North West Frontier

[Mad Carew]

This will be a layout thread that will probably take a good while to reach the construction stage.  Rather, I expect that it will be largely taken up with refining the concept, questions or research, the practical implications of the plan, help sought and gratefully received.

 

The gentleman responsible for this project is Mr Paul Lunn of this parish.  We learnt from Model Rail issue 218 that the 1959 classic film North West Frontier is one of his favourite films.  It is also one of mine.

 

Without his article, however, I would never have considered the film as the inspiration for a model railway.  Now, I can’t stop thinking about it.

 

If you have neither read the article nor seen the film, I encourage you to do both.  In the meantime I would simply introduce the concept of a native rising in British India’s North West Frontier Province in the year 1905, which leads to a motley band in a little old train fleeing 300 miles along a mountainous railway route pursued by rebellious tribesmen.  

 

British India was vast, and there are any number of real places that could provide the setting for the fictitious places in the film.  In 1905 the British were still building forts to control Northern Waziristan.  To the South East was Balochistan, where railways fanned out from the town of Quetta, probing towards the Afghan border and one of the passes through which invasion might come.  The area included some stunning railway set-pieces such as the Khojak tunnel (4^th longest in the word) and the Louise Margaret bridge across the Chappar Rift.

 

To the north-east of the Province, the great garrison town of Rawalpindi, and lying between it and the Afghan border, Peshawar, with numerous garrisons, forts and cantonments, and railways!  Beyond Peshawar, the Khyber Pass.  There were no railways through the Khyber Pass at that date.

 

In these various regions, the mainline network of the North Western Railway, built to Indian Broad Gauge of 5’6”, was supplemented by narrow and metre gauge lines.  To include one would be to add interest and, in a strange sort of way, actually reflect the film, where the characters’ train changes gauge during the filming as a result of using locations both in India and in Spain!  If, like me, not having known that, you have watched the film and failed to spot the gauge discrepancy, use OO gauge for your 4mm standard gauge models, as EM and P4 will be wasted on you!

 

My major challenge, the one thing that could stop this modelling journey from being fun, fun, fun, all the way, is my decision to stick with the familiar 4mm scale, and to hand-build track and re-gauge RTR locomotives to represent Indian Broad Gauge.  The one concession towards practically would be to adopt a 21mm (as for Irish Broad gauge of 5'3") rather than 22mm gauge track, because I might to find track components and axles to suit in this gauge. 

 

So, perhaps it is time to post some inspirational shots of the old NWR:

 

[Edwardian]

Great premise (I, too, really like the film (must see it again) and enjoyed the excellent Paul Lunn article).  I have often thought about modelling Irish railways, but know too little on the subject and am put off by the gauge issue, so I will view your progress from that point of view, too.

 

Very impressive terrain and, but for the gauge and the cabs, those could be late Victorian locomotives on English railways.

 

Nice to see another pre-Grouping British outline project in 4mm scale!

 

It could be a real show stopper!

[Mad Carew]

The first place to consider is Haserabad.  This is the fictitious garrison town that the Governor and the military fear will not hold out until a relief force can reach it.  This is the reason why the Indian boy-prince and the Governor's wife are evacuated at the last minute.

 

In the film Haserabad is depicted as an ancient Indian walled native town, with the railway passing through inner and outer gates in the medieval walls. I could not find a precedent for this, and I reckoned it more likely, in any case, that the railway would run, not into an old native town, but into the military cantonments of a garrison town. 

 

My 'Haseradad' does not, therefore, resemble the film very closely, and I chose the garrison town of Kohat in Peshawar as my inspiration.  To give some idea of what I mean, I have drawn up a very crude plan. The scene is framed on the left by the fort.  This is not an ancient Indian fort, but a British-built fortification.  The station building is to be based upon Kohat Cantonment Station. The engine shed along the lines of Wazirabad. 

 

I like the idea of passing through the walls and, in order to retain the essential feature of the film's Haserabad, there are inner and outer walls.  The walls, like the fort, are of modern, if decorative, British construction.  The inner wall gates take as their model the blockhouses found on the fortified bridges of the province, such as Attock Bridge.  The outer gate looks to the road gates at the outer limits of Kohat cantonment. 

