Greenford Green, WR Outer London 1960s-1980s

[nomisd]

This really should be read with this thread at this point to get the idea of where I am already (it is still imageless but I will eventually address that, probably, perhaps ;-)) . Bit the short story is...

 

Greenford, 1930s. Lyons want to open an ice cream factory somewhere close to their factory (that they referred to as a depot) that they had opened in the early 20th century. Turns out that a developer wants to build houses and shops on the north side of the Paddington branch of the Grand Union Canal. (they did actually really look for a site for an ice cream factory in the 1930s but it wasn't really built until the 1950s when I believe it was in the triangle at Greenford). A station is built by the GWR and named Greenford Green (its a real place and too good a name to ignore for my fictional station). It its a halt so beloved by the GWR at the time, designed for Autocoach trains, later GWR Railcar and BR 121 class single car DMUs which have a regular service to Acton. 

 

The regular mundane passenger service is enlivened by a small but busy exchange sidings with the Lyons factory. Locos work light engine to pickup out going, full loaded van trains from the sidings which are converyed there by Lyons own locos. A link between the two Lyons sites runs under the same canal and that conveys the empties from (what became the Greenford Old Side) where they have been delivered by pick up goods trains. There is also a daily services of milk tankers to the site. These can be delivered to the either exchange sidings by BR then be worked internally by Lyons. All WR wagons are tripped from Acton. Inter-regional trains also operate with ER, MR and SR locos all turning up to take trains. They are mainly destined to the yards around London (Temple Mills, Ripple Lane, Willesden, Brent, Feltham, Hither Green) but trains also run direct to the ports of Southampton, Dover and Harwich and trains can also work directly to Birmingham, Bristol etc. 

 

This is the point that someone would go and here is my plan. However I seem to have done my planning on the baseboard. So to start of with an overview of the layout with now scribbling.

 

 

Scribbling on the shops and station bit

 

 

 

Next bit along

 

 

 

Then. Everything has been pretty self explanatory until now. This are is the J Lyons and Co Sports and Social Club grounds (the real one was somewhere else a bit further west). When I was doing the initial planning, one of the things that surprised me about the actual development of Greenford in the inter0-war years was the preponderance of sports grounds and fields. I have no idea how I am going to do this at the moment. A low relief rear of a sports club. bar and changing rooms has come to mind with some trees on the left towards the road.

 

 

To start of the industrial half. The double slip is the end of the exchange sidings and the entrance to the factory.

 

 

The BR line curves off round the corner with the Lyons system behind it. The factory has no track as I only have enough to play around with one half of the layout whilst I work out how much new track to buy.

 

 

The two lines then pass under the canal, the internal line behind the milk tanks

 

 

A wider angle view including the Lyons loco shed

 

[Banger Blue]

2 hours ago, nomisd said:

This are is the J Lyons and Co Sports and Social Club grounds (the real one was somewhere else a bit further west). When I was doing the initial planning, one of the things that surprised me about the actual development of Greenford in the inter0-war years was the preponderance of sports grounds and fields. I have no idea how I am going to do this at the moment. A low relief rear of a sports club. bar and changing rooms has come to mind with some trees on the left towards the road.

 

How about this little kit from Metcalfe?

 

https://www.metcalfemodels.com/product/po410-00-h0-scale-wooden-pavilion/

 

[M.I.B]

Just down the rails from North Cranford, where vans for Lyons Tea, and for Eldorado Ice Cream are dropped for forwarding to Greenford Green..........

 

To what is now the home of Ferrero Rocher.........

 

 

Will be watching this with interest, even if it is a couple of years younger than my version of NC.

[nomisd]

A quick diversion into the philosophy an conceit...

 

What are we trying to do when we build our model railways? What are we trying to evoke. I don't think that I would be breaking too much new ground to suggest one of the things that we are trying to do is evoke a moment from our youth. I wrote my first train number down when I was six (a class 85 at Wolverhampton station on the way back from a family holiday to the Cambrian Coast in 1976). It was inevitable as I think I may have just been emulating my dad but it stuck. My personal Golden Age of Railways is anytime from then until about 1986. For me, thats when railways were railways (other opinions may apply). So when it comes to building a railway, thats what I am trying to evoke. But, but...

 

That has its constraints. If we were to take a ten year slice of time and say we will build a railway then, we can only have the locomotives, rolling stock, infrastructure that were current then. However I quite like Hymeks. This are outside of my Golden Age period as they had all been withdrawn. And of course I snookered myself from the off by having two rash purchases of a GWR railcar and a class 15. This are certainly outside my Golden Age. So my reasoning then becomes have a 20ish year time period that means what runs can become more fluid. This obviously falls down immediately as the streamlined GWR railcars were all withdrawn by 1960 and the others by 1962 so this sits at the very edge of my time period.

