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GWR / BR-WR London Division Minories style layout in 4mm


Tumut
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Hello All,

 

quite some years ago, there was a 4mm GWR or BR-WR Minories style layout based in West London, which featured a row of three story Georgian style flats by Bilteezi on one side. The train came out of a double track tunnel to the terminus, and there was a small loco servicing area adjacent to the points. Above the tunnel was a row of suburban style houses. The layout was for suburban non corridor stock primarily.

 

I am still quite intrigued by it, but have been unable to find its location on this site. I would really appreciate a link if anyone is aware of  the layout in question please,

 

Regards, Tumut

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Hello Tumut

That sounds like 'Shepherd's Bush' It was actually 3mm scale and they somehow got the pointwork design wrong and ended up with a single track throat rather than an actual Minories. 

I took these photos at the CMRA St.Albans show in January 2007. The idea was a suburban GW branch  with its terminus behind the Central Line's Shepherd's Bush station.  I thnk it may have been based on a scheme that started building from a junction just to the east of Acton Main Line station. The location in Shepherd's Bush is on a real street (though they used generic rather than actual buildings) and I think the land set aside for the railway became the access parade for the White City exhibition site  from Shepherd's Bush. It's now the Westifields Shopping Centre!Img_9200.jpg.f48f765d2b10266fb5eadf896b8f4c4e.jpg

Img_9199.jpg.465cc6ba9d4a5ce0bead1dbc69098b19.jpgImg_9198.jpg.d9fde1bc76eb1855e3538f035b056534.jpg

 

I think it did appear in one of the magazines and I should have the article somewhere so I'll try to dredge it up.

Edited by Pacific231G
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I've found the article. It was in the 2008 BRM Annual (and may therefore have also featured in BRM)

The layout is 3mm/ft scale with 12mm gauge track- the original TT-3. It was built by Colin Cook and was indeed based on the proposed Ealing and Shepherds Bush branch which was authorised in the GWR's 1905 New Railways Act and would have run for just over four miles from Ealing Broadway via part of the Princes Risborough cut-off and the spur to the West London Extension Railway to a terminus between the Uxbridge Road, Caxton Road and Sterne Street (You can look it up) 

This is not the railway that actually started building from a junction to the east of Acton Main Line but is the railway that became, for all but its final half mile,  the route of what is now the Central Line to Ealing Broadway. Partly because of WW1 that line didn't open to passengers till 1920.

 

Shepherd's Bush GWR was ,according to Colin Cook's article, intended to  be a subsidiary terminus for suburban trains that were handled at Bishops Road Station (now Paddington's platforms 13 & 14) with a subway connection to the Central London Railway. In the end the plan was abandoned in favour of the CLR extending their line to join the GWR near Wood Lane and then running jointly to Ealing Broadway and to West Ruslip  (now the western end of the London Undergrond's Central Line).

This is one of the better "might have been" railways. The main reason it wasn't built was that the GWR saw greater benefit by allowing the CLR to extend its electric services to  Ealing Broadway where the connection from its suburban trains to London's West End and the City  was better. Given how rapidly the GWR came to this arrrangement with the CLR I do wonder whether it ever had any real intention of connecting with the CLR at its original western terminus at Shepherd's Bush which would have been the main purpose of its own terminus. StAlbans0107-0027.JPG.c796d5bcd02e1db4d8df35cc61c0f4fa.JPG

 

Colin Cook's layout depicts GW practice between 1925 & 1935. is about ten feet long with the scenic area on two 3 foot by 16 inch baseboards and the fiddle yard a five road sector plate that extends slightly beyond its three foot long base.  It does show the benefits of 3mm as a scale as it can operate with trains of up to five suburban carriages. One more than most Minories in a shorter length - points are no. 5 so a bit easier than Peco's 16.5 mm gauge StAlbans0107-0016.JPG.b5e336aa6a42703b4efdb2eb41b0eb10.JPGStAlbans0107-0031.JPG.05c4f962a5c5e611be3d5d7e886139ce.JPG   

 

 

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Something very similar was my Earl's Court layout. It assumed the LMS and GWR built a joint station just off the west London line to relieve some suburban traffic from Euston and Paddington. 

 

The layout appeared at over 50 exhibitions until being retired and sold privately in late 2019.

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1 hour ago, Sabato said:

Sadly, Colin Cook passed away on 28 November last. Much missed by the 3mm community.

Thanks for letting us know Sabato.  That is indeed very sad to hear. I only got to meet Colin Cook a couple of times when he was exhibiting Shepherds Bush but it was a very nice layout with a well thought out 'legend'. I can only offer my condolences to his friends. This sad news comes on top of discovering that David Curtis, whose EM gauge Casterbridge North was another Minories based layout, also passed away just a few weeks ago.

 

 

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17 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

Given how rapidly the GWR came to this arrrangement with the CLR I do wonder whether it ever had any real intention of connecting with the CLR at its original western terminus at Shepherd's Bush which would have been the main purpose of its own terminus. 

