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Rylstone


Tortuga
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Having argued with myself for sometime, I’ve finally decided to cease further development on Gibbs Sidings, strip it down and start again.

Firstly, having just become a dad, having other expensive hobbies (vw camper and surfing) and (as a result) not having as much time, Gibbs Sidings was becoming too much of a monster to cope with. Secondly, me being me, not being able to come as close to prototype as I’m honestly happy with was beginning to bother me and a chance viewing of “Cwm Prysor” really brought this home.

As a result, I’m starting again. This time I’m focusing on Rylstone on the former Grassington Branch as the focus is on short freights and mineral trains with minimal excursion traffic.

However, I’m still in the research phase: I have a track plan; I’ve found (on the ‘net) some photographs of locos and trains; I’ve even got hold of a WTT (albeit an LMS one from 1945...), but more info would be useful!

So, while I get to work on the baseboards, can I put out a general request for information? I’m after WTTs from the ‘50s/60’s, photos of workings and any details of Rylstone Station itself...

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There is a book by Donald Binns on the Yorkshire Dales Railway. It is a Northern Heritage Publication and just may still be available.

I got to know Grassington and Threshfield in 1950. I was a member of a boys club in west Leeds, and the leaders of the club used to take us camping every August. The later years 1950 to 1953 we were camping a couple of miles from Threshfield on Mastiles Lane. For years afterwards I visited Grassington a couple of times each year, first by bike then Lambretta and finally by car.

The station buildings were wooden construction and built by the Portable Buildings Co.

Derek

Edited by Mrkirtley800
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I look forward to seeing this develop! It is on my list of potentially modifiable places.

 

It's worth checking out Dave Hawkins 'Great Bardfield' which is a similar layout & concept - albeit with the platform the goods yard side of the line - but shows what can be fitted in a realistic space.

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Thanks for the replies!

The book was already on my radar, but I wasn’t sure if it was still in print, so I’ll start checking online sellers.

I’ll admit to compressing the track plan, so the platform scales out at about 260’ instead of 400’, but I’m hoping I managed to reduce everything else in proportion so the overall effect hasn’t been lost.

I wasn’t aware of the POWsides. I’ll check them out. My interweb photo searches have turned up goods stock as mainly being 16t steel minerals, 5 plank LMS (?) minerals, 24t steel hoppers, catfish and dogfish. I’m convinced that SOME van traffic must have made it onto the line, but have yet to find photographic evidence! Preferably, I’d like to have a go at recreating actual formations that ran...

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There was a daily goods train, as far as I can remember, in the later years, consisted of just a few vehicles. Yes the odd van but mostly opens. On August Bank Holiday Monday, the old BH at the start of August, there were three excursion trains, from Leeds, Bradford and I think Manchester, although I am not sure of the last one, came into Grassington. I remember at least one was of 8 coaches, behind a 4F, and stored in the long headshunt. The two others were in the mineral siding and the yard. The one from Leeds was not welcomed by our club leaders. Some parents came on the train to see their offspring in the camp and unsettled everyone.

The thing that stood out in the memory of us lads was the twobuildings across the road from the station. One was a police house, the other a rather wonderful bakery that produced some delicious pies. We were always hungry.

Similar wooden station buildings to that at Grassington were also used on the Derwent Valley line east of York. I believe that line is largely lifted but I have photographs of a station building in the middle of a field. Taken many years ago when I worked in York. I think the station was Wheldrake.

My first real layout built in 1965 just after I got married was an 80% copy of Grassington station. The very long headshunt had to be shortened, but I could run trains of the 1908 period.

When building my model, I obtained a pass from BR to take photographs of Grassington. I had to report to the stationmaster. He seemed to have a lot of staff with him at the time, but he was very helpful and I got my photos.

Derek

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  • 3 weeks later...

Finally the three scenic boards are complete. It’s taken longer than I’d’ve liked - mainly because some idiot (me) decided making the whole layout curved was a good idea - but I’m happy with the result;

post-33375-0-05334900-1542268125_thumb.jpeg

Looking North

post-33375-0-20221600-1542268176_thumb.jpeg

Looking South

The “unfinished” ends and sides are intentional; I’m intending to incorporate the backscene and facia into the structure of the boards, but want to get the scenery in place first.

I haven’t decided on the fiddle yard yet either. Originally I intended to have two 4’ traverser fiddle yards, one each end, but the 7-8 coach excursion trains present a problem (thanks @Mrkirtley800!), so I’m toying with the idea of storage loops behind...

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Looking good! I like curved layouts, so looks worth it to my eye.

