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15inch makes a good prototype for 1/12 scale on 0 gauge track. A lot of scenic stuff is available from dolls house suppliers.

 

The Perrygrove railway is nice. We lived across the valley from there and could hear the locos whistle from the garden. I did fancy buying it when it came up for sale. Bit out of my budget though!

 

Don 

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Here are my pictures of my visit to Perrygrove in 2011 https://www.flickr.com/photos/52554553@N06/albums/72157645134659097

 

As I wrote in the caption: Ostensibly Perrygrove, near Coleford in the Forest of Dean, is a family tourist attraction. But connoisseurs will recognise it as the recreation in spirit of Sir Arthur Heywood's Duffield Bank Railway.

 

This visit nearly five years ago was my most recent, so I can't be sure that it's quite the same nowadays. I went on one of the bi-annual enthusasts' days when an intensive service was operating.

 

It didn't seem feasible to reach it from my home in Bristol by public transport, so I took my bike on the train to Lydney and thence by the Dean Forest Railway to Parkend. From there I cycled to Perrygrove alongside the former Coleford branch - after which experience I can well appreciate why a special train of three auto coaches required two panniers to get it up the gradient. BUt on the homeward journey it was downhill all the way from Perrygrove to Lydney.

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Yes, as I struggle to move CA forward, I really need a distraction in the form of 15" railways!"

 

Fascinating stuff.  Perrygrove looks a wonderful place.  Some excellent pictures there Andy K.  Thanks for sharing.

 

Many Achingesque things are happening elsewhere, that certainly repay a visit:

 

Kevin's rural tramway topic (http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/113785-steam-tramways-rural-great-britain-ireland/page-1) and Neil HB's excellent contemporary (1906|) Sudrian venture, which has all those odd, old Victorian bits I love and want to assemble at CA (http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/97585-elsbridge-wharf-1906-neilhbs-layout).  Neil has very generously sent me some plans for tramway stock.  Thanks, Neil. 

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Yes, as I struggle to move CA forward, I really need a distraction in the form of 15" railways!"

 

Fascinating stuff. Perrygrove looks a wonderful place. Some excellent pictures there Andy K. Thanks for sharing.

 

Many Achingesque things are happening elsewhere, that certainly repay a visit:

 

Kevin's rural tramway topic (http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/113785-steam-tramways-rural-great-britain-ireland/page-1) and Neil HB's excellent contemporary (1906|) Sudrian venture, which has all those odd, old Victorian bits I love and want to assemble at CA (http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/97585-elsbridge-wharf-1906-neilhbs-layout). Neil has very generously sent me some plans for tramway stock. Thanks, Neil.

Happy to be of assistance James, and thanks for the kind words about Elsbridge Wharf.

 

Incidentally to note, the Heywood collection is no longer at the Perrygrove Railway - I recall it left after the railway changed hands. Not sure where it has ended up which is a shame as I rather like Heywoods locos - they have a rather unique charm.

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Edwardian

 

I'm not very au fait with miniature, as opposed to narrow gauge and minimum gauge, railways, but if you google around a bit, I think you could workout which miniatures are 15" gauge, and of them which has a either resident or visiting minimum gauge stuff ...... The Heywood replicas tend to break cover for gala events.

 

Purpose of above ramble? I have a feeling that one of the places that occasionally sees Heywood-power is within A Grand Day Out distance of you. [ Yes, Cleethorpes, c2hrs from you, has a replica 'Effie']

 

And, if you want to model this stuff, here is where that is discussed http://forum.gn15.info

 

Kevin

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Edwardian

 

I'm not very au fait with miniature, as opposed to narrow gauge and minimum gauge, railways, but if you google around a bit, I think you could workout which miniatures are 15" gauge, and of them which has a either resident or visiting minimum gauge stuff ...... The Heywood replicas tend to break cover for gala events.

 

Purpose of above ramble? I have a feeling that one of the places that occasionally sees Heywood-power is within A Grand Day Out distance of you. [ Yes, Cleethorpes, c2hrs from you, has a replica 'Effie']

 

Kevin

 

Thanks, Kevin.

