Pig Lane or should it be "I am sorry"

[Clive Mortimore]

Seems to be a lot of bicycles on those photo's Clive.... Shall I send Smasher and the boys round!! :angel: ......Good to see you back in print mate!!

 

Disgusting of Market Harborouigh

 

Dear Disgusted in Market Where????

 

No need I seem to break things on my own quite well these days.

 

To everyone else

 

Dave's remark about the bikes comes from something I use to do as a little extra piece of entertainment at shows. Both Pig Lane (and Hanging Hill) had bicycles placed around the layout as well as the bike shed. I use to display a sign "How many engine drivers came to work on their bikes today? Count the number of bicycles." The kids use to enjoy counting the bikes, and everyone who counted them was given a prize of a sweet, even if they did not find all of them. One day a lady pointed out to me that a stange old man giving out sweets to children might not be the right thing to do in public. I had not thought about my innocent piece of fun could be copied by others with other intents. I find it a great pity that many social interactions between adults and children can be damaged by that very small minority of perverts. I know the kids enjoyed counting the bikes and I enjoyed seeing them compete with each other in trying to find the bikes. But the lady was right.

Edited October 14, 2012 by Clive Mortimore

[Peter Kazmierczak]

Hello Clive,

Pig Lane certainly captured the "look" and "feel" of an ER depot.

 

Regards,

Peter

[griffgriff]

Anyone who makes their own figures need not apologize for anything.... worth the column inches on their own

[Clive Mortimore]

Excellent, in the view of one who was a Fitter for much of my life at Eastern Region Glasshouse Depots (Frodingham and Immingham), you have done well in representing the environment around this type of instalation. An altogether enjoyable post.

 

Hi David

 

Thank you. It is nice to recieve positive comments from professional railwaymen as it shows the reseach has been in the right direction. At shows I would get drivers and fitters say "At my shed that would be done like this" but always in a helpful manner. The next time the layout went out it would incorperate my new information.

 

Conversley many modellers like to tell you your errors in an unhelpful way. At one show I had a modeller say something was wrong. I cannot remember what but as he walked away another chap said a non RM word and reassured me I had modelled it right because it just like the shed he worked at, to the approval of the other viewers.

[Oldddudders]

But the lady was right.

Not in my book. There is an enormous difference between some undesirable standing on streetcorners dishing out sweeties with intent - and a thoroughly accountable exhibitor at an exhibition where all kids will be accompanied by a responsible adult.

[Guest Phil]

Clive -

Thanks very much for creating this thread on here.

I have been admirer of your skilful use of plasticard and filler for years, partly because, I still have a little fear of metalbashing.

 

Is there any chance that sometime in the future you can show us some of your wagonry - particularly the anchor mount tank wagons you built some years ago please ?

 

Keep up the excellent work

[Crisis Rail]

You confess - It was you all along and you are to blame for it all.

 

 

Damn you.

 

 

 

 

 

(Brilliant work and an inspiration)

[Clive Mortimore]

Not in my book. There is an enormous difference between some undesirable standing on streetcorners dishing out sweeties with intent - and a thoroughly accountable exhibitor at an exhibition where all kids will be accompanied by a responsible adult.

 

Hi Ian

 

You and the lady are both right. Should anything happened to one of those kids who I gave a sweet to, I could be a potential suspect. "He was given sweets by a man at the model railway show". So stopping it did remove a risk from me as well. We have seen in recent days that someone doing charity fund raising wasn't all he seemed, and I am not talking about the cancer research funds raised by Lance Armstrong.

[Clive Mortimore]

Clive -

Thanks very much for creating this thread on here.

I have been admirer of your skilful use of plasticard and filler for years, partly because, I still have a little fear of metalbashing.

 

Is there any chance that sometime in the future you can show us some of your wagonry - particularly the anchor mount tank wagons you built some years ago please ?

 

Keep up the excellent work

You confess - It was you all along and you are to blame for it all.

 

Damn you.

 

(Brilliant work and an inspiration)

 

Cheers Phil and Crisis

 

OK Phil I will dig out the photos of them under construction and take some new ones of the finished ones. They may go on the Hanging Hill thread http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/61979-hanging-hill/

[Clive Mortimore]

Beware of dogma, in my experience of work at a number of depots, whether full time, covering odd shifts or passing through on the way to somewhere else to collect or drop off stores or tools etc. there was invariably no system wide concept of a prescribed way to do this or that. True there were such items as Regionally issued instructions as discussed elswhere on RMWeb, but there were often wide variations between depots depending on local customs, layout and equipment, you moved to another depot maybe only a few miles away and could be forgiven for thinking that you had ended up working for a completely different railway.