 

 

 

It may be a good idea to reduce the length of the excursion trains? Not only to help fiddle yard requirements, but also that they might dwarf the layout?

 

I seem to remember reading somewhere that trains about 1/3rd of the layout length look about right, but obviously it would be nice thing to be able to model them properly if you can work out a fiddleyard system to suit!

 

The other thing to consider is the ballast traffic. Are you planning on using the same wagons with removable loads, or do you need to be able to swap the full and empty rakes? Same I guess for coal traffic in the other direction...

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Looking good! I like curved layouts, so looks worth it to my eye.

Thanks! I quite agree and I’m glad I put the effort in!

 

It may be a good idea to reduce the length of the excursion trains? Not only to help fiddle yard requirements, but also that they might dwarf the layout?

 

I seem to remember reading somewhere that trains about 1/3rd of the layout length look about right, but obviously it would be nice thing to be able to model them properly if you can work out a fiddleyard system to suit!

Yeah, I thought about reducing the excursion train length. If I go with my original 4’ fiddle yard idea, I can fit 4x (57’) BR Mk1 Coaches + Loco (Fowler 4F or Ivatt 4MT), which (coincidentally) works out as a touch over 1/3rd of the length of the scenic section. Like you say though, full length ones would look awesome!

 

The other thing to consider is the ballast traffic. Are you planning on using the same wagons with removable loads, or do you need to be able to swap the full and empty rakes? Same I guess for coal traffic in the other direction...

I’m intending to use removable loads rather than duplicate rakes; partly to reduce the number of wagons, but mainly because I’m not certain I’d be able to produce identical wagons!

 

(edited to correct the number of 57’ carriages that would fit into a 4’ fiddle yard + loco)

Edited by Tortuga
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  • 4 months later...

I thought it might be of interest to share the following Youtube link, covering the branch (though not specifically Rylstone unfortunately.  It is quite late on, but surprisingly (to me) includes an Ivatt class 4 as well as a standard 75xxx.  I saw it shared on the 'Old Skipton pics' Facebook group.

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Many thanks for sharing that Jub45565! Really nice to see and hear those locos in action, but more interesting to see the stock in use on the branch. I made out: Catfish; a Dogfish; Conflat Ls; 21T Hoppers; 16T Minerals and what looked like Wooden Minerals (?) - guess I know what kits I need to look out for!

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  • 6 months later...

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/g/grassington_threshfield/index2.shtml

 

3rd Image down showing a Crab on an Excursion at Grassington shows some Vans on the goods yard which make it possible for Van Traffic on the local good.

 

Also when the passenger service shut down the LMS made a point of saying that parcels would still be handle so there is also potential for a parcels can to appear.

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I must have looked at that image dozens of times and never noticed those vans! I’m guessing they’re in use for the fertiliser and cattle feed traffic referred to in Donald Binns’ book of the branch.

Would the parcels traffic have been dealt with using a special van? DaveF’s  photos of the last days of the branch show a Standard 4MT with brake van, so I’d assumed parcels traffic would have been handled by the guards van of the daily goods.

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55 minutes ago, Tortuga said:

I must have looked at that image dozens of times and never noticed those vans! I’m guessing they’re in use for the fertiliser and cattle feed traffic referred to in Donald Binns’ book of the branch.

Would the parcels traffic have been dealt with using a special van? DaveF’s  photos of the last days of the branch show a Standard 4MT with brake van, so I’d assumed parcels traffic would have been handled by the guards van of the daily goods.

The more I thought about it after my post the more I feel you are right and any parcels were probably just carried in the guards van.

 

Fertiliser and animal feed seem most likely candidates although given the isolated nature of the area even until the 1960s anything significant would probably have to arrive by rail.

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  • 2 months later...

Well it’s been a while (over a year!) since any serious work on Rylstone and most of my railway time since I built the three boards has gone into planning and replanning the storage yard(s) with little actual progress on the layout.

Fed up with this state of affairs (I want to do some actual railway modelling!), I found time after the rush of Christmas to get the boards up in their final home and actually see how much space was feasible (rather than available) for the storage yard(s). While a set of storage loops would be possible, I’ve decided they’d take too much time to construct and impact too much on the storage role of the room. Two traverser fiddle yards (as per the original plan) are more time- and space efficient solutions, although I’m going to have to forget about running 7-12 coach excursions, at least for the moment!

Construction of the north fiddle yard commenced yesterday and after a couple of hours tonight, the whole thing is just about complete only requiring the deck to be added - apparently noisy bench saws can’t be used after 22:30 in case they wake sleeping toddlers.

