steveNCB7754
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Blog Comments posted by steveNCB7754
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One of only four images available of the works, that I am aware of. Got my copies from the Warwickshire County Archive, at the beginning of my research into Shipston, way back in 1981!
Keep hoping that one day, a set of more detailed images will turn up, perhaps taken by somebody on one of those steam trips down the branch in its latter days. Suppose people had better things to point their 'Brownie' at, than a small, town, gasworks.
Equally, I have never come across an image, even an engraving or illustration, of the original horse-drawn tramway or its terminus, which is surprising given how inovative the venture itself was, in its day.
Steve N
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Paul,
Sorry (again!), have only just come across your new repy by chance. So this is the second time I have had to click 'Follow This Thread' - hope it 'sticks' this time.
If only someone hadn't built a gasworks nearby, you could have had the 'Cordon' gas tank wagon traffic as well (LOL). On the subject of goods traffic (and research); if you need any information on that score, I still have all my research notes, which I could knock into some sort of order and post here, if required.
Steve
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Talking of copies of things written about the line...
Just picked up a copy of the June 2015 issue of 'Back Track' magazine (Vol.29 No.6) and on pages 361 to 356, there is a profile of William James, 'Man of Vision', one of the forgotten pioneers of the railway age. He was responsible for the Stratford and Moreton Tramway (originally horse-drawn from Moreton to Stratford-on-Avon), the lower half of which, went on to be developed into the Shipston branch in the days of steam. The photos in the article are all modern and focus on the surviving tramway bridge and basin at Stratford, but the story is an interesting one and details the life of a man who really was, 'ahead of his time'.
Steve N
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When I was doing my own research, many years ago, a member of the Shipston local history society told me he had once seen a 16XX with an inspection saloon on the branch - guess they did not bother with that to often (track/facilities inspection) towards the end of the line.
Interesting to hear about that unpublished work by Woodward - I thought I had seen/got copies of everything written about the line.
Steve N
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Paul,
Sorry, for some reason, I do not seem be getting notification of your replies any more.
Horse loading/unloading - I probably did not explain myself very well. This was carried out on that flat area at the top of the slope to the right of the livestock ramp leading to the cattle pens. In other words, if your GWR horse box were just a few scale feet nearer the cattle dock (in the last picture above), it would be in exactly the right place.
That area does not look very big, but such valuable animals would presumably have been ridden to the station for transportation, or have drawn the owner's personal carriage there, prior to that vehicle being separately loaded into a covered carriage truck ('Python'?) or onto a well-type wagon ('Hydra'?). Either way, the area required to load each animal singly into the horse box wagon, does not need to be that large.
HTH
Steve
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That's looking very good now Paul!
As you say, the goods shed is fairly dominant - I only got to see the station/platform let-into the surface of my layout board (before pulling the plug on the project), so its good to see the goods shed in its true proportion.
Still going to use the original water tower, or does your new scenario demand somthing a little bigger now, or is 'off-scene'? The original (round and flat-topped), was slightly smaller than standard and only had to service the very infrequent branch loco (Dean Goods). The traffic volumes you are postulating, would presumably need a bigger supply.
Also just spotted your GWR horse box, which reminds me I was told locally, that the rest of that level area and then slope adjacent to the rail by the cattle dock, was where horses were loaded/unloaded from those wagons. Probably a well known fact to most (but I didn't) and seems obvious now, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.
EDIT: Water Tower and Horse box unloading.
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US modeller Lance Mindheim (of some repute, I think we can agree), also cautions against black and suggests painting fascias, a dark olive colour.
HTH
Steve N
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Going on Saturday - looking forward to it.
Steve N
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No chance it was the result of a derailed wagon's wheel - how far along did the dents go?
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Hi Paul,
Good to see the layout starting to take shape - and I'm sure the buildings are in safe hands ;-)
Steve N
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No, the only thing I remember, and shown in the only photos I was able to find (from the Warwickshire County Archive), is the raised ridge ventilator you mention. However, in two of the photos I have (which for some reason, I cannot find by searching their database at the moment), there is a large, square, brick chimney stack at the north, rear corner of the retort house.
This chimney rises parallel to almost the height of the retort house ridge, then tapers until reaching the usual stepped-brick embellishment at the top. Only one of these photos gives a clear view but, unfortunately there is another building (on the north end of the retort house) in the way. As a result, it is difficult to say whether the chimney is built up against the outside of the north end of the retort house (in the angle between it and the boundary wall), or whether it is actually built into the corner of the retort house itself, at that point.
