Whaley Shunt (Shallcross Yard)

[Tortuga]

WARNING: what follows is a long-winded explanation as to how Whaley Shunt came about, but ultimately the blame lies squarely at the doors of @NHY 581, and @Alister_G  @JustinDeanalthough neither of these fine gentleman were directly involved in its conception.

 

Around the time @NHY 581 was claiming he definitely wasn’t going to build another layout next/this year, someone on here suggested he might consider doing his take on the C&HP Railway and @Alister_G @JustinDeansuggested Shallcross Yard, located in Whaley Bridge at the northern end of the aforementioned railway as a possibility, accompanying said suggestion with this photo from the WJ Sutherland collection depicting the yard after closure.

 

The seed of an idea was planted… 

 

Since starting the now-abandoned ‘Rylstone’ the thought of the PECO code 75 turnouts and track recovered from my aborted ‘Gibbs Sidings’ going to waste - I’d mangled the turnouts trying to make them more realistic, so selling them wasn’t an option - nibbled away at my Yorkshire frugality.

Over time, several wildly different layout ideas that would make use of these “scrap” turnouts were considered and rejected, but the thought of a smaller, second layout resurrecting the track from ‘Gibbs Sidings’ refused to go away.

 

During a tidy of my shed, I came across the baseboard surface of one of the boards from ‘Gibbs Sidings’:

A few weeks later I discovered the frame I’d built for one of the fiddle yards for ‘Rylstone’ amongst  a pile of timber in the loft:

The board measured 600mm wide by 1220mm long and the frame 400mm wide by 1220mm long: how big were @NHY 581’s LACK shelf layouts again?

 

As documented on my other layout thread:

events at work resulted in a (brief) spate of wagon detailing/firtling and thoughts along the lines of “it’d be nice to have a layout where I could take photograph these rather than the dining room table” flitted through my head, closely followed (once again) by “it’d be nice to have a layout where I could test out modelling techniques / practice wiring / run locos / shunt wagons / play trains / etc.” - I think you can guess where this is going…

 

So I had a board, a frame and some track and I could therefore build a layout where, unlike my ‘Alsop-en-le-Dale’ layout, the focus would be on shunting. The ‘Inglenook Sidings’ concept has always struck me as a way to give shuffling wagons a purpose and a fully scenic version would allow a “test bed” for techniques I could later implement on ‘Alsop’.

 

However, I wasn’t interested in an inglenook layout that was simply a set of three sidings and headshunt on a flat board. If I was going to build an inglenook layout, it needed to look as if it was part of a larger whole and that meant either the headshunt or the longest siding would need to appear connected to the rest of the network in a realistic manner.

 

Since I have no intention of giving up on ‘Alsop’ - one reason for building this is, after all, to use it to “trial run” different materials, methods and construction techniques to eventually be used on my main layout - I need the motive power to be suitable for both layouts. This limits the real-life location to somewhere on one of the lines out of Buxton (the majority of my locos will be Buxton ones) and also sets the timeframe to the 1950’s (although I could potentially get away with early to mid 1960’s). It also means the smallest loco I can shunt with is a Fowler 4F (the shortest goods engine in my fleet), so I’d need to take a longer headshunt than usual for an inglenook layout into account.

 

I could’ve chosen one of the many quarries on the lines around Buxton, but the wagons would predominantly be minerals while ‘Alsop’ has opens and vans in addition to minerals; so a goods yard would be more appropriate…

 

At that point the seed of an idea chose to sprout and Shallcross Yard popped into my head as a definite contender:

1. It’s located off one of the lines out of Buxton.

2. It closed in 1965, so fits into the timeframe.

3. It was shunted by locos on the trip workings between Buxton and Stockport (mainly Stanier 8Fs)

4. Due to the location of the yard relative to Whaley Bridge station, wagons were pushed into the yard and the position of the loco in relation to the wagons before shunting Shallcross was the same prior to leaving; exactly as in the inglenook puzzle.

5. Entrance into the yard was via a bridge carrying the A625 so the illusion of a connection to the rest of the world would be preserved.

 

Shallcross Yard was starting to look more of a distinct possibility for a second layout…

Edited December 24, 2022 by Tortuga
It seems I miscredited blame to an innocent party; now corrected

[NHY 581]

[NHY 581]

Ahem......120cm x 40cm. 

