Annie's Virtual Pre-Grouping, Grouping and BR Layouts & Workbench

[Annie]

With 'Lady Godiva' being a Bristol engine I decided to buy it because it would be highly likely that it did work over Lickey.  I'm considering buying a 5XP 'Jubilee' as well in lined black with 'BRITISH RAILWAYS' on the tender. 'Eire' 45572 shedded at Bristol Barrow Road looks to be a possibility.

 

Thanks for the tale about Stanier and the Princess Cornations, - that made me smile.

 

 

[Annie]

30 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Looking forward to seeing those LMS Standard 3F 0-6-0Ts on the bank.

I hope it works out too Stephen.  Trainz can be a bit stupid about banking engines which can make independently dropping away from the rear of a train a bit difficult sometimes, but I'll give it a test out and see how it goes.

 

I have gone ahead and purchased 45572  'Eire' and then I went and purchased 45700 'Britannia' as well.

'Britannia' is well out of area since it was shedded at Newton Heath, but I didn't have much choice if I wanted another early BR period 'Jubilee'.

That should have fitted goods and parcels trains taken care of as well as the odd passenger turn as well.

[Schooner]

1 hour ago, Annie said:

(no silly schoolboy jokes please).

 

 

Lovely modelling Annie, and nice to see the research and development. Looking forward to more

[Annie]

1 hour ago, Schooner said:

 

 

Lovely modelling Annie, and nice to see the research and development. Looking forward to more

Thanks Schooner.  I'm trying not to get too deep into research since my aim is to give the layout a basic work over so what should be there on the layout is there, but without pulling the whole thing apart from one end to the other in a total rebuild.

[Annie]

New update picture.  I refuse to paint the water tower like it's a WR one.

 

[Annie]

A quote from a blog about the Lickney incline.  http://lickeyincline.blogspot.com/2011/

 

'There was one occasion in March 1950, recounted in some detail in a railway periodical of the time, when ex-LMS Garratt 47972 arrived at Bromsgrove with 42 loaded wagons and was banked up Lickey by 69999. The train stalled half-way and had to be rescued by 58100 'BIG BERTHA'

 

69999 was the LNER U1 Garratt.  Apparently it wouldn't steam and consumed 4/5 cwt more coal on a banking job than 'Big Bertha' did.

[Compound2632]

2 hours ago, Annie said:

A quote from a blog about the Lickney incline.  http://lickeyincline.blogspot.com/2011/

 

'There was one occasion in March 1950, recounted in some detail in a railway periodical of the time, when ex-LMS Garratt 47972 arrived at Bromsgrove with 42 loaded wagons and was banked up Lickey by 69999. The train stalled half-way and had to be rescued by 58100 'BIG BERTHA'

 

69999 was the LNER U1 Garratt.  Apparently it wouldn't steam and consumed 4/5 cwt more coal on a banking job than 'Big Bertha' did.

 

All very odd since the U1 had spent the previous 22 years banking trains up some hill on the Great Central, through a hideous tunnel to make matters worse.

[Annie]

47 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

All very odd since the U1 had spent the previous 22 years banking trains up some hill on the Great Central, through a hideous tunnel to make matters worse.

Apparently a great deal of time was spent in the works trying to make it steam better with even oil firing being tried out, but all to no avail.  I don't know how steep the hill on the Great Central was, but it seems that Lickey was just too steep for it.

 

[Annie]

After studying photos of the south end of Bromsgrove station I got a bit carried away with things, but I'm a lot happier with how things are now.

 

The S&C coal stage is a bit grand compared with the tumbledown shed of a coal stage that really was at Bromsgrove, but lacking anything suitable to replace it with it will have to stay.  I removed two 'tales of mystery and imagination' sidings from behind the coal stage as well as other stuff that shouldn't have been there and then raised up the level of the ground behind the coal stage as it's more or less supposed to be.

 

 

There are supposed to be two sidings leading off the line behind the signal box so I fixed that.  Once I started looking I can see that there's a lot of missing pointwork, but at this stage of things I'll leave it until I can play trains do some serious testing to see if anything needs to be added.

The turntable is S&C which should come as no surprise.

 

 

Six strand barbed wire fences were everywhere including places where a barbed wire fence should not be used.  I've largely got the 4 bar boundary fences sorted out now and have made a start on removing hedges where hedges should not be along the railway boundary.

 

 

For some reason the layout builder used a huge Eastern European goods shed at Bromsgrove along with the trackwork to the goods shed being laid out incorrectly.  I've redone the trackwork so it's closer to the prototype arrangement and I found that a large S&C goods shed was a reasonable match for the goods shed footprint shown on the 1927 OS map.  There isn't space to place the right number of goods sidings as should be there, but what I've done is a lot better than how it was before.

