My name is Steve. Stephen on Sundays or when in trouble. As a child I was introduced to model railways by my Grandad. My mother rather suspects that the Lima HO set that appeared on a 6x4' board on my Grandparents dining table was the start of a slippery slope as well as my Grandad secretly fulfilling an ambition to "play trains" himself. After all, signals and a signal box soon appeared on the green board as well as a full explanation of their correct operation.
Perhaps at this point I should explain something. My Grandad joined the LNER in 1936 as an apprentice in the newly formed S&T department based in the Darlington district. As a child he'd seen HushHush and he'd followed his father and his brother onto the railway, ending up as Middlesborough District Telecoms superintendent and emptied his desk with the onset of modernisation prior to the ECML electrification. He didn't like computers, despite his electrical engineers ability and sense of logic. For a few years after retirement he would continue to show me round places he'd worked, stopping to exchange words with familiar faces. These were dwindling fast as the district's mechanical signaling assets were whittled down through the late 1980's and even these remnants were washed out compared to the tales of the full extent of the region's signalling. I still remember the sombre tones and sense of uncertainty in conversation with his old colleagues facing redeployment or redundancy in places like Long Lane SB coming to the end of their lives as modernisation rolled down the ECML. I can only guess at the sense of loss when Northallerton SB was closed and levelled. A Northallerton lad, he'd seen the distinctive box commisioned, and like many projects he'd worked on it had become part of the landscape and he probably never expected to see it fall. I wish I could remember even half of what I was told and had taken better photographs.
Typically, my interest in the railway scene faded as teenage pursuits kicked in and University beckoned. The legacy remaining was a thoroughness of approach and sense of the correct method. At that time the railways were on the back foot and had been for thirty years. They were not seen as suitable or viable as a career path, but knowing what I know now I wish I'd followed in his footsteps.
Fast forward to 2006. I'm living in the midlands and take a visit to the GCR at Loughborough to take some photographs for a small web gallery to get Grandad to share his memories online. As a project this was a failure apart from reviving my own interest. By then Grandad was 85 and very frail. His memory came and went, and his hearing was failing, but every now and again a little nugget dropped out, sometimes in surprising ways: my short footplate ride on 78019 resulted in the tale of faulting the failed signalling power supply near Eryholme. There were no transit vans or MOMs back then, so to site on the first express going south meaning a night cab ride on an A4 and the temporary fix of a large nut, bolt and washers found on the cess to get things up and running again. Unthinkable today no doubt but these were different times demanding results from engineers without motor transport or an NRS catalogue. Oh and the surprise? A perfect mime of a driver at night, hand on the regulator, eyes moving from line ahead to backhead and around the gauges and firedoor. Perhaps this quiet reserved man missed his calling and should have taken to the stage. Proof that you never really know someone fully? Similarly the erection of a 45' lattice post at Rothley elicited a fear of heights from the former lineman and a considerable loathing of having to attend to the pole route where it crossed the Tees at Croft.
Sometime around 2007, I had read a supplement in one of the magazines about P4. Being heavily involved in digital imaging at the time, something about hands on making things again appealed. I bought a test pack from Exactoscale, some wagon kits from Parkside Dundas and a J-72 chassis kit from Comet and set out to find a prototype fitting the criteria handed down for a "proper railway". Engines: not too big, anything more than a V2 was messing about! Region: north-eastern preferably North Yorkshire/South Durham and preferably involving a faded quiet backwater that had seen better days but retained mechanical signalling. Family history and personal interests meant this reduced to an east west strip bounded by Wensleydale to the south, Whitby to the East, Weardale to the the North and Kirkby Stephen to the west. Oddly this meant more or less the old Central division of the NER or the Darlington Engineers district. My own inexperience meant a need for something simple. A Whitby or a Richmond with their full range of facilities were attractive from an operating standpoint but in no way achievable. For some reason I rejected the stations between Battersby and Whitby too, despite having a full range of drawings. The Stainmore Route had always held a great fascination. What's not to like about a line that demanded a fleet of double headed snow ploughs in winter, and double-headed and banked freight and holiday specials over the summer and whose platforms, now buried under a car park I remember standing empty at Bank Top? Bishop Auckland, West Auckland, Barnard Castle and Kirkby Stephen were just too big. Similarly Middleton Teesdale, Stainmore Summit or Appleby. Bowes ironically was rejected due to the landscape though its straight and simple nature would have made an easy layout. Attention turned to the Darlington and Barnard Castle link and suspicions were raised by one image in particular........
Broomielaw was a small halt just east of Barnard Castle. I'd dismissed it previously, since the blurry picture I'd looked at made it unclear how it was worked . However my interest was captured by reading the entry on http://www.disused-stations.org.uk and in particular one image http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/b/broomielaw/broomielaw_old6.jpg. When I saw that staircase and grasped the history I knew I had to give it a go.
A copy of the signaling diagram and some pictures were given to Grandad and a plan for the rodding run appeared proof modeled with paper strips and split pins on the dining table. With research going full steam ahead, I was faced with the obstacle of a missing bridge with no clear drawings or pictures, but more crucially in early 2013 I was facing redundancy and shortly afterwards my Grandad suffered a stroke and passed away not long after, taking his knowledge, not only of the railway but of all those unknown relatives staring back at us from the mound of black and white pictures. Having belled out quietly it was great comfort that despite a thirty year retirement two work colleagues turned up at the funeral. My thanks to Wally Holmes and Nigel Carmichael for their kind words and respects.
The day before the funeral, saw me back around Darlington. Weirdo that I am, and desparate to avoid the obvious places and the memories associated, I chose to follow a hunch planted by google earth and visit the site of an occupation bridge near Gainford. Bingo. One surviving D&BR stone overbridge. I now had the material for an arch profile to give me a set of bridge drawings to determine the ground heights for a model intended to be as accurate as possible including the sites dual height and gradient profile.
So here I am, half a lifetime of havering behind me. Tomorrow I will be forty-one. Oddly that seems more real than forty did, but I now have a plan for a layout. The last 18 months have been turbulent to say the least and that journey is still not complete, but it is time to ring down to the engine room and make revolutions sufficient to leave the dockside. The aim is Broomielaw in P4. It has a C2 signal box, coal drops a little architecture, and a lot of history. Modular and operable as a station core at home or given more space as a full signalling section, section signal to section signal, its not complicated though its scale is a little ambitious.
This layout will be in memory of my late Grandad. Its simplicity and aimed for accuracy are in honour of the thousands of unsung railwaymen who tended to their lengths in all weathers. I owe it to them all to give it my best shot. Through this blog I will chronicle progress and hopefully give myself a structure in order to make progress.
In memory of Maurice Stockdale. 1921-2013.
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