Leeds Victoria, Dewsbury Midland and Bradford London Rd a never finished oo layout

[Barry O]

Many years ago, when I first joined the Leeds Model Railway Society the OO group were busy building a new layout.

 

Thanks to Mike Edge here is the trackplan

 

When I joined Leeds Victoria was "built" ..but a bit more background...

 

I am sure my colleagues on RMWeb will help ... @Nicktoix       and @Michael Edge

 

[Joseph_Pestell]

Looks like a lot of fun as a layout. But what a different design philosophy to nowadays.

[roundhouse]

Reminds me of the Croydon MRS OO layout although on a smaller scale when I joined in 1978.

 

When the clubroom in Purely Oaks station burned down in 1989 the layout was still standing supporting much of the debris from the roof collapse but nothing was salvageable IIRC.

[Barry O]

3 hours ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

Looks like a lot of fun as a layout. But what a different design philosophy to nowadays.

Yes .. what do you need on a layout? Track and lots of operating potential.

Baz

[Michael Edge]

It was fun to operate and you could get a huge crowd round it at shows, did need a large crew of experienced operators though. In those days (1970s) we had more members who were interested in operating model railways - and you really had to work the traffic round this, it wasn't just playing trains at random.

It was built to replace our old club layout which was in more than one room in our then clubrooms, tunnelled through a wall (not that this stopped us taking to the Corn Exchange) this was something of an operational challenge as well.

We had a design competition in the club before starting the layout, this is one of the alternatives.

There were a couple of others but they don't seem to have survived.

I built a 1/2": 1ft model of the final design before we started, the only time I've ever done this.

This is the original design, after it was complete it was extended slightly in the middle of each side, which is what the first trackplan shows.

[Joseph_Pestell]

I would have voted for the alternative version. It seems to have more operating potential. 4'x2' boards (which gives an overall dimension of 24'x12')?

[Nicktoix]

The original design was 30x15 with 5ft x 2ft 6in baseboards.

All made in plywood with separate trestle legs.

On a trip to Barrow in Furness exhibition the legs did the splits on a polished ballroom floor.

The layout was stabilised by a nail into the stage and string passed round the layout.

Baseboards built , no track and a young St Enodoc

Nick

Edited April 30, 2020 by Nicktoix
Spelling, sorry John

[Enterprisingwestern]

1 minute ago, Nicktoix said:

The original design was 30x15 with 5ft x 2ft 6in baseboards.

All made in plywood with separate trestle legs.

On a trip to Barrow in Furness exhibition the legs did the splits on a polished ballroom floor.

The layout was stabilised by a nail into the stage and string passed round the layout.

Baseboards built , no track and a young St Enedoc

Nick

 

No track?

 

Mike.

[Nicktoix]

My mistake should have said new track which was soldered PCB.

Making the half track for the plain line was done in a jig and was very tedious.

And there was a awful lot of it.

Nick

[Michael Edge]

5 hours ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

I would have voted for the alternative version. It seems to have more operating potential. 4'x2' boards (which gives an overall dimension of 24'x12')?

All the proposals were the same size - 30ft x 12ft, basic premise for all of them was a complete railway running from one terminus to another with a separate goods only route.

[Michael Edge]

9 minutes ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

No track?

 

Mike.

Wait a bit, let's take this in chronological order - this was I think the first time any of us had had a full size track plan on paper. This was in the pre-computer age, no Templot, no CAD design and plotting, all hand drawn on a big roll of paper.

[rovex]

I've got a vague recollection of seeing this at shows. Perhaps back in the day when Leeds show used to be at the Corn Exchange.

[Barry O]

So the proposal is to do this Thread in Sections..so stay calm everyone.

 

 Part 1 Leeds Victoria Baseboards

Baseboards

Track

Buildings

Temporary storage yards

Control Panels and electrical systems

Operation

Banking

Signals

Exhibitions

 

Part 2 Dewsbury Midland to Bradford London Road

Baseboards

Track

Buildings

Control Panels

Operation

Banking

Signals

Exhibitions

 

Part 3 Lessons learned and what happened to it.

 

Biggest problem is a lack of photographs.

 

Edited April 30, 2020 by Barry O

[Colin]

It all reminds me of Edward Beal’s “West Midland” layouts, I still have one of his books. 

[Barry O]

When I first started going to the Club as an Engineering Student ( I only arrived at the Club as St Enodoc had found that we lived not far from the "New" clubrooms) only the Leeds Victoria Baseboards and track down to the bottom of the "hill" were present. In effect these formed and "L" shape with a  traverser for storage..more about the traverser later.

 

 

 

As there was a line below Victoria the baseboards shown as a yellow streak in plan above and white streak further along) (made from Marine play) were very heavy but very strong. (min the incident mentioned by Nick above one set of supporting tressle legs fell down. The layout didn't collapse.

