This weekend the Country celebrates the Diamond Jubilee of her Majesty whilst bunting manufacturers reflect on the good times and worry about their ongoing share price and the inevitable drop in sales. To mark the occasion in Southern style I thought I would share a few pictures of my Adams A12 ‘Jubilee’ class 0-4-2 locomotive number 528.
Built originally in 1887, at the time of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, hence them gaining the ‘Jubilee’ name, the Adams A12 class were buil
Well its been over a week now since the Manchester Show. I have to say it was on the whole a great weekend and thanks must go to my able helpers for the weekend firstly my Mum and Dad and also Roger, Mark (GWMark) and his son Daniel from the High Wycombe and District MRS who gave up their weekend to help me operate the layout.
The new venue for the show seemed to be pretty good, certainly makes unloading and load easier and quicker than the old venue and is a nice well lit sports hall in w
November this year sees the 10th anniversary since the first exhibition outing for Fisherton Sarum. Wycrail 2006 , the annual exhibition of the High Wycombe and District Model Railway Society , was the first public appearance, and was the first time the layout was actually fully operated. I was however able to set the layout up for the very first time at the Society’s clubrooms the week before and some very last minute corrections to wiring etc. (thanks again Mark!) ensured that on the day itse
With a nod to a lyric from the Genesis track ‘Deep in the Motherlode’ from their ‘Then there were three’ album (did I not mention before I am a bit of a Genesis geek) Fisherton Sarum is celebrating its 10th birthday (its first exhibition was in back in 2006) by heading West on Saturday 30th July to be at the Barnstaple Model Railway Club exhibition.
This one day show is organised by my friends at the Barnstaple MRC, and has gained a reputation for enticing good quality layouts to North Devon
Fisherton Sarum as I am sure regular readers will know uses Salisbury shed as its basis and inspiration. The London and South Western Railway (LSWR) buildings and their relationships with each other are modelled to create the spirit of Salisbury shed, that hopefully to some is instantly recognisable. Albeit somewhat modified and condensed to fit within the quite limited space that I had available. This enabled me to use available drawings of the actual LSWR designed buildings along with photo
One of the characteristic views from the coach window when travelling on our railways , until the late 1970's was the continual dipping and rising of the telegraph wires. Telegraph, telephone and signalling block instrument communications were all carried alongside the line suspended from the iconic multi-arm telegraph poles. Whilst the poles themselves are often modelled, there being a number of manufacturers of such in the popular scales, creating the actual wires, especially to scale is somew
Fisherton Sarum had a sucessful day yesterday at the Astolat show in Guildford. Even with the early start, due to the fact that exhibitors were unable to set on the Friday evening (unless you are a certain very talented modeller and photographer ) set up went well and other than one trouble some point motor on the double slip all seemed well.
I really pleased when Bob Symes, you may remember him from such TV shows as "Model World" and "Tomorrows World" in the mid 70's on the BBC, had a good
In my controlling interest #1 post I mentioned the change of turntable control system to the Model Railway Electronic Group (MERG) turntable control unit.Since I first built Fisherton Sarum the turntable was powered via a Frixinghall motor and gearbox that did not have any form of automatic indexing. This meant that the rotational speed of the table was not easy to control and track alignment had to be done by eye (sometimes hitting the mark easier than at othertimes) via a toggle switch.
Frien
Firstly a quick Happy New Year to all the readers of this blog as this is the first post of 2013, I wish you all a peaceful and prosperous year ahead with hopefully plenty of time of modelling all things Southern!
One of the regular sights on Fisherton Sarum is my Z class pushing loaded loco coal wagons up the incline to the coal stage. Maunsell Z Class 0-8-0T number 957 was allocated to Salisbury primarily for shunting the East yard, this was due in part to the fact that the yard was shunte
The topic of Bulleid coaches has come to the fore again via a number of mediums. Firstly; the new Graham Farish Bulleid coaches in 2mm N gauge have hit the shops, a good review of them by Nigel Burkin can be found on the Model Railways Live website here. Secondly; current Model Rail magazine editor Ben Jones included a bit of crystal ball gazing in his editorial within the magazines Winter issue No. 191 mentioning that an upgrade of the now long in the tooth Bachmann 4mm Bulleid coaches as a pos
I have a bit of a soft spot for all large tank locomotives and a number of classes of large tanks existed on the Southern Railway such as the H16 4-6-2T, W 2-6-4T, the Z class 0-8-0T that I featured in my
Talking Stock# 19 post here and the topic of this post the G16 4-8-0T. The H16 and W classes will I am sure be the subject of future posts.
The ex London and Southern Western (LSWR) Urie G16 class of four 4-8-0tanks were introduce in 1921, the same year as the larger H16 4-6-2T. The two c
Douglas Earie-Marsh will probably be best known for the popular and graceful H1 and H2 Atlantic express engines, although these were essentially Ivatt designs from the Great Northern with whom March previously worked. His fist design of Atlantic tanks the I1 and I2 classes were not at all successful performers. The I3 tanks however changed that and quickly gained an excellent reputation especially with respect to fuel economy. When used on the ‘Sunny South Special’ between Brighton and Rugby,
The third and final series of
Bulleid’s Merchant Navy Pacifics
were not introduced until after the formation of British Railways in the Autumn of 1948. As a result they were numbered immediately into the new BR numbering series 35021 to 35030 but still initially appeared in malachite green whilst British Railways developed their own new livery schemes.
he locomotives were built at Eastleigh and five of the first seven were finished before the completion at Brighton of their 6000 gallon te
With respect to the Southern Railway Mogul 2-6-0 locomotive fleet most people probably immediately think of the Maunsell Moguls, the N/N1 and U/U1 classes. Their origins lead back to the SECR for the 5’6? driving wheeled N class followed by the later Southern built, also under the design auspices of Maunsell who was now CME of the Southern, the U class with their larger 6? driving wheels.