 

The other thing to consider is that there are a couple of posts in the J Lyons & Co Ltd, Greenford Green Depot thread about the history of the real locos that worked at Greenford. It turns out it is possible to get a OO scale model of every loco that worked at Greenford. This obviously set cogs whirring. Now I am not adverse to modelling steam and the idea of a visiting LNER J50 and a GWR 97XX and nice rake of GW livered Mica vans certainly has its appeal. What I suppose I am saying is that whilst there is a date range applied to this layouts title, I think its more of a guide. I think it could certainly go back to the 1930s. I have a friend who models GWR in N but has quite the collection in OO that he can't run so I have access to some GW steam (his Earl on my late French base layout as some nice visual distraction).

 

 

That brings us on to conceit. Conceit in my head is a fancy way to describe modellers licence! In many ways this layout is an after thought. The main attraction was the Lyons factory. I am an industrial enthusiast. In real life mainline railways don't hold much interest to me. Don't get me wrong, I was a trainspotter and I still love travelling by train and am always on the lookout out of  the window. But the thing that get the juices flowing are industrials. The same applies to modelling. Greenford Green station is a way of putting the Lyons factory in context. Don't get me wrong, it will get as much love and attention in its building and operation as the factory but it wasn't what I started out wanting to build.

 

I have given this some thought and in reality, the idea of a small three road exchange siding, which passenger trains run through the middle of, along with a loco sidings opposite a former GW dead end halt station, all controlled by a fully manned ARP signal box actually existing are somewhere near unlikely. Certainly until the mid 1980s. But when did we let that stop us?

 

Anyway all of this is a very convoluted was of replying to @M.I.B to say, lets never say never about trains running between Greenford Green and North Cranford. I quite like the idea of timetabling my trains to and from somebody else's layout.

 

[stivesnick]

I like the idea behind this layout. 

 

Normally city terminal  model layouts are compact affairs so go to see a longer version, but still with single car DMUs.

 

I am looking forward to updates.

 

Regards 

 

Nick 

 

 

[nomisd]

A milestone has been reached, After much deliberation, I finally got around to ordering track. This is on its way and will arrive in the next couple of days. So it may get laid this year ;-) I have been working a bot more on the High Street area. I got hold of some Woodland Scenics 4% risers to make the sloped road surface base. I could have hot wire cut some foam board but decided that I would get a much more even surface bby getting them ready made. I have also decided to lower the High Street area to two levels of foam board rather than three, so down to about 60mm from base board height. This gives it a more gentle slope on the road, which I think is probably more in keeping with its surrounds.

 

 

I have also done some more accurate plotting out of the buildings. It is my intention to use Kingsway Models kits throughout. Once I found them I decided there was really no other option - its like a pick and mix for suburban London modelling. I am still at a bit of a loss as what to do with the large blank area on the right which currently has row of shops in it. I think a cab office is a must but I need to find a suitable looking building, which I haven't found so far. The other thing that occurs to me is a pub wouldn't be out of place. Again haven't found a suitable 1930s style building to act as pub. I have a feeling that I may end up having to build these myself.....

 

 

I have also purchased rolling stock but will post that in the industrial thread, link below.

[nomisd]

Things are progressing slowly. I now have all my track and am just about to take the plunge and go all DCC. It was a big gulp! The terrain is decided and laid. I made a whole street of buildings in the spring. Most of them have stayed. During the summer I had a flight of fancy moment when I thought "ah, the station needs to be Holdenesque but built for the Great Western". I filled that because its not a simple thing to do. Heavily kit bashed or scratch built. Having watched Jago Hazzard's recent video about Greenford, turns out that what Greenford actually I am now veering back towards the flight of fancy.. The idea is to populate the tree patch with all trees. Need more trees. 

 

A new  traffic flow has appeared - a NCL depot formerly GWR Goods Depot. A couple of years ago I had an idea for a layout that was a parcels depot a la Nottingham or Leicester, I think using pretty much all of the buildings I now have on the layout. I have always la single car parcels DMU and who doesn't love a lone GUV or a BG?