 

I am even nearer to this http://www.thorpelightrailway.co.uk/history/

 

It is a very modest affair and has visiting locomotives.  On my only visit it was a rather uninspiring internal combustion steam outline job, but some interesting types have visited in the past (like this http://www.thorpelightrailway.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/DSC_0011.jpg), and I understand there is an excess of stock at Cleethorpes and some arrangement might be entered into.

 

The NRM are involved; they take the history of these miniature leisure lines seriously.

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Ah, yes, I remember you saying you had one nearby.

 

The shed in the final shot is wonderful.

 

You absolutely have to persuade them to get a Heywood train (not just a loco) to visit, because the coaches are very special things. James Waterfield owns the stuff that was at Perrygrove (it has gone from there, but I don't know where to), and I bet the guys at your 'local' know him.

 

Chris Stockdale, who has a Bagpuss avatar on Gnatterbox, knows 'everybody who is anybody' in the 15" realm too, although his own railways are 2ft and 400mm (genuine Victorian Decauville portable), so he might be able to help.

 

Another good contact is Rev Alan Cliff, who writes the "Jack the Station Cat" children's books. He is very involved with the Rhyl 15" gauge line and the museum there.

 

K

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Ah, yes, I remember you saying you had one nearby.

 

The shed in the final shot is wonderful.

 

You absolutely have to persuade them to get a Heywood train (not just a loco) to visit, because the coaches are very special things. James Waterfield owns the stuff that was at Perrygrove (it has gone from there, but I don't know where to), and I bet the guys at your 'local' know him.

 

Chris Stockdale, who has a Bagpuss avatar on Gnatterbox, knows 'everybody who is anybody' in the 15" realm too, although his own railways are 2ft and 400mm (genuine Victorian Decauville portable), so he might be able to help.

 

Another good contact is Rev Alan Cliff, who writes the "Jack the Station Cat" children's books. He is very involved with the Rhyl 15" gauge line and the museum there.

 

K

 

Sadly, the engine shed is scheduled for conversion to a holiday cottage.

 

The story told locally, and I hope I have this correct, is that the railway was an adjunct to a "Lido", which was a strange sort of tourist attraction to find nestling on the slopes of Teesdale, near to two country houses, Wycliffe and Thorpe Halls, and below the village of Whorlton on the opposite bank.

 

The new owners of Thorpe Hall bought the Lido, too, just to close it.   It was then sold on, no doubt with suitable restrictive covenants in place!.  The present owner wishes to build some holiday cabins on the wooded slopes behind the track, and to utilise the engine shed as accommodation.  The volunteer group that have restored and who run the line are permitted discrete opening days, but will otherwise run it for the guests in due course.  So, it is very much a private line.

 

The only other structure is the loo block that once served the Lido and I believe that the plan is to convert this to a new engine shed!

 

Now, this is all hearsay, so I apologise to anyone who knows better if what I have been told is not 100% accurate.

 

Anyway, the much more wonderful thing about Whorlton - even though it has nothing to do with railways - is the little early Nineteenth Century (1831) suspension bridge with its toll house and still utilising its original chains, I believe.

 

I include an old postcard and a, poor, view from the site of the miniature railway.  Must photograph the bridge properly at some stage.

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Very nice bridge!

 

On lido railways, I once visited a really intriguing one, in moribund state, at a place called Overstone Solarium in Northamptonshire, which is barely more noted for its solarity than your neck of the woods.

 

A 2ft gauge line, built in the 30s, with excellent little concrete stations, which looked as if they had escaped from the Piccadilly Line or a Trix Twin layout.

 

I'm not sure when it closed, but when I visited, by means of a long bike ride, in about 1982, everything was intact, with weeds growing through it. There was a big gloomy shed, containing the rolling stock and one, possibly two, very old steam-outline diesel locos.

 

Stupidly, I only photographed inside the shed, which resulted in "black cat in a coal cellar" pictures, and it turns out that the railway is incredibly little-photographed, because the place was a private establishment, and I think for part of the time a nudist colony! It probably appears in the background of pictures in ancient copies of 'Health and Efficiency', but I'm blowed if I'm going to take research that far.

 

Kevin

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I travelled on that in the 70s... Thought I would mention that just to annoy you.

Sadly, I was too young to appreciate it, and I was certainly annoyed that it wasn't steam powered.

