In honour of Bradley Wiggins riding triumphantly into Paris yesterday as the first British victor of the Tour De France I thought it might be appropriate to look at the Maunsell Lord Nelson class…
Introduced by Maunsell in 1926 the four cylinder 4-6-0 locomotives had 6 ft 7 in diameter driving wheels, a boiler pressure of 220 lb psi and a tractive effort of 33500 lb that was the the highest of any British express passenger locomotive of the time. Bulleid improved the class by fitting Le
Fisherton Sarum was started back in 2005 originally as an interim layout, as time and space does not permit the building of the other layouts I have planned, as a means to display some of my locomotives and rolling stock. This is the fist post in a series looking back through the archives of Fisherton Sarum’s over the last seven years or so.
First up in this series are a couple of early construction pictures. The two scenic boards can be seen here after track laying and early scenic forming
Fisherton Sarum is of course based on the ex LSWR shed at Salisbury (I am sure I might have mentioned that before) and although primarily is all about the shed itself I wanted to incorporate a non railway related scene on the layout. At Salisbury the rear of the water tank building very much towered over and backed directly onto Cherry Orchard Road, although there were some houses on the other side of the road, I moved the road to incorporate some semi detached houses. These houses and gardens a
One the benefits of recently changing to slow acting ‘stall’ type point motors as per my Controlling Interests #3 post, where I describe my fitting of DCC Concepts Cobalt slow acting motors, is that the unprototypical spring and spring housing in the middle of the Peco turnout is no longer needed, removal of this certainly improves the look of the turnout.
There are a number of simple improvements that can be made to the Peco turnouts even when using solenoid type motors that still requi
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
When I first built Fisherton Sarum I made the decision to use SEEP solenoid point motors to control the turnouts, this was partly due to being familiar with solenoid motors at the time and partially due to cost. In hindsight from both a visual and reliability perspective a mistake. It has become apparent after a number of exhibitions that reliability of the SEEP motors is questionable, even when used with a Capacitor Discharge Unit (CDU), and most frustrating issue has been the inconsistent oper
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
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
Whilst Fisherton Sarum has now appeared in a number of the regular modelling magazines such as Hornby magazine, Railway Modeller and British Railway Modelling it has now made an appearance in the latest book from the
Kevin Robertson, Noodle Books stable
“Modelling the Southern Volume 1: Ideas and Inspirationâ€
This 112 page paperback publication by Jeremy English, a finescale modeller and lifelong Southern enthusiast, covers a range of aspects of modelling the Southern Railw
One item of my rolling stock that raises the most questions when I exhibit Fisherton Sarum, and is also one of the most common search terms that readers of
my own blog have used to get there, is in connection with the Bulleid Leader. I will not go in to the whys and wherefores of the prototype as there are enough books and online references, such as the Semg website here or dare I say it Wikipedia here although a few myths about it can be seen to be perpetuated such as that the initial int
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
There are just two days to go until the doors open to the public at the
British Railway Modelling magazine Festival of British Railway Modelling at Doncaster Racecourse
and the appearance at the show of Fisherton Sarum. As well as keeping an eye on the Met office website forecast for the next 24 to 48 hours, due to possible snow falling across the Midlands and my route from home to Doncaster, I have been preparing Fisherton Sarum for the trip north.
As with most layouts being exhibited
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
A busy few weeks ahead beckons on the exhibition front, with the main highlight for me being the appearance of Fisherton Sarum at the
BRM Festival of British Railway Modelling at Doncaster Racecourse, in 12 days time (11/12thFebruary).
If that event wasn’t enough I shall be operating three other layouts at three other shows between now and the first weekend in March!
This coming weekend (3rd/4thFebruary) sees the
Hornby Magazine layout Berrybridge making an appearance
The February issue of British Railway Modelling magazine has today hit the shelves (subscriber copies should have landed on doormats by now too) and features an article about Fisherton Sarum. The article discusses designing and building a layout taking inspiration from an actual location rather than being an exact scale model of a location or being totally fictitious, just as I have done using Salisbury as the inspiration for Fisherton Sarum.
