Ouseburn Park RMT

[Ragtag]

Hi all,

 

with our daughter now 7 months old things are settling down at chez Ragtag, and I now know what space is available for a layout in the foreseeable future. More details to follow, but the plan for Ouseburn Park is as follows.

 

The layout assumes an alternate history where, predating the establishment of Railnet, a dedicated mail terminal was constructed in the vicinity of Newcastle Airport. When Railnet was established this facility became part of the network, and Low Fell was never built. Main features of the layout will include:

-Rail/road sorting and exchange facility for mail and parcels

-Industrial park (currently thinking a couple of small bus depots here)

-Over-bridge Metro station something akin to the one in South Shields

-3 operating eras which, although all existing within a decade of each other, will allow significant changes to the stock run on the layout: Early-Res (1991-2), Late-Res (1995-6) and EWS (2001-02).

 

The attached Metro map gives an idea of the location of layout, the fictional Metro station being added to the green line to the airport:

 

[David Todd]

Nice idea, I would normally, get off at Benton, where my mother live's.

[5BarVT]

Ouseburn probably doesn't give the right image to me as it was a right smelly thing 50 years ago. It ran past the bottom of our road when I was a child (between Armstrong Bridge and Byker Bridge) but I had never actually worked out where it came from so never associated it with that part of the Metro. Claytons on trip workings and metrocam DMUs in my day.

Paul.

[HillsideDepot]

-Industrial park (currently thinking a couple of small bus depots here)

 

 And weren't there lots of them in Tyne & Wear in the years immediately after de-reg!

 

There seemed to be little operators all over in my student days, not to mention the larger ones like OK Travel and Tyne & Wear Omnibus Company. It was certainly a good place to study public transport, formally at Newcastle Polytechnic and then "for real" out on the local roads.

 

I remember one trip from the northern boundary of T&W to Newcastle where Northumbria, Target and plain white "I'm not really a Northumbria" buses would follow each other along. I can't remember which order they actually appeared in, but we let the first two go past and caught the third. A short way down the road and we'd over taken the other two, so with a safe gap opened up we bailed out, let the second go past and caught the one which was then 3rd. And a bit further down the road we were in the lead again and repeated the process, finally catching the bus we'd already refused twice, much to the puzzlement of the driver!

 

The Network Travel Tickets allowed for that sort of fun, but the only down side of such escapades were the "bleep-bleeps" T&W survey staff who monitored ticket usage using bar-code readers which bleeped each time they read a code. On a busy bus they'd not get round between stops so would ask "where did you board?" and then "where are you travelling to?" - as if we knew when we were leaping on an off buses whenever we saw something interesting coming the other way! Although, to be fair, we used to occasionally spend a day covering all the ticket zones, changing buses in each one and on one such day we were somewhere out beyond Blaydon at the boundary when a bus with a surveyor on turned up. As we were the only passengers and we had a fair trip across the zone we got chatting and he was soon reeling off memorised timetables as he suggested a series of good changes, to cover the whole western area!

 

Happy days, and sorry for filling your thread with ramblings!

 

 

 

[Ragtag]

No worries Adrian, I do miss the variety of operators and vehicles. All I ever seem to see thesedays are Arriva Enviro 400s.

 

Anyway, here's the current plan for the layout:

[Ragtag]

Here's a mockup showing the platform ends with the road loading bays. Don't worry about the stock, I try to avoid using 'the good stuff' during the planning and construction phases in case anything gets damaged. That said, 47808 is in the middle of a long-term refurb to try and get it looking passable without losing the character of the original loco (as you'll see from my signature, she came out of my first ever train set )

 

[Ragtag]

While the layout itself has had to be put on hold, work is progressing with some stock for when it is eventually built following a likely house move.

 

NRX Airline Container BG:

 

 

 

PCV built from a Replica kit:

 

 

Class 47 making some progress. The Express Models lighting kit still needs the tail lights fitted to the body shell.  The ringfield motor also needs chipped. The livery may be fictional but I can't bring myself to repaint it as it came from my boyhood train set (although I did repaint the pacer as a parcels unit many moons ago!):

 

 

 

What might have been if the long-standing connection between Class 47s and mail traffic hadn't fallen foul of EWS:

 

 

 

And a final what-if had the planned extension of mail traffic into Scotland reached the West Highland line. In order to maintain high speeds locos with a better Route Availability than the Class 47s would be needed: