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Nellie's New Railway - A 1963 BLT


Nearholmer
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PS: it’s just struck me that the girders are very beefy because the bridge is, if anything, wider than it is long, so the girders must act as support for a gridiron that has considerable mass in itself, leaving aside what sits on top of it.

 

 

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Edited by Nearholmer
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Ere, boss, your “pastoral idyll”, spoilt only by a dirty big girder bridge and the mighty GWR thundering underneath with the two hour Brum expresses (it’s just off Stephens map to the left, the green line crosses the yellow line, not the pink line.) and when you described it, the old grey matter started churning. The tram’s gone, the bridge has gone, but if you stop your bike on the nearby road, you’ll spot a radio cabin by the railway. I was doing the electric supply to them, and that one was the worst of the lot, the local electric board (was it Eastern, then?) wouldn’t give me a supply. Eventually they agreed to put one in at the bridge to the north of Brill tunnel, something like three quarters of a mile away, so we had to lay a dirty big cable from the bridge along the track through the tunnel to the cabin, all for a 230v, 2kVA supply! Ah me, back to pastoral idylls:09F89098-2A66-4B09-B357-2954B1DC4E8D.jpeg.baa0dd1d3f090d8f196e75f14120dbd0.jpeg

 

Edited by Northroader
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It would work here because there is not the height but occupation crossings for farms etc. are useful as you do not need the roads either side of the bridge. I think trees are your best bet with possibly something in the foreground to stop you looking straight down the track in to the fiddle yard.

 

Don

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Yes, I think it will be trees.

 

The Dock Shunter has been found and arrived today and, although I’m not convinced that bro has found the very first one we had (box and Beattie’s price sticker suggest this one is about five years newer), it really does run much better than Nellie. The gear ratio and the small wheels mean that it isn’t cogging all the time. The b-t-b is very tight though, and I’ve never ‘drifted’ one of these before, so I think I will seek advice.

 

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Also, I decided last night to add a combined end loading and milk platform, based on the one at Wood Siding (it’s a Peco box in photo above), which meant I needed another point. Nearest model shop is about 12 miles, along riverside paths and the canal towpath - rough, but only just under an hour each way.

 

Usually.

 

Today it turned into a minor adventure, because the river has burst its banks overnight, and the canal is brim-full. I cycled through a few flooded bits, but had to give-up, go back, and make a big detour when I got to a long stretch where I couldn’t actually tell where the path was ...... cycling into a ten foot deep river on spate wouldn’t have been a good idea. Luckily my good lady took the car this morning rather than cycling as she usually does, because her route would have hit the flood, and the playing fields, tennis courts, and half of the access roads at the uni where she works are completely inundated.m

 

I hope The Shade of Sidney Pritchard appreciates the efforts we go to to obtain his products!

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Yes it was a bit moist in the Ouzel / Lovatt valley this morning and the Great Ouse by New Bradwell is out of its bed and across the fields - and Little Linford Lane, which is shut!

 

I went to the same emporium for Peco products this p.m., but I used motorised transportand kept dry. One could spend a lot of money there if you were so minded.

 

Regards

Chris H

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Oddly enough, I don’t get ‘wallet flutter’ in shops filled with modern plastic 00 and 0. I had a look round, and it is well-stocked, but I didn’t see a single thing that said ‘buy me’.  
 

Now, if it was wall-to-wall tinplate, or Hornby Dublo, or even, given this essay, selected Triang, that might be different!

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Random coffee break thought, prompted by the fact that, however nicely it might run, a 1960s diesel dock shunting engine is going to look a bit incongruous in rural Surrey in 1911 ........

 

I've often fancied building a 'time warp' layout, one that can quickly and easily flip between supposed dates, to accommodate a wide range of trains, and have even worked-out in pointless levels of detail how to do that for an 'edge of cathedral city' light railway terminus that survived in military, then industrial use, clearly S&M inspired (no jokes please).

 

Well, could I do that with this one?