 

Hi David

 

I know what you mean. When I was a nurse we had a standard way a bed should be made ready for a patient coming from A&E, just the 30 ward sisters had a their own variation of this standard.

 

I am sure that as an apprentice each time you went to do a simple job the shift forman or fitter you were working with told you how to do different to the last bloke you were working with. That is human nature and would take this into account when railwaymen passed on their information but usally it did not conflict with what others had said. When it did I was normally able to say that another railwayman had said somethging else, with a responce "He must have been a Stratford man" and a smile.

[alastairq]

Hi Ian

 

You and the lady are both right. Should anything happened to one of those kids who I gave a sweet to, I could be a potential suspect. "He was given sweets by a man at the model railway show". So stopping it did remove a risk from me as well. We have seen in recent days that someone doing charity fund raising wasn't all he seemed, and I am not talking about the cancer research funds raised by Lance Armstrong.

 

 

I enjoy naturally extinguishing uptight parents' bonfires on 'trick-or-treat' night, by having to hand a very large bucket full of Haribos and gummies [bought in bulk, for not-a-lot, at a local factory shop]....telling the doorstep visitors to dig in and grab a handful....leaving the anxious parents to cope with the ingestion of all those hyper E-numbers!

 

 

Love the layout, BTW...and would like to know more about the older conversions and scratch-builds.....[yes, I am perverse at times!]

[BrushVeteran]

What you have managed to capture Clive is atmosphere. Anybody visiting Stratford diesel depot in the mid to late sixties saw exactly the type of thing you have modelled. Yes we have RTR models of most of the types now but it takes a certain type of skill and knowledge to harness this all together to create a working shed environment. You have everything to be applauded for and nothing to apologise for.

There are only two things I can see missing...........the Beyer Peacock/Brush D2999.......and perhaps an audio tape to go with it with recordings of some of Stratfords fitters finest engineering language! I was there the day D5518 was shunted into by a line of class 15's...............somewthing like Oh bother or words to that effect!

[Brush47337]

I too still have the original article from Model Rail and have to say "thank you" for being one of the first layouts that proved to me that fun can be had in a small space.

 

I waited 12 years visiting shows and collecting boxes for a "some day I may have enough space for a train set" layout. Your layout in Model Rail was a bit of a Road to Damascus moment for me and I realised - I should have ( could have ) found a space and just got started years earlier.

 

top quality and oooozing atmosphere and period detail.

 

this is nothing more than a shunned " me too" post - but your layout is a piece of modelling history and I for one wish to say I appreciate seeing it again in digital splendour.

[Clive Mortimore]

I enjoy naturally extinguishing uptight parents' bonfires on 'trick-or-treat' night, by having to hand a very large bucket full of Haribos and gummies [bought in bulk, for not-a-lot, at a local factory shop]....telling the doorstep visitors to dig in and grab a handful....leaving the anxious parents to cope with the ingestion of all those hyper E-numbers!

 

 

Love the layout, BTW...and would like to know more about the older conversions and scratch-builds.....[yes, I am perverse at times!]

 

That is wicked Alastair....Haribo's on the shopping list

 

As for the conversions and early builds, I can do some post on them. just give me a bit of time please.

[Clive Mortimore]

What you have managed to capture Clive is atmosphere. Anybody visiting Stratford diesel depot in the mid to late sixties saw exactly the type of thing you have modelled. Yes we have RTR models of most of the types now but it takes a certain type of skill and knowledge to harness this all together to create a working shed environment. You have everything to be applauded for and nothing to apologise for.

There are only two things I can see missing...........the Beyer Peacock/Brush D2999.......and perhaps an audio tape to go with it with recordings of some of Stratfords fitters finest engineering language! I was there the day D5518 was shunted into by a line of class 15's...............somewthing like Oh bother or words to that effect!

I too still have the original article from Model Rail and have to say "thank you" for being one of the first layouts that proved to me that fun can be had in a small space.

