Rodentian Railways

I think the bigger picture here is whether the wheezing asthmatic engines operating on the line would ever have gone fast enough (if they went at all) to actually be in danger of a collision such that some form of signalling arrangements were required. All historical photos of Piglington and its environs clearly show a man with a red flag moving sedately in front of each train as late as 1956. The impecuniosity of the former LNER constituents is well known and it is hard to imagine that any form of signalling would have been provided for. The surviving station records at the NRM strongly indicate the station was entirely staffed by one old blind Kelpie call "Muffie" whose job it was to keep the rats and any paying passenger out. Gifted as "Muffie" undoubtedly was I suspect manipulating the the necessary levers in the signal cabin was beyond him. I will have to check the relevant section in the General Appendix to the WTT but I believe that all movements were regulated by "Special Instruction". Specifically "Any Train approaching or departing from Piglington, whether preceded by Flagman or not, must not under any circumstances cross onto or from any running line unless prior permission is received from the Regional Traffic Manager." There is however no evidence that any such permission was ever granted. It is interesting to note that no thought appears to have been given to the using proven LNWR method of train control - "First to the junction has right of way for punctuality is the politeness of Kings!"

From https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1671513 "The ironwork was cast by Richard Kitchin of Warrington who in 1851 employed 44 men, and by 1861, at the age of 75, he employed 100 men."

Thanks - I' will take a gander: Here are some update photos: The base boarding has been cut to size and is being braced (screwed and glued to pine battens) and then screwed to the supporting beams. I had thought to use 6mm marine ply but our one and only local timber supplier did not have the advertised stock except for one piece - a fairly typical bait and switch tactic. Being a cynic I had also made plans for braced 7mm non-marine ply and also braced 9mm mdf. I settled on the 7mm ply and despite many of the standard advertised sized boards not being able (which meant a lot of additional cutting) I got the majority of what I needed. The truly eagle eyed will notice a few additional supports to the framing a well! The bracing on the piece below is not on its edge as a thinner shim/spacer will be added to ensure the correct slope.when placed on the supporting structure. I cut all the boards on Bro's table saw - a godsend for this kind of work! For the rest of the work I use an old dropsaw. For drilling/driving, again Bro has kindly loaned his lightweight cordless drill and driver. Otherwise I would be using my own much heavier drills. I strongly recommend the assistance of a near relative with a good assortment of power tools etc! Being paranoid, I got exterior ply with at least one good face (BC). Should be pretty stable right? This is what happened to one piece only two weeks after I bought it - it has been stored in the dry.... As you can see it has delaminated, bent like a banana and one of the plys has fractured. Subsequently, during some unseasonaly wet weather, I noticed that some of the laid out boards had actually flattened a little...which probably indicates that the ply was manuafactured in a very humid environment. Anyway, so much for quality control. On of the braced boards is also showing sign of delaminating so all I can do is apply some real wood glue and clamp firmly! More anon- hopefully at a greater pace than before!

Did get to Evesham and had a look around the station - took some photos to help with some of the details. Spent a few hours searching through the Almonry's digital collection - they were incredibly helpful. I found no new photos but I did get some more information on the history of the saw mill business and the LMS/GWR interaction at Evesham as far as receipts/payments were concerned. Spent a day on the GWSR - really excellent. My time in York at the NRM sadly coincided with their research center not being open. We had changed our itinerary around the UK so I knew it would be closed, There is still scope for significant further OCD research into the saw mill but when I get back (in the US ATM) I will lay the main running lines and create a temporary loop to join them. More anon Regards

Here is the completed frame: And the workbench Won't win any prizes for beauty but it is functional.

Slight delays have occurred to this project... I have completed a work bench to do my sawing on so now that problem is solved and SWMBO will be much happier. We will be visiting the UK in August before heading on to the US so I will try to do a bit of carefully targeted research at the NRM and in Evesham as we tootle around. She admitted to watching Flying Scotsman videos the other day and has complained we can't get on the Waverly/Dalesman this trip so maybe there is hope after all ! It would be nice to spend some time at Swindon looking at the Historic Britain collection but there is not enough time. (Not the railway stuff - that is obviously heresy for me and I'd probably get struck by lightning!). Construction in earnest will probably begin in mid September.

