railway. The time was to be the present. I was looking at a Heritage line which would also be used to carry crushed slate from a quarry to a seaport. It was to be situated in Cumbria, Yes, not all slate comes from Wales
Hi.
Having messed about attaching files which I hope I am getting the hang of I thought I thought I had better get on with further etching. Nothing to do with railways I'm afraid. I mentioned the building of the SS Raven which was the the start of my second ship building period. The first was was during the war While the rest of my classmates were into building Spitfires and Hurricanes and the like I was into building British warships. The drawings for these were produced by a firm called Model
Hi
After the period of building the Windermere boats and the etching of all those stanchions a change of modelling was needed. Two things came together at this point. A spare bedroom and some passed down 009 locos and rolling stock. This culminated in the infamous episode of bashing a hole through the chimney breast which went up through bedroom to create a tunnel. I would hasten to add the fireplace in the room below was not in use. The bashing through was done when my wife was away for
Hi all
Back again with a bit of a odd ball model. I do't know how many of you have had a look at the Cool4Cats web site. These are delightful card kits of a range of subjects all of which make into working models, automatons I think is the word. I have made several over the years and powered them with those cheap motor and gearbox items. At my last viewing of the site there still were not any railway ones. I thought I would have ago at scratch building one. This is probably my last throw a
Hi.
Attaching two more box diagrams. Shipley Bradford Jcn and Shipley Bingley Jcn. The former was at the Bradford end of the Shipley triangle. ;As mentioned ;in a previous posting there were some boxes between Manningham Jcn and Shipley for which I don't have drawings. (1) Manningham Sidings.;Spare and summer only coaching stock was stored here. (2) Frizinghall. ;There was a large wool warehouse here served by rail. These two boxes had signals on the passenger lines but no points. ;(3) Shipley
Hi Everyone.
I see it's six weeks since I posted my "penultimate blog" and a heck of a lot has happened in that time. I have moved from the Lake District back to my roots in Shipley. I have an apartment over looking the River Aire just half a mile from Saltaire where I was born so I think I can say I have come full circle. To say the least it has been a hectic time for an 85 year old but with the assistance of my family is has happened and I'm settling down. So, on to what may be my last blog
Hi all.
After posting the last blog I found a couple of images of a model of Emett's Nellie which I thought I had already posted but looking through my past posting I cannot find them so I'm attaching them today. If I have posted them before my apologies. Nellie is now in the hands of my daughter down in Ellesmere and. is usually kept in a show case and just comes out at Christmas as will be seen in one of the attachments. Also attaching a pic of a model Hiab sea crane. She works in
Hi all.
A nice sunny but very chilly day here in the South Lakes. Took the chance to take some images on my "Garden Line". This is the only model railway I have left and if I don't make an effort to post a blog on it it will get passed over. Don't get to expectant regarding this line. It's very simple and was in fact built for a reason other than a model railway. When we moved up here at the end of the last century (that has quite a pioneering ring about it) the front lawn was in a bit of
Hi again.
Back again after over a month. I am posting the last model railway I constructed. Cranly Lake Railroad. This was only the second 7 mm scale I had built, the other one being the Liquorice Line. I was seduced by the Bachman Shay. Also at the same time my Friend Paul Towers sent me details of a very short line in Canda. " The Portage Railway" which was only one and one eighth miles long with track gauge of 42 inches. It was a tourist line connecting two lakes and had two locos, t
Hi. I gather the image I attached got through Stating the obvious it was a B/W print of part of Nethertarn on the aborted line.I going to try a few more. One of interest is the one of the Clinker Block Works, a bit dark, with the American rail cars on the line above I think it may explain why the line was aborted. The image of the stamp may be of interest.
Regards Derek.
Hi.
Back from East Grinstead. Did the full trip on the Bluebell line. Not sure that passengers starting at East Grinstead will find it easy, Sainsbury's have cut their parking time down from two hours to ninety minutes so it's a pay and display car park a little distance away. No problems for my party though with living in East Grinstead. My Grandson dropped us off at the station. It was a bonus weekend for me as it was the model railway weekend with layouts at Horsted Keynes and Sheffield
Hi.
I have been up in the loft today looking for something which I didn't find. However I did find some items of railway interest. First up is the delightful photo of the the last B.R. shunting horse, Charlie and his "workmate" whose name I do not know. The original image was a calender which I received many years ago from a friend who as we can see had exceedingly good tastes in New Year greetings. The title is Working Partners and was done by a professional photographer. Charlie died on
Hi All.
I feel a bit of an idiot as I have another correction to make (what again?).The Rocal loco, it turns out it was a tank engine. The only reason I know this is because after my last blog I dug all my bits and pieces out and there was the Railway Modeller article "Internal combustion on the Aire Valley". Well it was 47 years ago. As mentioned in the article The body was parts of the Airfix Drewery. I guess I may as well continue with the the two pairs of railcars.. No prizes for knowing wh
Hi.
After the tragic event in Canada of the runaway oil tanker train I was reminded of the oil tanker train derailment in Summit Tunnel in 1984 on the L&Y route between Leeds/Bradford and Manchester. The cause of the the derailment was a sheared axle. Fortunately there was no train running in the opposite direction and the driver of the tanker train escaped along with the locomotive and first four wagons. It must have been really horrendous for him. However, oil escaping from a rupture
Hi again.
The layout and buildings. I'm sure it would be just a bit boring to go into a lot of depth on this subject so I have selected items I hope might be of interest. I;think the clinker block works ;might be a good place to start. It's a poor man's crib on John Ahern's brick works. A couple of reasons. One, lack of space for a brick works. Two, it added another dimension to C-Oil. creating further rail traffic between the two works. Construction was a bit odd in using a complete alarm mech
Hi.
Just a quicky. If any of you have not discovered it yet, If you Google Summit Tunnel fire 1984 you will find quite a bit of information. Sorry I didn't mention it in the blog.
Derek
Hi.
I guess it's about time to look at further layouts I have constructed. After the Windermere boats and the two layouts that came to nothing I came up with the Idea for Semerdale. I'm not sure how the idea for the layout came about ..As mentioned in the Railway Modeller article of May 1998 I was looking for a few "tweaks" in the scale/gauge. Also, for what ever reason I built it as an exhibition layout and as mentioned in the above article I am more of a constructor than an operator. Most
