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Ideas for a GCR Layout


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4 hours ago, Regularity said:

That was the MSLR’s intention, together with a branch from Brackley to Northampton (land is earmarked on the plans for an extra platform). See the A43 from Brackley to where it crosses the WCML just north of Blisworth Station site for the route. Basically, spur from Brackley to Helmfon on the Northampton and Banbury, take the latter to Blisworth, then a short section down the Nene Valley. 

I personally think Peter Denny got it slightly wrong with siting his layout at Buckingham (although it gave home a lot of freedom) as Northampton Great Central really could have happened, and with added variety from the EWJR.

The Met also had designs on Northampton and Birmingham, which would have transformed it into a major trunk railway. 
It’s all that  Watkin bloke again, isn’t it?

Yes, Watkin's many schemes really are a treasury of ideas for the modeller.

 

I imgine the GWR might allow the GCR access to Snow Hill for a pretty penny.

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5 hours ago, GWRSwindon said:

Yes, Watkin's many schemes really are a treasury of ideas for the modeller.

 

I imgine the GWR might allow the GCR access to Snow Hill for a pretty penny.

I am not so sure: it would have been direct competition for their own services.

In the end, the GCR relented over its North Warwickshire intentions in return for access to London via the GWR/GCR joint line. If they had reached Birmingham, but failed to gain access to the capital, well the word pyrrhic comes to mind!

(Despite Watkin - or maybe because of him - the GCR and Met initially had a hostile relationship, degrading so far as for the Met to delay the King on the GCR’s Royal Train service by running a goods train ahead of it.)

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13 hours ago, Regularity said:

I am not so sure: it would have been direct competition for their own services.

In the end, the GCR relented over its North Warwickshire intentions in return for access to London via the GWR/GCR joint line. If they had reached Birmingham, but failed to gain access to the capital, well the word pyrrhic comes to mind!

(Despite Watkin - or maybe because of him - the GCR and Met initially had a hostile relationship, degrading so far as for the Met to delay the King on the GCR’s Royal Train service by running a goods train ahead of it.)

Ah, perhaps Moor Street will be somewhat larger here. 

 

I've heard Woodford Halse shed was designed to allow for the possibility of expansion, and it seems it will be needed in this case.

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On 25/11/2019 at 09:14, webbcompound said:

Sorry. got the order wrong. Should be Welsh Railways Union. a Watkin scheme that started in 1883 with the Welsh Through Traffic Act, and whose final link was the opening of the Wrexham - Ellesmere line. . the idea was that the Wirral, the Cheshire Lines, the WM&CQR, the Cambrian, The Neath and Brecon, the Brecon and Merthyr,  the Taff Vale, the Barry and the Swansea Vale joint would combine to compete with thw GWR/LNWR joint route from South Wales to  Liverpool and Manchester.  Watkin had effective control of the Wirral, the WM&CQR and the Cheshire Lines, and became chairman of the Neath and Brecon.1558693632_welshunion001(2).jpg.8b3464e97101f9d7fcac4065b6b08d0f.jpg

Do you think WRU carriages and wagons would have been lettered as "WRU" or something different, like "WU"?

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  • 1 month later...

To review the ideas I had so far (Forgive me, @James Harrison):

 

What-If Ideas:

- I dunno, something with Nottinghamshire
- North Warwickshire Line

(This likely wouldn't work due to the GWR, maybe have it be joint GW/GC?)

- Welsh Railways Union

(This probably wouldn't work due to the bottleneck of the Mid-Wales Railway)

 

Prototypical:
Great Western & Great Central Joint Railway

Edited by GWRSwindon
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Looking at my copy of the Christiansen and Miller book on the North Staffordshire Railway, they mention that in the 1860s there was a proposed "Macclesfield, Knutsford & Warrington Railway" which the Cheshire Lines would have had running powers over, and a later proposal in the 1870s for a line linking the CLC at Winsford with Sandbach. Both of these proposals could allow me to include the GCR and the Knotty, so it certainly seems these are worth looking at.

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Looking back over this interesting thread, I think that you need to have a clearer idea of the style of layout that you want to build and the trains that will run on it. 

 

As you want a largish loco shed, it needs to be urban (or edge of urban). That would seem to limit the choice to something in Manchester area or Nottingham area.

 

Perhaps the most "reasonable" is an extra line in the eastern part of Manchester linking the Woodhead Route to Manchester Victoria/Manchester Exchange so that trains could run from Sheffield to destinations in the North-West and Scotland.

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On 14/04/2020 at 03:18, James Harrison said:

There's an interesting what-if discussed at length in (I think) volume 2 of Dow's trilogy, an MSLR line to Fleetwood and Blackpool.

