How accurate should our stock be if the station is a "Could have been"

[Clive Mortimore]

Hi All

 

While munching away on my cheese and pickle sandwiches I had a thought (and yes it was painful). If you are like me and have, or are building a model railway of a location that never existed how true do you need to be to the real thing when it comes to locomotives and rolling stock?

 

I know many will shout "RULE ONE APPLIES". For those of us who despite the location not being a real place who would like to get as close to real railway operation and stock, rule one is not always applicable. 

 

I will take my own layout as an example, it is a fictitious terminus set in Sheffield built by the L&YR and GNR, neither railway had their own access to the city and were known for their cooperation in other Yorkshire cities with joint stations. The time span is a little variable, from steam just before the diesels arrive to when the station closed in 1968 and most services were in the hands of DMUs or somewhere in between. Which ever combination of stock I use hopefully it appears to be the same time frame. I have deliberately set the services so they connect Sheffield with other Yorkshire cities and towns, and places the other side of the Pennines. Medium length trains with medium size locos B1s, Black Fives, class 4MT tanks, type 2 diesels etc and DMUs. I do run some larger locos, I have a Britannia and a V2 and loads of type 4 diesels but they are not the bread and butter locos I use. The DMUs I run are types allocated to the LMR, NER and ER. Coaching stock, depending on my time period but I have a mix of LNER, LMS and BR coaches. Parcels stock is typical 1960s mixture. I have very little freight as it is a model of a passenger station , I do have "The Perishables" a fitted van train as well as coal and diesel fuel trains for the loco yards.  I want to portray the image of what it could have been like by having stock that could have appeared off the GNR and L&YR in the Sheffield area during the early to mid sixties.

 

What do limits do others put to recreate a possible scenario? Or does it matter? 

[dunnyrail]

Being Sheffield there would likely be some sort of Metal activity.

 

A Steel Works would want Iron Ore or ready rolled Steel in, possibly Rails or Vans of finished Goods out plus of course the empties from the Ore and Steel going out. Coal in to power the works or perhaps oil and empties oiut.

 

A more modest facility perhaps made Sheffield Steel Cutlery, this would be less raw material in perhaps some coal and Stainless Steel in Vans. Vans out with the finished product. Empty coal wagons out.

 

That is as far as my thinking takes me for now.

JonD

Edited May 17, 2020 by dunnyrail

[Dagworth]

I try to stick to the locos and stock that would be seen in the area and period in which the layout is set, and running in appropriate formation. 
One of the things I learned with exhibiting Dagworth was to leave the non-region stock and locos at home. 
 

Andi

[Rivercider]

I think it all depends.

 

Someone who has given a lot of thought to their 'could have been' station to get the style of buildings and track layout right will probably want to use only locos and stock regularly seen in the area, and working plausible services.

 

If the layout is just set 'somewhere in the south west'  for example, then perhaps any locos and stock that might have worked there on high days and holidays (however rarely) might be used.

 

My layout falls somewhere in between, using a variety of rtr and rtp items to create something I think is a bit West Country(ish)

 

cheers

 

 

 

[Peter Kazmierczak]

Clive just think of some of the most effective (in my view anyway) model railways of fictitious stations set in real locations - Buckingham, Charford and Borchester to name but three. What did they have in common?

1 A sense of place

2 A sense of time (ie period being depicted)

3 Locos and rolling stock of a consistent standard for the region being modelled

4 A sense of the "everyday" - not specials being run every 2 mins

5 Operated in a railway-like manner, with a purpose for each movement

6 Not a model of a model, but an eye for the prototype

[woodenhead]

You should run what you feel comfortable running on your layout - if it is a might have been then you have more flexibility as long as it doesn't jar your own senses - that's my approach.

 

Says the man with a class 26 in blue hauling green Bulleids - well it is a preserved line.

 

And on the subject of pickles

 

[MarkSG]

That's a good question, and there isn't a single right answer. A lot depends on how rooted in reality your fiction is.

 

To give an example, the first "proper" layout I ever built (as a teenager) was simply "somewhere on the LNER". I didn't have a particular location in mind, just a company for the sake of consistency when it came to locos and rolling stock. For me, that meant running anything in LNER livery appropriate to a branch line, irrespective of whether it would have run together in reality.

