Annie's Virtual Pre-Grouping, Grouping and BR Layouts & Workbench

[Annie]

19 hours ago, Edwardian said:

Not, I trust, in the Wash? 

Looking at it again James I suppose it is somewhere 'in the Wash' since it's on the coast in the very large bay called 'the Wash'.  Is this a bad thing?

[Annie]

Continuing on:  That placement does make the H. & W. T. Co. somewhat dangerously in Lincolnshire and very seriously in fen country so I've decided to ignore the actual physical direction of the layout's orientation and say the H. & W. T. Co. still remains very somewhere north of Yarmouth possibly on a map that has had considerable violence done to it in an alternative reality.

 

[Edwardian]

Well, Annie, I'm confused, because the Nene flows through Northamptonshire and Cambridgeshire to Lincolnshire, where its outflow is to the Wash. 

 

EDIT: Sorry Annie, your latest post, with map, did not show up as I was posting the above, I see you have the point!

Edited March 2, 2019 by Edwardian

[Annie]

James, with my safety glasses on and wearing my Intrepid Girl Tee shirt, - and after making backup copies of everything, - I have determined that if I was to join the MGNR-GER layout to the other end of my Hopewood & Windweather layout the map would at last make sense.  In his description notes the layout builder says he got the compass orientation of his layout wrong and that certainly hasn't helped, but after a couple of test merges of backup copies of the two layouts I've found a combination that can be made to work.

The amended map shows where the Hopewood & Windweather Tramway is probably sited.  This of course involves the usual folds and heavy creases in the map, but all the various branchlines on the M&GNR-GER layout are now heading off in the right direction with the Hopewood & Windweather Tramway dropping nicely into place in a sensible location.

(1903 Bartholomew Railway Map)

 

Now I just have to do it for real with the actual layouts I've done sooooooo much work on.  

Edited March 2, 2019 by Annie
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[Edwardian]

Excellent.  That makes much more sense. 

 

At the other end of the MGN/GER layout, I wonder if you are able to add in the WNR connections?!?

[Annie]

That is most certainly a possibility for the future James.  I'm still knocking the MGNR-GER layout into shape and once that's done I can look at other railway connections such as the WNR.  The layout builder claimed to be in possession of official 1910 M&GNR documents giving all the correct station yard layouts for the M&GN, but while he may have set out the station yards correctly he couldn't lay track for toffee so there's still a bit of work to do here and there.

 

I have to say it's very nice having all my favourite layouts joined together. (There's a 3ft gauge light railway layout as well, - the 'Sumwheir District Railway', - I successfully merged in earlier) The first attempt with the MGNR-GER layout might have been less than best, but it did show that the idea was sound in principle.

[Regularity]

5 hours ago, Annie said:

Continuing on:  That placement does make the H. & W. T. Co. somewhat dangerously in Lincolnshire and very seriously in fen country so I've decided to ignore the actual physical direction of the layout's orientation and say the H. & W. T. Co. still remains very somewhere north of Yarmouth possibly on a map that has had considerable violence done to it in an alternative reality.

I think that considerable violence has been to the coastline along there (and above and below it) in this reality.

it is not difficult to think up a new town, inspired by the history of places like Dunwich.

[Annie]

Well the two layouts are now together in their correct configuration.  Essentially to cut a long story short I took a copy I'd made of the Mark 1 attempt and joined it to the original Mark 1 version.  It was quite a business sorting out the now merged layouts as duplicated parts had to be deleted and care was needed to make sure that only the unwanted parts were removed and not something essential or else I would have had to start over again.

Still quite a bit of tidying up to do, but at least now all the main bits are together and everything is in the correct relationship to each other.  I decided to keep the star shaped junction even though technically it was now superfluous in the new configuration.  I left a stub with a couple of stations and about a mile of so of landscape attached to the star junction and this piece will get remodelled so that the GCR double track line will appear to be connected to a GCR-GER joint line and the GER branchline will have connections to both the GCR-GER joint line as well as a second GER line .  All of these lines will end in portals at the end of the one mile stub section which makes things a bit more interesting than how I had it before with the portals set in the middle of nowhere at the ends of the old Valleyfields layout boards.  I'll need to check the map again for some semi-plausible destination names for the new portals as simply naming them 'To the Rest of the GER' doesn't please me anymore.