 

I waited 12 years visiting shows and collecting boxes for a "some day I may have enough space for a train set" layout. Your layout in Model Rail was a bit of a Road to Damascus moment for me and I realised - I should have ( could have ) found a space and just got started years earlier.

 

top quality and oooozing atmosphere and period detail.

 

this is nothing more than a shunned " me too" post - but your layout is a piece of modelling history and I for one wish to say I appreciate seeing it again in digital splendour.

 

Hi Brush and Brush

 

Thanks for the comments guys.

 

I learnt to do when trying to create both Pig Lane and Hanging Hill was to look at how it would be operated, that gives the track plan. That is the easy part, have a look at real locations and copy. Then modify to fit the space but do not include things that should not be present. In fact removing non-essential items is better. As for the scenic side look at photos but ignore the subject matter (the lump of metal on the track). For both track plan and scenic list what you see, cross out half the list and apply what remains to the track plan. It is too easy to add too much and that makes a model of a railway subject become a model railway at worse become a train set. I also find keeping focused on one railway, in my case the Eastern Region and one time span (1960-68) stops that "that would be nice to have" feeling I am sure many of us suffer from.

Edited October 14, 2012 by Clive Mortimore

[Clive Mortimore]

Anyone who makes their own figures need not apologize for anything.... worth the column inches on their own

 

Sorry Griffgriff I have not replied before.

 

I will need to take some more photos of how I make my own little people, I have some on the computer but they are so fuzzy even my eyes can't look at them for long.

[Clive Mortimore]

I for one would be very interested in that Clive

 

Hi Dave

 

Sorry for the delay in writting this up.

 

When planning Pig Lane I had studied many loco depot track plans and realised that most would not fit on a 6 ft 6ins by 1 ft 8 ins kitchen cupboard side. Before trying to cram too much in I had to work out what happened to a locomotive when it entered a locomotive shed. Now why does it need to go to the shed, apart from making it easy to trainspot loads of locos at the same time, and why was the shed there? Both these need to be taken into consideration at the same time. Locosheds where placed at concentration points of traffic, especially where trains would terminate. The reason for being there was to service the locomotives, many had the additional facilities to do various level of examinations and repairs to locomotives. In Colin Marsden Book “Life and Times of the Class 58” he describes what happens when a locomotive is required to go to the locomotive depot. First it is refuelled, sand boxes replenished, engine oil levels checked and any minor defects repaired. Further reading about what happens in a depot explained the differences between exams, how often they were undertaken and what work took place. Looking at track plans ranging from small locations to the Laira’s and Totton’s a common feature was the servicing area (fuel point), locos came in one way and were dealt with. They carried on in the same direction and then reversed on a bypass before going on to being repaired/examined in the shed building or placed in the sidings before going on to their next duty. Pig Lane had to reflect this.

 

 

Back to the track plan I need one that would fit in my limited space, one that did stand out was Ranelagh Bridge loco yard sitting outside Paddington. It had the through fuel point. How many depot layouts do not have this feature? I wish modellers would look at the real railway not someone else’s train set. If Sainsbury made their petrol stations like many fuel points on loco depots the customers would hate to be blocked in by the car behind them before they could reverse out. Railways where possible do not want to have locos blocked it. OK there were a few locations where the fuel points were dead end but these are the unusual. I wanted to include a loco shed building to undertake small repairs and B and C exams. Along with these parameters I need to know that it would all physically fit. A class 40 was used as my standard loco. Each siding is two or three standard locos long. The headshunt and entrance/exit are one standard loco long. One feature of loco depots is lines of locos buffer to buffer. Now in pre DCC days tracks had to have isolating sections to achieve this effect. Many failed by having section lengths for the longest loco. I worked out that sections of 4 inches would be best, a shunter is about 4 inches long, a Baby Deltic is 8 inches and a Type 4 just under 12 inches. So 4 inch sections worked, I just need to remember how many switches to throw. With a little reworking of Ranelagh Bridge I arrived at Pig Lane’s track plan.

