Nick Holliday

The big circular layout you saw was almost certainly the Southend Circle. That was a proper layout which was fully scenic for the full 360° and 20 feet in diameter in OO gauge with a couple of mainlines and at least one branch line weaving in and out of the continuous backscene. I suspect that it was maintenance issues that forced them to build the oval and smaller Curate's Egg as a replacement - baseboard construction was in the bronze age then, and I seem to recall that the track was all hand-made by the various members of the Southend club, and many cut their teeth in the process. The majority of the worthy examples cited by others are at the opposite end of the spectrum, with generally a single station as the focal point and reduced in size to the point where I have heard of one which hung from the operator's shoulders!

I know it is early days, and that the drawings are only sketches, but it would make sense to get them looking right at this stage. My problem is with the wing rails at the crossing on the simple turnouts. As this drawing shows, courtesy of Martin Wynne from a thread in 2009, the nose of the crossing should be approximately in the centre of the crossing timber, to get the full support of the special chair, and the wing rail should extend past the next chair, but no further, unless the crossing angle is very shallow, or there is another reason to have some form of check rail extending past the crossing. At the same time, generally, the opposite check rails would also stop on the same crossing timber, lining across nicely.

Although I agree entirely with your comments, unfortunately the GNoSR is perhaps, not the best example. There is an excellent general history, including locos, albeit a bit scanty, from the Stephenson Locomotive Society, Lightmoor Publicaiotns have a detailed book on the Coaches and NPCS, and the goods wagons are farily well covered in the recent LNER wagons series, just leaving the signals and architecture, perhaps. There is also an active company society to support it. The line I feel sorry for is the Glasgow and South Western, which seems to have fallen through all the nets, although there are snippets in various LMS tomes, such as architecture and locomotives, and some shared Midland coaching stock.

According to their website, the Gem NLR 0-6-0T is still available http://www.lytchettmanor.co.uk/OO_locomotives.html - designed to fit the Branchline chassis!

I suggest you have a look at the Caley Coaches website. They sell a number of the bits and pieces for CR locos, and, although they don't list chimneys and domes, I am sure that they could supply if you knew what you wanted. I have found them very helpful in the past. It's worth viositing the website anyway because they have availabe to dowmnload detailed histories of many CR classes, as covered by their kits. If you are prepared to go down the SEFinecast route and butcher one of their LBSC D1 kits, then why waste your money when, for little more than they charge, you can have an accurate CR loco such as the Class 1 4-4-0T or Class 104 0-4-4T or an 812 0-6-0 or a 900 4-4-0, or others of even more exotic lineage.

Good to see such a positive attitude, and best wishes for the future. Just a very minor point regarding the Midland cattle van - the dividing partition supports only occur at one end of the van, so that in the outermost position they create a space equivalent to a "small" cattle van, but it is good to see this detail, which is often omitted. There is a good picture in the NRM archive at http://www.nrm.org.uk/ourcollection/photo?group=Derby&objid=1997-7397_DY_9164

A handful of Gresley catering coaches were transferred to the Southern and were seen in either green or maroon liveries and some survived to be painted in the later blue/grey livery. Try a Google search for Gresley catering southern

The trouble with the East London line and the WIdened lines is that the length of tunnels required the locos to be condensing, which would have limited them to tanks only. However, there is another possibility, in that in the 50's, because of problems with the Bulleid Pacifics, a fairly large number of big LNER locos were drafted in to fill the gap, including, I believe, V2's, and they were timetabled in for a wide variety of mainline services. It only takes a small stretch of the imagination for various Pacifics to be involved instead. I also seem to recall that an A4 appeared on some sort of special deep into LSWR territory and it stayed around for a few days working local trains, but I may be creating an urban myth!

Jidenco / Falcon Brass were the ones who produced the 4-4-0T kit. Currently listed as "not currently available".

My main interest is modelling the LBSC in 18.83 around the turn of the century, and thanks ot all those manufacturers out there, have some of the most expensive loft insulation in the world! I have managed to put enough together for my model of Fittleworth as seen here http://www.scalefour.org/layouts/fittleworth.html I am looking forward to the next kits off the 5&9 production line, one of the few kit manufacturers actually supplying early Victorian rolling stock, so that, eventually, I will be able to run trains ranging in era from around 1870 through to grouping.

