Castle Aching

[Nearholmer]

The story of my cupboards that is.

[Donw]

5 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Thank you for the further excursion to the MVR, always an enjoyable trip.

 

Pyramids? I owe the WNR an apology, because The Metropolitan Pyramid Company has still, after all these years, not fulfilled the order for a wayside station. I shall make enquiries as to Mr O'Doolite's whereabouts.

 

PS: a rather posher short gangwayed coach for you to consider.

 

 

 

Is this the economy type of pemenant way track only under rolling stock? Now that coach could be seen in a lot of settings I think.

 

Don

[joppyuk1]

Thank you for another set of Madder Valley pictures to add to my collection. I'm slowly building up a full 'along the line' photographic survey for my own amusement. I wonder if anyone has (or will) try to build a version using modern standards?

[Edwardian]

2 minutes ago, joppyuk1 said:

I wonder if anyone has (or will) try to build a version using modern standards?

 

Would love too, but it's a lot to copy slavishly and I think individualistic inspiration would be bound to break through.

 

Something referencing and in the spirit of is more likely, but, yes, seeing the MVR laid, say, to handbuilt track, perhaps vignoles spiked to sleepers, and scenic products Ahern could not have dreamed of, like water effect products, static grass, sea moss etc.s

[Nearholmer]

I wonder if it might look a bit ‘toy town’ if done using modern materials ....... it would take an artist of Ahern’s talent to prevent it being so.

 

Nearest modern equivalents are probably some large 7mm/ft narrow gauge ‘system’ layouts in the ‘highly plausible freelance’ camp, which feature periodically in NG&IRM and NG&SLG, although there is that similar work in 4mm/ft standard gauge that appears in MRJ sometimes.

 

They are all quite big, medium/large room-sized, and all seem to come from single-minded pursuit of an imagined locality over a long period by chaps who are not too distraction prone.

 

We look forward to the WNR’s full flowering!

[Donw]

I am not sure the fudges Ahern made with mixing narrow gauge stock on std gauge track would be acceptable today. Possibly the nearest has featured in MRJ I think it is called the Amble Valley. I will dig out the articles and post some more info. I suspect the copyright is with MRJ so I cannot just bung the photos on here.

The other one that does feature a whole branch is Jas Milham's Yaxbury there are some photos on the S scale website but is more serious and lacks the touch of whimsy that Ahern had.

 

Don

[Edwardian]

28 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I wonder if it might look a bit ‘toy town’ if done using modern materials ....... it would take an artist of Ahern’s talent to prevent it being so.

 

Nearest modern equivalents are probably some large 7mm/ft narrow gauge ‘system’ layouts in the ‘highly plausible freelance’ camp, which feature periodically in NG&IRM and NG&SLG, although there is that similar work in 4mm/ft standard gauge that appears in MRJ sometimes.

 

They are all quite big, medium/large room-sized, and all seem to come from single-minded pursuit of an imagined locality over a long period by chaps who are not too distraction prone.

 

We look forward to the WNR’s full flowering!

 

I suppose there is the difference between recreating individual scenes on Ahern's layout and realising a full system layout.

 

The latter is unpopular - the realism of less-is-more has been established doctrine for decades and accepted as a necessary step in graduating from train set to model railway - and that could affect our ability to appreciate a modern version.

 

However, it's a genre I have a soft-spot for, hence my first freelance scheme, the Isle of Eldernell & Mereport Railway (North Cambridgeshire, 1897). 

 

 

Don is surely right about the mixing of loco scales to the exten Ahern did being to push one's luck.  I've a couple of re-gauged Irish locos (or, rather, equivalents built to standard gauge) and IIRC P D Hancock made his Manning Wardle to a slightly larger scale to accommodate the motor, but Ahern really super-sized and, in one case, super-reduced, the scale of some locos.

 

Bear in mind, however, that the 009 version of the Wantage Tramway uses scale standard gauge loco bodies, and they work fine (as do many fine 009 Pug-bashes), so I think a certain playfulness can be 'got away with'. 

 

I've never minded a larger, SG, Prince, for instance.

[Joseph_Pestell]

9 minutes ago, Donw said:

I am not sure the fudges Ahern made with mixing narrow gauge stock on std gauge track would be acceptable today. 

 

Kato seem to be doing OK with their RhB stock running on N gauge track.

[runs as required]

Madderport reminds me that we went to Peel for our summer hols in 1949 from Brum (via Woodside. the King Ory and the IoMR).  It reminded us all of Ahern - a  wartime RAF badly burned "Guinea Pig" who scratch -built LT&S tanks, lived with us at the time. An avid follower of Ahern in the mags, he had us all trying our own imaginary worlds.

 

Peel had got the lot: the long quays, the terminus at the east end, piers and light house at the west with the ruined castle overhanging it all. I enjoyed an old Bean lorry caked in Herring fleet residue, also several steam lorries were around.  Even a 1920s char-a-banc still attracted our custom rather than the line of new Bedford-Duple (Vista?) charas with boards advertising their tours parked along the prom by the open air pool.

2

I hadn't noted the high and low lights before on the Madderport layout for safe entry into the river .

I first saw the ones at Harwich and Dovercourt in the early 1950, and since moving to Tyneside the "old and new" pairs of lights  supposedly affording safe entry for sailing colliers to the Tyne before the long piers were built by the Tyne Improvement Commission set up by 'firebrick' Cowen of Blaydon.

 

Edited June 10, 2020 by runs as required
typos

[ianathompson]

54 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

I suppose there is the difference between recreating individual scenes on Ahern's layout and realising a full system layout.

 

The latter is unpopular - the realism of less-is-more has been established doctrine for decades and accepted as a necessary step in graduating from train set to model railway - and that could affect our ability to appreciate a modern version.

 

I think that, unfortunately, you are correct in this observation.

The Railway Modeller of the sixties/seventies was full of "closed" systems, SG and NG, where there was no fiddleyard whatsoever.

These fell out of favour because people wanted a more realistic model of a single location rather than accept the compromises necessary in building a system.

 

I get fed up with seeing layouts where the fiddle yard is two or three times the size  of the visible layout which, in extremis, contains one or (hold your breath) two whole points.

 

 I preferred to go down the nowadays discredited track of creating an entire system in a totally freelanced setting.

My inspirations were the Aire Valley and the Stronalachar Railway, and the Madder Valley when I later ran across it in older magazines that I was given.

 

I am sure that you know where to find it but if you are struggling you can press one of the buttons on the footer below.

 

As an aside I have posted in two forums on this website and one on another for a few years now. I think that I have garnered a dozen followers in total.

Perhaps that's a reflection on mediocre modelling standards and unpopular opinions.

I am tempted to present a layout in the main thread on here (Layout topics) which consists of the terminus of a modern  branch line (Morecambe, Sudbury, St Ives (Cornwall).

There would be a small straignt piece of track, no points, a bus shelter and a bufferstop.

I bet I would have two dozen followers within days!

 

That's the end of the rant. Turn away now if you are easily offended by freelancing.

 

Here is one of the latest photos on the reality challenged railway.

 

7-71 by Ian Thompson, on Flickr

 

A standard gauge loco on a narrow gauge line using what I refer to as the 'flexiscale' approach of the fifties and sixties freelancers.

 

A disgruntled Ian T!

[ianathompson]

Oh. and by the way, as an addendum, If you get the chance to go to Pendon the Madder Valley makes it all worthwhile.

The Dartmoor scene and the Vale are stunning in their own right but it was the Madder Valley that held my attention. 

 

Whilst I (visually) examined it a couple of parties entered the room, glanced at it, and left.

They might or might not have been railway modellers but you could almost see them thinking, "Why is this thing in a museum?"

I suppose that it is symptomatic of how times change.

 

Thanks for the photos by the way. 

I shall have to copy the layout plan from MRJ onto the computer and then file the copies that I made accordingly.

 

Ian T

[ian]

1 hour ago, ianathompson said:

 

As an aside I have posted in two forums on this website and one on another for a few years now. I think that I have garnered a dozen followers in total.

 

 

I always read the posts (and go off to the website) but have now 'followed' on both sites to buck your spirits up.

[Nearholmer]

Maybe railway modellers divide, unknowingly, into two camps, one coalescing around scale fidelity and less-is-more, the other around systems, operational fidelity, acceptance of compromise on scale-sized layout of individual stations, and a degree of imagination, and maybe CA attracts the latter sort most.

 

I’m definitely in the latter camp: nearly everything on my layout is imaginary, but I do like an ‘operable’ track layout.