 

While the baseboards were very strong the weight was a problem, During the time at Headingley they were only carted down one flight of stirs, When the Club moved to 26A Dock Street the 6 flights of stairs to our Clubrooms certainly made you fit!

 

I believe (but stand to be corrected) that these baseboards were built by Ken Nelson - who is still a member of the Society.

Baz

Edited April 30, 2020 by Barry O

[Nicktoix]

The baseboards for the first stage were built by Ken when were at Armley Mills Museum.

That was just one of our many homes in our peripatetic existence. 

Nick

[Barry O]

And the next set were built by John Aldrick and myself. Anyone going to admit building the Traverser ?

[Nicktoix]

Steve Roberts had big part in building the traverse.

I seem to remember he used a large inside micrometer to set up the angles in which

ran Charlie's balls? But that's another story

[Barry O]

One thing we learned quickly. We needed to build more basboards and track as the Traverser had a life of its own....

 

Baz

[Michael Edge]

I've unearthed another of the track plans considered, I think this was mine.

There's a bit missing on the right but I think it was just a single track and loop, this was part of the required separate goods line. There's still a steep gradient to the upper terminus so bankers would have been required. Only one turntable in this design, the upper terminus has a wye (triangle) for turning.

[Barry O]

Track

 

The track was all handbuilt  on this part of the layout.  It made use of copper clad sleepers with the rail soldered directly to it.  The plain track was jig  built. Various people in the Club were  involved in building the track. Points etc were again copper clad with rail soldered directly to them. One of the problems we had was that some of the point building wasn't as precise as others. The single slip was a case in point. My brand new Mainline Peak used to end up all over the roads when first used.

 

There was no cork underlay – track was fastened onto the paper plan which had been glued to the baseboards. (Can Mike or Nick check this please?) . The picture of the layout under construction put up by Nick can't have St Enodoc on it as when we joined the track was fully complete.

 

All the track was  hand ballasted- Andrew Ross our current Chairman was involved in doing this work. It always looked superb.

 

One of our then members did cause a major problem. He suggested using shot blast grit for ballasting the loco depot and turntable area. Locos were very sluggish in the area. When we turned off the  lights we found out why. The grit had a lot of iron in it. It glowed when power was applied to the track!

 

Mike Edge built the turntable - it is still in use on another layout. Perhaps he will explain how he built it and explain how it is driven.

 

If you look at the track plan it gave plenty of operational use. Two people on the passenger/ parcels and one for the Goods Yard.. more of this in later thread entries.

 

Baz

 

 

[Nicktoix]

I think the track was laid on carpet paper basically a thick plain grey paper.

On expert advise from "herself" it is SJR not St Enodoc

The points were worked with H&M point motors of which the club had made a bulk purchase. 

Initially we turned the top plates over so we could adjust the switch more easily. 

Eventually we changed to using micro switches from Whistons in New Mills. (Who remembers them. Source of all sorts of goodies such as farmer's mixture nuts and bolts and all sorts of electric bits and pieces).

 

[lezz01]

You have to love the old H&M point motors. I've been lucky enough to build up quite a stock of them off of ebay. I have enough to make testing with wires a chore so I'll build a test rig so I can fix them to a sub base and add mimic reporting via a microswitch. Then I just install the sub base to the layout and do the next one.

Regards Lez.

[Michael Edge]

12 hours ago, Nicktoix said:

I think the track was laid on carpet paper basically a thick plain grey paper.

On expert advise from "herself" it is SJR not St Enodoc

The points were worked with H&M point motors of which the club had made a bulk purchase. 

Initially we turned the top plates over so we could adjust the switch more easily. 

Eventually we changed to using micro switches from Whistons in New Mills. (Who remembers them. Source of all sorts of goodies such as farmer's mixture nuts and bolts and all sorts of electric bits and pieces).

 

Is that a very young Andy Ross on the right? Geoff Appleyard and his daughter on the left but who's that in the middle?

The track wasn't all hand made, we had some very early SMP plain track which was used in the platforms at Victoria. Over the years this gradually deformed, widening the gauge at the rail head - almost to EM in places. I hasten to add this doesn't happen with SMP track now.

I built the complex pointwork here, part of it in one piece about 4ft long, our local librarian in Upton asked if she could put it on display in the window, I think it was there for a week or so. 

We had a lot of problems with the K crossings in this pointwork, we hadn't discovered then that there is an absolute limit to how flat these crossings can be. They would have been better as switched diamonds and would have been OK in 16.2mm gauge but that was far in the future then.

[Joseph_Pestell]

Just a thought. But all of these plans would be ideal for N gauge round a standard garage.