 

 

It was easy to define how the locos would run. They would drive on from the fiddle yard stop by the fuel tanks, the driver go over to the shunter’s little shed by the tanks and be told which fuel road the loco would go to. It would drive on to the fuel point. At this point in time the driver and the second man would go and have a cuppa before taking there next loco off to work. The fitters would start to service the loco, refuel, fill up the train heating boiler etc. A exams were often undertaken while locos were being refuelled. The disposal crew would move the loco either to a storage road or the maintenance shed. After a while the loco would go off shed. No loco was allowed to pass the exit signal until the driver had kicked the secondman out the cab to telephone the signal box and let the signalman know they were waiting. To replicate all of this I used a pack of playing cards. Black cards locos coming on shed. Picture cards were for locos going from fuel point to the shed building after being refuelled. Red cards were for locos coming off shed, again picture cards for those in the engine shed. Aces were for the fuel trains, jokers for stores trains, sixes for double headed locos and sevens the loco had a brake tender attached to it.

 

 

Working out how I was going to operate Pig Lane and planning the track at the same time I think enabled me to achieve a model of a working depot. On its first show an ex BR driver and fellow Maldon club member, who normally saw me as the butt of his jokes, was quite surprised at what I had done and to this day his remark “He runs it like a real depot” will stick in my mind.

Edited November 18, 2012 by Clive Mortimore

[Clive Mortimore]

Having seen Mike Edge's latest kit the Ruston 88DS http://www.rmweb.co....125#entry852390 and made some comments on the thread I thought I would drag mine out. It was built for Pig Lane, it does appear in one of the overhead shots. It has not been part of Hanging Hill's stock as it is a NER locomotive and was very lucky not to have been disposed of in my downsizing operation. I thought it best to add it here as it was built for the Pig.

 

Built from plastic card and runs on a Tensodo power unit.

 

It never did get glazing, one day maybe. One of the problems with not regularly using models is they get damaged even in boxes. Note the broken roof and missing foot steps.

 

Ahhhhh just look at those wasp stripes.

 

I made a comment about Mike's model that it did not have the housing for the donkey engine on one of the engine room doors. I knew about this housing because I found out after I had made my model. Mike's kit will have both designs and the modeller fit the one most appropriate to their locomotive.

[rob D2]

Hi,

I love the layout. I'm all for depot layouts but they have to be believable like this one.

I think a major failure of alot is using unsuitable generic buildings or steam era infrastructure with the latest class 66s which they dont need anymore.

[Clive Mortimore]

Hi All

 

I have dug out some of my poorly taken photos. It must have been a day when Pig Lane and wandered across the regional boundary and found itself on the Midland.

 

I think both BRCW Bo-Bos were 33 converted.

 

A Wrenn Type 1, despite its multitude of faults it had a bulk to it like a real loco, something the Lima one never had so I always prefered my Wrenn locos to my Lima ones despite the howls of protest from my mates when operating at shows.

 

Cannot remember what I was preched on to take this shot, I bet 'elf and safety would have nightmeres thinking about it.

 

Growing up in Bedford, Peaks were my staple diet when transpotting. Still have loads for when Hanging Hill has a Tinsley moment. 

 

I enjoyed making this shed building more than I did Hanging Hill's. I think because it is smaller it was structurally stronger and therefore easier to handle. Having a 2ft by 1ft 3 ins building bending and twisting as you try to make it becomes frustrating.

 

The Knightwing fuel point, it is a lovely model of a NER fuel point, not an ER one.

 

 

 

[Clive Mortimore]

Found this photo of Pig Lanes first show in 1992, Jubilee Hall, Maldon.

 

No Idea who the guy with Mike Frazer is.

[Richard_A]

i can remember reading the article about this in model rail and thinking I'd like to make a depot like this one day, I used to like the look of another depot model I still have the article about called pretops, which along with this is a good model and very inspirational.

 

I especially like the scratchbuilt locos

[Clive Mortimore]

Cheers rka.

 

When I first saw Kevin Farrow's Pretops layout in the July 1991 Railway Modeller I did say "He's copied my layout". That was before Pig Lane went to any exhibition. The two concepts were very similar. A few years later we were both showing our layouts at the same show. We had a chat about how similar they were. Kevin explained he took his inspiration and track plan from a short article by Jeff Pugh that appeared in Rail Enthusiast. I have a photo copy of the plan but it does not say which issue of the magazine it comes from.

 

Do have ago at modelling a diesel depot.

Edited January 6, 2013 by Clive Mortimore

[Richardderby]

There is so much atmosphere in this layout. Really impressive and inspirational work.

[mullie]

Just found this thread, what a great layout. Real inspirational modelling.