 

Lovin' the frame. Very neat..

 

Rob. 

[JustinDean]

Hi!

This is a location I considered modelling and I have a very large collection of photos. 
Send me your email and I’ll pop them over to you if you like. 
 

Will be following with great interest!!! 
 

Jay

[JustinDean]

Not wishing to throw a spanner in the works but I’m sure wagons weren’t propelled into Shallcross and there was a run round adjacent to the goods shed. 
 

Jay

[Tortuga]

1 hour ago, JustinDean said:

Not wishing to throw a spanner in the works but I’m sure wagons weren’t propelled into Shallcross and there was a run round adjacent to the goods shed. 
 

Jay

Hi Jay and thanks for your interest! Thanks also for your offer of photos - I’ll PM you my email as any additional images will definitely be useful!
 

There was definitely a run around in front of the goods shed (and earlier, a second one as well), but an account of the Whaley Shunt by WJ Sutherland in ‘Scenes of the Past: 50’ describes “the two wagons for Shallcross in front of the engine” and “also pushing down a string of vans”.

 

The photos I have seen (thanks to the WJ Sutherland collection hosted by the Manchester Locomotive Society), all show locos positioned at the north end of the yard. For the purposes of the inglenook ‘game’, I can assume the train has arrived in the yard and we join it with the loco having already positioned itself to start the shunt.

[Tortuga]

1 hour ago, NHY 581 said:

Ahem......120cm x 40cm. 

 

Lovin' the frame. Very neat..

 

Rob. 

Welcome aboard Rob. The Sheep Chronicles can add another layout inspired by your work to its list!

[JustinDean]

23 minutes ago, Tortuga said:

Hi Jay and thanks for your interest! Thanks also for your offer of photos - I’ll PM you my email as any additional images will definitely be useful!
 

There was definitely a run around in front of the goods shed (and earlier, a second one as well), but an account of the Whaley Shunt by WJ Sutherland in ‘Scenes of the Past: 50’ describes “the two wagons for Shallcross in front of the engine” and “also pushing down a string of vans”.

 

The photos I have seen (thanks to the WJ Sutherland collection hosted by the Manchester Locomotive Society), all show locos positioned at the north end of the yard. For the purposes of the inglenook ‘game’, I can assume the train has arrived in the yard and we join it with the loco having already positioned itself to start the shunt.

DM me your email and I can send over a zipped folder tomorrow. It will be nice to reacquaint myself with this spot on the C&HPR - it’s ideal for a micro. It was me that suggested Rob @NHY 581 should have a crack at it by the way…all the way back on page 499 of The Sheep Chronicles!
 

Jay

Edited December 17, 2022 by JustinDean

[Tortuga]

Ahh! That’ll teach me to check my memory! Now you get part of the blame for this instead of Al and I’ll have to edit my original post!

[JustinDean]

37 minutes ago, Tortuga said:

Ahh! That’ll teach me to check my memory! Now you get part of the blame for this instead of Al and I’ll have to edit my original post!

I think Al can be blamed also.

His layouts definitely spurred me on to start modelling again and Ladmanlow is an inspirational piece of work. 
 

Jay

[airnimal]

Jay, a couple of photographs taken in 1967 by myself while I was wondering around Whalley Bridge. 

 

Mike

[JustinDean]

53 minutes ago, airnimal said:

Jay, a couple of photographs taken in 1967 by myself while I was wondering around Whalley Bridge. 

 

Mike

Nice photos Mike. Some of this can still be walked today although there are far less indicators a railway was ever there.

 

Jay

[Tortuga]

12 hours ago, JustinDean said:

I think Al can be blamed also.

His layouts definitely spurred me on to start modelling again and Ladmanlow is an inspirational piece of work. 
 

Jay

Oh, Al can definitely be blamed as well! It’s just a bit more difficult to pin down where his influence has contributed to this side project. I quite agree with what you say about Ladmanlow: the effort regarding the characteristic Derbyshire walling alone…

 

Thanks for the photos by the way. Quite a few different views I haven’t seen before and a couple have already helped with the ongoing baseboard construction.

[JustinDean]

Good to hear those photos are useful. 
 

Regarding baseboards - are you going to include the brook passing underneath the throat of the yard? 

[Tortuga]

All will be revealed Jay!

