whart57

While we are on matters Dutch, the bits and pieces in my cupboard reminded me of another small Dutch railway that is worth considering for a model. In fact I believe it has been attempted. The starting point is this Roco NS class 200, the so called Sik (goat) on account of the bleating nature of the exhaust powered whistle. This example here is an old version from the 1970s, Roco seem to have a new DCC version with automatic uncoupling now. There were a lot of Siks running around on Dutch railways, they were used both for yard shunting and for short trip working, for example on the aforementioned Haarlemmermeer lines in their latter days. Here is one at Vinkeveen in February 1986 The line I am going to suggest though is in Amsterdam. At the dawn of the twentieth century the city of Amsterdam had designated some new polders on the north side of the Y river to be industrial terrains. A rail connection was needed but all the railways were on the south side of the Y or a long way away towards Zaandam. The Holland Railway decided on a train ferry instead. This became the Distelwegveer, and connected the new industrial estate along the Distelweg with the railway yards of the Amsterdam Rietlanden. The first factory, opened in 1913, was one making margarine from coconut flesh. A century later the entrepreneurs behind that are recognised as being among the founders of Unilever. That particular plant moved away in the 1930s but by the 1950s there was a healthy industrial base there served by its own, isolated, rail network which was connected by ferry to the rest of the NS system. Just for orientation purposes, this screen capture from Googlemaps shows where the Distelweg is in relation to the centre of Amsterdam At its peak, there were three or four ferry trips a day, and a Sik from Rietlanden would be shipped over each day It strikes me that this railway has the potential to be a nice shunting shelf layout. Only one locomotive and a dozen assorted freight wagons would be needed. Around half a dozen factories had sidings or loading bays and there was also the facility to use the Distelweg itself as an unloading area from wagon to lorries. The ferry itself would be the fiddle yard. As more and more freight went to road in the 1960s the need for the ferry fell away and the last trips to Distelweg ended in 1973. The tracks were lifted and since 2000 the entire area has been cleared and is now being built up with luxury flats and apartments. A foot passenger ferry still connects the Distelweg to the former Rietlanden, with a half hourly service for most of the day. There are two good websites describing this train ferry, both unfortunately in Dutch, but we have Google Translate these days don't we. https://www.amsterdam.nl/nieuws/achtergrond/locomotief-ij-verdween/ https://www.aga-museum.nl/electro-spoorpontje/

I was going through my half-finished kits and came across this white metal kit by DJH My intention had been to build it in its late NS stage when the class were running trains on the Haarlemmermeer lines south of Amsterdam. (Nearly every visitor to the Netherlands will have been to the Haarlemmermeer, it's where Schiphol airport is). The Haarlemmermeer lines were light railways (or local railways in Dutch parlance) which were late opening (first lines opened in 1912) and barely lasted forty years as passenger lines. They would last a bit longer - until 1986 - for freight only and part of the network and the line's Amsterdam terminus are used by the museum tramline in Amsterdam. One model of this line has made the model press, a description of Vinkeveen appeared in Continental Modeller some years ago. However any plans I had for a model of the Haarlemmermeer lines were shelved many years ago so in dusting off the kit for a club project (I need something to run on their 16.5mm gauge layouts) I thought of finishing it in the original Netherlands Central Railway condition. So what was the Netherlands Central Railway and why am I writing about it in a thread titled Overseas Railways Worth Modelling? The answer is that for a dozen or so years, from the start of the 20th century to the start of the Great War, the NCS ran some very striking trains, particularly on their local lines. An example of one of the carriages used by the NCS is preserved in the Utrecht railway museum. (photo from Wikimedia Commons - photographer Erik Swierstra) Rather posh. Third class passengers didn't have quite the same upholstery admittedly, though third class did have same varnished teak outsides and balcony ends. The NCS did have one first class carriage in this style, but it was reserved for the use of the then Queen Mother Emma, mother of Queen Wilhelmina. And that gives a clue why the NCS had such high quality local train carriages. Their local lines served an area with a number of royal palaces as well as the country houses of Amsterdam bankers and stockbrokers. Imagine a British branch line that served Windsor Castle, Sandringham and the Surrey stockbroker belt all within a few miles. That line wouldn't be using mid 19th century boneshakers relegated from mainline use either. At the front of the train the locomotives were pretty flash too. In the 1890s the company changed from a plainish green to adopting the yellow colour of the LBSCR. (OK "improved engine green", but Stroudley must have been colour blind if he couldn't see it was yellow). With olive green bands and red, black and white lining. Sadly this was before colour photography and there is no preserved example. There is however a model in the Utrecht Railway museum in full NCS livery So could the NCS be modelled? I'm not sure the DJH kit is still available. It is definitely a 1980s vintage kit and needs improvement. There is someone called Garrattfan on the internet who has built one - https://modelrailroading.nl/Projects/NS7000n/en.html Another NCS local train loco might be easier. This 2-4-0T is in its NS state but it would have carried the same yellow livery in the first decade of the 20th century This was a rebuild, this class were the original locos from the opening of the first NCS line (Utrecht-Zwolle) in the 1860s and rebuilt as tank engines when the local railway network was rolled out. Electrotren did a Spanish 2-4-0 in HO which might be the basis for a conversion if one could be obtained second hand So yes it might be possible to model these local lines. As for the NCS, the yellow livery and varnished teak disappeared in 1915 as a wartime economy measure. (The Netherlands remained neutral in WW1 but still suffered an economic slump because of the war). The Netherlands went through their grouping in 1921 (only one group) but two years before, in 1919, the NCS handed over operation of their lines to the SS, the (private) company that ran the state owned lines. The NCS then only existed on paper, and then only until 1937 when all railways in the Netherlands were nationalised.