Yep, pages 175-182 of Volume 2. Still in Volume 1 at the moment, so I'm not quite there yet.

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On 14/04/2020 at 08:09, Joseph_Pestell said:

Looking back over this interesting thread, I think that you need to have a clearer idea of the style of layout that you want to build and the trains that will run on it. 

 

As you want a largish loco shed, it needs to be urban (or edge of urban). That would seem to limit the choice to something in Manchester area or Nottingham area.

 

Perhaps the most "reasonable" is an extra line in the eastern part of Manchester linking the Woodhead Route to Manchester Victoria/Manchester Exchange so that trains could run from Sheffield to destinations in the North-West and Scotland.

I don't think Woodford Halse could ever have been called 'Urban'!

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  • 2 weeks later...

There was a line from Ashburys to Philips Park that (theoretically) gave the GCR access to Victoria and Exchange. It still exists. Truth is the GC and LY were often, if not invariably, at daggers' drawn, and relatively little use was made of it. Eventually GCR excursions were allowed to run this way (to Blackpool etc.) but engines (and crews) were invariably changed at Midland Junction (where the GC running powers over the Midland hit LY metals.) You might have thought Victoria was a more logical place for this than a crossover situated on a viaduct, but that's how it was.

 

Although the GC had access to Philips Park sidings, and put pilot engines up there, the L&Y objected to exchanging coal traffic here and, inexplicably, their objection was upheld by the courts. This led to Ashton Moss exchange sidings being built by the GC (in 1911) because for a time they had to exchange coal traffic at Penistone or Barnsley. This cost the GC a lot of mileage, as they moved a whole load of coal for destinations on the LY and LNWR west and north of Manchester.

 

There were at least two attempts to reach Blackpool. The second one - which Dow does not mention at all - involved building a line up to Heysham as well. I strongly suspect the GC hoped to get the Midland involved, but the Midland (I assume) was not interested. Perhaps they were more interested in keeping the GC out of Heysham than acquiring a more direct route to it and having access to Blackpool.

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  • 1 month later...

Does anyone know of a way to get the GCR to Peterborough? One idea I had was for the Midland Counties Railway to not build the Syston and Pboro for whatever reason, with the line later built as a joint effort between the GCR and someone else. The route would likely be something like Leicester-Oakham-Stamford-Pboro.

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2 hours ago, GWRSwindon said:

Does anyone know of a way to get the GCR to Peterborough? One idea I had was for the Midland Counties Railway to not build the Syston and Pboro for whatever reason, with the line later built as a joint effort between the GCR and someone else. The route would likely be something like Leicester-Oakham-Stamford-Pboro.

 

I think that the main problem with this idea is that there would have been a long period of history between the Midland not building the line and the GCR coming into existence.

 

Perhaps if an independent company had built the line and then been taken over by the GCR......

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5 hours ago, billbedford said:

 

Yeo, model the post 1910 proposed GNR, GCR.and GER merger. 

Well, you're not wrong.

 

There's the Huddersfield & Manchester Railway, which nearly ended up joining the railways that formed the MS&LR. The GCR in Huddersfield - that could have potential.

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  • 5 months later...

I think I may have found something that should work - the old South Yorkshire Railway's Barnsley to Doncaster line. 

 

Passenger traffic was never especially heavy on the line, but it is a spectacular example of a coal railway, with connections to collieries galore. It also allows for multiple companies to put in appearances: the L&YR, the Midland, the H&BR, the GNR, and the NER (via the Swinton & Knottingley joint anyway). 

 

I don't know if this concept has caught on in the UK as it has here in America, but several modellers are fond of "living interchanges." Where an interchange with another railroad is located, instead of it being a "dead" track ending at the backdrop, it is "live," leading to a small fiddle yard of one or two tracks behind the backdrop. 

 

Thus, if one is modelling Stairfoot Junction, where the GCR met the Hull & Barnsley, when your GCR train pulls in, you or another operator will "play" the part of the H&BR. The H&BR train will "arrive" and switch some amount of wagons from its own train to yours. I believe it may add a great deal of interest and immersion to a layout, and seems well worth it.

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  • 9 months later...
On 19/01/2020 at 02:10, GWRSwindon said:

Does anyone have any ideas for where a possible Lanky/GCR joint line could be located?

The L&Y had an end on interchange and joint station at Barnsley Exchange.  The L&Y ran north to Wakefield and the GCR both North and South (to Sheffield).  To the north it had it's own goods yard and then a junction with the Midland from where they both ran northwest to Penistone, the Midland diverging to Huddersfield and the GCR following the Woodhead route to Manchester.  MR also ran south from Barnsley Courthouse towards

Sheffield but also through Oaks Junction looped back north to it's own lines to Royston and Wakefield.

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