Newharbour West - '70s Southern Region (3mm)

[Robedob25]

Hello everyone,

 

As 3mm is seen as one of the less common scales I thought it might be of interest if I started a new topic to document my journey to design and build my first layout, Newharbour West.

 

As you might have guessed from the name, Newharbour is heavily based on the former terminus of Bournemouth West. There is of course already a superb layout of the actual station, modelled in 4mm scale by The South Coast Model Railway Development Group. So with Newharbour I have instead set my sights of modelling what might have been had the station continued on into the '70s.

 

Having been included in the electrification project of the 1960s Newharbour West represents the end of the 3rd rail from Waterloo and as such would have seen a varied mix of traction, ranging from 4-Veps and 4- Reps ,with the latter having  split from their 4TCs at Newharbour Central, and diesel traction in the form of Class 33s and 73s. The station is also imagined to play host to services operating over the still open (but heavily rationalised) S&D, with long distance interregional trains worked by Class 47s and local services from Bristol worked by cascaded class 119s DMUs. The line to Salisbury via West Moors is also still open, although now only worked by Hampshire units operating a 2 hourly service. The line on to Ringwood and Brockenhurst has not been so lucky, having been closed and lifted.

 

The first challenge has been to create a space to house the layout. The garage was chosen and over the last year (somewhat delayed by COVID) I have had doors and a window added to the garage. I have then built an insulated room within the back 3/5ths of the garage, with the final room measuring approximately 11' 6" by 9' 3".

 

 

With the room nearing completion I've turned my focus to the trackplan and using templot have managed to come up with the following:

 

 

In the next few weeks I plan to finish the painting the room and get the floor laid so that I can begin thinking about how to best construct the baseboards. 

 

I hope you have found this of interest and I would welcome any advice, thoughts or suggestions.

 

Happy modelling,
Rob

Edited February 24, 2021 by Robedob25
Grammar error

[bradfordbuffer]

56 minutes ago, Robedob25 said:

Hello everyone,

 

As 3mm is seen as one of the less common scales I thought it might be of interest if I started a new topic to document my journey to design and build my first layout, Newharbour West.

 

As you might have guessed from the name, Newharbour is heavily based on the former terminus of Bournemouth West. There is of course already a superb layout of the actual station, modelled in 4mm scale by The South Coast Model Railway Development Group. So with Newharbour I have instead set my sights of modelling what might have been had the station continued on into the '70s.

 

Having been included in the electrification project of the 1960s Newharbour West represents the end of the 3rd rail from Waterloo and as such would have seen a varied mix of traction, ranging from 4-Veps and 4- Reps ,with the latter having  split from their 4TCs at Newharbour Central, and diesel traction in the form of Class 33s and 73s. The station is also imagined to play host to services operating over the still open (but heavily rationalised) S&D, with long distance interregional trains worked by Class 47s and local services from Bristol worked by cascaded class 119s DMUs. The line to Salisbury via West Moors is also still open, although now only worked by Hampshire units operating a 2 hourly service. The line on to Ringwood and Brockenhurst has not been so lucky, having been closed and lifted.

 

The first challenge has been to create a space to house the layout. The garage was chosen and over the last year (somewhat delayed by COVID) I have had doors and a window added to the garage. I have then built an insulated room within the back 3/5ths of the garage, with the final room measuring approximately 11' 6" by 9' 3".

 

 

With the room nearing completion I've turned my focus to the trackplan and using templot have managed to come up with the following:

 

 

In the next few weeks I plan to finish the painting the room and get the floor laid so that I can begin thinking about how to best construct the baseboards. 

 

I hope you have found this of interest and I would welcome any advice, thoughts or suggestions.

 

Happy modelling,
Rob

Looking forward to further updates..12mm or 14.2mm?

With lenny locos some good stuff coming  on stream

Is  layout permanent or exhibition style 

Cracking man cave..

[Robedob25]

18 hours ago, bradfordbuffer said:

Looking forward to further updates..12mm or 14.2mm?

With lenny locos some good stuff coming  on stream

Is  layout permanent or exhibition style 

Cracking man cave..

Thanks Bradford, 

 

The layout will be built in 14.2 using the 3mm society's flexitrack. 

 

You're quite right about Lenny, I need to acquire some of his class 33 bodies so I can produce  a mix of 33/0s and 33/1s.

 

The layout will primarily be a home one, but I do intend to build it so I can exhibit it also. In "exhibition" mode I think the layout would be set up as an L, with the second half of the horseshoe curve replaced by an additional straight baseboard leading to a fiddle yard off the bottom right edge of the page. I suppose the other option though would be to exhibit it as the horseshoe but with a backscene fixed to the inside edge of the layout and the backscene on the other edge removed.

 

The room has been a real labour of love, I don't think I quite appreciated how much work it would be to do things like the plastering, painting and floor laying when I first started!

 

Happy modelling,

Rob 

[Mike Storey]

I look forward to further news of this - any SR layout is welcome here!!

 

[Robedob25]

Evening all, 

 

The layout room took another step forward this weekend, with the walls and ceilings having been sealed and painted. Next step will be to clean up the floor, get the underlay down and then the floor!

 

 

Whilst waiting for the coats of paint to dry I also took the opportunity  to read through some old working timetables to better understand the services that operated through Bournemouth in the '70s. Rather helpfully, i've discovered that even without the  accompanying Carriage Working Notices its quite easy to work out what services were worked by what as the timetable indicates the traction type, which around Bournemouth was either a diesel locomotive (DL), electro-diesels (EDL), 4-Rep (PP), 3H (DEMU) or where blank the only other candidate would be a 4-Vep!