Sorry guys, I was genuinely puzzled by this OO-SF description. I thought I was pretty much up on various scale and gauge definitions from Z to Gauge 3, but it was one I'd missed. I really did not want to pick open the scabs of old arguments. We have enough of those in 3mm Scale ..........

Thank you Martin. A brief summary was what I was looking for

OK, the difference between 12mm gauge Finescale, 12mm gauge Intermediate and 12mm gauge Triang standards have been discussed in depth over the last thirty years too. But I don't think you would get such a dismissive response were you an outsider asking. I guess being in the dominant scale blunts your sensitivity

After West Byfleet we had just over 70 pre-orders so the order was for 50LH and 50RH split over two batches at Wayne's request. What everyone will be looking for is the level of follow up orders now the initial pent-up demand has been met.

Can someone indulge this anything-but-4mm-scale modeller by explaining what OO-SF is and what the thinking behind it is?

I've had an email to say the second batch are on the way Just so as you are aware, we are pursuing a crossover - 2 B6 points but timbered correctly for a 6' way of 33mm - as the next project.

The Grand Old Duke of York -- nursery rhyme

Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory -- American Civil War song also known as the Battle Hymn of the Republic

Shepherd's Farewell -- Hector Berlioz, l'Enfance du Christ

Aside from the 1900 plans for an electric tramway to Canterbury, there were four proposals for a branch line to the actual town of Herne Bay. There were five submissions to Parliament but one was a resubmission of the 1846 plans for a link to the Canterbury and Whitstable submitted after the arrival of the Kent Coast Railway in 1861. All of these plans had the pier as their target, even though for a significant period of the mid nineteenth century the pier was in no state to be a steamer terminal. This end of town was however where the property speculators were building the hotels and summer residences they hoped to sell or rent to visitors to the resort. I thought it would be interesting to draw the proposed lines over an 1872 map of Herne Bay. (This map was surveyed in the period in the 1870s when the first pier had been demolished and the second not yet built)

Man of Mystery -- The Shadows (OK, not strictly a song, but ........)