 

More recently, I've been working on two projects. The first, somewhat in abeyance at the moment because I started it at our previous house and I don't have space to put it up here (until I get round to the loft conversion I've been promising myself for the last five years!), is based on a fictional reality of place that actually exists - Arnold Bennett's "Five Towns", which was his version of the real life Staffordshire Potteries. Now, anything I run on that layout has to be reasonably plausible for Stoke-on-Trent in the 1950s. But, since it is a fictionalised version, I can bend that if I want to - just as Bennett himself did when writing the novels. The name of the layout is taken from Bennett's books, but, since he didn't exactly go into detail about the local railways, I can imagine them for myself. Bennett's Potteries didn't have quite the same geography as the real life one, and therefore nor does mine. That gives me a fair amount of freedom to run what I want, so long as it's internally consistent.

 

The second project, which started out as a bookshelf diorama but has expanded to occupy the length of one wall in my study, is, though, based on a "what if?" scenario around a real life location - in this case, the presumption that the Wisbech and Upwell Tramway did get extended to Welney and beyond. So in this case, I'm modelling a real location, but one that, in reality didn't have a station or goods yard. Obviously, that is still fictional. But, since it's based on a real location, and the "what might have been" only envisages the extension of a line that really existed, to be plausible it needs to have locos and stock that really would, or could, have run on lines in that area at that time. At the moment, that means just three locos (a couple of J70s and a J15 - the latter because my location is what would have been the "other" end of the W&U if it had gone all the way through rather than terminating in the middle of nowhere). I could expand that roster a bit - I'd love it if someone produced an RTR E4 - but it still has to be something that would have been seen in the Cambridgeshire fens in the early days of BR. Anything else would be pushing the envelope too far.

 

 

[Kris]

The stock you use should be sensible. It would look daft having an HST next to a Jinty. In much the same way a GWR castle would look very lost on a Scotish based layout.  

[The Johnster]

Cwmdimbath is built, stocked, and as far as possible operated according to Peter Kaz's 6 principles.  It is located in a real place that never had a railway, but if if had had, locos and stock would have been provided by Tondu, (86F during my period).  In order to incorporate a wide variety of liveries I have set the period as being 1948-58, so coaching stock can be big 4 liveried through changeover and early BR to maroon, unlined for non-gangwayed.  With one exception, all locos are resident at Tondu during this period, but not all at the same time.

 

The leads to my take on what is acceptable deviation under Rule 1.  It is based on what I am comfortable with, and of course involves deviating from the 6 Principles.  I have a Hornby 2721, 2761 in austerity GW livery as withdrawn at the end of March 1950 from Tondu, and while I am uncomfortable running it with maroon passenger stock or wagons that were not introduced when it was in service, it appears unashamedly on the layout with items it could not possibly have appeared with in real life such as a 1954 built 94xx or 1953 auto-fitted 4575s.  

 

There is also a Rule 1 loco because I like this particular type, a Barry 3MT standard tank 82001.  I have postulated a through working of parcels vehicles to a mail order company distribution warehouse on the branch, which is part of a diagram for a Barry loco working from Barry to Cardiff with a rush hour train, then the parcels through to Cwmdimbath where it runs around the stock, then light engine to Bridgend to pick up a Vale of Glamorgan passenger working home.  It might at some future date be joined by a Barry shed TVR class A that I have an unfinished kit for.   I am 'Rule 1 accepting' of this situation, but for some reason cannot square off the idea of a Rhymney R class (another unfinished kit) from Dyffryn Yard, because I can't envisage an unfitted coal working from the Port Talbot area getting past Tondu without a loco change, thus I am 'Rule 1 non-accepting' of this.

 

I have a Wills 1854, to be provided with a new chassis and finished as 1730, another 1950 Tondu withdrawal, and with this loco I am planning to use a 57xx type cab, unless someone can prove to me that 1730 never had one; I'm Rule 1 accepting of this, and there are 2 Tondu types not yet represented, though they are admittedly associated only with the Porthcawl Branch, 44xx and Collett 1936 31xx.  They are about as likely at Cwmdimbath as a 3MT tank...

 

I also occasionally run a class 116 dmu that I converted from Lima 117 stock many years ago on an occasional excursion.

 

I think we each have an individual relationship with Rule 1, and this is as it should be.  One of the attractions of Borchester was the timetable predictability, which was a major factor in it's ability to convince you that you were watching somewhere in the East Midlands on the GN, real but small rather than a model.  Cwmdimbath runs to a timetable but locos are changed every so often as they are taken out of service every 10 working days for 2 working days for boiler washouts, during which time any other work needed is done on them at Tondu.  As Tondu never had enough auto fitted locos for all its auto work, never mind the extra branch that i've loaded it, my auto trains are. sometimes hauled and run around by non auto-fitted locos, which photos of other Tondu branches, particularly Abergwynfi (probably because that was particularly photogenic and on the itinerary of enthusiasts heading for the interesting coaches on the Glyncorrwg workmen's), confirm was not an unusual occurrence. 