 

 

Using this information I've made a start on putting together what the sequence could be for Newharbour, which includes the S&D and Salisbury services:

 

 

 

Happy modelling,

Rob

[ikcdab]

Great stuff. I look forward to seeing this develop.

[pwr]

Rob

 

I have often speculated what would have happened had the S and D not closed and the proposed new tunnel under Bath had been built so traffic could use Bath Spa or the new station proposed slightly further down the line. Would it have been part of today's cross country with Voyagers making their way north via Bristol with local trains in the hands of 166's.

 

Paul R

[Ian Smith]

Rob,

I look forward to seeing your project develop - hopefully in our zoom meetings.

Ian (one of the 2mm Midland Area Group)

[Robedob25]

7 hours ago, pwr said:

Rob

 

I have often speculated what would have happened had the S and D not closed and the proposed new tunnel under Bath had been built so traffic could use Bath Spa or the new station proposed slightly further down the line. Would it have been part of today's cross country with Voyagers making their way north via Bristol with local trains in the hands of 166's.

 

Paul R

 

Hi Paul,

 

Great minds think alike. Although I didn't realise there had once been plans for a tunnel under Bath to provide a better connection. Do you have any details of this you could share?

 

In my fictitious history for Newharbour I've imagined that as part of the Southern keeping hold of the S&D the regional managers came up with a bold plan improve the fortunes of the line, although through some very strict triage.  Having looked at the various stations on the line and where in particular the bottleneck single line sections are I've come up with the idea that the Southern Region only kept open stations that were on the double line sections and that were sufficiently populous (based on current population) to warrant the station staying open or that were the logical point for a token exchange to take place for the single line sections. My triaged station list for local services is therefore as follows:

 

 

One further thing to add is that I've imagined that the other single line sections that existed were doubled during the second world war to support increased capacity on the line. Looking on oldmaps.com its appears that the S&D built some single line sections in such a way that they had enough space to be doubled later if required. A stretch perhaps but it fits the narrative I'm trying to create for why the S&D was retained.  

 

For the through interregional services I've assumed they would only call at major stations and the token exchange stations to achieve the fastest  time possible across the line:

 

 

 

On a related note I carried out a similar exercise for the line to Salisbury:

 

 

Let me know your thoughts.

 

Happy modelling,

Rob

  

 

 

Edited March 1, 2021 by Robedob25

[Robedob25]

5 hours ago, Ian Smith said:

Rob,

I look forward to seeing your project develop - hopefully in our zoom meetings.

Ian (one of the 2mm Midland Area Group)

 

Thanks Ian,

 

Absolutely, I find the zoom meetings really inspiring.

 

Rob

[Mike Storey]

On 01/03/2021 at 23:31, Robedob25 said:

 

Hi Paul,

 

Great minds think alike. Although I didn't realise there had once been plans for a tunnel under Bath to provide a better connection. Do you have any details of this you could share?

 

In my fictitious history for Newharbour I've imagined that as part of the Southern keeping hold of the S&D the regional managers came up with a bold plan improve the fortunes of the line, although through some very strict triage.  Having looked at the various stations on the line and where in particular the bottleneck single line sections are I've come up with the idea that the Southern Region only kept open stations that were on the double line sections and that were sufficiently populous (based on current population) to warrant the station staying open or that were the logical point for a token exchange to take place for the single line sections. My triaged station list for local services is therefore as follows:

 

 

One further thing to add is that I've imagined that the other single line sections that existed were doubled during the second world war to support increased capacity on the line. Looking on oldmaps.com its appears that the S&D built some single line sections in such a way that they had enough space to be doubled later if required. A stretch perhaps but it fits the narrative I'm trying to create for why the S&D was retained.  

 

For the through interregional services I've assumed they would only call at major stations and the token exchange stations to achieve the fastest  time possible across the line:

 

 

 

On a related note I carried out a similar exercise for the line to Salisbury:

 

 

Let me know your thoughts.

 

Happy modelling,

Rob

  

 

 

 

I like that scenario - it fits with Rule 1! Will you also be imagining that the third rail got that far, at least from Poole? That would allow a greater variety of stock!!

[Robedob25]

3 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

 

I like that scenario - it fits with Rule 1! Will you also be imagining that the third rail got that far, at least from Poole? That would allow a greater variety of stock!!

Hi Mike, 

 

I do indeed intend to include 3rd rail.   As a location Newharbour would of been between Poole and Bournemouth, so my assumption is that during the 1960s electrification project Newharbour west was at the very end of the electrification. I've also assumed budgets would of been tight and therefore the there wasn't enough to resignal the station as well as electrify it, so the station would of have retained its semaphores.

 

Stock wise the list is looking like the following so far-

 

Locos:

• Class 47s - Working interregional trains from Newcastle, Liverpool, Manchester etc.
• Class 33/0s - Used to work parcel trains, regional services from Cardiff (via the S&D), Motorail and engineering trains etc.
• Class 33/1s - Working some of the very late and early push pull services between Newharbour West and Weymouth. I also plan for there to be some through worked 4TC sets to/from Swanage. 
• Class 73/1s - working parcel trains and engineering trains.
• Class 09s - General shunting duties, ECS moves to/from the carriage sidings etc. 

EMUs:

• 4 Reps - Express services
• 4 Veps - Stopping services
• Departmental stores unit (ex 4 SUB vehicles)

DMUs/DEMUs:

• Hamshire units (3H) - Operating the shuttle service to Salisbury
• Class 119 - Operating the local S&D service to Bristol

Unfortunately all the above will have to be built, but thankfully in 3mm there is quite a lot of kits already out there to choose from. Worsley works in particular have the multiple unit and coaching stock well covered in their range.

 

Happy Modelling,

Rob