 

To the back of the scene could be the Governor's Residence, garrison church and cantonment bungalows.

 

The metre gauge line runs across the front of the layout.

 

I am a beginner, and I realise that my layout design will leave much to be desired, so any comments and suggestions would be welcome.   

[burgundy]

An "interesting challenge" and good luck. What sources of prototype information are available? I imagine that most of the system is actually in Pakistan now, although the railway museum in Delhi has this loco, which immediately reminded me of a Webb coal tank.

Did the North Western Railway have one of these?

Again from the museum in Delhi, this one is metre gauge and, if I remember correctly, built for the north east of India.

Best wishes

Eric  

 

   

[Legend]

Loved the film. Got it on DVD. I remember it was the big Christmas night film. It would have been 1970 I think. Great pics of the actual railway

[Dzine]

This will be a layout thread that will probably take a good while to reach the construction stage.  Rather, I expect that it will be largely taken up with refining the concept, questions or research, the practical implications of the plan, help sought and gratefully received.

 

The gentleman responsible for this project is Mr Paul Lunn of this parish.  We learnt from Model Rail issue 218 that the 1959 classic film North West Frontier is one of his favourite films.  It is also one of mine.

 

Without his article, however, I would never have considered the film as the inspiration for a model railway.  Now, I can’t stop thinking about it.

 

If you have neither read the article nor seen the film, I encourage you to do both.  In the meantime I would simply introduce the concept of a native rising in British India’s North West Frontier Province in the year 1905, which leads to a motley band in a little old train fleeing 300 miles along a mountainous railway route pursued by rebellious tribesmen.  

 

British India was vast, and there are any number of real places that could provide the setting for the fictitious places in the film.  In 1905 the British were still building forts to control Northern Waziristan.  To the South East was Balochistan, where railways fanned out from the town of Quetta, probing towards the Afghan border and one of the passes through which invasion might come.  The area included some stunning railway set-pieces such as the Khojak tunnel (4^th longest in the word) and the Louise Margaret bridge across the Chappar Rift.

 

To the north-east of the Province, the great garrison town of Rawalpindi, and lying between it and the Afghan border, Peshawar, with numerous garrisons, forts and cantonments, and railways!  Beyond Peshawar, the Khyber Pass.  There were no railways through the Khyber Pass at that date.

 

In these various regions, the mainline network of the North Western Railway, built to Indian Broad Gauge of 5’6”, was supplemented by narrow and metre gauge lines.  To include one would be to add interest and, in a strange sort of way, actually reflect the film, where the characters’ train changes gauge during the filming as a result of using locations both in India and in Spain!  If, like me, not having known that, you have watched the film and failed to spot the gauge discrepancy, use OO gauge for your 4mm standard gauge models, as EM and P4 will be wasted on you!

 

My major challenge, the one thing that could stop this modelling journey from being fun, fun, fun, all the way, is my decision to stick with the familiar 4mm scale, and to hand-build track and re-gauge RTR locomotives to represent Indian Broad Gauge.  The one concession towards practically would be to adopt a 21mm (as for Irish Broad gauge of 5'3") rather than 22mm gauge track, because I might to find track components and axles to suit in this gauge. 

 

So, perhaps it is time to post some inspirational shots of the old NWR:

A great start, wonderfully informative.  Wish we'd have had chance for a chat before the article went into print......could have added so much more.  But not to worry it's all here now.  I look forward to watching your progress as the project unfolds and anything I can do to help is there for the taking. Kind regards Paul  

[Dzine]

Hi Mad Carew,  Have just checked the film and it's clear that Captain Scott and all the rest of the soldiers were wearing uniforms with red trim to hat and cuffs by the time the train left Haserabad.  Scott's in straight trousers too!  Hope this helps.  Kind regards Paul

[Mad Carew]

Paul, thank you for your interest.  I was hoping you would come and stick around, as this is, really, all your fault!