 

I think there was some jostling for position going on early in the game, because the CLR was looking at extending as far as Ealing as early as 1905. I reckon the GWR decided that it was only "fine with that" if it "got a piece of the action", and included the separate terminus in its application for the line as a sacrificial chess piece. I can't find the Act authorising the line via The London Gazette (I think it was bundled-up with lots of other GWR improvement works), and I don't think it achieved assent until 1911, by which time the two companies had a joint plan all worked out anyway.

 

 

Edited by Nearholmer
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18 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

 

I think there was some jostling for position going on early in the game, because the CLR was looking at extending as far as Ealing as early as 1905. I reckon the GWR decided that it was only "fine with that" if it "got a piece of the action", and included the separate terminus in its application for the line as a sacrificial chess piece. I can't find the Act authorising the line via The London Gazette (I think it was bundled-up with lots of other GWR improvement works), and I don't think it achieved assent until 1911, by which time the two companies had a joint plan all worked out anyway.

 

 

I have found it. It's on the Gov UK website as a downloadable pdf. It's called the Great Western Railway (New Railways) Act, 1905 and I found it with a DuckDuckGo search. Unfortuinately it's 11Mb and a facsimile not a machine readable text document so too large to attach here. You may find it here but it's a bit reluctant to download properly. 

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/1905/98/pdfs/ukla_19050098_en.pdf

 

 

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Thanks.

 

There were also two relevant Great Western Railways (General Powers) Acts, 1909 and 1910, then the Central London Railway Act 1911, plus extensions of time as well, which I waded through while trying to understand the history of the traction power supplies in the area, but I'm not keen to go through them again!

 

The upshot, incidentally, is that traction power came from the GWR generating station at Park Royal via a GWR substation called Old Oak Common, to feed the E&SBR.

 

 

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27 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Thanks.

 

There were also two relevant Great Western Railways (General Powers) Acts, 1909 and 1910, then the Central London Railway Act 1911, plus extensions of time as well, which I waded through while trying to understand the history of the traction power supplies in the area, but I'm not keen to go through them again!

 

The upshot, incidentally, is that traction power came from the GWR generating station at Park Royal via a GWR substation called Old Oak Common, to feed the E&SBR.

 

 

There were several "railways" in the 1905 act including the Aynho cut off. They included the section from Ealing Broadway to North Acton joining the line from Old Oak Common to Northolt, the section from that line to a junction with the West London Railway just east of Wood Lane and the line from a junction with that to the proposed Shepherd's Bush terminus. Meanwhile, the CLR had extended from its terminus at Shepherds Bush through its depot to a new station on Wood Lane that was in the form of a loop partly to access the Franco-British Exhibition site at White City and partly to increase capacity with trains no longer having to be reversed. It was from that station that the CLR extended itself to join the GW line but I don't know if they used the powers in the 1905 Act to do so. There were clauses in the Act about not disrupting the tram line along Wood Lane when they built a bridge for it to cross their line and, though the pdf of the act doesn't include the plans, I can't see the CLR line following a different route.

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14 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

It was from that station that the CLR extended itself to join the GW line but I don't know if they used the powers in the 1905 Act to do so

 

That connection is covered by the CLR 1911 Act.

 

This has quite a good diagram of all the stations at Shepherd's Bush https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Underground_Stations_in_Shepherd's_Bush.svg, but it doesn't show the not-CL bit of the E&SBR. I think the station in this thread would have been somewhere around Ariel Way, or the cottagey backstreets behind the CLR station (I used to travel frequently between the Holborn area and Wood Lane, so used to walk through those streets a lot!).

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Dear Messrs Pacific231G, Sabato, Terry ecmr, and Nearholmer,

 

1 / thank you for your detailed replies, and especially the photos, greatly appreciated.

 

2 / the Earl's Court layout also came to mind, and the photos of Earls Court are also appreciated .

 

Earls Court was frequently referred to as Kangaroo Valley by the Australian press, though Australians I knew who went to London were mystified about the reference, as on their visits, the number of Australians encountered at Earls Court were not noticeably greater than elsewhere, and could usually be counted on one hand.

 

3 / being 3mm scale, Colin Cook's Sheperd's Bush it is an interesting variation on CJF's original proposal, which was originally intended for Tri-Ang TT scale.

 

This layout stuck in my mind due to urban London look ( or at least that is how it appeared to me, my knowledge of " the London look" is primarily derived from British films, especially B&W ) , and the use of Bilteezi Card Kits, to make a realistic setting.

 

Thanks and regards, Tumut

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3 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

 

That connection is covered by the CLR 1911 Act.

 

This has quite a good diagram of all the stations at Shepherd's Bush https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Underground_Stations_in_Shepherd's_Bush.svg, but it doesn't show the not-CL bit of the E&SBR. I think the station in this thread would have been somewhere around Ariel Way, or the cottagey backstreets behind the CLR station (I used to travel frequently between the Holborn area and Wood Lane, so used to walk through those streets a lot!).

