Jump to content
 

DK123GWR

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    582

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Blog Entries posted by DK123GWR

  1. DK123GWR

    To make or not to make...

    By DK123GWR,


    Updates from Devizes
    While much progress has been made on the layout, there is little to say about it. Baseboard construction, track laying, and wiring, are all using well-established techniques which have been executed and written up far better elsewhere. As a result, I have decided to write a little about rolling stock, and specifically the question of how to choose what to buy and what to build yourself. Everybody's views on this will of course be different, but I will try to set out my approach.
     
    The first thing to do is to set out the options. Firstly, I could choose to make something using traditional materials - cardboard, styrene sheet, etc. I often use this for buildings, where you generally want a bespoke item to fit the theme and the space available, but will only want one or two. I started out using the Wordsworth range of kits and cereal boxes - thicker card was obtained by using more layers - and have since moved on to designing some of my own buildings. Model Brick Yard is an invaluable resource for this. The drawback is that I find it difficult to be precise when drawing and cutting (a combination of impatience and poor coordination) so its not as good for small items or fine details.
     
    However, this is where 3D printing has a role to play. While I only have a small and fairly basic FDM printer (the Creality Ender-2 Pro) I can design and print things which it would be a huge struggle to produce using traditional techniques. The drawbacks are well documented - the risk of warping on large pieces is a particularly important one, and I am also held back by the fact that my laptop isn't really powerful enough for very large, complex CAD files, such as those needed for brick buildings.
     
    The final two options are kits and ready-made items, where the main downsides are price and the need to take whatever is already on offer.
     
    The first thing to consider is locomotives. Here the choice is fairly simple. I could not make a model which runs as well or looks as good as a ready to run loco (and even some who are very good kitbuilders say the same), so unless I want to model a niche or fictional prototype, it just doesn't make sense. Everything I actually need is available ready to run (although some locos will need minor modifications) so purely ready-to-run locomotives are the way to go.
     
    Coaches are more challenging. The Airfix autocoach is suitable for the era and readily available. A seemingly common train formation on the branch after nationalisation is a B-set with an extra coach to strengthen it. Whether this combination was used in the 1930s is difficult to establish due to a lack of photographs from the period. However, it's an interesting train formation and makes use of the Airfix coaches. More difficult is selecting stock for the longer Paddington services. The 1920s Collett corridor stock provided by Hornby is a good starting point, but 1940s photographs show a real mixture of stock, including occaisional clerestories and Centenaries. Concertinas show up more than once and toplights are very common. Of these, only the Centenaries (Airfix) are available Ready to Run (excluding the various flawed clerestories now made by Hornby), but these were purpose built for the Cornish Riviera and unlikely to have been used elsewhere before the war. Concertinas, even if they were available, are 70ft coaches and so take up much more space than the other options. A Sunshine coach, courtesy of Mainline, is perhaps the best RTR option to mix up the fleet.
     
    Toplights seem like the ideal candidate, with 57ft examples available and being quite numerous. However, the only RTR model likely to appear soon is of the unusual Mainline & City set. There are metal kits available, but this is a medium I haven't worked with before and they cost more than I would be willing to risk given my lack of experience building and painting stock. Fortunately, basic drawings are available from The Great Western Archive and this opens up the 3D print/scratchbuild route.
  2. DK123GWR

    Introduction to Devizes

    By DK123GWR,


    Updates from Devizes
    Devizes is a town in central Wiltshire. Now most famous for Caen Hill locks on the Kennet and Avon Canal, it was formerly served by a Great Western Railway line, which passed through a tunnel under the castle to the east of the station. Initially the terminus of a branch line which began at Holt Junction on the Wilts, Somerset, and Weymouth Railway, Devizes later became a stop on the through route from Paddington to Weymouth when the Berks and Hants Extension Railway was built to link the branch with an existing line from Reading to Hungerford. In 1900, the Stert and Westbury Railway was opened, bypassing Devizes, which was now on a less important single track line from Patney and Chirton to Holt Junction.
     