 

I have to take this steady, there is still so much I just don't know.  Fortunately, it is a fictional version of the NWF, so anything I get wrong, or which is atypical, may be excused on that basis.

 

Part of the fun is learning about the various railway companies in India at the time. The company operating in the North West Frontier Province was the North Western Railway.  Eric, I believe that lovely little 0-6-2T dates from 1904 or thereabouts.  I am not at all sure whether it would have travelled to the frontier outposts of the NWR, but, in my world it certainly could.

 

What did the NWR look like?  Well, it had broadly British outline locos, the obvious visual difference being the cabs, and it had quite a tradition of sourcing locomotives from the Vulcan Foundry.  Do general arrangement drawing exists for these I wonder?  Before the advent of standard designs across Indian railways during the 1900s, Vulcan started supplying the NWR in the 1890s, and I am quite interested in these early orders.  

 

I read that the NWR modelled itself on the LNWR!  From circa 1904, if my information is correct, the NWR adopted lined black for its locomotives.  Another Indian company apparently closely followed LBSC livery!

 

In 1905, I suspect that the majority of locomotives still wore the older liver, whatever that was (!), but I could have both liveries represented.  I have seen preserved locomotives lettered NWR and one in a constituent company livery that are green, so I wonder if pre-1904 livery was green?

 

Coaches in 1905 would have presented a very great contrast to British outline coaches.  There were bogie coaches, apparently common at least as far back as the 1890s, and probably quite a few non-bogie coaches still around.  All had the characteristic wooden sun shades, like a deep canopy built out from the top of the coach sides.  The gap between the coach side and the sun shade was evidently deep enough to allow compartment doors to open inside it.  Cut outs at door height seem to have been reserved for the guard, perhaps so he could lean out and look up and down the train.  The passengers had to duck under the boarding to exit the coach.  Please see the two trains pictured in my initial post.

 

I have no information on coach liveries for this period, but, perhaps, it could be said that there were no liveries up to c.1905.  Suppose the framing of the doors and windows and the sun-shades were in a varnished wood, this would leave just the lower body panels and these were typically, and throughout India, painted different colours to denote the different classes, as an aid to the illiterate. Third class was usually white.  Second class green.  First class seems to have differed according ot the company; I have seen references to red, but also to ochre. I don't know the shade the NWR favoured for first class.  In one of the pictures in my initial post is a bogie coach with 2 different colours on the lower panels.

 

It was in 1905 that a revolution in Indian passenger coach design appears to have taken place.  That year the Great Indian Peninsular Railway introduced coaches without the sun shades, using materials integral to the upper coach body to achieve the desired effect.  They also abandoned the class colour code.  This allowed Indian coaches to look much more like contemporary British coaches, including characteristic beading and two-tone livery.  I have seen pictures of the NWR in the 1910s with such coaches,  and it is tempting to suppose they wore plum and spilt milk!  These British-style coaches are too late for our period, so we will stick to the sun-shade coaches common at the turn of the century.

 

I think what I must do is continue to collate information on the subject, while firming up my growing list of extravagant 'must-have' elements.  To combine these I may well need to enlist the expertise of Mr Paul Lunn (Paul, I hope your rates are reasonable!).  I would like to do so, as I really feel that this is as much his project as mine.  As I said, it's certainly his fault!

 

PS: Metre Gauge armoured train - that is tempting!

Edited February 28, 2016 by Mad Carew

[burgundy]

I read that the NWR modelled itself on the LNWR!  From circa 1904, if my information is correct, the NWR adopted lined black for its locomotives.  Another Indian company apparently closely followed LBSC livery!

 

Something like this perhaps?

Metre gauge, again from the Indian Railway Museum

Best wishes

Eric

[lezz01]

Hi there.

I think this is a great project. One thing is where are you going to source figures in traditional Indian dress from? 

Regards Lez.Z.

[Mad Carew]

Lez.Z, thanks.  As for your question, I have no idea, but give the challenges of hand-built track and re-gauging locomotives, I suspect that's the least of my worries!

