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Pre Grouping layouts


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While admiring pre-grouping EM and P4 layouts, for practical reasons I stick to OO for my attempts at 'entry level' pre-grouping.  I recalled a fine layout that showed how a bit of pre-grouping flair could be achieved in the popular gauge to the great encouragement of duffers like me.  It was by a gentleman called Robert Tivendale and called Ashley Bridge.

 

I tried to find some pictures of the layout, but only managed to find the following Ashley Bridge pictures; neither of which was quite what I had in mind.  Can anyone help?

 

 

 

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Chris, you are kind to suggest it, but all I have is a row of cottages that have yet to receive gardens.  As I am planning to move house it could be months before I have a chance to produce baseboards.  As it will be a freelance line set around the turn of the Century, it will certainly be pre-grouping era and I will post in Layout Topics and link here once things start to take place.

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While admiring pre-grouping EM and P4 layouts, for practical reasons I stick to OO for my attempts at 'entry level' pre-grouping.  I recalled a fine layout that showed how a bit of pre-grouping flair could be achieved in the popular gauge to the great encouragement of duffers like me.  It was by a gentleman called Robert Tivendale and called Ashley Bridge.

 

I tried to find some pictures of the layout, but only managed to find the following Ashley Bridge pictures; neither of which was quite what I had in mind.  Can anyone help?

Ashley Bridge was 'Railway of the Month' In Railway Modeller, November 1979.  According to the author, the period was kept vague to allow running a wide cross-section of stock from the turn of the century to the 1930s.

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I'm not keen on vague periods, or locations. It's as though it was so long ago that no one really cares about accuracy, just about seeing quaint olde trains and ornate liveries, with people in old fashioned clothes, and horses but no cars! Much as I liked what Mike Sharman did in some ways, to take an extreme example, he modelled something that never existed in anywhere near that form. It's what you see on a train set, not a model railway :nono:.

 

I've been through all my built and unbuilt EM gauge locos and rolling stock, and weeded out the out of period items, so what appears on the next layout will have existed in 1905 as far as possible, and there was a fair chance may have been seen in more or less the same location. I've given my 1906 built loco coal wagons the benefit of the doubt for now, and need to check on a few non GWR wagons. The 1930s/40s RTR stuff will go, get converted back to OO and run on my 1958/60 Ingletyme, or turned into something weird, quirky, silly, freelance O-16.5 or similar!

 

I know it's not easy to stick closely to a period and location with limited products available, and a lot of what exists is in the form it ran in much later, so compromises have to be made. I've got an assortment of broad gauge kits from a variety of dates, and if they all get built I'll end up with a mix that never existed, so that's something I need to work on.

 

With my latest dabble in 7mm scale, I picked a date and location, and decided that if I was starting with nothing I could make sure I only build or buy the correct stock. Then I was given some coaches, and started buying cheap (well cheapish for O gauge!) wagons on eBay, some of which doesn't fit the criteria! A home for some of the oddities will be revealed to the world very soon!!!

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Likewise Macclesfield MRC's Butley Town.  They used to run a fully-lined Great Western Railmotor, appeared generally Grouping in a vaguely inter-war way, but with a post-war policeman and Zebra Crossing, with standard issue '50s school children (Merit in both cases) and road signage that, while it had its origins pre-war, would probably not have reached such a location in the '30s.  A truly fine example of 'finescale OO' (for those who permit such a term), with lovely track, but solecisms included the rendering of all the architecture in Western Region chocolate and cream!

 

In the innocent world of c. 1975-85, nobody seemed to mind and they all had fun.  We had fun reading of their efforts; I remember drooling over pictures of this layout in full colour in the late lamented Contsructor.

 

Actually, I posit two layout schemes for my own consideration; one a prototype location set in a specific 2-week period in a particular year, the other, fictitious, providing a span of at least a dozen years and being geographically ambiguous enough for me to run everything that cannot run on the first mentioned. Once I have world enough and time ... 

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Of course an exception to sticking to correct dates, if I can find a suitable model, would be a German Shepherd appearing on my 1905 and mid 19th century layouts. The breed didn't exist until 1899, and as far as I know wasn't discovered by us Brits until WW1! A little test to see if anyone notices :sungum: .

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I think that the breed must have been in the UK before WW1. UK breeders decided to change its name to Alsatian because "German Shepherd" wasn't politically acceptable during the war. They wouldn't have needed to change it if they weren't already in the country.  :)

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As I understand it, they were first seen at work in the trenches in WW1, but I'm not sure their need for their own sofa was discovered there! I think they were originally named Alsation Wolf Dogs when they arrived here, as the German association wasn't popular after the war, but the Wolf bit didn't go down too well either, so they became Alsations, although they have no connection with Alsace. If I come across a decent model I'll have one regardless!

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Does anyone question your sanity when you refer to one of them as the green dog? As the nearest I'm getting to a Brighton loco is a Terrier in K&ESR blue, I must paint one of my rather more freelance locos Improved Engine Green, so I can have arguments with people about the colour :jester:.

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I'm not keen on vague periods, or locations. It's as though it was so long ago that no one really cares about accuracy, just about seeing quaint olde trains and ornate liveries, with people in old fashioned clothes, and horses but no cars! ............................ It's what you see on a train set, not a model railway  .............................