I did say I would upload a map of the setup: Below is an extract from the 1927 O/S 25" map of the area. All I had to do was bend the map around the layout and then make it look right... easy The pic is a snip of the pdf - the latter is attached. What really surprised me was that the corner joint under the left hand over bridge (the "Black Bridge" as it was apparently known) actually came out quite well. 1927 25 inch.pdf

Funny you should say that... I thought a frame connected to the edge with a piano hinge on which the mill could be place. "When not in use" it could be slid away on a shelf underneath. Now if I can only get the room reclassified as a "kitchen" I could take over another room as well!

Progress(?) Well assuming I can scan part of one of the OS 25" map printouts I originally worked with (these are available online through the NLS), you will see how the layout compares to the original. Historically, the line approaches the OW&W line (barbarians) from the North, crosses over it and turns very sharply West, runs through the station and past the goods yard and the saw mill (did I mention the saw mill by the way, absolutely fascinating, there is definitely a paper on that somewhere if I get the time), before crossing the Avon on a beautiful bridge (which again, should be compared to the primitive, rickety structure used by the "competition" a few hundred yards away) - you may detect a certain pattern here - before resuming its southerly course. If this were a rational enterprise (see above) I would wrap the layout around the room with the station on the inside and the yards (and extra space) on the outside - in fact the very opposite of what I have done. To me however, the most aesthetically pleasing aspect of the station is its wrought iron and glass, ridge and furrow awning. Since I intend to build a faithful (or at least vaguely loyal) model of this, I want to be able to see it in all its glory from the operator's position in the middle of the room. Moreover, I want the backscene there to be a (probably black & white) montage of the GWR (forgive the blasphemy) station and its surrounds. There is a uniquely shaped curved loading dock that leads on to the exchange siding with the GWR [Deleted by the censor]. The dark red track in the SE corner of the plan is how it will be represented on the plan. In reality, the line continue straight after passing under the bridge but there is a wall in the way so it had to move. The BLUE track in the middle of the room is the for the saw mill. Currently it appears that it cannot be represented on the layout because it is not actually on the layout but rather in the middle where there is no layout. I mock these difficulties. The saw mill will make an appearance, somehow....

ramble..... Looking for an alternative to the TTWNGCBC layout above, and being bred and born a Yorkshireman ("E bah gum it were greet!" and all that!) I initially though t of something on the L & Y. Then again, there were some very nice country stations with extravagant canopies illustrated in the LMS Lineside publications on something called the "Gloucester Loop", so I started looking there. Of course it helped that I spent some very happy years in Evesham, but I did not really think of it as a likely subject. I didn't really know much about it. Looking at some of the info on the web, especially the Warwickshire Railways site, I saw a few likely sites, Broom Junction etc, but these required far too much width for any layout I could make. Then it dawned on me that, Evesham LMS, not only had the right pedigree, but was in reality a long thin layout. Oh and it had a rail served steam sawmill with private siding(s). There was a bit of OCD in relation to the sawmill but my therapist says I'm over it now. So here is a reasonable draft of the layout:

While I ponder the many ways my mobile might work as opposed to actually works, here is some back ground to the choice of subject for the layout. In the beginning.... A very long time ago when I was but an impecunious lad, I has a Hornby Catalogue. Actually purchasing anything from it was way beyond my means (or my parents) but it was fun to flick through it with my brother and dream. The very last catalogue we had heralded the introduction of "Zero One". But the most important thing was that the best looking locos in the catalogue were clearly the unstreamlined Duchess of Sutherland/Atholl in LMS maroon. I recall one of my friends had what must have been the "Night Mail" set up in a spare bedroom, and another had a complete live third rail layout suspended from his garage ceiling (I think it belonged to his Dad!). For reasons that eluded me however they did not evince any great desire to play with them. Page forth Brother Maynard.... ...and so it came to pass that there came a time when my interest in things all things TRAIN was rekindled and I found myself having time, money, space, inclination and grudging acceptance by She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. It was therefore natural that I should return to my haunts and the LMS. Whilst I was then, unencumbered by any understanding or knowledge of matters locomotive, my subsequent researches have uncovered nothing to shake my zeal for that fine company, and one of its major antecedents - the Midland. Please Note: Whilst I understand there are some wayward souls who delude themselves about the alleged superiority of other locomotives or railways companies, they are obviously mad. With appropriate therapy/duress as appropriate, they will see the light. So my first thought was a simple quad track, triple-ended dog bone layout incorporating a mainline junction, and a rising highland branch line with terminus. With a little cutting and shunting it could include a full size sea wharf, with grain, oil and coal loading facilities, crushing/cake and seed mills, flour milling, a canal on one side with with timber and coal facilities, a distillery, quarry and coal mine. Adjacent to the wharf would be a marshaling yard, and an engine shed, turntable and other facilities. To keep everything within the limits of the baseborad, at the the end of each dog bone (there are three remember) the track would turn around under the table. This incorporated all the features I considered desirable, and to avoid much grief in construction it all had to be planned out in meticulous detail in advance. What truly terrifies me is that ultimately, all the technical issues were solved and it could actually be built. Sure it involved several miles of track, a few kilowatts of power and would employ an army of gnomes a lifetime to make it but it could be done. The last detail to be sorted was the necessary spacing between tracks to ensure 69' sleeper coaches could pass safely. The "only" limitation, was that even using power base I would probably be limited to about 8 coaches because some of the runs were 1:40 on the straight and 1:60 on the curves. Maintenance would have been a nightmare. Having thus proved that it could be done the word of the great prophet came to mind... "And this seems rational to you?" It was clearly not. For what it is worth, I have attached a SCARM (it has about 8 layers!) of the almost finished design. If a model railway club is looking for a challenge it could try to build it! I have also attached a couple of jpegs of the visible part. The quad track is of course paired by speed. Actually it seems I can't post a SCARM file so if you really curious PM me and I will send it on. Otherwise more rambling later. Regards Michael