 

 

Brick walls instead of barbed wire fences.  I really need to find a more grimy brick wall model, but this one will do for now.  There was a hodge-podge of modern error prefab buildings jammed together pretending to be an industry of some kind so I deleted them all and replaced them with some proper industrial buildings.  I don't really know what's supposed to be on that site as all the photos I have only show blurry buildings in the background without any detail

 

 

 

[Compound2632]

Can those S&C structures be re-skinned in brick?

[Annie]

50 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Can those S&C structures be re-skinned in brick?

Did you mean the goods shed Stephen?  It's available in four kinds of stone, but not brick.  All the S&C models have a very stern copyright licence against being messed around with so I wouldn't like to try it.

[Compound2632]

I can't track down a photo of the goods shed at Appleby but the station buildings there were of brick, with stone quoins etc.

[Annie]

Engine sheds and wagon works at Bromsgrove.  At least I now know what I'm up against.

I have a good many grimy brick Victorian industrial buildings in my digital trainset box so what I think I'll do is arranged them artfully around in the right places, absentmindedly leave off most if not all of the wagon works sidings and concentrate only on putting in the ones for the engine shed.

 

Picture copyright Roger Winnen.

 

 

 

[Annie]

47 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

I can't track down a photo of the goods shed at Appleby but the station buildings there were of brick, with stone quoins etc.

This is Appleby station on the older TS2012 payware S&C  route I purchased ages ago.  I can go and hunt around and see which goods shed the S&C team used when they built it.  I haven't done anything on the S&C route for a good while now so it might be useful to refresh my memory.

 

[Compound2632]

The buildings with the rectangular tops to the gables and round headed windows are, I believe, the original Birmingham & Gloucester locomotive works, where James McConnell cut his teeth. It was at Bromsgrove that the famous discussions between McConnell, Charles Beyer, Richard Peacock, and others took place, leading to the formation of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. The whole site has been redeveloped as housing.

[Annie]

That seems to be the ultimate fate of historic railway sites doesn't it.  Demolition and then redevelopment as a housing estate or an industrial park (sigh).

I did think that those particular buildings looked significantly different and older to the others so would be something special.  Thanks for the background information Stephen.

 

I won't be able to do anything except a basic representation of the wagon works.  With it being such a significant part of Bromsgrove leaving it out entirely as the original layout builder did would fairly silly on my part.

 

I'm working more and more off the 1927 OS map since I'm finding that the original builder has left so many things out that it's barely representational of the BR period anyway.  He claims that he accurately followed the prototype station layouts & etc, but I seriously have my doubts from what I have found so far.  The one thing he did do properly though is layout the gradient on the Lickey incline itself since I can see all his height and measurement data when I go into the surveyor/editing side of the simulator.

[Northroader]

Putting in a link for the Worsborough Branch, from whence the U1 originated, for your edification. It was much harder than the Lickey, with the coal going up the hill, but it lacked the glamorous expresses.

https://spellerweb.net/rhindex/UKRH/GreatCentral/Worsborough.html

[Annie]

I read somewhere the U1 Garratt was making 18 banking trips a day at Worsborough, - so what the heck went wrong to make it short of steam at Lickey?

 

[Northroader]

Midland firemen were used to firing small engines without doing any real hard work....

 

(hat, coat, exit stage left before Stephen spots this)

[Annie]

Not the finest piece of railway modelling on earth, but I think this is an improvement over what was there before.

This is somewhat of a Readers Digest version of the engine sheds and wagon works, but if I'd modelled it all properly (if I'd had the right kind of buildings to hand) I would have been off the edge of the layout board.  It's certainly better than a poke in the eye.

 

[Compound2632]

3 hours ago, Northroader said:

Midland firemen were used to firing small engines without doing any real hard work....

 

(hat, coat, exit stage left before Stephen spots this)

 

I recommend a read of Terry Essery's Saltley Firing Days to give the lie to that. 

[Annie]

6 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I recommend a read of Terry Essery's Saltley Firing Days to give the lie to that. 

Just ordered my own copy from Abebooks.

[Compound2632]

It is, in my opinion, one of the best footplate memoirs around. No glamour, just how the job was done on an ordinary busy freight-dominated line.

[Annie]

 

 

14 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

t is, in my opinion, one of the best footplate memoirs around. No glamour, just how the job was done on an ordinary busy freight-dominated line.

That's what I thought too from how you've previously described the book Stephen.  So despite the horrible postage charges to New Zealand I decided that I had to have it in my library.

 

As a devotee of the real GWR and having been grounded in modelling the Midland Railway as a teenager I tend to have a certain reluctance when it comes to the Churchward influenced LMS engines, but since it would be difficult to model the Lickey without a 'Jubilee' or two on the roster I purchased two of them from Gary Price at GP Locomotives.  At £3.50 each they are an absolute bargain and I have to admit that they do look rather fine.

 

45572 'Eire'

 

 

45700 'Britannia'

 

Edited September 26, 2020 by Annie
can't spell for toffee

[Northroader]

I like his thoughts on old LNWR engines in that book.