The article coincides with Fisherton Sarum
Two of the more unusual items of rolling stock built by the Southern Railway were the cinema coach and also the 100 inspection Saloon.
Marc Models
have now produced kits of, or will supply Ready to Run, these unique prototypes.
These models of both coaches and generator vans are in etched brass and have the correct style bogies. A resin cast generator is fitted into the vans that can be viewed through the van windows.
This is an extract of the latest entry on my modelling blog c
The imposing long building beyond the turntable at Fisherton Sarum is a representation of the water tower, dormitory and stores building at Salisbury. It dominates the turntable end of the layout and although over 2 foot long is actually a good 6 inches under scale length.
The water tank at Salisbury held 110,000 gallons and fed both the shed and the station water cranes totaling 12 in all, with eight in the station and four in the shed yard. The water pressure at Salisbury was maintained un
When first introduced 21C101 to 21C163 had the original Bulleid style cab with narrow front lookout and two large side windows, the rear one of which slid forwards behind the front. Complaints were made due to a restricted forward view, not helped by the position, inside the cab, of the vacuum ejector controls, in front of the window on the driver’s side. Therefore starting in July 1947 the cabs were modified, with a wedge shaped front (sometimes referred to a ‘V’ shaped) giving a larger front w
Obviously in some instances, despite what you might be told elsewhere, size does sometimes matter. In response to a comment made on a previous post on my external blog I thought I would provide some further information as requested.
To recap the overall scenic section of the layout is 8’ long by 3’ deep split into two 4’ x 3’ boards. These two boards bolt together face to face for transportation.
At each end of the layout are two fiddle boards, that due to using cassettes are simple flat
The elevated coal stage at Fisherton Sarum like the shed, as discussed in my post a view from the line #2 below opened in 1901. Just like the Shed itself, the coal stages were also built in a house style and as such as well as Salisbury similar stages existed at Eastleigh, Basingstoke and Plymouth Friary. Construction was wooden lapboard panels within a steel frame and a slate roof. Loco coal for Salisbury was supplied from the South Wales coal fields by the Southern Railway loco coal contra
The 1948 locomotive exchange trials took place from April though to September 1948 with Waterloo to Plymouth being one of the chosen routes and utilised during may and June 1948. I was keen to introduce some of the locos that ran on the Southern during the trials into the locomotive fleet on my Fisherton Sarum layout as it is based on Salisbury and as such was a stopping off point for the trials.
This is an extract of the latest entry on my modelling blog click here to read the full entry
The shed opened in 1901 at Salisbury was the fourth to be built and replaced the two older sheds that were near the Station itself (on what then became the west yard) that were together known as Fisherton shed (Fisherton Street being the name of the road next to the station, and forms one of the reasons for my layout being called what it is). Just in case you were wondering, the first shed (of the four) was located at the original Salisbury Milford terminus.
The London and South Western Rail
This is the first in hopefully a series of posts looking at the various items of rolling stock that have and operate on Fisherton Sarum. Over time the intent is that the series will include locomotives, coaching stock and wagons.
First up are Bulleid’s masterpieces the Merchant Navy class in original ‘Air Smoothed’ condition. I am not going to get into discussion about the success or otherwise of the design as plenty has been published elsewhere, but to cover some of the models that I have buil
Any model railway layout needs the little people to complete the scene. I try where possible to position them in natural groupings. This post, the first in a series of ‘views from the line’, looks at the little people on Fisherton Sarum.
Alongside the typical Southern concrete platelayers hut next to the main line my grandfather can be seen taking a break. He is leaning on his ballast fork, with his co-gangers and linesmen, one of whom is sat reading the newspaper and another has a mug of te
When one looks at the majority of steam era model layouts of the big four railway companies, or the subsequent British Railways regions, the majority tend to be set in either the 1930s or the 1950/60s this also tends to be reflected by the choice of models and liveries from the major ready-to-run manufacturers. Leaving aside the arguments of the least modelled and supported of the big four or BR regions the period that seems to most get overlooked in model form is the immediate post war to natio