86185ED5-CBED-4F9E-8580-67A8CBE25889.jpeg.77339b71fa3c536a8573bef9a7879613.jpeg

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  • 3 weeks later...

While physical progress on the layout has stalled (this time due to organising the loft into a suitable layout home), I’ve been thinking over its operation.  In reality, traffic on the YDR seems to have been pretty sparse in the year I was planning on setting the layout: a single daily goods plus excursions. Although moving time back to 1962 gives two daily goods trains (plus excursions) I’m thinking operation might begin to pall over time.

So what if I play with history a bit? The YDR originally intended to extend further north past Grassington (and the station was constructed with that in mind) so suppose it did? If the line served more communities north of Grassington, might the passenger service have been retained?
With regular passenger trains and two daily goods plus traffic to the quarry at Swinden, might Rylstone have become fully signalled?

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3 hours ago, Tortuga said:

While physical progress on the layout has stalled (this time due to organising the loft into a suitable layout home), I’ve been thinking over its operation.  In reality, traffic on the YDR seems to have been pretty sparse in the year I was planning on setting the layout: a single daily goods plus excursions. Although moving time back to 1962 gives two daily goods trains (plus excursions) I’m thinking operation might begin to pall over time.

So what if I play with history a bit? The YDR originally intended to extend further north past Grassington (and the station was constructed with that in mind) so suppose it did? If the line served more communities north of Grassington, might the passenger service have been retained?
With regular passenger trains and two daily goods plus traffic to the quarry at Swinden, might Rylstone have become fully signalled?

 

I did consider this as a possibility as it was originally meant to go as far as Hawes.

 

I was going to do a fictional station at Kettlewell with the assumption that the line was doubled to allow for diversions off of the Settle Carlisle.

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Going by the worth valley, this had all its signalling removed later on & a gap in the passenger timetable during the day to allow for the goods.

 

There was no quarry traffic there though, so if signalling was there to start with there may have been more justification to keep it...

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Thanks for the replies.

I'm not sure how much signalling Rylstone had when it opened - the only photo I’ve seen just shows the station building - although from Donald Binns’ book, I know the loop was installed after opening of the line to allow trains to pass.

My thinking is that, assuming the branch was built extending to Hawes, the Midland (who operated the line) would have run daily passenger services through from Skipton to Hawes (and possibly onward to Garsdale on the S&C) and that these would have lasted through grouping, becoming reduced during nationalisation, rather than disappearing in the 1930s.

Assuming that as a “might-have been” history, does the following sound plausible for traffic through Rylstone in the early 1960s? One or two local passenger services, a twice daily pick-up goods service (which existed until 1963 according to Donald Binns) and the mineral trains (lime and ballast) serving Swinden Quarry.

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  • 7 months later...

Well once again it’s been a while and once again very little progress. A break in the very hot weather in August means the layout room (loft) is now painted and floored.

 

Unfortunately, there are problems. Firstly the layout is curved so, because I’m me and my mind thinks “oh, the track plan is really simple”, I need to build curved points. So I’ve been trying to plan the whole layout using Templot with a view to making a full size template on which to construct it from C&L parts. All well and good? Not really: due to having to compress it lengthways, I end up with a plan where the points are all crammed at one end, limiting the length of goods trains and meaning that all the action will be confined to one end of the layout.

 

Secondly, the real life operation of the Grassington Branch at the time I want to model was limited - it’s very much a case of “Train A passes through, Train B passes through, drops off a wagon, Train A passes back through in the opposite direction”; perhaps more limited than I’d ideally like - especially since the motive power is going to be either all Fowler 4Fs or all BR Standard 4s (albeit with the occasional Ivatt Class 4). I’ve already thought about modelling it as “what if the branch HAD linked up to the MR branch at Hawes”, but in that case I think that the bulk of traffic would have more likely gone north and therefore not via Rylstone. 

Finally, there’s the signals or lack of. To be perfectly honest, I want my layout to follow the prototype as close as I can and two signals showing danger when the crossing gates are closed just isn’t floating my boat.

 

So there we are. Unfortunately Rylstone isn’t going to be the layout I want to spend my time building and operating. I’ve enjoyed researching it and I’m grateful for all the helpful replies I’ve received since I started this thread.
While Gibbs Sidings turned out to be too much of a monster, Rylstone has turned out to be not enough. Clearly I need to aim for something in the middle - I’ve already got an idea turning over, but I’m going to wait until I’ve got something to show before starting another thread for it.

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