British oak, Crigglestone, Wakefield

[mr miles 73129]

Good Evening folks

I am just in the process of planning my next layout (AKA thoughts in my head)

i am going to have a go at constructing the coal staithe onto the Calder & Hebble canal in the late 1960s to early 1970s which was part of the British Oak disposal point at crigglestone wakefield

i have obtained some infomation on the location such as a 1950s track plan of the area and photos from fotopic and verious other places

i have got the baseboards ready to go i could just do with a few photos of how the area looked back then as when i visited the other day its just lots of trees with a viaduct sticking out above them all

i found this site where a chap has had a go at doing one in 2mm scale but this hasnt been updated since 2006

http://markfielder.photobook.org.uk/c950326.html

my plan is to have the viaduct carrying the disused line over the top down one side of the layout to hide the break between the scenery and backscene with the crigglestone curve running on the enbankment in the back ground to add some interest whilst my jinty 47445 goes to collect some more wagons.

im also thinking of useing something along the lines of a faller car road system and fitting it to the bottom of my canal boats to have them moving under the coal drop, fill up then contine off again

just still thoughts in my head of how i can get the coal from the coal wagons down the shoot into the canal boat, i believe triang did a 20t coal hopper that had opening doors might have to look out for a few of those and some way of opening them without useing hands

if anybody can help eg: photos, a more detailed trackplan than i have or just infomation on it please let me know

i just want to make sure im going along the right lines before i spend lots of money.

thanks for your time

Cheers

Adam

[John B]

Adam -

 

You'll find some more info on British Oak in plans by Paul Lunn, in "Building Micro Layouts" and "Model Railways Planning and Design Handbook" - both published by Santona / Booklaw.

 

Good luck - it's an interesting project.

[Alex M]

I will have to keep my eye on this as I only live down the road from there.

 

Alex.

 

 

[2mmMark]

Crikey, was it really 2006 when I last updated that page! The layout has moved on a bit since then but it's still not complete. I wasn't happy with the handrails on the staithe, so they are being replaced with some Plastruct items and I'm using a Plastruct staircase which suits as well.

 

Maybe we should share notes Adam, I have a few photos and I'd be interested to see the 1950's track plan.

 

Mark.

[mr miles 73129]

Crikey, was it really 2006 when I last updated that page! The layout has moved on a bit since then but it's still not complete. I wasn't happy with the handrails on the staithe, so they are being replaced with some Plastruct items and I'm using a Plastruct staircase which suits as well.

 

Maybe we should share notes Adam, I have a few photos and I'd be interested to see the 1950's track plan.

 

Mark.

 

 

Excellent your pictures have served great inspiration to me to start this layout. even though its a smaller scale than mine its brilliant is the staithe made from plasticard? its brill

ill email you the trackplan either tonight of tomorrow as im going out for tea shortly

heres some pictures of my jinty 47445 too....

thanks again

Adam

[Dzine]

British Oak Coal Disposal Point is a great favourite of mine. I was fortunate enough to live quite near in the years preceding closure and often dropped in just to enjoy the location. If you can get a second hand copy of Scale Model Trains for April 1991 there's an article containing 9 prototype photo's (one on the canal staith itself in operation), a brief history, description and track plan derived from an NCB original. There are scale drawings of the canal loader in the Design and Planning Handbook (Santona/Booklaw) and an excellent account of canal operations in 'Ethel and Angela Jane', Smith P.L., Enterprise Publications, 1976. This book will be hard to get hold of and is almost certainly out of print. Wakefield library may still have a local history section. In my time there they had a specialist member of staff dealing with mining history and I think they might have had some involvement with a A4 homemade booklet, 'Caphouse to Calder Grove - The story of a colliery mineral line', by Till M., 1987. Hope this helps, look forward to seeing the model.

[halfwit]

You probably allready know this but there are photos of the staithe in 'Industrial Steam Album Album' and 'Industrial Steam Album number 2' both by M.J Fox and G.D. King.

The PSL book 'Structure Modelling' by Micheal Andress has 4 photos of a model of the staithe being scratchbuilt.

 

HTH.