 

Edit: it had been - http://www.bwlr.co.uk/locos.php-flag=lj.html

 

The solarium is now a caravan park.

On which, Whorlton or Overstone?

 

It doesn't annoy me.  Relatively recently I braved the Peterborough Lido.  The Luftwaffe did its best, but it's still going in it's Art Deco Riviera style.

 

I do find the concept of a 'Lido', with all its Mediterranean suggestion, gloriously amusing, particularly when located in the English Midlands (where I grew up) miles from the sea! 

 

It is a testament to the skill of the GW publicist that, by contrast, I don't find the concept of an 'English Riviera' side-splittingly amusing.  Mind you, that Cornwall versus Bay of Naples poster always makes me smile.   

 

Went to Alton Towers once as a child. Spent 3 hours in the model railway room (or so my parents claim). Not that many 'attractions' featured in my childhood, though.  My parents' views on holidays were that they should be conducted somewhere as far away as possible from Other People.  Quite a lonely childhood, at times, now I think of it ...

 

The honourable exception was always visiting a Preserved Line.  I was not starved of those! 

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I think Simon is taking about The Overstone Solarium railway.

 

So, Simon:

 

- did you take any photos of the stations (one was at the end of a lake, and the other near a swimming pool with a sort of fake-classical building beside it, IIRC?); and,

 

- is it true that the place was a nudist colony at some point?

 

- did "Lady Joan" actually steam there? (And, was she renamed "Lady Godiva" for the duration?)

 

When I was there, it was in a sort of deep sleep, I think, certainly closed, and possibly for sale. My plan had been to sneak in over a fence, but I had a chat with the security guard at the gate, and he gave me the keys to the big shed, and told me to put them in the postbox when I left, because he was going down the road to get his lunch.

 

There is one "inland Lido", complete with railway, left in Northants: Wicksteed's Park. That survives, I think, because it was bequeathed either to a trust or the town council, and it is good fun for a day out with children. They used to have brilliant railway weekends there, with all sorts of visiting engines, but the guy who was into all that left. They still have their original Baguley locos, though, as well as their modern AK.

 

Sorry, I could go on.

 

Oh, I already did!

 

Kevin

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Edwardian,

 

my childhood holidays were the opposite of yours, it would seem, in that we always went to stay with various members of the family, because we were always boracic, which meant sleeping about forty three to a box-room, in view of the number of brothers and cousins involved.

 

My truly favourite holidays in adulthood have involved: great long walks across deserted tracts of Irish bogland and Welsh mountain tops, entirely alone; Landrover tours of deserted forests in mid-wales, entirely alone; immensely long bike rides, entirely alone etc etc, and one of my brothers goes in for long-distance running and cycling, entirely alone, and fishing expeditions, need I add, entirely alone.

 

So, I suspect that there is an action and reaction thing going on here.

 

K

 

PS: The foregoing might imply that I don't enjoy holidays with my family. I do. But, they always leave me needing a holiday, somewhere very deserted.

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Anyway, enough reminiscence.

 

I've now built a model of a 15" gauge railway.

 

It took five minutes, so not a protracted exercise in scale fidelity, but the proportions look about right.

 

Loco by Bassett Lowke, c1937, and designed by Greenly, so it has 15" gauge pedigree; driver and passengers courtesy of my daughter, who can't find the little old woman's husband at the moment.

 

Mole and Badger are being conveyed home, after a heavy session at the 'Three Beetles'; what the gingerbread man has been on, one can only speculate.

 

K

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We look forward to seeing your model of the three beetles. Your photo is rather in the spirit of Paul Fletcher once into finescale modelling but since being confined to a wheelchair has gone to garden railways using 32mm gauge and a somewhat flexible scale tending more to 1:12 these days with a bit of whimsy but very much the flavour of these 15inch lines. I always enjoy his pieces in Garden Rail.

Don 

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"We look forward to seeing your model of the three beetles."

 

Well, since it takes me an age to make anything, here is the original, which is better than anything I could build anyway.

 

K

 

A wonderful bit of nostalgia for me there, Kevin.

 

My three childhood influences were (1) the Railway Series, which was the only reason I learnt to read, (2) Repeated visits to the Dart Valley and Torbay & Dartmouth, and, (iii) my father's stack of '50s RMs.