Interesting that the view of B17 1641 at Trumpington shows that there were still turnouts with interlaced sleepers on a main line in BR days, albeit in the GER style with proper crossing timbers under the frog. I thought that this practice had died out by Grouping, and the examples that did linger into the sixties were mainly on sleepy Scottish branchlines.

Have a look at both the Scalelink and GT Buildings Models catalogues. They both produce brass etchings for a number of different types of valance, and they also do cast metal columns to go with them. 5&9 Models also do a couple of different column castings, specifically for the LBSCR, and Lochgorm Models do a wide variety of etched Highland canopy bits - brackets and valances.

The story of the coaching stock on the Island is extremely complex, and I would advise getting hold of a copy of Maycock and Reed's Oakwood Press book on the subject as it provides a detailed explanation of the various changes that took place. As far a models are concerned, apart from the appropriate Roxey ones, there are other potential sources. The only ones that I know that are specifically based on IoW examples are the Smallbrook Studios' Stroudley Four Wheelers, (and their K's white metal predecessors), the Worsley Works LBSC Saloon (sides and ends only) and the range produced by Alan GIbson, which were supposed to be based upon the preserved LBSC bogie stock. The last range were pretty rare at the time of introduction, and although they are listed in the current David Geen catalogue they are noted as not in production, and I cannot recall seeing any of them on eBay either. Apart from the company stock Chris has listed, the Southern also brought over some LSWR items, which might be found in the Roxey, Blacksmith or Southwark Bridge ranges, and LDCR four wheel and bogie stock. Of these, D&S produced some 4 wheelers, and Branchlines some bogie stock, but I have no idea whether any are appropriate, and the D&S items are only to be found second-hand. The pre-grouping lines also bought some NLR 4 wheelers, but they, like the Metropolitan coaches, didn't make it to the thirties, but London Road Models might have something in their range. Sadly I don't think any of the Roxey SECR coaches are usable, and I cannot recall whether Branchlines have anything suitable either, from either the SECR or the LBSCR. One oddity that might turn up secondhand is the LBSC Inspectors' Coach that was produced by Smokeyloco some time ago; this was converted to a first class saloon, and the centre wheels removed, as was done to many of the other 6 wheelers, both LSWR and LCDR that were sent over the Solent. One problem is that many of the coaches sent over were adapted and altered, sometime out of all recognition, and the work required to convert an original kit might be considerable - for example some lost all their raised panelling and had it replaced with steel sheeting, resulting in a vomparatively modern looking vehicle.

A Pictorial History of LMS Architecture (OPC) has drawings of Newtonmore (stone) and Carr Bridge (Timber) station buildings and the typical timber goods shed. (and an iron footbridge) The Model Railway News ran a series of articles comprehensively covering Garve Station in 1952 and Burghead appeared in 1953. I seem to recall that the late lamented Morill had some items by Simon da Sousa about building Highland buildings from plastic sheet, but I have no references to confirm that.

A trip on the District Line to Ealing Broadway has reminded me that substantial parts of the London Underground system use bullhead rail.

Only in the very early days of railways did they consider being able to turn the rail over as a way of extending its life, with some original rail section being a true double head. Experience soon showed that the impact upon the bottom of the rail at each chair created indents that made that surface totally unsuitable as a running rail, so the section was redesigned with the smaller section for the base, allowing for wear only on the top half, and saving on the overall weight.

Despite all the pointwork for the junction being recently replaced using concrete bearers, the down Epsom Downs platform at Sutton is still laid with bullhead rail, but this may be due to the need to have a continuous check-rail!

When I was working at Wembley on the car park for the then new Conference Centre, back in the seventies, we were visited by the OS to carry out an interim update. I seem to recall the technique was no more sophisticated than sketching the visible changes onto an existing map - we did suggest it might make more sense to come back when the work was finished, but that would have been too sensible. (I know of a Victorian map where the temporary lines for constructing the Peckham Rye to Sutton line are shown, rather than the permanent arrangements) However, looking at Old-Maps, the survey wasn't incorporated in the 1975-7 revision, but appear in the 1988 issue, still looking a little incomplete, some 10 years after we left site!