BTW, the covering letter (1981) to me, from Warwickshire Record Office, stated that the photocopies of the photos they sent me at that time, were taken in 1966. The shot from the roadside I have, can also be seen here (you can just see the top of the chimney, in the top left beyond the ridge vent);
http://www.search.windowsonwarwickshire.org.uk/engine/resource/default.asp?resource=9111
Incidently, that image itself, has a reference given of 'PH, 120/14' (which is not on the photocopy I have), but the photocopy I have of that better view looking back towards the retort house, is marked with the reference 'PH120/15', which presumably is same 'collection' that these images all came from.
HTH
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Hi Paul,
What a fantastic job! Had a dabble with SketchUp myself a while ago, but I decided learning one 3D programme (Cubify Design), was enough to be going on with and more intuitive for the engineer I once was.
BTW, I'm pretty sure that 'when I was a lad' and lived there (e.1960's), the gasworks 'colour scheme' (house and outbuildings at any rate) was white with green doors, door frames, window heads, etc. You know the sort of green I mean, that ubiquitous 'Sanitary Green' such places were often painted, more LNER 'Darlington Green' than 'Doncaster' (if that helps in any way at all?).
There are some Hornby Scaledale gasworks models of course, but none of the components match those used at Shipston.
Steve N
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Yes, our house was the end-of-terrace, you can see sticking up at the middle of the bottom of your picture. Immediately to the left of the gasworks, but set back from the road (it was just a dusty lane in those days), was a large engineering works. When we lived there, it was known as Shipston Engineering and later became Norgren Engineering/Valves. Eventually, they (along with the companies using the old station yard as an industrial estate), de-camped to a new, purpose-built estate on the northern edge of Shipston. Sadly, Norgren (the biggest employer in Shipston at the time) closed in 2008 and the manufacturing moved to eastern Europe.
Actually, if you crank-up 'Google Earth', you can use the 'Time-Slider' function to go back to 1945, revealing an historic aerial photograph overlay. Unfortunately, the quality is not good and it is not scaled or positioned quite correctly (does not line up with the roads, for example). You can pick out the gasworks, but the image is poor. Looking at it though, shows I got my earlier info slightly wrong - it is the larger gas holder which is at the rear of the works and the smaller (but taller) one, is the one nearest to the gasworks house.
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Hi DonB,
I would guess that the 'chairman' in the shorter video, is equally not a 'hands-on' type. From the article and photo in the 'Boost' magazine (Feb 1964), he looks like 'management'. From his slick (brylcreem) hair, shirt and tie and the suspiciously new-looking white lab coat and insulated gloves he is wearing, I would guess this is a staged photo opportunity he could not miss. In fact, given the date of the video, I would not be surprised if the gasworks was no longer actually working at that point and that Mr Darnley had arranged for a small coal fire to have been lit in the retort concerned, in order to allow the chairman to '...rake out the coke for the last time', for the cameras.
Interesting stuff nevertheless.
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Addendum;
Although Shipston station itself closed in May 1960 (and track lifting commenced in 1961), Mr Compton (the then, coal merchant) continued to operate his business in the corner of the yard adjacent to the gasworks house. Indeed, he eventually purchased that end of the yard by the roadside and had his own bungalow built. Sadly, Mr Compton is no longer with us, but the bungalow still exists, as does the old weighbridge office which he retained for his business (albeit with a washroom structure tacked onto the back). In fact, the weighbridge office, is now the only extant structure remaining on 'site', everything else has been swept away by housing.
So, up until 1960, coal could still have arrived for the gasworks by rail and (as you suggest) must have then come by road, from that date, until the gasworks closed in December 1963. Whether that road delivery was directly through the front gate, or still heaved over the wall, I do not know (or remember) - hopefully, the former!
Steve N
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Shipston Gasworks layout;
As a one/two-man operation, Shipston gasworks did not have all the facilities of an urban or city works. Though the basic principles were the same, many of the chemical by-products (e.g. Coal Tar, Sulphur, etc.) recovered in bigger works, were not harvested at Shipston and simply went as waste (either out of the yard or up the chimney).