 

Inventing a back-story might be challenging, although the area did until recently have one very significant military industry https://www.bibliophilebooks.com/tankfactory. I can imagine this clearing in the woods with a very rundown railway surviving into the late 'sixties to bring a wagon or two of coal in periodically, and maybe there is a local customer sending out the odd van-load of something once in a blue moon. Or, the place is now inside the fence-line of the military establishment. Dublo EE350hp shunter. The Dock Shunter re-painted in army green? The military option sounds better, because they paint and polish everything, thereby avoiding building everything twice, once in 1911 neatness, and once in late-BR dilapidation.

 

I do like diesel shunters ...... very characterful things.

 

 

Edited by Nearholmer
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44 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

 

I've often fancied building a 'time warp' layout, one that can quickly and easily flip between supposed dates, to accommodate a wide range of trains,

 

 

The trouble is, there's so much more to giving an authentic period flavour than the rolling stock. For starters, there's the change in vegetation.

Edited by Compound2632
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OK ...... we've settled on trees as background, so if I plant small, real ones, in a trough along the back-scene, and wait patiently .....

 

You are right, and the 'edge of cathedral city' concept was worked-out in crazy levels of detail to include subtle changes over a c50 year (1910-1960) span, even down to the figures, including a boy who started in a pram in 1915, was playing on a rope swing c1925, in uniform with kitbag on his shoulder in 1940, and walking the dog with his own young son in 1960 (this is what a boring daily commute for years on end can do to the human mind ...... I guess prisoners suffer the same only a lot more so!).

 

The two biggest challenges would be trees and the gradual decay of human-made structures ....... substituting, adding and taking away things isn't too difficult, and if the scene is very tightly controlled things like road-surfaces can 'keep', but how to make a roof weather, a fence collapse, or a canal silt-up, I never did work out.

 

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Quote

The Dock Shunter re-painted in army green? The military option sounds better, because they paint and polish everything, thereby avoiding building everything twice, once in 1911 neatness, and once in late-BR dilapidation.

 

What about the Cleobury Mortimer and Ditton Priors Light Railway as inspiration?  That went from saddle tanks, to Great Westernised-versions of the same, to diesel shunters, under military (admiralty) ownership to serve a munitions arsenal, but all the way it retained a vintage light-railway atmosphere.  It might have survived even longer if either the mainline connection had been saved, or if (as was proposed) the Americans had taken the facility over.  Something like that would allow you to keep the old-worlde surroundings but with diesel locomotives?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleobury_Mortimer_and_Ditton_Priors_Light_Railway

 

 

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Yes, I'm aware of the CM&DP, and others. I've visited a few military railways, and work took me to a still-operational ex-military line several times a few months back, and they're always interesting ...... among the few real railways that sometimes have oval track layouts too, which is useful from a toy train perspective ....... but, I've never really been into military modelling (that was one of my brothers' province really), and would prefer something else as an excuse if I can find it,

 

This line in the Wikipedia entry that you linked to caught my eye: Parts of the site are now occupied by an industrial estate and fireworks factory . Wrenn were very keen on selling model gunpowder vans in highly implausible firework liveries IIRC, and I imagine that such places need dispersal and blast relief arrangement like an ammunition store.

 

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Edited by Nearholmer
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That's an idea with potential; thank you.

 

Not sure about the Drewry specifically, or 3D printed things in general, but the idea of a little petrol railcar could lodge. 

 

The other thoughts that crossed my mind were a tram-type loco, or the really back-to front idea of making a steam rail-motor, and putting the motorised bogie at the passenger end, and having the loco end as a push-along, perhaps using bits of an Airfix Pug kit to create some of it. 

 

Or, we assume that the W&BLR was electrified as planned, and make this an electric loco. Now, that might not be so daft, because tramway-style OLE would give the layout a USP, which it will otherwise lack.

 

Triang even made such a thing on the Nellie chassis, but I believe they are rare beasts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Edited by Nearholmer
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49 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Just thinking out loud while on the train to Brum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Hope the tram contains fewer than the average 8 insects parts included in each of the "chocolate" bars!

 

Great idea, but you will need a dedicated tramline.  Works very well on the superb Craigcorrie layout. Not to mention shades of Craig.  

 

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It would be great to see some trams included in the scheme, especially as I need to enjoy them vicariously (I just don't think West Norfolk is urban enough to justify their inclusion). 

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