Deliberately Old-Fashioned 0 Scale - Chapter 1

[Metropolitan H]

P.S. - We can even provide modern exotica - well 1940s / 50s exotica - so long as you provide more clearance under the built up area of Birlstone. Perhaps this should be transferred to the Swiss Railways topic heading, but I'm not quite sure whether this would be welcome there.

 

The Re4/4 and wagons will get another airing at the NAR0GG all day session at Wansford on 12th October.

 

Regards

Chris H

[rockershovel]

12th Oct? It says Sat 6th on the FB page, although 6th Oct is actually a Sunday. 

[Nearholmer]

12th, Saturday week.

[rockershovel]

if they have 20v AC I could bring one or other of the Lionel locos....

[Nearholmer]

Bring one - tbh I can’t remember whether the main controllers can do both ac and dc, but at worst on D.C. it should just run one way, without it being possible to reverse it.

 

Also, one of the smaller tracks will almost certainly be running old Hornby on 20V ac.

 

 

Edited October 2, 2019 by Nearholmer

[rockershovel]

12 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

12th, Saturday week.

 

Ive just noticed that the FB Page is actually a year out of date, hence the discrepancy in days

[Nearholmer]

Buckingham Branches by Bike (Part 1)

 

Since a great many of my bike rides traverse parts of the territory that Rev Denny set his Buckingham Branches layouts in, and I'm forever getting confused between the real and imaginary railway history of the area, I've long thought it would be good to undertake a proper "survey" of Denny's routes, and this is a modest start on that, me being limited in range this week due to an eye injury.

 

Clearly, it has nothing directly to do with 0 gauge, so my excuse isa that it does touch on a lot of old-fashioned things.

 

Starting at Buckingham might seem logical, but it wouldn't make for a circuit, so I've started at Stony Stratford instead.

 

Stony Stratford is not usually the first name that springs to mind when thinking of Denny's layouts, but it was the destination of a "branch off the branch" in his very first essay. The station was his first super-portable one, a very simple terminus that folded up to form a box, the hinges hidden mid-way along it being covered by a road over bridge. The design later resurfaced as Tingewick and, most well-known, the early version of Leighton Buzzard (Linslade) the construction of which he described in detail in Railway Modeller.

 

So, that's the model, but where in the real world might it have been? My surmise is that he didn't have a fixed location in mind, because, as we shall see, the topography is hard to match to reality.

 

Here is The Reverend's map of the route.

 

 

 

And,here is an OS map extract showing the relevant part of Stony at about the right period.

 

As you can see, he plots his route on the northern side of The Ouse, in Northamptonshire rather than Buckinghamshire, and in doing so actually takes a course similar to the former Buckingham Branch of the Grand Junction Canal. Its a logical course, just above the flood plain, but not involving very heavy earthworks, but it present a bit of a problem: it puts the station not in Stony Stratford, but in Old Stratford, some distance away.

 

Here is the Watling Street bridge over The Ouse, marked red on the map above. Stony is to our left, and Old to our right.

 

Going into Old Stratford, the Watling Street rises up a fairly gentle hill, and we eventually come to where the canal no longer is. It crossed below the road in a "tunnel", a long bridge really, but having no towpath, just below this recent addition to the village.

 

 

 

This is about the only place locally where the topography bears any resemblance to Rev Denny's layout. He excuses the bridge over his station on the basis that the line was meant to carry on to Wolverton, but ran out of money, which all seems very plausible.

 

A station here would be rather a hike from Stony, but conveniently situated for the Wolverton and Stony Stratford Steam Tramway, which extended (exceedingly briefly) all the way to Deanshanger, where there was a large ironworks making agricultural implements (I am the proud owner of a Victorian hoe made there), so some shoe leather could be preserved.

 

Turning back to Stony Stratford, we can see what such a site for the station would have missed, which is to say a busy little market town. First, the mill, or rather a fake mill built on the site of the real one, in a very similar style, after the original burned down in 1985. A decent traffic source, I think, so maybe there was a mill spur, crossing the river.

 

 

And, a few photos to give a flavour of the place. The W&SSST ran down the high street, past The Cock and The Bull, and Odell's ironmongers shop, founded originally to serve the navvy's building the canal, and still owned by the same family.

 

 

Quite a good destination for branch line, but I can't imagine one lasting very long, if its station was so badly located, and it ran in the wrong direction for most local needs!

 

If this blend of fact and imagination is interesting to others, I will add as bike rides permit.

 

Edited October 10, 2019 by Nearholmer

[Donw]

I am quite happy to see your musings on what Peter Denny had in mind. It can be quite an interesting exercise. If the Line had been built Old and Stony Stratfords might well have become one with more growth closer to the station.

 

Don

[Nearholmer]

Old Stratford certainly might have developed more than it did, which is to say barely at all from c1800 until probably the 1940s, but the flood plain between the two is quite wide and soggy, and would have made uniting them rather costly/difficult.

 

I think you'll see as this goes on that just about the only station on the Buckingham Branches that pins to an exact location is Grandborough Junction, my impression being that he sketched lines on 1" OS maps without looking closely at the contours.

[Northroader]

The High Street at Old Stratford has a really attractive look, and perhaps the Ouse bridge is by Telford, it has that look to it. As it’s on Watling Street, I suppose it would have been a calling point in stagecoach days (with a small S), so the two inns would have seen some bustle (did they think of combining, so you could go in the bars and listen to Cock and Bull stories?) Its a good idea to flesh out the Buckingham branch line, I always thought Linslade made a really attractive layout. I do hope your eye gets better.

Edited October 11, 2019 by Northroader

[St Enodoc]

13 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Buckingham Branches by Bike (Part 1)

 

Since a great many of my bike rides traverse parts of the territory that Rev Denny set his Buckingham Branches layouts in, and I'm forever getting confused between the real and imaginary railway history of the area, I've long thought it would be good to undertake a proper "survey" of Denny's routes, and this is a modest start on that, me being limited in range this week due to an eye injury.

 

Clearly, it has nothing directly to do with 0 gauge, so my excuse isa that it does touch on a lot of old-fashioned things.

 

Starting at Buckingham might seem logical, but it wouldn't make for a circuit, so I've started at Stony Stratford instead.

 

Stony Stratford is not usually the first name that springs to mind when thinking of Denny's layouts, but it was the destination of a "branch off the branch" in his very first essay. The station was his first super-portable one, a very simple terminus that folded up to form a box, the hinges hidden mid-way along it being covered by a road over bridge. The design later resurfaced as Tingewick and, most well-known, the early version of Leighton Buzzard (Linslade) the construction of which he described in detail in Railway Modeller.

 

So, that's the model, but where in the real world might it have been? My surmise is that he didn't have a fixed location in mind, because, as we shall see, the topography is hard to match to reality.

 

Here is The Reverend's map of the route.

 

 

 

And,here is an OS map extract showing the relevant part of Stony at about the right period.

 

As you can see, he plots his route on the northern side of The Ouse, in Northamptonshire rather than Buckinghamshire, and in doing so actually takes a course similar to the former Buckingham Branch of the Grand Junction Canal. Its a logical course, just above the flood plain, but not involving very heavy earthworks, but it present a bit of a problem: it puts the station not in Stony Stratford, but in Old Stratford, some distance away.

 

Here is the Watling Street bridge over The Ouse, marked red on the map above. Stony is to our left, and Old to our right.

 

Going into Old Stratford, the Watling Street rises up a fairly gentle hill, and we eventually come to where the canal no longer is. It crossed below the road in a "tunnel", a long bridge really, but having no towpath, just below this recent addition to the village.

 

 

 

This is about the only place locally where the topography bears any resemblance to Rev Denny's layout. He excuses the bridge over his station on the basis that the line was meant to carry on to Wolverton, but ran out of money, which all seems very plausible.

 

A station here would be rather a hike from Stony, but conveniently situated for the Wolverton and Stony Stratford Steam Tramway, which extended (exceedingly briefly) all the way to Deanshanger, where there was a large ironworks making agricultural implements (I am the proud owner of a Victorian hoe made there), so some shoe leather could be preserved.

 

Turning back to Stony Stratford, we can see what such a site for the station would have missed, which is to say a busy little market town. First, the mill, or rather a fake mill built on the site of the real one, in a very similar style, after the original burned down in 1985. A decent traffic source, I think, so maybe there was a mill spur, crossing the river.

 

 

And, a few photos to give a flavour of the place. The W&SSST ran down the high street, past The Cock and The Bull, and Odell's ironmongers shop, founded originally to serve the navvy's building the canal, and still owned by the same family.

 

 

Quite a good destination for branch line, but I can't imagine one lasting very long, if its station was so badly located, and it ran in the wrong direction for most local needs!

 

If this blend of fact and imagination is interesting to others, I will add as bike rides permit.

 

Kevin, I like this very much but may I suggest that you put it in a separate thread? There will be many others who would like to see your efforts but who won't find it here.

[Nearholmer]

Thank you.

 

I did think about that, and I don’t really have a cogent explanation as to why I didn’t!

 

If the weather is half-decent, and my eye isn’t playing-up, I will cover as far as Buckingham, and around the town, early next week. That might be the time to move to a new thread.

[Nearholmer]

Northroader

 

many thanks.

 

Stony Stratford was a major coaching town, the first change of horses from London, although 50+ miles seems a long way to go at full tilt, so maybe it was the second change. The cock and bull story thing is supposed to originate in the confused and conflicting versions of the news that reached the two inns. 
 

when we get to Linslade, you will see that the fictional route to it would have faced a few challenges.
 

K

[Guest Isambarduk]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

50+ miles seems a long way to go at full tilt, so maybe it was the second change.

On the Watling Street, St Albans would have been the most likely first night stop out of London, at about 25 miles out.   David

Edited October 11, 2019 by Isambarduk

[Northroader]

Watling Street always struck me, living up the top end, as a funny sort of main road, the A5 before motorways were invented, out to St. Albans, a lovely old town, then a succession of small towns where you could get the stages changed and farmers call in,  Daventry,  Stratford, Towcester,  Atherstone, the industrial revolution bumping up Cannock, then a long lonely stretch into Shropshire. With the stagecoaches, they just kept going night and day, changing horses and having refreshment at inns, no overnight stops . I’m a big Dickens fan, and enjoy the accounts of pre railway travel he slips in.

[Nearholmer]

I couldn't get to the great assemblage of old-fashionistas at Narogg today for various reasons, but this afternoon I did go and spend a couple of hours peering myopically at the opposite end of the scale, 00 & P4 finescale at the Great Electric Train Show.

 

My observation is that the smaller scale seems to suit what CJF labelled "modern image" layouts, and that diesel sound, done well, adds a lot to things, but those are obviously personal tastes.

 

Two layouts really got my attention: a large P4 essay, depicting just the sort of 1970s to early 1980s BR(S) that I grew-up with and worked on. Its called Shelvington, and even if you loth everything to do with the 1970s is well worth seeking out, because it is incredibly well-observed. I can't seem to find a links to many pictures that really do it justice, and none of the truly excellent model substation(!), but there are a couple here https://www.flickr.com/photos/simage61/30148736772/in/photostream/; and, a "cameo" called Exton Quay, which does that format superbly, even though it is 00, and not as finescale in other respects as some. It is a brilliant example of operational potential in a small space, as well as looking picturesque, whereas some cameos seem terribly limited on the playing trains front. Link here http://www.westernthunder.co.uk/index.php?threads/exton-quays.6289/

 

Edited October 12, 2019 by Nearholmer

[Nearholmer]

Just to go on-topic for a change, a trio of gratuitous toy train pictures, snapped while I was tidying up last night, after my small daughter had persuaded me to run a service for the benefit of the Harry Potter figurines earlier. The passengers travelled in a 1940s Hornby cattle van, as normal.

 

Doesn’t early BR livery look smart when it’s all clean and shiny.

[GRASinBothell]

It does, but by the time it had got up steam for the first time after a repaint, the shine was starting to disappear...

Gordon

[Nearholmer]

Gordon

 

Its been raining heavily here all day, I don’t think the sun even bothered to open one eye, let alone get out of bed, and there was seriously maudlin music on the radio in the car as I drove home just now.

 

So, today, I think I need to believe that the new never wore off of locomotive paintwork.

 

Kevin

[GRASinBothell]

It's sunny here in the Seattle area for once, but we are threatened with the same weather as you for the next few days!

Don't forget rule #1. It's your trainset, so you get to decide everything, including how paintwork weathers at Paltry Circle.

Gordon

[Nearholmer]

My bike ride today didn’t get into “Denny-land proper”, skirting it, but no further, because I set off too late, but these are interesting (to me at least).

 

Perchance it is not dead but sleepeth. The Bletchley - Oxford Line, very slowly shaking off its thirty years of slumber.

 

 

Swanbourne Station, which is a delightful ragbag of additions, alterations, and neglect. Someone with money to burn really needs to buy it and restore it, before too late!

 

 

This doorway has a story to tell. It leads from the station booking hall onto the platform,  which was at rail level originally - you can just see the rail of the nearest track on the right. In 1902 a person walked out of this door, across the narrow platform, and straight under the wheels of a moving train, after which the door was boarded and barred to prevent its use.

 

Under the plywood, the door, the boards, and the bars are all still there.

 

 

Edited October 15, 2019 by Nearholmer

[St Enodoc]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

My bike ride today didn’t get into “Denny-land proper”, skirting it, but no further, because I set off too late, but these are interesting (to me at least).

 

Perchance it is not dead but sleepeth. The Bletchley - Oxford Line, very slowly shaking off its thirty years of slumber.

 

 

Swanbourne Station, which is a delightful ragbag of additions, alterations, and neglect. Someone with money to burn really needs to buy it and restore it, before too late!

 

 

This doorway has a story to tell. It leads from the station booking hall onto the platform,  which was at rail level originally - you can just see the rail of the nearest track on the right. In 1902 a person walked out of this door, across the narrow platform, and straight under the wheels of a moving train, after which the door was boarded and barred to prevent its use.

 

Under the plywood, the door, the boards, and the bars are all still there.

 

 

Did you come away with a paint chip or two to match the weathered maroon and cream colours?

[Nearholmer]

Well, no, but the idea did cross my mind, and I had a jolly good peer at the paint.

 

The cream has shrunken back to form large flakes, and each one is about 2mm thick, showing stratification of paint layers, so you could probably analyse a section, right back to The Buckinghamshire Railway of 1850, through LNWR, LMS and BR. There are some parts which show what looks like the initial coat of paint, revealed by the shrinking-back, although whether it is primer or a finish colour, who knows - it is a strange sort of orange-brown-buff shade. There is also a quite dark layer in the stratification, which I think might be something similar in the form of LNWR buff.

 

The maroon looks 'modern', so probably BR, or even post-BR, and is flaking badly, but below it is a colour that has weathered far better, a dark chocolate. 

 

I have feeling that the LMS didn't really have a clear corporate standard for station colours, persisting with pre-grouping colours for the most part. [Full nine yards on the topic here https://stationcolours.com/lms scroll down to see LNWR "stone", which is the orange-brown-buff shade that I saw, and LNWR Dark Brown, which is the chocolate.]

 

I'd be surprised if someone hasn't already analysed the paint, because the wooden booking hall is a very rare survivor is unrestored condition.

Edited October 15, 2019 by Nearholmer

[Nearholmer]

This is all Northroader’s fault because, a couple of weeks ago, I was musing about starting on a light railway terminus in 4mm/ft, and he pointed out that such a thing ought to be possible in my now normal format.

 

That led to a look at the very first Rother Valley Railway coaches, and a genuinely cheap eBay purchase.

 

Yes, it’s German, but it does look (in tinplate terms) a bit like a RVR coach.  Made by Fandor in the ‘thirties, it’s part of their ‘big’ range, the ‘small’ being a bit like Hornby M Series, so it’s a decent size, and has refinements like opening doors, and footsteps. Colour is nice a rich too.

 

 

Edited November 1, 2019 by Nearholmer

[GRASinBothell]

That does look good, although I'm surprised you don't have a terrier in KESR livery to go with it!

Of course, one of the Colonel's other lines purchased a couple of ex-Chatham six-wheelers, and did no more than paint over the "SOUTHERN" on the sides. You could do that with a couple of Ace or Darstaed 6-wheel coaches and some stickers printed on your home computer...

Gordon