 

I've faced exactly this problem in trying to convert my 'train set' into a representation of a late 19th-centry railway!  Sometimes there are pleasant surprises, like finding that level crossing gates acquired something like their recent form, way back in the 19th-century.  More often, though, there are many pit-falls and it is surprising how quickly information is lost!  GWR red wagon livery is. perhaps, a prime example but there are so many details that have changed beyond recognition.  No yellow arms or lights for distant signals, for example, and, before 1895, no green lights either - white for 'all clear'.

 

There are memories from my own childhood that are difficult to verify nowadays.  For example, I remember the refuse collection being by horse-drawn carts, which a lorry would pick up at intervals and take to the local 'tip'.  It took quite a lot of searching to find that this was the 'Pagefield system', used in parts of London and in the North of England.  For a while I had thought it was just my imagination!

 

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How many of today's commonplace sights will tax the minds of historians of the future?

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When you consider how well documented and photographed the 19th century was, there's still vast amounts of missing and unknown information! Maybe today will be even worse in 100-150 years time, as so much of what is recorded is digital.

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Ashley Bridge was 'Railway of the Month' In Railway Modeller, November 1979.  According to the author, the period was kept vague to allow running a wide cross-section of stock from the turn of the century to the 1930s.

The 'other' Ashley Bridge looks like she could be "Model of the month" in a different type of modelling magazine!!!

More seriously,

I am slowly building what I call a "Pre grouping" German layout based somewhere completely fictitious in Prussia, does that count?

Cheers,

John E.

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Pre Grouping isn't a very useful term for me, as the GWR carried on and just absorbed some companies in 1923, and the Kent & East Sussex was independent until nationalisation. The grouping that had the biggest effect was in 1876 when the GWR, Bristol & Exeter, South Devon and Cornwall Railways merged, and I'm not sure if my broad gauge layout is pre or post that one yet! The layout I'm just starting on wouldn't have been grouped either, as it's a mixture of industrial and narrow gauge.

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Mr Stroudley said it was green, and I think you should respect that!  My dog is a not dissimilar shade of "green".

 

Terms are interesting.  We all need to pigeon-hole for the sake of order and brevity, yet they can cause difficulties!  For instance, from the enviable position of complete indifference,I have watched people bicker endlessly over the term 'Modern Image'; what it means, to which period it should be applied, whether it should still be used or should ever have been coined!  BG John makes a fair point about 'pre-grouping'.  Presumably, if you were London & North Western inclined, for instance, you could happily regard 1846 as the Grouping, whereas pre-grouping would be the days of the London and Birmingham, Manchester and Birmingham and Grand Junction Railways!

 

Anyway, I'd like to see a Prussian layout (pre or post Unification, surely?)

 

I'm pretty relaxed about the terminology, provided that you use nothing so misleading and so imprecise as to be worse than useless as the egregious 'Era' system that Bachmann has attempted to foist upon the British Outline scene!  There, we all have our pet hates!

 

As to the second Ashley Bridge picture I found, if I were considering opening a model shop, I might ask her to pose provocatively with the stock, smouldering over a Pullman, perhaps, or stroking a Pendolino (whatever one of those might be).  You could work in some sophisticated wordplay around the word "model", as John E suggests.  You never know, it might catch on.

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I'm pretty relaxed about the terminology, provided that you use nothing so misleading and so imprecise as to be worse than useless as the egregious 'Era' system that Bachmann has attempted to foist upon the British Outline scene!  There, we all have our pet hates!

 

Couldn't agree more, a truly dreadful system. A pet hate of mine too.

 

Jerry

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I know it's not easy to stick closely to a period and location with limited products available, and a lot of what exists is in the form it ran in much later, so compromises have to be made. I've got an assortment of broad gauge kits from a variety of dates, and if they all get built I'll end up with a mix that never existed, so that's something I need to work on.

 

Even scratch building almost everything has to be a compromise. I chose 1906 but simply cannot stick to it as the information available will not let me get everything, anything? I build to be a true representation of how it was in that year. I think we have to accept that we can model a particular item of rolling stock accurate to a photograph taken in our chosen period but unless everything else around it was photographed on the same day then we have be content with a compromise. I still strive for accuracy but I don't think it worthwhile losing sleep over it! Modelling should be fun.

Ian.

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I work around the 1900 period and like BG John I tend to think as modern image starting at WW1 as well. But I try to keep flexible and base my modeling on a loose period from about 1895 to 1910. this was the high point of many of the pre grouping company's the war taking its toll and the grouping coming as a blessing to many.

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Yes, strangely, I have a great reluctance to move past August 1914; when I think of pre-grouping, I think of pre-Great War, I suppose because this was the heyday, before the War took its toll.  Though I read that some of the best locomotive performance was achieved meeting the traffic requirements of the war, we all know that this came at a cost.  Post-war pre-grouping has less appeal, as does post WW2 pre-Nationalisation or Transition Era or "Death Steam".  I suppose I am a heyday rather than a fag-ends enthusiast!

 

From c.1895, by which time most of the familiar (to us) elements of the steam-age railway were in place, to 1914, is the most varied and colourful era, IMHO, though I do have a soft spot for that last great brief blaze of glory of the '30s, before it, too, was cut short.

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I have a soft spot for the end of WW1 to 1923 when many railways were getting back on thier feet after the war, introducing new designs

of locos and carriages.

 

For example the LSWR running out of London to the West Country had the big new modern outside cylinder N15 4-6-0 that were to

become the King Arthur class and longer corridor coaching stock in a new green livery. 

 

Meanwhile the busy London suburban lines where being converted into efficient electic railways.

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