The missing mogul in more ways than one is the ex London Brighton and South Coast railway (LBSC) K class
Well I think I have just about recovered from exhibiting at the Warley show last weekend (my third exhibition in three consecutive weeks with three different layouts!). From my perspective the show went well and from what I could see (although I did not manage to get around the whole show and see everything) the overall standard of layouts appeared to be very high and perhaps an improvement of previous years.
I am indebted to my operating team which comprised of my dad, Mark (GWMark on here)
Fisherton Sarum is making its last appearance of the year this coming Saturday 13th October at the
Tring and District Model Railway Club’s Tad-Rail exhibition . This will be the first time that the changes to the control system for the turnouts (points), turntable and main line controllers will be used in anger, so I hope they all work especially as there is some last minute issues with the point control circuitry! (click the link here to read my blog posts on the changes),
Fisherton Sarum is currently only making two appearances on the exhibition circuit this year and the first of which is this coming weekend 11th and 12th February at the
British Railway Modelling magazine Festival of British Railway Modelling at Doncaster Racecourse.
With over 30 layouts ranging from N to O gauges, many of which ( including Fisherton Sarum,
see February 2012 issue ), have graced the pages of British Railway Modelling Magazine
and over 80 trade stands there shoul
Bulleid Merchant Navy pacific 21C6 will be seen hauling the Atlantic Coast Express on Fisherton Sarum at Ab-Rail 2011 on the 5th March. Further details about the show can be found here.
In December 1941 Merchant Navy class locomotive number 21C6 was rolled out of Eastleigh Works, later to be named Peninsular & Oriental S. N. Co. after the famous shipping line. 21C6 was unique amongst the Southern Railway Merchant Navy pacific’s in that she spent her entire working life allocated solel
Well it has been a while since I updated this blog hasn't it? Sorry about that.
Since Warley Fisherton Sarum has not had anything done to it. I have however been working on a few more items of stock and locomotives.
This week will see the layout prepared for its showing at the Chesham show this coming Saturday (6th March) The show is being held at the Elgiva Theatre, St Mary's Way, Chesham, HP5 1LL and is open to the public between 10am and 5pm. If you are thinking of dropping by come and
This post highlights some of the examples of Dougal Drummond of the LSWR 4-4-0s that I have models of (some of his other classes will no doubt be the subject of future posts) and can sometimes be seen running on Fisherton Sarum. Many of these these examples have been kit built.
Although not his first 4-4-0 design for the LSWR, that was the C8 class, his second is probably his most well known and much loved being the T9 class known as ‘greyhounds’. First introduced in 1899 the 66 strong clas
Although not iconically named after Arthurian legends until (Sir) John Elliot joined the Southern Railway in 1925, and set up what is reputedly the UKs first Public Relations Department, the N15 ‘King Arthur’ class of 4-6-0 locomotives were first designed by Urie of the London and South Western Railway in 1918. The design was adopted and modified by Maunsell as the newly appointed CME of the Southern Railway and this along with differing build batches, including some contracted to North Brit
The London South Western Railway (LSWR) first started using pneumatic control, rather than traditional wire and point rodding, at Grateley in 1901, using the system from the British Pneumatic Railway Signal Company that used low pressure air at 15psi to operate the signals and points. Following this successful trial Salisbury station, that was in the process of being rebuilt at the time, was also so equipped with the two new boxes, Salisbury East and West both containing a 64 slides frame (slide
Although still October, the December 2013 issue (Number 189) of Model Rail Magazine hits the newsagent shelves today and features an article about Fisherton Sarum.
The article is written around a completely new stunning set of photographs by
Chris Nevard. As well as the obvious details about the layout the article focuses through some of the text and the great photography on my kit built rather than Ready-To-Run rolling stock.
Those using the iPad app will also be able to view a g
Although Fisherton Sarum is not currently set up, I am using the time between shows to make a few changes and additions to the operating system. These modifications include: the addition of a third controller for main line operation (see below), the installation of a
Model Electronic Railway Group (MERG) turntable control unit
with stepper motor, moving of the signal control to the fiddle yard panels and changing all the point motors to
slow acting Cobalt types
. The other modificati
Fisherton Sarum will be exhibited at the Princes Risborough and District Model Railway Club’s Risex show this coming Saturday . This nice little local show that showcases a number of local layouts, is being held at the Community Centre, Wades Field, Stratton Road, Princes Risborough, Bucks, HP27 9AX. The show is open between 10 am and 5 pm and is well worth a visit, so come along if you can and say hello.
Making their debut on Fisherton Sarum at the show will be two ex LSWR locomotives.