[lmsforever]

Blimey you don't pick easy projects this will be a very interesting one lots of scratchbuilding and I expect plenty of curry to get in the mood.Nice photo of Sir Sydney Roughdiamond and of course his lovely lady will be somewhere around!

[t8hants]

IIRC the movie North West Frontier, or Flame over India to use its other title, was shot in Spain.

[Edwardian]

Partly shot in Spain, according to Mr Lunn's article (which I also read and enjoyed). Some of it was filmed in India.

[PhilJ W]

Hi there.

I think this is a great project. One thing is where are you going to source figures in traditional Indian dress from? 

Regards Lez.Z.

Mike Pett figures.

[brack]

1/72 native figures of various empire locations aren't too hard to find. If you're close to a military modelling scale you're generally ok.

Try building a Sudanese layout in 1/48 (I got part way, but had scrounged 3 figures after much scouring) Most of the military kits and figures in 1/48 are for planes, and they don't need much in the way of colonial civilians. 1/32 would also be a good scale for figures.

[Dzine]

IIRC the movie North West Frontier, or Flame over India to use its other title, was shot in Spain.

Hi there,  The films railways were partly shot in India but mainly Spain; 'Haserabad' station and the massacre scene early on in the film for the former.  Many film sites cite all sorts of inaccuracies as indeed do others, particularly with the blown up bridge, which has been wrongly located on every website I've looked at.  The film had a third title too for down under!

Hope this helps, if not send a message and I'll pass on more detail on my primary and secondary sources of reference.  Regards Paul

[shortliner]

Posted in Error

Edited March 1, 2016 by shortliner

[Mad Carew]

Am re-thinking the scale!

 

Figures might seem a minor factor, but could be one of the more difficult things to produce from scratch.  HaT 1/72nd military figures are really a little too big.  There would loom over the Andrew Stadden figures, which only give me European civilians.  There are some 20mm scale white metal war games figures, but some of these are fairly old ranges and a bit crude. 

 

Then there is the gauge.  Having received quite a bit of helpful advice, I am feeling a little less daunted by the prospect of re-gauging OO models. But I think the task of building track, even if successful, would make the whole process too slow. The concept demands a reasonably long run of track and several stations; it's not your average BLT.

 

That brings forth considerations of space.  The layout space is not settled, but it is clear that a smaller scale will help me to fit more of what I want in.

 

I am revisiting the 3mm scale option.  There is, I understand, some trade support for scenic accessories, and I believe that unpainted plastic figures are readily available in 1/100 scale, as this is a scale used for architectural models.  Armed with a scalpel and putty, I am sure I could do something with these.  Further, there are a number of 15mm scale war games ranges that ought also to be compatible.

 

Track would be ready to lay (hurray!).  I would imagine that the Peco Code 75 HO track would be fine.  The rail might be a bit heavy for the Indian rails in a smaller scale, but nothing too gross, and I am guessing that Peco's chosen sleeper length and spacing, such a bane for 4mm modellers, would not be so bad for 3mm scale broad gauge. The sleepers probably won't be that visible anyway.

 

It may be possible to find small-wheeled RTR locomotives that could be rebuilt to 3mm scale.  My major concern is that the smaller scale bodies might not accommodate the motors of most 4mm scale RTR bodies,  I need to get some locomotive drawings and scale them accordingly.  I cannot judge this as I find it difficult to think in an unfamiliar and smaller scale.

 

Finally, the fact that everything will be 3/4s normal length means that I can be more ambitious.  Perhaps there is scope for a plan that would encompass all my 'must-have' features in 3mm scale?

[Mad Carew]

On the complex subject of turbans, or puggarees, I have found a very useful site: http://www.militarysunhelmets.com/2013/turbans-of-the-indian-army

 

It quotes from Major R. Money Barnes, Military Uniforms of Britain & The Empire, (1960):

 

“The winding of military puggarees had become a skilled accomplishment and, throughout the Indian Army, there must have been scores of different styles, each instantly recognizable by those who knew them. The variety of patterns in one regiment was due to the class-company system, which dated from after the mutiny of the Bengal Army in 1857.”