 

Cameo layouts, bitsa stations, and much other Ricery are all well and good, very good indeed in many cases, but they are not the be all and end all.

 

 

Edited June 10, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Adam88]

On 10/06/2020 at 14:21, ianathompson said:

 

I get fed up with seeing layouts where the fiddle yard is two or three times the size  of the visible layout which, in extremis, contains one or (hold your breath) two whole points.

 

 

 

 

Big fiddle yards can be prototypical though.

 

Edited April 22, 2022 by Adam88
return lost photo

[Donw]

 I am rather keen on realistic operation myself.  I find a dead scale railway operated like a toy quite disappointing compared to a model railway using comercial stock but worked as the old railways were much more to taste. Watching an exhibition layout and realising the operator is just pushing wagons around aimlessly a big turn off. The closed system has one failing it loses the sense of goods going anywhere so I can live with a fiddle yard. But those layouts where a train just runs from the fiddle yard out and through the scenic bit and back, well it is like seeing a play where the actors just walk across the stage and all the interesting action happens off screen.

 

Don

[ianathompson]

18 minutes ago, Adam88 said:

Big fiddle yards can be prototypical though.

 

Which one is it?

I suspect its American.

 

Ian T

[Adam88]

3 minutes ago, ianathompson said:

 

Which one is it?

I suspect its American.

 

Ian T

Funnily enough I saw it flying into Vienna a couple of years ago.  I didn't realise: a) that there were any such yards left (at least outside North America, as you surmised) and b) how large they could be.

 

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zentralverschiebebahnhof_Wien-Kledering&prev=search

[Edwardian]

10 minutes ago, Adam88 said:

Funnily enough I saw it flying into Vienna a couple of years ago.  

 

That means nothing to me.

 

24 minutes ago, Donw said:

 I am rather keen on realistic operation myself.  I find a dead scale railway operated like a toy quite disappointing compared to a model railway using comercial stock but worked as the old railways were much more to taste. Watching an exhibition layout and realising the operator is just pushing wagons around aimlessly a big turn off. The closed system has one failing it loses the sense of goods going anywhere so I can live with a fiddle yard. But those layouts where a train just runs from the fiddle yard out and through the scenic bit and back, well it is like seeing a play where the actors just walk across the stage and all the interesting action happens off screen.

 

Don

 

Yes, I like systems.  The WNR can be planned as a system, if only so you know what to expect on the bit that gets modelled, though not, of course, a closed system, as the offstage is the GER, MGN and the rest of the national network.

 

I confess, while I understand why it is don and necessary in order to represent many prototype stations, I find the mainline exhibition through station format of one scenic straight section with large off-stage return curves and fiddleyards difficult.  There is something, to my mind, fundamentally unsatisfying about a layout where the minority of the real estate is devoted to the modelled scene.  

[Compound2632]

Added to which, all the interesting-looking stock is just out of sight round the back and takes for ever to appear at the front.

[DonB]

 

9 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Added to which, all the interesting-looking stock is just out of sight round the back and takes for ever to appear at the front.

 

Nearly prototypical except the the real thing has nothing hidden "round the back. " The Interesting stock always took for ever to appear,  as any erstwhile train-spotter will tell you !

At least with a Half-hidden fiddle yard there is a clue that other interesting bits are available.

[Adam88]

16 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

That means nothing to me.

 

I was being flown, the big fiddle yard was definitely rooted to the ground.

[Andy Hayter]

16 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Added to which, all the interesting-looking stock is just out of sight round the back and takes for ever to appear at the front.

 

Which is why my PLM layout had open view fiddle yards.  They often attracted as much if not more interest than the scenic bit.  Perhaps not surprising given the unusual prototype.

[Donw]

16 minutes ago, Adam88 said:

 

Big fiddle yards can be prototypical though.

 

Now if that was the modelled scene.........

Don

[Regularity]

30 minutes ago, Adam88 said:

I was being flown, the big fiddle yard was definitely rooted to the ground.

Ah, Vienna.

 

I think we may be showing our age, Edwardian... Whatsamatter you, hey?

[Edwardian]

49 minutes ago, Regularity said:

Ah, Vienna.

 

I think we may be showing our age, Edwardian... Whatsamatter you, hey?

 

I was young, once,

 

If what I say has meaning for an audience of just one, that will have to do!