The frame is is made of 70x35 MGP10 treated pine - the cheapest (structural) timber could get. It is bolted and screwed together with specially coated nuts/bolts/washers and screws. Theoretically the pine is low-odour-solvent treated but I can tell you it stank to high heavens for a few months! The top of the frame is 42" above the floor - I'm reasonably tall so it is a good height to work on. Since it is a round the room layout, it has a depth of 24" on three sides and 32" on the other side. This is governed by the ability to work comfortably from one side. A plan of the top frames is here:[As you can see I used SCARM, and to get round the limitation of the "export" function only capturing what is within the defined baseboard, I used "Snipping tool".] The room adjoins the dining room - so there is no wall/doorway to worry about - which is why I can have 32" depth on that side. The annoying short section of wall on the left will make reaching into that corner difficult. Access to the middle of the room is via a 3' wide duck under. The floor is carpet and my knees still work. Apart from reach, the only other major design consideration was that there be room in the middle for a 9'x5' gaming table with reasonable clearance all round. The frame was the easy part and has has been in place for a while whilst I finalised the layout. If I can work out how to take and upload a photo on my phone I will post it up.

Thanks for the suggestions, I will follow them up. I was a local - about 35 years ago! Now in Perth, Australia. I wasn't sure if this was really the place to post it but the railway does run at least partially through Gloucestershire! Regards Michael

Dear All, I am planning to replicate the above station in a round the room layout at full 1/76 scale (about 50'), from the bridge over the OW&W (GWR) line at the North (East) end to the rail bridge over the Avon at the South (West) end. I have Essery's Illustrated History of the line and Yate's 2014 work on the same together with everything I can glean from the WWW. I have the O/S 25" maps from 1886 to 1938, the rating diagrams from the NRM and a copy of Kelly's Directory for Worcestershire for 1912 and I'm stuck. I am trying to find any images from this time of the areas marked A to E, especially B to D, and what the structures and line at B to D were used for. The O/S maps show a variety of variously drawn structures and similar iterations of the ground drawn in different styles for B to D, which is not helpful. I speculate that the locations B to D may have been used earlier for coal merchants and that these were relocated to the position at E. Later pictures (c 1935) show van traffic occupying the siding C. The relocation of the merchant offices would only have been practical (I think!) once the original Espley's Saw Mill building had been demolished and the three sidings extended to the right over its site, as shown. Note that the second of Espley's Saw Mill buildings which was adjacent to the first and survived until at least 1935 (but is shown as gone by 1938) is off-map to the SW of the three sidings. The rating diagram is copyright NRM. Also if anyone has can point me to any pictures of Espley's second Saw Mill building I would be extremely grateful. I think (again very dangerous!) that the coal stacking area at A was for loco coal, and that the original coaling stage (if there was one initially) would have been on this side. BTW if anyone is interested in modelling the adjacent GWR station c1931 there is a wealth of detail on the later LMS rating plans - presumably the LMS station master who later was in charge of both stations, need the info. The Almonry Museum and the VEHS have generously provide me with an image of the original Saw Mill building and I will be following up with them and the Evesham Journal but my ability to search local archives is hindered by 12000 miles! Regards Michael