I'll show you mine. Tram layouts of the past.

[Andy Ross]

I think over the years we took Leeds Trams in one form or another to the Festival three times. Was one at Crich? 
 

The last time we took Headingley  Depot to Manchester.

 

We never exhibited at Kew but we visited a couple of times. 
 

These specialist shows were alway excellent both to exhibit at and to visit but always inevitable come to an end.  

[Middlesea John]

Anybody know what happened to Rob Bryan and his tram layout Mill Street Junction ?  We were friends in the 70s when we were both in rock bands.  He wrote several magazine articles I think in the 80s.

[coline33]

I do not recall a London layout so named but the title suggest it to be of a northern system.   Was Rob a member of T&LRS and could the articles have appeared in "Tramfare"?

[wagonbasher]

On 25/11/2020 at 00:04, phil_sutters said:

This was exhibited only a few days before the Croydon tram crash in 2016. I didn't upload it at the time as it seemed a bit inappropriate. The tram is on the move so it is blurred.

I was in Croydon for the first time ever.  I had travelled 4 hours to West Norwood on business but needed a pit stop first.  For miles South of central London the screen is small Victorian high streets often quite up market and then rows and rows of housing, Victorian, Edwardian and interwar before another busy little high street.  The same streets the trams would have rumbled through.  Outside the metropolis it is far more common to drive a mile in a town and find some ex industrial site that has retail parks and super supermarkets.  
 

My need was becoming pressing when I drove into your scene, I don’t know how faithfully the model represents the scene, but I sat at those lights and new I was ‘in the model’.  Croydon’s landscape is very different to the urban sprawl to its North.  Thar was my first look at Croydon trams, quite a system,.  Found the retail park and a big Sainsbury’s.

 

Andy

[2ManySpams]

On 17/11/2020 at 06:34, wagonbasher said:

As promised, the layout never had a name, it was just the stafford Railway Circles Tram Layout:

 

 

I still see Dave around town, he has no interest in trams buses or railways, he did't then, but he did have a car.  This is the first part of the layout built, depot and power station and terminus. We were exhibiting at a bus rally in Hanley Clough street depot (now gone).

 

 

A closer look at the depot, I would say this was 1987 Wolverhampton exhibition.  I still have the bus blind. I think it is the lower part of a two roller blind from either a Midland Red S22 or S23.

 

 

Wolves again, the town scene had a lot of crazy tight bends.  The attentive operator is my wife Jane, putting up with my hobby then as she does now.

 

 

The town scene and Jane from the opposite angle.  Many of the buildings were based on ones in Stafford.  The track was just Peco flexi track with set points.

 

 

A younger me in a pre Stafford Railway Circle Exhibition picture in the Stafford Newsletter.  Newspaper photographers always wanted you to be in the scene, preferably doing something.  "Can you touch the tram  / train?", No. the whole point is that we don't touch them!!.   Anyway, this little street section linked the depot and the town.  It is interlaced track through the arch.  There were loose plastic cobbled inserts that fitted between the blades of the turnouts, not sure why that one is missing ?

 

I am sure I have more pictures somewhere, great times.

 

Andy

 

 

 

Morning Andy,

 

Just stumbled on your thread. The photos of the old SRC Tram Layout brings back memories. The then Room 2 Posse - yourself, Nigel, DJH, ATG, Richard, Dave 'Chewitt' and me. Many a happy hour spent supping tea. More folk joined later and the next layout the team built New Haden Colliery - EM, hand laid track, scratch buildings from the real site - very different!

 

I do remember the layout having a nasty bite. It was fitted with Relco track cleaning units and it was always a high risk job reaching between wires and overheads to rerail a tram. One wrong move and you got zapped in the wrist and the usual outcome was hand up through the wires. Then out with the soldering iron to repair the wires usually ending up with burnt fingers! 

 

Working on the layout with you guys taught me how to scratch build buildings from a variety of bits of ply, card and plastic sheet. I think one of my earliest efforts was the fire station on the left side of the town scene. I think my first building though was probably the cottages made for Holme Mills - now 35ish years old and still doing service on the club's Thomas layout. 

 

Love the photo of Dave H in the shades! Happy days!

[thirty2a]

couple of mine,  N gauge Japanese (since re jigged somewhat) taking up the space of previous 00/ho layout now broken up.