[Annie]

Norfolk County Council has on-line aerial survey photos from a survey done by the RAF in 1946.

 

http://historic-maps.norfolk.gov.uk/mapexplorer/?xmin=566348.8091833818&xmax=567428.3113423862&ymin=319661.9529800186&ymax=320164.3977349081&scale=3000&1946Aerial=0.5&OrdnanceSurvey2011=0.5

 

Melton Constable

[Edwardian]

I thought, 'let's base the WNR's Works on Melton Constable, then I saw from the map quite how extensive the track-work was ...

 

 

[Annie]

 

The original Eastern & Midland Railway version is a bit simpler James.

 

That map you posted will be useful though as a reference since the works sidings as laid out by the layouts original creator are an alarming mess and while I've done a lot of work on them they're still not right.

 

There's this OS map which I think is from the 1900's which is the one I'm attempting to follow.  

 

 

Edit:  Perhaps I should just make it easier on myself and cheat by using the E&MR works layout since the works sidings are more there as a kind of background decoration rather than being a part of general operations on the layout.  

 

More Edit:  And now I know why the goods yard is impossible to shunt in because he's done all that wrong too and omitted the oh so important long headshunt by the gas works.

 

Edited March 3, 2019 by Annie
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[Edwardian]

Annie, I don't envy you relaying and amending all that!

 

Thank you for the map of the E&M era.  As you suggest, that would work really well for the WN. Much more manageable.

 

I can see the lines fan out in a similar way to the west, where the southerly line would be the Bishop's Lynn Tramway and the northerly the Wolfringham branch.  To the east, the eastern line may be omitted; the one curving south leading to Castle Aching.

 

What date is the E&M map?  And can I use your picture for CA, please?

[Annie]

The E&MR map is from the first edition OS survey of Norfolk, but I don't know the actual date it was published.  And yes please feel free to go ahead and make use of my image.

 

I'm now very much tending towards following the E&MR map myself in the interests of my own well being and general enjoyment of life. 

[Annie]

A much better image James.  Good old National Library of Scotland OS maps archive to the rescue.  Dated 1885.

 

  

Edited March 3, 2019 by Annie
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[Martin S-C]

So an island platform GCR style? Nice. I like those works. Ridiculously small, even with the enlargements, considering the network it supported.

 

I love maps. I could stare at them for hours.

 

When I was representing Swindon in my Highworth route I put in just enough sidings to make it look "works-ish" and so that activity writers could script things happening in there but most of it was a backscene. If you drove a train from the footplate it looked ok. If you went up in helicopter view it looked very weird!

[Annie]

Some of the very early BR error era photos I have of Melton Constable show the works area as absolutely crammed with tracks and buildings in the constant search for finding space to put something on what was essentially still the old E&MR works site.

In the end what I have done is exactly as you suggest Martin with a sort of halfway amalgam of the old 1885 E&MR map and the 1905 M&GNR map that looks basically like it should when looking across to it from the station platforms.  Originally the 'works' was represented with some buildings that were part of an immense 'kit' to assemble a 1910ish US steam era  works and MPD.  The style and 'look' of them was essentially right, but the colour and appearance of the brickwork & etc was all wrong.  Fortunately they all shared the same texture patches so I reskinned them into looking a bit more British.  

 

 

I put together the brickwork texture piece by assembling it brick by brick so it was completely seamless when displayed on the model buildings.

 

And the goods yard is now as it should be based on a combination of the 1885 and 1905 maps, - which means that it's now actually possible to successfully shunt wagons in it.  Fixing the goods yard meant that I could now do a representation of the gasworks and its siding.  The town's buildings and streets are sited incorrectly which has cramped up the gasworks site, but since I'd already done a whole lot of detailing with the town before I realised the error I wasn't about to start moving it all.  As it was I had to shift some houses slightly so I could put the missing and highly essential goods yard headshunt in place.