 

(I’m actually a little further on than my first post suggests to try and keep updates showing a little more progress than on Alsop)

[Reorte]

Just down the road from me! (although any railway there was long before my time) I look forward to seeing this come along.

[JustinDean]

1 hour ago, Tortuga said:

All will be revealed Jay!

 

(I’m actually a little further on than my first post suggests to try and keep updates showing a little more progress than on Alsop)

Brilliant!  Looking forward to seeing more. 
 

Jay

[Tortuga]

***DISCLAIMER: the content of this post was written long (well, not that long) before I started the topic on here. Some of my replies following my initial post therefore are covered again in this post for which I apologise***
 

Apart from a shot of 48165 standing in the yard in 1961, a shot of a wagon being shunted and a shot of 46152 ‘The King’s Dragoon Guardsmen’ entering the yard through the A625 overbridge, I initially had access to three photos that showed the arrangement of track at Shallcross, as well as the 1898 1” to the mile map in  ‘Cromford & High Peak’ by V Mitchell and K Smith.

The WJ Sutherland photo of the southern end (shown earlier) confirmed a siding serving the goods shed, a right-handed crossover between the two tracks front of that and at least one other siding on the opposite side of the yard.

The other two photos (taken from the northern end looking south) showed a right-hand tandem turnout leading to two sidings on the west side of the yard with the furthest diverging again to form the start of a loop (the crossover was just visible in the distance) and the siding leading to the goods shed diverging about halfway along the loop.

The map showed more or less the same apart from the tandem turnout and one of it’s associated sidings was missing and there was a left-handed crossover between the goods shed and the loop in addition to the right-handed one.

 

Fortunately an internet image search for “Shallcross Sidings” produced several more photos from the MJ Sutherland collection (hosted by the Manchester Locomotive Society) taken between 1956 and 1965, which slotted nicely into my proposed timeframe and confirmed the following:

1. The tandem turnout and siding nearest the Gas Works had been removed prior to 1956.

2. The left-hand crossover between the loop and goods shed siding had been removed prior to 1956.

3. The line from Whaley Bridge split to form a loop with the right-hand track (looking south) splitting again to form a single siding along the western edge of the yard.

4. The whole yard had a gentle curve toward the east with an interesting “wiggle” at the end of the goods siding.

 

Obviously my next step was to draw up a track plan to see if I could incorporate the inglenook arrangement without too much loss of the prototype character. I also decided that, with a bit of forward planning, I could potentially extend the initial inglenook into a full shunting layout (and possibly making it suitable for exhibitions - especially since it was to be a free-standing layout).

 

I tried shuffling pieces of track, turnouts, wagons and an 8F around on the board surface, but couldn’t visualise the gentle curves I wanted and eventually resorted to Templot using known dimensions of PECO points to replicate the turnouts I had available. Neither the tandem turnout nor how the tracks of the loop and siding diverge are prototypical of the location, but it used up one of my “scrap” turnouts and allowed for the longer headshunt and it’s my layout so there!

After three attempts, this was the final result:

 

And with the two sections (inglenook and extension) divided:

 

Now to add in the civil engineering and see how it fits the board and frame: woodwork time!

[JustinDean]

Are your baseboards wider than the plots in the above photo? Just wondering about the width available for the goods shed. 
 

Jay

[Tortuga]

It’s going to sound daft, but I’m not 100% sure. I’ve been dealing with a trackbed only version of the inglenook section recently, which is narrower than the baseboard.

 

The baseboard is 400mm wide and I think the plots were cut to be the same width.

 

According to my notes, I’d worked out the goods shed to be 30’ wide by at least 42’ long (so 120mm by 168mm) and its situated to the left of the nearest point in the crossover on the extension board. There should be enough room (maybe), but the southeast corner might (probably will) end up being cut off by the backscene.

[JustinDean]

17 minutes ago, Tortuga said:

It’s going to sound daft, but I’m not 100% sure. I’ve been dealing with a trackbed only version of the inglenook section recently, which is narrower than the baseboard.

 

The baseboard is 400mm wide and I think the plots were cut to be the same width.

 

According to my notes, I’d worked out the goods shed to be 30’ wide by at least 42’ long (so 120mm by 168mm) and its situated to the left of the nearest point in the crossover on the extension board. There should be enough room (maybe), but the southeast corner might (probably will) end up being cut off by the backscene.