 

So, built in to the concept, and the timetable, is a degree of wobble room which can, If I want it to, allow me to ring the changes while keeping within the original parameters, the central Glamorgan valleys in the decade following nationalisation.  The post war Labour government's nationalisation program is germaine to the layout, as the NCB has only recently come into being, and promises to provide canteens and pit head baths at all it's collieries.  This isn't delivered overnight, and I can run an occasional ad hoc goods trip at Control's behest with supplies for the construction of these new facilities at the colliery.  The pick up goods sometimes has to deliver a wagon of pit props and perhaps pick up an empty 5 planker as well.  Each day is different, I am nowhere near tired of it yet, and all the layout is is a run around with a colliery kickback and a goods siding.  I am not too far off my 3 score and 10, and expect this to last me out.

 

I promise that there will never be an inspection saloon special or a bus on a bridge.

Edited May 17, 2020 by The Johnster

[JohnR]

I think it depends on your "might have been". Conceivably, a large, almost sub-network, might have locos or coaches specially built for it, especially in pre-group days. But by Grouping, and especially BR days, these would have replaced by more "standard" types. 

[Peter Kazmierczak]

1 hour ago, Kris said:

The stock you use should be sensible. 

 

Just wondering if Clive understands the meaning of the final word in the quoted sentence above.

[TheSignalEngineer]

My scenario is a bending of the history of the area of the Black Country covered by the South Staffs/LNWR and OWW/GWR. It covers a number of suggestions which were made around 1845 but never happened. The timeframe is c1957 to 1962, so early and late BR steam liveries plus an occasional diesel on a special or loan for crew training, strictly no yellow panels. 

As far as possible loco types are ones known to have visited the area, the regulars mainly numbered as ones allocated to Bescot, Monument Lane, Oxley, Tyseley and Stourbridge for part of that period. 

Usefully there were regular specials to Dudley Zoo particularly from the East Midlands so an occasional B1 or Brush 2 with Gresley and Thompson stock is permitted. Another useful place in the area was Stafford Road Works. Small locos from the whole of the GWR seemed to turn up there and often appeared on local trip workings for running-in purposes.

Most regular passenger trains have three or four coaches of LMS or GWR origin. Local trains start with push-pull and progress to early DMUs. Dated holiday trains were often worked by two sets, one from each region, and it wasn't unknown for a set in SR green to turn up on a local working during the week.

Freight stock reflects mainly the industries of the area and is mostly Big Four, ex-PO or 1950s BR. 

For parcels anything goes, plus GWR No.17, a Class 128 then when I get round to it a Class 129 kit to be built. Also in the to do box some donors to build the Palethorpes fleet.

Infrastructure-wise little changed from c1954 to station closures in the mid 1960s except progressing from grotty to decrepit. 

[Erichill16]

The scenario Clive describes is similar to my ideal layout. With regarding stock and individual numbers Id be happy to say this is a fictitious place and the local loco shed would have had to have more locos than it actually did to service my fictional location. Therefore I’d don’t have to stick with the locos actually located in the general area. One step further is of course enough locos were built for the reality so to increase the size of the network would require more stock so you could ‘legitimately’’ invent extra locos for example 55023 ‘Red Rum’ etc.

Keep up the good work and can we see some painted stock please.

regards

Robert

 

 

[jonny777]

I tend to locate my fictional stations somewhere in the East Midlands. 

 

I also tend to choose a narrow time period (2-3 years) because from the late 50s onwards things began to change very rapidly. 

 

Once I have made these two main decisions, I look through shed allocations and get an idea of the classes of locomotives allocated to the ones which might conceivably provide motive power for any of the services I intend to run as fictional passenger and goods trains. 

 

If a loco was allocated miles away, I tend to renumber RTR items to ones which had been allocated locally.  Mind you, having said that, it was not unusual to find some  locos many hundreds of miles from their home depot.  This is especially true if the locomotive was constructed in a far away works. For instance, I have just been transcribing spotting notes from a visit to Darlington Works in 1959, and despite that fact that I'm sure Stratford was capable of performing major repairs on L1 2-6-4t locos, two - 67729 of 30A and 67768 of 34A were both noted in the works there (at Darlington). 

 

Therefore, along with the local football side drawn at home in the FA Cup against opposition from hundreds of miles away, or a Scouts/Guides national gathering nearby, there are a number of scenarios which can be used to enable rare motive power to appear. 