Coal arrived in wagons (i.e. from Exhall Colliery) in the siding alongside the gasworks. There was no rail entry (why - maybe there was a cost involved, payable to the railway, in having such a facility that, historically, no one wanted to pay?). Anyway, a local history society member told me that the coal was unloaded from the wagon(s) by hand and shovelled (by hand) over the wall into the works - talk about labour-intensive! Coke was available for sale in the gasworks yard, but I do not know if coal was - might have upset the coal merchant (Hutchins & Son), who had a business in the station yard of course.
Looking into the works from Station Road, the gasworks 'house' where Mr & Mrs Darnley lived (with their son Peter, if memory serves), was on the right (and is still there), whilst the retort house was the first, large, building on the left. The retort house appears to have been rebuilt at least once and there were two distinctly different makes of retort 'stacks' inside - those nearest the road were made by Clapham Brothers of Keighly, Yorkshire. In the far end, there appears to be some sort of pressure regulating room, possibly also containing the donkey/oil engine(?), which drove the gas compressor to force the gas through the rest of the system. Somewhere, the gas also had to pass through a condenser of some sort, but I've not been able to identify exactly where that was (see later). Actually, thinking about it, the compressor would probably have been after the condensing phase.
Anyway, continuing down the left-hand side of the works, you passed a walled pit, in which were two gas purifier boxes. These contained iron oxide, used to remove the 'rotten egg' smell (hydrogen sulphide?) and their contents were emptied out into the walled pit. Beyond the purifier 'pit', on the left, is the meter house (the one with the, permanently lit, gas lamp over the door). Beyond the meter house is another, quite tall building. My guess, is that this is the condenser house (given its height), though usually, such equipment would have been positioned outdoors to allow for natural cooling, so the jury is still out on that one.
Eventually, you reach the gas holders themselves. As far as I know, the nearer (but squatter) one is the original holder, whilst the smaller, but taller one, is the later additional capacity. Consumer (mains gas) pressure was (partially?) maintained by the manual placing (or removing) of many concrete blocks on the top of the gas holder 'bells' (hence Mr Darnley's trips up the holder ladders)!
There are other small buildings in the yard, but apart from the works office beyond the gasworks house, I do not know what their function was (toilets, washroom?).
HTH as well - if anyone has any more detailed information or photos, I'd be very interested to hear.
Steve N
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Thanks for that amazing link regarding the gasworks! As I think I probably mentioned to you some time back, we lived in the end of terrace house in Station Road, dead opposite the gasworks, from about 1962 to 1966
I can still remember some sort of TV filming going on before it closed (I would have been about six at the time). Some years back, during my own researches into Shipston, I managed to contact the BBC archive and was able to get (at an obscene cost, mind) a VHS copy of a short (7mins and 4secs), B/W clip from the 'Tonight' programme of the time, where reporter Julian Pettifer covered Shipston's gaswoks closure and interviewed Dick Darnley. The film starts in the (by now closed) station yard, panning round to show the gasworks, before going into the works themselves.
As a boy, I can remember Mr Darnley (I never called him Dick of course) coming into our kitchen to empty the meter and count out the coins on the counter top. Sadly, I was also witness to the gasworks' demolition, shame it could not have been retained as a museum, a bit like that at Fakenham.
As for Shipston's size, I thought I'd found out that Shipston Gasworks was the second smallest in the country, but I could not tell you which was the smallest. The Stratford Herald (20 Dec 1963) stated it was '...believed to be the smallest in England', whilst the West Midlands Gas Board newsletter ('Boost') of the time, said it was the smallest station in that (West Midlands Gas Board) region.
BTW, in that second, much shorter clip, the man in the white coat shown raking the coke out of a retort (not coal - coal goes into the retort, gasifies, leaving coke behind to be quenched and sold-on), is actually the (un-named) chairman of the West Midlands Gas Board (Dick Darnley is the one in the trilby BTW), so I guess that short film (including the 'turning off a tap' - actually, it looks like he's opening it) is meant to signify the last day of the gasworks and the changeover to the 'High Speed Gas' main.
You can look up how coal gas is produced, but it is the same principle as the 'gas-producer firebox', tried on many steam locomotives. Burning is only partial, because it takes place in the absence of sufficient air for complete combustion (hence why Mr Darnley used a lighted paper taper, near the retort charging door when opening it, to ensure any lingering gas was ignited safely, rather than initiating a 'Back Draught' moment!). The chemical reaction liberates the gas which is free to be harvested and then burnt much more cleanly and efficiently later. There are waste products of course, which still have to be dealt with, but at least they did not go straight up the chimney.