    The layout represents the goods yard to the northeast of Devizes station in the late 1930s. The main objective was to create a layout where there were plenty of interesting possibilities for shunting, but which also allowed a wide variety of trains to be run on the main line to provide a more relaxed option. The line from Holt Junction (the curve on the left) splits into three. The northernmost is the Up platform, the middle the Down, and the southernmost is bi-directional (I may swap the latter two if experienc shows that this makes the layout nicer to operate). In the Fiddle Yard, the plan is to use the uppermost through line as the running line, with the rest as storage sidings.
     
    In 1938, a bridge elsewhere on the line was upgraded, and Red engines were now permitted to run via Devizes. Local freight services (worked from Holt Junction and Westbury) often used 57xx locomotives from Westbury. Local passenger services were autotrains, likely hauled by 5400 class panniers. Longer distance freight trains were hauled by moguls, and long-distance passenger services seem to have moved over from Manors to Halls, Saints, Stars, and Castles during this period.

  3. DK123GWR

    GWR O11 5 plank Wagon

    By DK123GWR,


    The Drawing Office
    My first useable design, although there are many details that could be added (particularly to the underframe) and I realise I haven't got the proportions quite right.
    I wanted to make my own GWR open wagons as I felt I could do it more cheaply than buying RTR stock. Using Dapol wheels bought from Hattons at 85p/axle and 25g (roughly) of PLA at £21.99/kg gives a cost per wagon of under £2.50 - at that price you'll have a fairly limited choice of fairly low-quality models, so why not make your own?
    Some filing will be needed as the fit of most parts is designed to be tight. The construction of the model should be obvious once you have it in front of you, though a brief guide is provided on Thingiverse. Watch out as the couplings and brake gear may foul the axles if not placed carefully.
     
    https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6352317/files
  4. DK123GWR

    Bishop's Fleming (circa 1986)

    By DK123GWR,


    Layouts
    The Bishop's Fleming Branch was built opened in 1874 as an extension of the Norton and Letchmouth railway. It was intended to connect to the West Lundy Railway, which planned to extend its line from Chapelford. However, this became financially and legally impossible due to the efforts of rival companies and the Norton and Letchmouth, having invested large amounts of capital into its extension, collapsed into administration in 1876, being purchased by the Fishport, Oakhampstead, and Astleigh Railway.
     
    In later years, the line between Norton and Letchmouth became part of a branch line which diverged from the West Country Railway's mainline at Chepdene. Norton in particular remained well-served, though the frequency of trains was lower between Norton and Letchmouth. Meanwhile, the western end of the former N&LR became very infrequently served. Being an incomplete railway, it did not naturally have enough traffic to justify the sort of modernisation seen across the rest of the island. This inspired a change of direction. Most of the stations on the route served very picutresque areas or tourist attractions, while the eastern end of the line at Norton remained easily accessible by rail. Following the ban on steam locomotives operating on BR, Lundy had already become an attraction for steam entusiasts from across the UK, with many of the larger preserved locomotives finding work pulling specials across the island (they would later be used in Britain as well). However, a number of small locomotives were not able to run on the main line without causing disruption to other services. In an attempt to turn around the fortunes of the failing branch, it was relaunched as a heritage railway using locomotives from the WCR which could not be used elsewhere, alongside period coaches.
     
    On a day-to-day basis, maintenance is carried out at Norton Works, although stock is usually sent to Oakhampstead or Crovan's Gate, Sodor, for major overhauls. The works are close to Norton station, which provides connections to the main network. The western terminus, at Bishop's Fleming, is set into a cutting as the line would have then passed through a tunnel in order to connect with the WLR. As this never happened, a retaining wall has been built around the station and its goods yard on two sides, while the ground on the other two has been lowered in order to better integrate the station into the town.
     
    Most of the rolling stock carries a livery which has been used during its time on Lundy - usually de-branded BR, WCR, or one of its predecessors. A notable exception is number 101, an 0-4-0 tank engine purchased from the GWR, which in 1985 was repainted into a special livery to mark the 150th anniversary of the Great Western Railway.
×
×
  • Create New...