 

 

Edited May 17, 2020 by jonny777

[tomparryharry]

The layout I have in mind is a 'not quite Welsh valley' scenario, of which there are quite a few places to pay homage to them. on that basis, the locomotives I amassed are only those type that are liable to have worked the area. Anything up to, but not including 47xx and 'King' class locomotives wouldn't have worked there, as much as I might like to have them; stars & castles also........

 

The intention is to have 3 definite periods of use. Pre-grouping, post -group & nationalisation. I may, or may not, use any or all of the stock at my disposal, depending on my whim, after it's still in the acquisition stage. There again, I've been acquiring stock for nearly 40 years..... The location however, definitely existed, so it is capable of chronological transition. 

[MJI]

Mine is going to be Lickey route (Bristol Birmingham main lines), so I am restricting most trains to stuff I have seen between Worcester and Bristol.

 

So shunters could be any GL or WS 08, BR 03, or anything going to from Swindon such as a 13, also 3 of the PWMs.

 

Main line stuff 20 25 31 33 37 40 45 46 47 50 56 253, rare as 55, slightly older as 22 35 42 43 52. Steam you have a pile of Halls, Castles, plus City, a few large LMS, 2857, 92220.

 

Units 116 WR + MR, WR 101 117 118 119 120

 

HST both WR and NESW

 

I have not deceided where yet but I have the area, to be honest if I had the room it would be a not closed Ashchurch with a single car on the Upton branch. usual oddities sush as MR arcitecture with GWR details

[lanchester]

17 hours ago, Erichill16 said:

The scenario Clive describes is similar to my ideal layout. With regarding stock and individual numbers Id be happy to say this is a fictitious place and the local loco shed would have had to have more locos than it actually did to service my fictional location. Therefore I’d don’t have to stick with the locos actually located in the general area. One step further is of course enough locos were built for the reality so to increase the size of the network would require more stock so you could ‘legitimately’’ invent extra locos for example 55023 ‘Red Rum’ etc.

Keep up the good work and can we see some painted stock please.

regards

Robert

 

 

Trouble is, you hit the 'unbelievable' in unexpected places. Thus, no problem at all in imagining 55023 and other additional Deltics - but, timescale aside, no way would one have been named Red Rum if the new batch was for the ECML. Flat winners (preferably St Leger and the other Classics) only.

 

On t'other hand, if the WCML had been sufficiently impressed to invest in some Deltics, then naming them after National winners (and regiments from the North and West of England and Scotland) would be highly likely?

 

(If the Western Region had a Deltic phase, I'm sure the beach donkeys of Torbay had some suitably pretty names).

[Flood]

For Aberdeen Kirkhill, being a depot, we run the actual passenger and freight rakes for the Aberdeen area taken from photos and any other information to hand. For an exhibition we run considerably more trains on the main line to keep people interested, running at home we can follow a set sequence based on the actual workings.

Regarding "foreign" locos I have found at least two sources that state 47582 in NSE was working out of Aberdeen in October 1987 so there was no need to state a "what if" as it actually occurred.

[F-UnitMad]

20 hours ago, Kris said:

The stock you use should be sensible. It would look daft having an HST next to a Jinty. In much the same way a GWR castle would look very lost on a Scotish based layout.  

Nail & head = Hit!!!

 

Even a fictional layout should have some sense of location, and time period, to give it added purpose beyond a train set.

My main layout is totally out of context for most of you, being a freelance American Short Line (small independant Railroad Company), so you might think "great, anything goes" - but to be plausible it still has a location, even if "somewhere in the State of Minnesota" sounds extremely vague, that still dictates the scenery - no rocky mountains or arid deserts for me!! And it has a time period - again "late 1970s to 2000-sh" might sound very vague, but it dictates the types of freight cars I run - no roof-walk equipped 40ft boxcars, for instance, as roofwalks were outlawed in the early '70s, and 40ft boxcars phased out. 

There's some leeway in my collection, and I do use Rule 1 quite often - for instance one of my locos in reality was withdrawn in 1987, and scrapped, so it really shouldn't be hauling cars with 1990's build dates on them!! But I'm not that fussy, but do like to think that the whole scene looks plausible, at least.

One of my bugbears in this regard is UK layouts set in say, the 1980s/90s, that have 1960's road lorries on them, apparently still in everyday haulage. But if it's a type for the right Era, I'm not then going to point an Anoraky finger and say "Actually, I think you'll find Haulier ABC & Co never went to XYZ part of the Country...." most likely 'cos I wouldn't know anyway!!!