HTH and I'll detail Shipston's layout in another, separate, post
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'We do have a strange situation here, where the layout follows the buildings rather than the other way round'.Hi Paul,My boards numbered only two, and even that one joint seemed to be just in the wrong place! The other issue of course, is not just the joint between baseboards, but the juxtaposition of any strengthening timbers underneath the rest of the boards. Funny how they, or their intersections, always seem to be exactly where you want to place a turnout.My present planning, is based around the assumption I will make use of the existing boards I have made. To that end, since my CAD drawing for the baseboards includes all the sub-baseboard timbers, I have imported a view of that framework as an image into AnyRail5. By sizing it to fit a rectangle the size of the assembled boards, already drawn in AnyRail5, I then know exactly where all the potential problems are, before I start 'virtual track-laying'.Steve N
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Hi Paul,
As you know, my experience of layout planning for Shipston, is a somewhat salutary tale. Firstly, of course, spending nearly 20 years researching the line (whilst also being an aircraft modeller!), before then trying to turn it into a railway layout did not help.
Being a traditionally trained draughtsman (albeit later acquiring CAD experience), at the time I did my layout planning (to get the boards built) I naturally used pencil and paper on a drawing board. This approach ultimately failed, because by not using track templates, etc, I was apparently able to get all I wanted on my boards (including the adjacent gas works) - or so I thought...
When I finally came to the track-laying stage, years later, I discovered that the only way to actually get all that on the boards I had, by then, made, would have been to loose the gas works. Once I realised that, I finally fell out of love with the whole project. The rest is history, as they say.
Now of course, I use a planning program ('AnyRail5') and you cannot beat actually laying the track out to see how various ideas work (or not). Still, on the plus side, my loss was your gain - looking forward to seeing how your Shipston progresses.
Steve N
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As Atso said, thanks for the information.
Must have missed that about Shapeways brass 'prints', when I last looked (a while ago). Through a friend, in a business which uses such techniques, I had only been aware of actual metal powder printing, followed by 'sintering'. Guess it must also depend on which printer such things are done.
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Hi,
Any particular reason why you did not try a 3D printed one in brass, as opposed to casting it (even if only as a test)? You mentioned previous damage to a FUD version; does this mean the truck sides are functional/load-bearing, as opposed to merely overlays?
Sorry if the answers seem obvious, but I came across your post by accicent. I'm interested in using 3D printing myself and a couple of Warleys ago, I had a chat to a guy who is using 3D to print loco parts and chassis - he was contemplating printing an entire loco chassis, in one go, in brass.
Steve N
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Hi Paul,
Happy days - yes, I've been there, done that (well, the tramway bit at any rate). Stayed there overnight, back in July, for 'Two Gentlemen of Verona' at the RSC - beautiful weather but a tad crowded for my liking (the town, not the RSC).
Steve N
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We usually go on the Sunday - its quieter (travelling and inside the venue), but there is always the risk that some of those 'bargins' have already gone.
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Hi Paul,
Am sure you will enjoy it and as you say, end up buying more than you currently have on your list!
Was going myself (have been the last three years), but the two friends I normally car-share with have both cried off this time, leaving me questioning the cost (diesel) without the support of their wallets.
Not so many layouts I'm desparate to see this time, but did want to visit a few traders stands and there were a couple of demonstations I was interested in. There is still time though and I have not ruled out going just yet, but may have to give it a miss this time round.
Steve N
DCC Upgrade
in The Legge Lane MPD Blog
A blog by Focalplane in RMweb Blogs
Posted
Hi Paul,
Originally, I had decided that my first DCC set would be the NCE, then I was invited to see a very large (private) DCC layout, where Digitrax was the order of the day. Always a problem to get truly independent advice; as in, if someone has already committed to a system, are they really going to tell you not to buy it because it has issues?
Anyway, I let their 'counsel' sway my decision and so ended up getting the latest Digitrax Zephyr 'Xtra' as my first taste of DCC. Have been regretting that ever since. The 'Xtra' can access the higher CV's you mention, but only by a convoluted 'extended addressing' workaround which, frankly, is a PITA!
Let us know how you get on with the new 'toy' (though if you say it is fantastic, I may well sulk for a week).
Steve N