If your plots are the baseboard width then you’re probably right and you’ll need to chop a corner of the shed off. The real Shallcross is quite a wide site ….there’s always going to be a compromise somewhere. 
Track layout on the plot looks good. Looking forward to the next instalment. 
 

Jay

[5BarVT]

Looks nice.  I notice you’re making life ‘easy’ for yourself by cutting the LH turnout through the crossing!

Paul.

[Tortuga]

2 hours ago, JustinDean said:

If your plots are the baseboard width then you’re probably right and you’ll need to chop a corner of the shed off. The real Shallcross is quite a wide site ….there’s always going to be a compromise somewhere. 
Track layout on the plot looks good. Looking forward to the next instalment. 
 

Jay

Yep. I trimmed down the width between the loop and siding as much as I felt I could, but without a wider board… as you say, it’s a wide site.

 

I’d’ve liked to have more space along the back to include the flat ground behind the goods shed and include the more open ground beyond the brook…

…but it’s a slippery slope! Next thing would be doing it in bullhead rail, followed by correct sleeper spacing, then EM gauge! EM? Why not P4?! Fully compensated stock! Wagons with working springs!! 4mm locos powered by actual steam!!! NURSE!!!! FETCH ME MY BLUEPRINTS AND FOUNDRY!!!!!

 

…and let’s face it. Much as it’d be great to build a 100% accurate model of Shallcross Yard, that’s not what I want to do here. Ultimately it’s why both ‘Gibbs Sidings’ and ‘Rylstone’ failed to move beyond bare baseboards - I couldn’t accept the compromises I needed to and lost sight of my overall aim. ‘Alsop’ is a long term project with more of a focus on realism (albeit with some compromises), while the focus of this is on shuffling wagons and a “test bed” for things that will later appear on ‘Alsop’.

[Tortuga]

2 hours ago, 5BarVT said:

Looks nice.  I notice you’re making life ‘easy’ for yourself by cutting the LH turnout through the crossing!

Paul.

Ha! Almost, but not quite! The join is actually just after the crossing.

My intention is to build the extension and lay track across the join, but then put it to one side and concentrate on the inglenook section first - that way I can play trains shunt wagons on a self contained layout and take my time with the scenic work.

[Tortuga]

The main structures on the inglenook section are the bridge over the Randal Carr Brook, the A625 overbrige forming the scenic break, the shunters cabin and a variety of retaining walls.

I used known minimum clearances to plot out the opening of the A625 overbridge and the nominal base of the retaining walls onto the Templot printout.

 

The location of the shunters cabin relative to the track was guesstimated using this photo from the WA Sutherland collection (Manchester Locomotive Society):

while the width and height of it was worked out using the door as a reference. It’s length was guesstimated based on “what felt right” (essentially 1.5 times the width) and it’s position along the entrance track was determined by placing it in a comparable position to that shown on the 1898 map - about a quarter of the way between the overbridge and the brook - rather than trying to position it at scale distance.

 

The position of the underbridge over Randal Carr Brook was determined with the help of another photo:

from the WA Sutherland collection (hosted by the Manchester Locomotive Society). I took the point where the drystone walling was replaced by fencing as where the ends of the bridge started and again used minimum clearances to plot the inner edge of the parapet and the embankment retaining wall next to the brook.

The west side of the bridge was a little more difficult as it carried a footpath and the lifted siding, which I think served the retort house of Horwich End gasworks.

Helpfully I’d laid an extra track (circled in the photo) to represent this using Templot - I’d also plotted some approximation of the bridge parapets using Templots’s parapet function - but the compression of the yard to incorporate the tandem turnout meant I eventually resorted to shuffling a length of track around before eventually settling on an arrangement of trackbed, footpath and parapet that looked and “felt” right.

 

I’m not too sure about including (what I assume is) the retort house on the layout. There’s only room for a small corner of it in any case, so it would look a bit odd, like a single tooth, if I did include it and I’d quite like to keep the ‘open space feel’ of the yard. I’ll probably leave it off for now and use a mock-up to help decide once I’m a little further into the build.

 

Next up: wood butchery!

 

…but that will have to wait until the Christmas season is over: I’d like to take this opportunity to wish everyone on here (but especially those who follow this thread!) a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!