 

Muslims are easily distinguishable by the cone-like Khulla (kulla).  I seem to recall the troops in the NWF film wearing kullas; this is certainly the case with Scott's Guides.

[Mad Carew]

Research continues - I did mention this would be a slow burn - with the arrival in the post of 2 books, Indian Locomotives, Part 1 - Broad Gauge 1851-1940, by Hugh Hughes (splendid name, humorous parents), and The Frontier Ablaze, The North-West Frontier Rising, 1897-98, by Michael Barthorp. 

 

Hughes's book is a comprehensive survey, and, thus, is unable to be very detailed, but it contains essential basic information.  For the North Western Railway it even has locomotive allocations for 1889!

 

I thought that I was to be modelling essentially British outline locomotives, and this is brought home at the opening of the book's preface; 94% of the locomotives put into service in India between 1851 and 1940 were built in Britain, with a further 2.5% assembled in India from parts manufactured in Britain.  In many ways I am embarking upon a British outline pre-grouping model railway.

 

The first of the BESA (British Engineering Standards Association) designs, introduced as standard across India's railways, were not introduced until 1904 (an 0-6-0 and a 4-4-0), so just squeeze into the period depicted by the North West Frontier film (1905).  Some standardisation of designs was apparent even before then, however, in designs such as the H Class outside cylinder 4-4-0 and the L Class 4-6-0, found on several of the Indian state Railways, including the North Western.

 

I now have a fairly good idea of the sorts of locomotives to choose, but as Hughes provides little more detail than coupled wheels diameter for the various types, there is still a long road ahead.

 

Why Frontier Ablaze?  Well, I had always intended to cover a wider period than just the year in which the film was set.  I said that I wanted to depict the NWR c.1896-1905, a decade. One of the reasons is that there were a number of NWF campaigns and expeditions from 1895, though nothing on this scale around the 1905 period.

 

The premise of the film, a large-scale rising coming about because a number of Muslim Pathan tribes join forces, was the stuff of nightmares for the British.  It did not happen in 1905, but it did happen in 1897.  The scenario in the film is really the British fear of a repeat of the 1897 rising.

 

The fly leaf of the book sums it up:

 

In June 1897 the ambush of a British-officered column by Madda Khel Waziris marked the outbreak of the greatest Indian frontier war ever fought by the British Raj.  Goaded by their priests, nearly all the Pathan tribes rose as one, across 200 miles of some of the worst campaigning country on earth.  It would take eight months, and more than 60 battalions supported by cavalry, artillery and engineers, to put down the great Pathan rising; and the enemy remained uncowed and deadly dangerous to the end.

 

Poor old Private Widdle!   

[Edwardian]

A fascinating, if rather challenging, project.  It brings home how little many of us know about British steam away from these shores, how much there is, both at home and abroad, to be explored, and how absurdly narrow the focus of the mainstream hobby.

 

Variety is the spice of life, and this project seems to promise both variety and colour.  I wish you every success with it.

[Mad Carew]

Edwardian, you are too kind, thank you.  I think if I can get to the stage of producing locomotives and rolling stock in 3mm scale/16.5mm gauge, the rest will be plain sailing, but there are research as well as modelling issues to be overcome.

 

I want to keep nodding to the film, and I notice that, on your excellent Castle Aching thread, you post a picture of the Electrotren 0-6-0T that Dzine references in his article, paired with a coach remarkably similar to that used in the film!  If I do a post about the train in the film, could I possibly borrow that image?

 

Dzine, I would like to post a copy of the drawing of the train in your article, would that be possible?

[Edwardian]

For sure, PM me.  Happy to be of service to this excellent and admirable project.

[Echo]

A fascinating project.

 

I did once consider yet another gauge/scale combination for something like this, which is 3.5mm scale on 18.83mm track - very slightly under gauge but you can use many 4mm scale components and the vast range of HO figures. Each to their own though - not seeking to change your mind!

 

Good luck!