[TheSignalEngineer]

I find road transport as big a problem to research as the trains. Fortunately I found a reasonable model of a bus which worked in the area of my layout and wasn't scrapped until two years after my timeframe. I'm trying to keep the vehicles to ones on the road c1957 as they wouldn't have seemed out of place three or four years later. After all the paper mill close to where I now live still used steam tractors to move logs from the railway to the works as late as 1961.

[Nearholmer]

This is one of the things that the average enthusiast (to use old Railway Modeller language) has got progressively pickier about as the r-t-r offerings have permitted them too. The phrase is possibly “raised the bar”.

 

Fifty or sixty years ago in 00, having the right classes of locos, and types of carriages and wagons, for a particular locality and date usually involved a stack of scratch and kit-building. Now, for a great many places and dates (post WW2 at least) a representative selection can be found r-t-r or by using relatively simple kits. Obvious anachronisms are now more easily avoided, and thanks to very easy access to information, more easily spotted by nit pickers!

 

Many modellers will have time and inclination to stick with the “representative selection”, while a few will move beyond that to the exact thing, in number and livery for the exact date ........ which requires some combination of more time, more effort, more money and/or more patience.

 

How much time, effort, money, and patience do you wish to expend?

 

 

 

 

Edited May 18, 2020 by Nearholmer

[wombatofludham]

It's funny, isn't it, how we happily invent locations for layouts but then obsess about getting the stock and trains right.  And I'm guilty as charged, when I decided to invent "Wednesford" for the shed layout, I (mentally) created a complex back-story to guide the design and traffic planning, all based as much as possible on reality.  So, faced with a problem of curve radius I decided to have a single bi-directional line with a bay, the "back story" being the tunnel at the end of the platform was too narrow for two tracks with full OHLE, so the line was singled, and as the route was the third electrified route between Wolverhampton and Birmingham, it was felt OK to do this without causing too much trouble operationally.  I found creating this back-story, similar to the "character Bibles" soap-writers keep to allow script writers to keep things consistent, very useful and helped me visualise the town and service pattern.  Train wise it'll be pretty much typical of the Black Country AC lines mix, with three "Rule 1" exceptions: APT-E which as far as I know never worked in the Black Country but which will be a high days and holidays visitor: APT-P which again as far as I know never made it around the Birmingham loop but will be a must have, and one of Charlie's Class 142 units when they get released, which WMPTE rejected for the West Midlands but will probably get a try out on the Wombourne shuttle.  In my defence for the latter, I did genuinely see 141001, in Leyland's version of blue and grey, pull into Walsall from the Derby direction just as my train to Perry Barr was pulling out, in the mid 80s, so as I like Leyland National nodding donkeys, it'll be the exception that proves the rule, at least for 1986.

[Peter Kazmierczak]

Just had another thought 

 

Are layouts today too realistic? Every blade of grass, every signal wire, every super detailed item. Have we focused too much  on getting everything thing just so, yet lost some of the heart and artistry of it all?

 

Just wondering.

[MarkSG]

12 minutes ago, Peter Kazmierczak said:

Are layouts today too realistic? Every blade of grass, every signal wire, every super detailed item. Have we focused too much  on getting everything thing just so, yet lost some of the heart and artistry of it all?

 

That's a good question, although I think that the answer is no. If anything, I think that some of the newer products and tools available to us now are making artistry easier.  if you can make an individual item look better with less effort, then you can spend more time working on the overall presentation.

[john new]

37 minutes ago, Peter Kazmierczak said:

Just had another thought 

 

Are layouts today too realistic? Every blade of grass, every signal wire, every super detailed item. Have we focused too much  on getting everything thing just so, yet lost some of the heart and artistry of it all?

 

Just wondering.

 

I think there is a tendency these days towards this, so yes. Many extremely accurate layouts exist these days that are proto-boring to watch and even to view in a magazine. They may well satisfy their builder(s) during construction, and that is obviously a prime aim, but not third parties. For operations, too so many on the exhibition circuit are just roundy-roundy trains sets doing nothing else.

 

Going back to Clive's original post for his Sheffield Exchange some accuracy is needed, and he captures that well. On my shunting plank I can have anything goes sessions at home but if I was ever to take it out to a show, then the selected stock will be period and location specific by type, and era but probably not renumbered. Any bigger layout I build if/when space becomes available will almost certainly have to be set as a preserved line, my collection is too eclectic for it to be anything else, but I won't restrict my self to just items that have in reality been preserved.