Older Inspirational Layouts

[PatB]

On 04/03/2021 at 07:37, SD85 said:

 

Thanks for the information. Given that the layout featured in RM nearly a quarter of a century ago and Mr Webb had already been living in Australia for several decades prior (according to the information he provided in the article), I guessed that he possibly would have passed on by now.

 

It's always been a station that really rewards modelling from a scenic and operational angle, what with engine changes,  the gradient from St Davids, light engine movements etc. The layout definitely held my imagination when I read about it.

Exeter Central seems to have been providing inspiration for a very long time. CJF was drawing condensed but prototypically operable versions in the mid-60s. 

[kevinlms]

9 hours ago, PatB said:

Exeter Central seems to have been providing inspiration for a very long time. CJF was drawing condensed but prototypically operable versions in the mid-60s. 

August 1962 apparently.

[Bulwell Hall]

On 13/06/2020 at 19:55, ICH said:

Just been clearing my workshop and here is the photo. Hopefully this is the layout you remember

 

Eric Hines is on the left, I am in the middle and Roger Cox on the right 

Good grief - that was a long time ago!

 

Gerry

[cypherman]

There used to be a display layout in a little seaside town called Mablethorpe(My Grandmother lived there and I spent nearly all my school holidays there as a child) in Lincolnshire. As a child it was huge. I seem to remember it had a curved wooden trestle bridge on one line that was about 6ft long and 2-3 ft high. If my memory serves me right . It was in what I think was an old garage or bus station and was about 50-60ft long and 15-20ft wide. Now this was in the early 70's. It unfortunately went when I was not there. I believe the owner died and his family did not want to continue with running it. But that was the inspiration for me for my model railways. Just wish I could find some pictures of it, But it seems to have vanished without trace.

Edited March 6, 2021 by cypherman

[Re6/6]

PD Hancock's Craig and Mertenford. I first saw it in an early 50s/60s RM (the small size) . It inspired me to move on from HD three rail. Does it still exist somewhere?

 

A bit later I saw 'Castle Combe with the Tyling Branch' by Ken Payne (?) in MRC with wonderful long GW trains! Much too big to ever replicate but inspirational. Does anybody have any pictures of it? 

[Neil]

19 minutes ago, Re6/6 said:

PD Hancock's Craig and Mertenford. I first saw it in an early 50s/60s RM (the small size) . It inspired me to move on from HD three rail. Does it still exist somewhere?

 

A bit later I saw 'Castle Combe with the Tyling Branch' by Ken Payne (?) in MRC with wonderful long GW trains! Much too big to ever replicate but inspirational. Does anybody have any pictures of it? 

 

Hello John, yes it does, or rather a bit of it does, in the hands of the Edinburgh & Lothians MRC. Link here. It's one of my all time favourites too, particularly in it's early version.

[RJS1977]

As mentioned, Dundreich station still exists and is operable.

 

Roughly 50% of the buildings from Craig also exist in the hands of E&L MRC, including the castle which was saved at the last minute from becoming a child's toy fort! Many of these buildings were retained by PDH when the C&M was dismantled to form a perspective backdrop to a 7mm layout.

 

Some other locos and rolling stock are held by another 009 Society member. Occasionally more items are discovered - E&L MRC discovered a year or so back that one of the C&M coaches had been sat on one of their layouts as a grounded body for a couple of decades!

 

 

[Donw]

40 minutes ago, Re6/6 said:

PD Hancock's Craig and Mertenford. I first saw it in an early 50s/60s RM (the small size) . It inspired me to move on from HD three rail. Does it still exist somewhere?

 

A bit later I saw 'Castle Combe with the Tyling Branch' by Ken Payne (?) in MRC with wonderful long GW trains! Much too big to ever replicate but inspirational. Does anybody have any pictures of it? 

 

I think there is at least one picture in the Peco book on Ken's layouts.

 

Don

[Re6/6]

1 hour ago, Neil said:

 

Hello John, yes it does, or rather a bit of it does, in the hands of the Edinburgh & Lothians MRC. Link here. It's one of my all time favourites too, particularly in it's early version.

Thanks for that link Neil. Yes it must have been the first version that was in that early RM. I still have it somewhere!

[dunwurken]

John

If you search P D Hancock Craig and Mertonford Railway that will take you to a thread on this site.   You can also use the same search on NGRM online and if you require any specific information please feel free to pm me.

Malcolm

[Ian Blenk]

Well, late to the party again;

I've limited it to layouts that I have actually seen.

• Ashleigh  Ian Futers
• Portleven Dave Howsam
• Benfieldside John Henry Wright
• North Shields  Chris Pendleton
• Ringburn / Ting Tong Yard
• Southallerton Peter English

Thanks Guys

 

[New Haven Neil]

1 hour ago, Ian Blenk said:

Well, late to the party again;

I've limited it to layouts that I have actually seen.

• Ashleigh  Ian Futers
• Portleven Dave Howsam
• Benfieldside John Henry Wright
• North Shields  Chris Pendleton
• Ringburn / Ting Tong Yard
• Southallerton Peter English

Thanks Guys

 

 

Hi Ian!

 

I think Southallerton was Phil English - I was an operator for him when just a teenager, he was in Shields club, died very early unfortunately.  I don't know Ringburn, seen the rest!

[Ian Blenk]

1 hour ago, New Haven Neil said:

 

Hi Ian!

 

I think Southallerton was Phil English - I was an operator for him when just a teenager, he was in Shields club, died very early unfortunately.  I don't know Ringburn, seen the rest!

Yeah my bad Phil English member Birtley Club 

[D-A-T]

Slight thread drift, as I never saw it,  but a layout I found inspirational was called Eastfleet by a member of the Wakefield MRC which I think the member gifted to them. It was a circular layout of a harbour branch in the east coast. It just captured the smell of the sea and secondary route nature of the line. Was in Model Railways magazine I think. Late 80s/90s?

[jcm@gwr]

4 hours ago, Ian Blenk said:

Well, late to the party again;

I've limited it to layouts that I have actually seen.

• Ashleigh  Ian Futers
• Portleven Dave Howsam
• Benfieldside John Henry Wright
• North Shields  Chris Pendleton
• Ringburn / Ting Tong Yard
• Southallerton Peter English

Thanks Guys

 

 

Was Ringburn a long 4mm layout?

[33C]

Top inspirational layouts for me has to be "Allied Marine", "Brookhurst"? and "Minories". Scrap, damp, dickensian arches and claustrophobic termini. Lovely!

[kevinlms]

2 hours ago, D-A-T said:

Slight thread drift, as I never saw it,  but a layout I found inspirational was called Eastfleet by a member of the Wakefield MRC which I think the member gifted to them. It was a circular layout of a harbour branch in the east coast. It just captured the smell of the sea and secondary route nature of the line. Was in Model Railways magazine I think. Late 80s/90s?

Model Railways 1991 January

[New Haven Neil]

8 hours ago, Ian Blenk said:

Yeah my bad Phil English member Birtley Club 

 

Yes, he moved to Durham and left SS club.  He lived in Salmon Street off Ocean Road.  Nice bloke, encouraged us young 'uns a lot.

[Gilbert]

7 hours ago, jcm@gwr said:

 

Was Ringburn a long 4mm layout?

Small and thin - very nicely done. Is it this one?

 

https://www.cmra.org.uk/exhib12/l67.html

 

RM April 2007

[Ian Blenk]

2 hours ago, Gilbert said:

Small and thin - very nicely done. Is it this one?

 

https://www.cmra.org.uk/exhib12/l67.html

 

RM April 2007

That's it!

2 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

 

Yes, he moved to Durham and left SS club.  He lived in Salmon Street off Ocean Road.  Nice bloke, encouraged us young 'uns a lot.

I saw Southallerton at a Newcastle Exhibition in 1973 I think. I thought it was brilliant.