 

The base is a Metcalfe petrol station cum workshop. It means there will be two car dealers.... I had to buy it. I found a model shop at Pontivy station when visiting the town for lunch the other day. Sold Peco code 75 track so was able to get my last point. And a bumper pack of Metcalfe paving. Once the DCC order is received, track laying can start. ANd then roads and paths and ground works

 

 

 

[nomisd]

A few weeks ago my best mate Gaz came to stay for a couple of nights. Unsurprisingly it’s the first time in four years that he has been to visit us. There have been a few changes since he lasted visited, one of which is the railway. Now Gaz has been my mate for nearly 40 years now and he is more than well aware of my bent for railways. He found out about how serious it was about 25 years ago when he came to stay with me when I lived in Manchester. He came back for a visit to the bathroom with the question “That is a book you have next to the toilet  is called The Potato Railways of Lincolnshire? So what its it about then?”!

 

So when we got to the railway I was surprised when what I thought was going to be a cursory “yeah here is my model railway” turned into a hour long conversation about the process of how the railway had got to where it has. It was an interesting conversation. What was particularly interesting was what explaining to someone who used the train to get to work and that’s where their interest in railways ends, how you plan a model railway. What it is that you are trying represent, where the line between fiction and reality lays, what compromises you have to make for scale and on and on. It was interesting explaining the process. 

 

One of the things that Gaz was very keen on was to at some point play trains. One of the things we touched on was DCC and how it has sort of changed playing trains. It is something that I am hoping it will make playing trains with people who aren’t used to playing trains easy. I thought about this today whilst I was messing around thinking about a timetable. I like a timetable on a layout. I have operated a few club and club members layouts at exhibitions and they have all been of the run it freehand based on the stock available. I have never operated a layout by a time table so having the opportunity to do so, I have decided to give myself something of that challenge.

 

But the thing is how do you make a timetable rigid enough without losing the element of playing trains? I have an added element of industrial railway that has to operate to its own timetable and to that of BR. And a fiddle yard to work. As I was thinking about it, it occurred to me that if Gaz (or anyone else for that matter) wants to play trains the idea is that with me playing train dispatcher to the willing participant operating as the BR controller, whilst I also keeping the industry ticking over will give them a simple way to play trains. I have yet to do a timetable for the Lyons site. It’s a bit mind bending as there is the slotting in to BR services to take and collect wagons from the exchange sidings. Its also stock flow at the factory!

 

 

 

 

The loco time line is a more of a buying guide for me. Its definitely a “well when those non-existent lottery numbers come up…” list. I am going to do one with DMUs and I might do it with wagons too. My next serious purchase is hopefully a class 73 hauled continental van train. The Midland Region bound pickup goods/Speedlink train is an excuse not just to have vans and vans and a couple of tank wagons. Its an excuse to have a couple of 16 ton open wagons or some Prestflos. I already have a few blue grain wagons that I could wangle into a midlands bound goods train.

 

Some locos on it are very specific. The 47 for example covers a very short window. That’s because I have a hankering after a Straford sliver roofed low numbered loco and I think there is a pretty small window for what I would like. The 31 is a white stripped 31/4 so again exists in a window. I will at some point check piddiling details like when BR blue 73s stopped being a thing, it may be before 1989, the end point for my timeline. That of course isn’t to say that I may be tempted by a sectorised loco but its unlikely. Same in the other direction too. A black livered condenser fitted 94xx or a small shirt button livered tank and a rake of Mica wagons isn’t out of the question.

 

I suppose the point of this post is that its like I told Gaz. Getting the railway to its current state, the most finished I have ever got to, is all about years of planning and scheming to get to a point where trains are running. My timeline will be fulfilled if the track is laid by the end of the winter. Greenford Green is coming along nicely in the background. A station building is on its way. The planning of what order ground works are done continues…

[OnTheBranchline]

Any updates with this layout?

[nomisd]

31 minutes ago, OnTheBranchline said:

Any updates with this layout?

 

No in that I have done very little since my last post here in, just checks....ruddy heck the start of December! What I have done is this which is something to do with this layout but that the point its got to at the moment. I have also got the station building, a Kingsway Models Ealing Common station kit but have done nothing with it just yet. I was about to make the plunge and buy the DCC controller and point motors  and then we got household lurgi so that has taken nearly a month out of proceedings. That has now all passed and hopefully I will be back to it soon. But thanks for asking and taking an interest in my efforts.

[nomisd]

Oh the best laid plans. As I have explained in the post on the industrial half of this model, I have spent a overly long time trying to decide how to control this layout. Good old fashioned analogue has won the day and I have finally ordered point motors. This means that I can start to actually laying track. I have also ordered a couple of new mainline locos and yet more vans. With a fair wind, I may actually have a train running by next year...