Colin Cook identified the locatiob of the proposed terminus and hence his model as 1.5 chains east of Providence Place (that's in the text of the 1905 act) located betweeen the Uxbridge Road, Caxton Road and Sterne Street but I don't know whether that was an identified address appearing on the plans or simply a point 1.5 chains east of Providence Place.  

 

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Its right in the "cottagey" streets I was referring to, and would have formed an extension of the goods/coal yard that was next to the WLL, roughly where Shepherds Bush WLL station now is ....... its very hard to believe now that there was a big yard there.

 

As you said earlier, a very good legend for a layout, one worth stealing!

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I've got a soft spot for the railways around Shepherds Bush as I used to be able to see down into the remains of the original Central Line loop station on Wood Lane from the top of the Television Centre multi level car park on the opposite side of Wood Lane. I also once worked in BBC offices in a peculiarly curved linear building a couple of hundred yards south od Shepherds Bush which was on the trackbed of the old LSWR line that once connected the West London Line with what is now the Picadilly Line towards Hounslow at Hammersmith. There

 

I've been delving through the maps in the NLS collection and 1.5 chains east of Providence Place puts the station behind the bottom of the gardens on the east side of Providence Place. The old Central Line station, which I'm sure you were very familar with, was on the corner of Providence Place and Uxbridge Road station with the first  few yards of Providence Place occupied by the start of the pedestrian overpass that used to cross Shepherds Bush Green at that point (It appeared in the opening titles of a couple of early series of The Sweeney) 

That would put the Ealing and Shepherds Bush terminus not in the "cottagey streets" but between the Central Line station and Uxbridge Road station on the West London Railway (now rebuilt more or less in its original location)   so roughly where the Shepherds Bush bus statiion and the south east entrance to Westfields Shopping Centre is today. That also ties in with some of the clauses in the 1905 Act that refer to property not being taken from the CLR and to the possible demolition of buildings fronting onto Uxbridge Road between the CLR and WLR stations

768685573_ShepherdsBush5fttomile1893-1896likelyterminusadded.jpg.73e5f2d67bdc9ca4a85d7570d27f94b0.jpg

 

This map is from 1895 so before the Central London Railway was built. I've highlighted the rough probable position of the GWR terminus in pink. it probably wouldn't have been that wide though and something like the Hammersmith and City terminus at Hammersmith is perhaps more likely. I've marked the actual position of the  original Central Line station in green.

That position also ties in with its junction with "Railway number 4" being 2 chains to the east of Wood Lane. which is probably a bit further east than the actual junction was with the CLR 

1346100045_GWR(NewRailwaysAct1905-rys234EalingShepherdsBush.jpg.db7be71837cb7ed0dfa5e5738511a648.jpg

 

I think Forsbrook Street must have been in the housing that was demolished to make way for the Westway which was going to be part of a hideous Motorway "Box"that would have torn down great swathes of London. This article from 2019 reflects on how narrow London's escape from Corbusier style "modernism" really was and how far too much of London didn't escape. 

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/22/concrete-bungle-how-public-fury-stopped-the-1970s-plan-to-turn-london-into-a-motorway

 

 

 

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7 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

That would put the Ealing and Shepherds Bush terminus not in the "cottagey streets" but between the Central Line station and Uxbridge Road station on the West London Railway (now rebuilt more or less in its original location)

 

Ah, I see. I thought it involved blitzing Providence Place.

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3 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

 

Ah, I see. I thought it involved blitzing Providence Place.

No. A few buildings at the Uxbridge Road End were demolished to make way for the CLR but the probable site of the GW terminus coincides very precisely with the Shepherds Bush entrance to the White City exhibition site. This was a large arch with a run of long low buildings that formed a covered walkway to the exhibition site which was on the west side of Wood Lane where Television Centre and White City Place (formerly the BBC Media Village) are now. I think it was more than just a covered walkway and had exhibits along its length. The exhibiton arch and the buildings behind it were still there, though very run down, when I first worked in the area in the 1970s and I'd forgotten how dominant it was. 

 

The walkway was at street level or above but, looking at the local topography, I think the GW station would have been below street level - just as White City station is now and at about the level or a little shallower that Colin Cook modelled it. The Central Line tunnels at Shepherds Bush are deep enough for that not to have been a problem. When I saw the layout, Colin told me that his low relief buildings were generic London rather than specific to the Shepherd's Bush area 

There is a fabulous collection of images of the area here

https://twitter.com/OldW12

They include a lot of old and not so old photos of the various stations around the bush as well as other local delights such as Cookes' Pie, Mash  and Eel shop on the Goldhawk Road that for me made an occasional change from the delights of the BBC Televison Centre canteen.

Cooke's shop closed in 2015 but the business is still with the same family and now delivers its traditional fare frozen by courier. For anyone basing a layout on the proposed GW terminus, I think a meal of Cooke's Pie and mash with the proper liquor would be the proper accompaniment to an operating session. I draw the line though at the equally traditional eels though they are the basis of the liquor which is an essential part of this most traditional London meal. 

Edited by Pacific231G
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