Not quite answering th eoriginal post, but "Great Eastern in Town and Country - Volume 1" from Irwell Press covers Norwich Thorpe and Victoria in considerable detail, but predominately pre-1948. There is a copy of a BR plan from the early fifties that shows the spread of the Thorpe station,

The Hornby L&Y Pug is the ex-Dapol model, and the one I have, fitted with P4 wheels and a basic DCC decoder runs surprisingly well at slow speed.

Whilst old-maps is a fantastic source for plans, the one problem I have is determining the scale of what you find. To put things in perspective I usually refer back to a modern satellite image which has a scale bar, and superimpose the two images and adjust until they fit as well as I can manage. Just be warned that a quick check on Streetmap showed that the current station, like most in the UK, takes up a lot of space. The distance between the Bartholomew Road and Cheap Street bridges, where the station platforms are located, is about 500 metres, which converts to 21 feet at 4mm, and the rest of the current layout, from Cheap Street to Boundary Road bridge is a further 600 m, or 25 feet or nearly 50 feet overall, and that doesn't include the western run to the junction. The approximate width of the station area is of the order of 75 metres, so around 3 feet in 4mm. I seem to recall that Eric Fisher included a representationof Newbury in his magnificent Birkenhead and Woodside layout which appeared in Railway Modeller in the 1960's. (Without checking I may have got these names all wrong!)

Just compared an early Hornby body with the drawings in Russell's book, and the situation is worse than I had thought. Ignoring the effect of the height of the buffers above rail level, which is relatively easy to resolve, the overall height of the body, from buffer centre to roof and to boiler height is correct, but the bad news is that the rise in the footplate is almost double what it should be, perhaps some 3mm too much, which is one of the reasons why the s-curves look so much sharper than the real thing. The tank sides come out perhaps around 1mm too high above rail level, but the effect of the raised footplate is that the sides are actually nearly 2mm short in height. I am not sure waht can be done, lowering the footplate curves would appear to result in the overall height being deficient, and taking a section out of the tanks would make things worse. Horizontally things aren't any better. Overall the body is some 5mm too short, whcih seems bizarre since the chassis wheelbase overall is the same. Hornby obligingly decided to take a millimetre or two out of each section, so the smokebox, tanks, cab and bunker all theoretically need to be extended. The most significant section is actually the bunker. Hornby's measures just over 10mm, whereas the drawing scales 13mm, so the reduction is around 20% and it shows, the rest are not immediately obvious.

As usual, the old-maps.co.uk website can easily provide much of what you want. Enter the name ventnor in the relevant place, or use the co-ordinates 456170 and 77950 and you should get to a modern map of the area. Select a suitable year, such as 1946, which has coverage at 1:2500 and then go into Enhanced Zoom mode and you will be able to get a good idea of the layout of track and buildings. The OS were not particularly au fait with trackwork and occasionally left out the odd point or two, but given the range of photos on the disused stations website, and from other sources, it should be easy to fill in any gaps.

At the recent Astolat MRC Exhibition I picked up a couple of unbuilt PO Wagon kits. One is by Perivale Waggon Works, the other by Omega Model Co of Portsmouth. Both of them comprise a full etched chassis, the PWW one coming with white metal body castings and the latter a set of plastic mouldings. I am vaguely familiar with the Perivale range, as they were reviewed in MRJ at the time they came out, and I have always wanted at least one, as they were based on the less common steel underframed Gloucester wagons. However, at the time they were seen as the Rolls Royce of wagon kits and priced accordingly, I seem to recall they were around four times the price of a normal kit, and I couldn't justify the expense. The scan of the etching shows the amount of detail incoprated, and probably shows how complicated it will be to build. I have never heard of Omega before. Can anyone shed light on them? The etching looks pretty good, if a bit basic compared to the Perivale one, but probably easier to put together. It seems to have been produced as a general purpose underframe, and the body mouldings, a neat looking 7 plank end door 1923 RCH open, appear to have been a later addition.

Modellers BackTrack Volume 4 Issue 1 has an article on the H15's with, as I recall, several drawings showing the various variations in the class.