 

So, Rev. Awdry's Ffarqhar in RM was a bit special.  To my regret, I never met Rev. Awdry, but I have fond memories of a visit to Cadeby to see the "Fat Clergyman".

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I saw Rev Awdry at Central Hall when he was exhibiting his layout there. I asked it the station had been based on anywhere. The real one on the Island of Sodor was his response. 

Don

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Some progress at last on the village.

 

I have been researching and compiling material for a wagon-build programme.  I have reached 20 vehicles and decided to stop!  I need to establish what I need for each vehicle (I think only 4 will be OOB kits and one a new chassis for an RTR body, and one of the kits is OOP), and then scrape my coppers together (that's a lot of Gibson axles!).  For 1905 in Norfolk, I find that suitable rolling stock will need to be the product of much bashing and bodging.

 

One area that requires further research is the use of Archer's rivets - I have no idea what the best size for wagon bodies might be.  Another area is that of producing homemade transfers; West Norfolk Railway and fictitious POs need lettering, though the latter might be supplied by HMRS generic lettering sheets.  I also find that the Great Eastern seems to lack transfers.  Further, just about every company I would want to represent, save the Midland, would still have been typified by small lettering, not large initials, in 1905. 

 

So, I the meantime, I have pressed on with one end of the village, where it is built into the lee of the old castle walls.   I am indebted to Shadow for the picture of the 3-storey Georgian gable elevation, which was really the basis of this whole development, as it was just too good a feature not to include.  It is from Burnham Market, I believe.

 

Construction is the usual Edwardian home-made affair.  The distant chimney pots are from cocktail sticks, the hedge from scouring pad and the wisteria from tea leaves.

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One area that requires further research is the use of Archer's rivets - I have no idea what the best size for wagon bodies might be. 

 

 

I got some Archers rivets a while back when I was building locomotives, I got sheet AR88001 which is a general purpose set. They are nice but I think they are a bit small as a representation of the mighty fastenings the Victorians used. Mostly I have used the largest on the sheet, 0.36mm, the others are tiny.

 
If I was starting again I would probably get sheet AR88009. Ideally I would have both:
 
AR88001 - 0.008" (0.20mm), 0.011" (0.28mm), 0.014" (0.36mm)
AR88009 - 0.015" (0.38mm), 0.025" (0.64mm), 0.035" (0.89mm)
Edited by simon0r
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One area that requires further research is the use of Archer's rivets - I have no idea what the best size for wagon bodies might be.  Another area is that of producing homemade transfers; West Norfolk Railway and fictitious POs need lettering, though the latter might be supplied by HMRS generic lettering sheets.  I also find that the Great Eastern seems to lack transfers.  Further, just about every company I would want to represent, save the Midland, would still have been typified by small lettering, not large initials, in 1905.

 

 

If you have access to old MRJs, Chris Croft's series of articles lists the fastener sizes for 1923-spec wagons.

 

I've just looked at an RCH specification-drawing from the 1906 spec, for a 12-ton wagon. The body fastenings, holding the sheeting to the side knees and the diagonal braces, are specified as half-inch bolts. The only other fastener size I can make out (my scan of the drawing isn't perfectly clear) is some 5/8" bolts in the underframe. I would guess that a nut on a half-inch bolt might be 0.75" across the flats (having just looked at a modern, M12 nut), or possibly up to 1" if they were being generous with the metal. Presumably there was a standard for imperial fasteners.

 

POWsides do dry-print transfers for GE open wagons and ventilated vans in 4mm scale.

 

PS: the village is looking lovely and quite inspiring.

Edited by Guy Rixon
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Village is looking great and desperately needs a layout to go with it.

 

The people of Pott Row were getting restless as their service has been really poor over the last year. A passenger must be staging a sit in on the light railway platform because she has a wait of at least 4-6 months before a suitable carriage is available. As we are coming out of wartime and rationing is still in place services are well used but stock is very run down.

 

If you don't give your community some trains soon their might be a protest meeting in the local pub as the line from Pott Row could easily have passed through Castle Aching and I will draw a map of the route the Pott Row sits on one day.

Edited by mullie
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