The Sunshine of Your Smile -- Leonard Cook and Lilian Ray way back in 1913

A proposed line that had a title that was almost longer than the line itself was the London Thames Haven and Kent Coast Junction Railway. The Kent Coast Junction bit referred to the fact that the line made a junction with the LCDR's Kent Coast line (which was legally known as the Kent Coast Railway) just east of Herne Bay station. By a process of elimination then London Thames Haven must refer to Herne Bay pier just over half a mile away, for the line was little more than a long siding connecting the pier with the mainline railway. This map shows the planned route This screen capture from Streetview shows where the line would have emerged onto the sea front. It's hard to judge where the line would actually have gone as the buildings have changed so much. The tall block of flats was built on the site of the Pier Hotel of 1867 (building 5) on the map, but the name Pier Hotel lives on in the closed pub to the left. However building 3 on the map, which is described as "Refreshment Rooms and Assembly Rooms" might well be the white building behind the red brick facade. The modern Station Road runs to the left of that. So my guess is that the line would have gone through the gap to the left of the tall block. There is a history of the Royal Pier Hotel on the internet - http://www.dover-kent.com/2014-project-a/Royal-Pier-Hotel-Herne-Bay.html and interestingly that says that the proprietor - who was a tenant - had been given notice to quit in November 1867, one month before the railway company presented the schedule of landowners affected by the plans to Parliament. The owners of the hotel are listed in that reference paper, seven of them, ending with the curious remark "some or one of them" suggesting that ownership of the property was a bit of a mystery I vaguely remember there was a bit of controversy over the demolition of the Pier Hotel building in the 1960s. By then it was called St Anne's Home and had been a convalescent home for pauper children and a TB sanatorium since the 1890s. Which explains why the list of licensees posted on the aforementioned website refers to the "New Pier Hotel" for a few years in the 1880s. As you can see from the photograph, it's a bit of a climb up from beach level. The line's engineer planned for a 1 in 97 gradient from the junction with the pier tramway to cross the promenade on the level and then a 1 in 51 to reach the first public road (today's Avenue Road) in order to cross that on the level. The deposited plans also included an estimate of the costs Twenty years earlier the proposal for four miles of line to link Herne Bay to the Canterbury and Whitstable railway was priced as costing £3000. Whether the difference is inflation or just that the previous estimate was just a single line "it will cost £3000" signed, the engineer and it would have been much more in reality is something we won't know. The most curious thing though is that this line is the timing. Obviously the arrival of the Kent Coast Railway in 1861 was significant, but it is at the other end that the mystery lies. This line was proposed in 1867 but Herne Bay Pier had closed at the end of the 1862 summer season as it needed urgent repairs and the arrival or the railway had caused a dramatic fall off in the number of steamers calling at the pier. The pier would be demolished in 1871 and though a new shorter pier would be erected in 1873 this was not long enough for steamers to call at all states of the tide and nor did it have a tramway. A tramway would be laid on the extended pier of 1899 but that was thirty years on. But even if the pier had survived in the 1860s, what would the traffic on this line have been?

My wife won't let me -- Kermit and Miss Piggy

Rainy Days and Mondays -- The Carpenters

Diesel twins appeared in Thailand too. These Davenport Bo-Bo twins were photographed at Chiang Mai heading a Bangkok "express". Amazingly some are still around albeit used singly as station pilots and shunters far out in the sticks. They're considered useful enough to have had a repaint in the new livery though

Meet me in St Louis, Louis -- popular song from the 1904 St Louis Fair

Ain't Misbehaving -- Fats Waller

Take a pair of sparkling eyes -- Gilbert and Sullivan - The Gondoliers (Or take au pair off gargling spice, as was the punch line of a Frank Muir monologue)

Fings aint what they used to be -- Max Bygraves

Oh no, the 8x4 is for serious modelling too. Model Railroader's David Popp is very much an advocate of the 8x4 as a start point for serious modelling and the "Virginian" layout Popp and his MR colleagues built just a few years ago has a lot of very high quality modelling on it. As the trackplan here shows, the 8x4 design allowed for extensions to be built on, thus the philosophy of start "small" and expand. Curves are still insane though, down to what we would call R1, but the fully worked out design was created to enable proper operation as American model railroaders understand it. Now I haven't seen a Model Railroader for about six years, so it is possible that a new editor has changed that philosophy, but eight years back a high proportion of MR layout designs were based around an 8x4 solid board.

I don't know how you can do justice to North American railways on a model railway.

I still think this Dutch design trumps them (Door M.Minderhoud - Eigen werk, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=437719)