With Ashleigh Ian Futers had asked me to help him at the 1971 Newcastle show with it. It was a trip to Damascus seeing what could be done in minimal space and a few turnouts, I've never looked back! In the early days in the NE there were only the three shows SS, Birtley, then Newcastle which  started in 1971. Each Easter my father used to take me to York show then a trip to the museum, happy days!

[New Haven Neil]

Southallerton (there were many versions) was fun, Farish Formoway track with points all operated by real mechanical levers, 3 link couplings (struggle with them in O now, never mind OO!!) and some clever kitbashed locos.  Phil was great to know, although controversial at times in the club.  IIRC he was a schoolteacher, maybe explained his good ways with us teenagers at the time.  Some happy memories there.

[PatB]

On 06/03/2021 at 19:39, kevinlms said:

August 1962 apparently.

Fair enough. My contact with the plans was via the 1967 publication Track Plans, but the contents of the CJF plan books always fairly clearly derived from older RM Plans of the Month, so I assumed a year or two's lag but didn't quite extend the window far enough backwards.

[kevinlms]

7 hours ago, PatB said:

Fair enough. My contact with the plans was via the 1967 publication Track Plans, but the contents of the CJF plan books always fairly clearly derived from older RM Plans of the Month, so I assumed a year or two's lag but didn't quite extend the window far enough backwards.

I have had a look at my books and magazines and found the following.

 

The original article in August 1962. This has the 25ft x 10ft track plan, which included St. James Park Halt (for Exeter FC apparently).

 

Next is my issue of Track Plans which is 2nd edition, first impression, July 1971.

It also states that the First edition 1964-1970, so it was 2 years between appearing in magazine and book format. Presumably that includes your edition Pat.

 

TP17 has the same track plan as it appeared in August 1962. TP18 is a condensed version, which still includes St James Park Halt, but is only 15ft x 8ft. A similar arrangement of the loops appears.

 

 

I also have 'The Modeller Book of Track Plans No.1, dated First Impression January 1989. This is a bit surprising, because CJF finished as editor in 1978!

 

However TP22 shows the condensed version of the station of TP18 as above, but there is some minor tweaks. The significant difference is the absence of the reverse loops for storage (these always looked rather tight to me) and replaced with upper and lower loops, with a turntable at each end. There is no provision for continuous running.

[Pacific231G]

5 hours ago, kevinlms said:

I also have 'The Modeller Book of Track Plans No.1, dated First Impression January 1989. This is a bit surprising, because CJF finished as editor in 1978!

 

However TP22 shows the condensed version of the station of TP18 as above, but there is some minor tweaks. The significant difference is the absence of the reverse loops for storage (these always looked rather tight to me) and replaced with upper and lower loops, with a turntable at each end. There is no provision for continuous running.

Hi Kevin

 

It's not surprising at all.  Leaving the editorship of RM was no bar to his working on other books for Peco Publications as a freelance author. He was also the author of the Railway Modeller book of 60 plans for Small Locations first  published by Peco in 1989 which includes many of his RM plans but others that I think were new (including a redrawn and slightly longer Minories)   

 

As editor of Railway Modeller CJF was an employee of Peco so they would own the copyright in the actual drawings of the track plans he produced as part of his job (I think it was one of his favorite parts of the job). After he left RM He was scrupulous about not republishing plans he'd drawn for it for anyone else. His plans for the Model Railway Design Manual published in 1996 by PSL (Haynes) are all new ones. "Watergate" is an interesting development of Minories but not the same plan.  He did use the Minories plan in his PSL books on wiring and signalling but anyone can redraw a trackplan without infringing copyright.

Edited March 9, 2021 by Pacific231G

[Nearholmer]

Talking of which, has anyone here present got a copy of the first edition of "60 Plans" that they would be willing to part with?

 

I used to have a copy, but I think I threw it away (!!!) about thirty years ago, when it seemed simply outmoded, and I thought I'd grown out of that sort of thing, so now the earliest one I have is the second edition, which actually isn't all that good.

 

 

Edited March 9, 2021 by Nearholmer