This coming weekend, 8th / 9th March, Fisherton Sarum will be attending the
Basingstoke and North Hampshire Model Railway Society show being held at the Aldworth Science College, Basingstoke, RG22
Basingstoke is of course on the same ex London South Western Railway / Southern Railway South West mainline as, the inspiration for Fisherton Sarum, Salisbury. The steam shed at Basingstoke was also of the same, turn of the century, LSWR design and construction style
as at Salisbury along
Although I have been exhibiting Fisherton Sarum since November 2006 feedback from my operating team has resulted in suggestions and ideas for ways to continually improve the way we operate and exhibit. The main and largest change to date was as reported in my Controlling interests #1 post that added a third controller to enable independent up and down main line operation whilst still allowed movements to carry on in the shed area.
We now operate with each fiddle yard operator driving trains
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
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
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
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
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
One of the regular operational movements when operating Fisherton Sarum is to bring the 12t box van of spare parts and shed consumables, that has arrived from Eastliegh works, to the shed stores located in the water tower building at its own unloading platform.
Just as at Salisbury this involves a shunt across the turntable. At an exhibition this has required a 12? to the foot scale ‘hand of god’ to uncouple the wagon from the shed pilot loco, or sometimes the ash wagon, until now…
With t
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,
In my previous Controlling blog Interest posts I have discussed changes being made to a number of layout control items on Fisherton Sarum. For the last number of weeks the layout has been set up in its entirety at my local Model Railway Society , the High Wycombe and District MRS (whom have a nice new website also worth taking a look at..)
This prolonged period of having the layout set up has enable a number of items of work to be carried including:
Signals
There are two working LSWR latti
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
The Southern Railway following on from its constituents made use of Pull Push sets across the network and this practice carried on well into British Railways Southern Region days. Other railways companies also made of such although they were often also known as autocoach, motor coach or push pull sets on these other railways. Originally many of the units were converted from either ex steam railmotors, following early pre grouping experiments that found them to be inflexible and often under power
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
During the second world war the need for a goods locomotive with wide route availability at a time of scarce raw materials and labour was to provide Bulleid with a challenge. He has already voiced his dislike of the Maunsell Q class 0-6-0 (appartently stating he would have cancelled the build if he had taken over as CME soon enough). Bulleid being Bulleid, looked away from usual convention in some areas and introduced the 40 strong Q1 class.
It was a powerful, reliable loco with a large fire gr
The “Devon Belle” Pullman service between London Waterloo and Ilfracombe with a portion to Plymouth did not in reality last for long as named train services go. It was introduced by the Southern Railway on 20th June 1947 and lasted until September 1954. Usually the train was worked from London to Exeter with Merchant Navy class pacific’s and was then split with a four coach portion heading to Plymouth and the remaining eight (sometimes up to ten) coaches including the iconic observation car head
I am now able to confirm that I have accepted an invitation to exhibit Fisherton Sarum at the Salisbury and South Wilts Railway Society exhibition in May 2014. As well as meaning Fisherton Sarum will be returning once again to its spiritual home (see my recent external blog "from the archive" post about its appearance on Salisbury Station in 2009) the exhibition will also be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Salisbury and South Wilts Railway Society.
The exhibition is being held on Sat 10
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
I mentioned in my
Talking Stock # 17 Drummond’s 4-4-0s more than just T9s! that whilst Drummond had managed some successful 4-4-0 designs his various 4-6-0’s for the London South Western Railway (LSWR) were somewhat more variable in performance. This was quite worrying as increased passenger loading, the requirement for faster schedules and in general heavier rolling stock increased the demands of the locomotive fleet. His previously introduced 4-6-0 class such as F13, E14, G14 and P14 classes
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
After a bit of a frantic week with some last minute control panel modifications to
power the new Cobalt point motors Fisherton Sarum made its appearance last Saturday at the Tring and District MRC show.
Set up on Friday night was only available from 7.30pm and wasn’t helped by the lack of power to the socket on the wall that I supposed to be using, resulting in a 45 minute delay whilst an alternative cable was run into the hall. All the point motors bar one end of the double slip worked fine
Like the Urie’s other successful 4-6-0 designs the H15 and N15 King Artur Class, for the latter
see my Talking Stock #9 post here , his S15 class was built in batches both by the London and South Western Railway (LSWR) and also the Southern Railway. The first Twenty were built at Nine Elms in 1920. Their appearance is very similar the N15 class and they shared many components including the 180 lb per sq in boiler and tender designs. Being designed for heavy goods work they had 5 ft 7 in
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),
Although probably very tricky to spot from a passing train on the main line, and mentioned briefly in my first ‘a view from the line‘ blog post about the little people, the shed area is hosting a couple of trainspotters. They are taking the opportunity to record and photograph the locomotives on shed being prepared for there turns.
I can only assume that they must be armed with the letter of permission from the Head Office at Waterloo allowing them open access to the shed, as although they
William Adams was the Locomotive Superintendent of the London South Western Railway between 1878 and his retirement due to ill health in 1895. He arrived having held similar positions on the North London Railway and the Great Eastern Railway at Stratford. On the LSWR he was responsible for the introduction of 524 locomotives across 16 classes ranging from diminutive 0-4-0 B4 tanks to 4-4-0 express tender engines such as the T6 and X6 classes and the of course the 0415 class Radial tanks that ach
I am now able to confirm that I have accepted an invitation to exhibit Fisherton Sarum at next year’s Hornby Magazine Live show in Hartlepool on 13th / 14th July. This year the show moved to an in town venue at the new Hartlepool College of Further Education, and has gone from strength to strength quickly building a reputation for being a high quality show.
It will not be the first time some of stock has been seen there as the layout Ashland that Mike Wild (editor of Hornby Magazine), Richa