[Annie]

This is the considerable acreage of the section that joins my Hopewood & Windweather layout to the new M&GNR-GER layout.  The GCR double track line (actually in truth it's  really a GCR-GER joint line) is in the foreground and the sinuously curving single track GER branchline/secondary line is in the background.

Both make somewhat unlikely connections into the lines serving the portal tracks at Melton Constable, - though the GER branchline/secondary line is slightly more plausible in its connection.

 

Another view looking along the single track GER line vaguely towards Barrow Hills.  I've used a backscene along the edge of the layout boards here as without it the black cut off edge of the Barrow Hills board is visible which sort of ruins the illusion.  Lots of finishing work still to do, but since this is all open fields and farmland none of it is particularly arduous.

 

 

 

[Lancaster622]

Fantastic work as always Annie!

[Martin S-C]

Great work on the Melton Works, Annie. I adore that signal cabin in the foreground of the first image.

I'm a big fan of rail-served industries as you know so of course gasworks sidings always get a thumbs up from me.

[Annie]

Been sleeping lots and seem to have lost another day somewhere.  When I've been awake I've been working on my layout though even if I've done nothing else.

 

For Martin, - the signal box at Melton Constable.  There's another one like it at the other end of the station yard.  It's a nice model, - an old one, but a goodie.

 

 

 

Been doing scenery experiments.  The on-going saga of the salt marsh.  Hell is the place where they make bad Trainz folk model salt marshes.

 

 

Water meadow experiments.

 

 

Not the same water meadow.  This one isn't so much of a computer killer as the first one.

 

 

 

Wallow crossing where the Windweather Tramway crosses the GCR-GER joint line.  For some reason the whole idea of the W.T.Co. tracks crossing the GCR-GER line made everybody nervous so the gates were insisted upon  and may only be opened by a properly qualified signalman of good character who is authorised to do so.

 

 

I like to furnish my W.T.Co. signal box interiors.  The furniture models are well worn ones intended for use in setting the scene in a junk yard so they are a perfect fit for the use I'm putting them to.

 

 

New station.  Tenpenny Beach.  The line turning off to the right past the row of poplar trees goes to the interchange yard with the Sumwheir District Railway at Bishops Tenpenny.  By the way  you'd think it would be dead easy to find decent poplar tree models; - but no, - there were dozens of awful ones and finally, finally after a long search I was able to find the ones you see in the screenshot.  Poplar trees are very much a feature of the landscape in the part of Norfolk I'm inexpertly representing so nothing else would do.

 

 

 

Company servant hard at work.  Tenpenny Beach will get a proper signal box eventually, but since the company accountants are still in mourning over the £18/19/6½d they had to spend to buy the last second hand signal box the tramway company purchased it might be a while.

 

[Caley Jim]

I'm intrigued as to why the two point levers on the left are the opposite way round, meaning they have to be operated with the signalman's back to the track , rather than facing the track?    

 

Jim

[Edwardian]

Wonderful scenic work Annie

[Martin S-C]

Great work as usual. The Barrow Hills signalman looks happy with his lot in life. Do the passengers animate/circulate? I see different ones in the two images of Tenpenny (great name BTW!)

[Edwardian]

3 minutes ago, Martin S-C said:

Great work as usual. The Barrow Hills signalman looks happy with his lot in life. Do the passengers animate/circulate? I see different ones in the two images of Tenpenny (great name BTW!)

 

3 hours ago, Annie said:

 

New station.  Tenpenny Beach.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three little maids who all unwary come from a ladies' seminary?

[Hroth]

9 minutes ago, Martin S-C said:

Great work as usual. The Barrow Hills signalman looks happy with his lot in life. Do the passengers animate/circulate? I see different ones in the two images of Tenpenny (great name BTW!)

 

I thought he was on secondment from Wroxham.....