Wright writes.....

[Tony Wright]

Having a stack of magazines -mainly the big 3 back to around 1960, but some copies back to the 1948 era, I cannot recall hitchin. Was it ever featured in the mags?

 

Stewart

It was Stewart; in the Model Railway Constructor, sometime in the late '70s/early '80s I believe. There was an A3 on the cover. 

 

Bert also wrote 'Last Tango in Hitchin', where he described the construction of an O2. Great stuff!

 

He also wrote the modelling supplement to a prototype mag' at the same time, Railway Reflections, edited by Hugh Ramsay. It used to have some very good stuff inside, usually ER-biased. 

[Markeg]

Hi Tony,

 

like the photos, great inspiration.

 

I think that a new volume on Modelling the LNER would be a great idea.  The last volume published did not really provide much inspiration for modellers.  It was more on the rolling stock.  The Modellers' guide to the LNER, M Adair was published in 1987, nearly 30 years ago.  A lot of progress has taken place since in terms of researching the internet, access to historical documents, books on areas or places, improvements in rolling stock, both kit and r-t-r.

So as you indicate, you have plenty of material and plenty is available.

 

Hope it comes about, I certainly would buy it.

Mark in Oz

[coachmann]

Was Hichin Peco Code 100 or code 75? 

Edited August 31, 2015 by coachmann

[micklner]

Why ? ECML  layouts

 

Mallard, Flying Scotsman, Coronation and Silver Jubilee sets etc pre war  and  Deltics post war to name just a few of many many reasons,  nothing else comes close !!

[St Enodoc]

Was Hichin Peco Code 100 or code 75? 

 

Larry

From the photos I would guess GEM or Formoway.

[Barry O]

I know of a few LM based layouts which aren't easily viewable or written about. There are also a number on RMweb.

Of course A3s and A4s are nice but a tad small when placed beside a Lizzie or Duchess.

 

Baz

[coachmann]

The one layout that impressed me was Crewchester. I wasn't inspired to model it, but settled for a Hornby clockwork 4-4-0 and two Mills bakelite LMS coaches on handbuilt track laid in the garden. All courtesy Tyldesley & Holbrook in Manchester. Crikes, Bill Haley was all the rage at the time and the rock 'n roll years would soon be beckoning!

[Tony Wright]

Was Hichin Peco Code 100 or code 75? 

I don't know the exact Code Larry, but I think Bert made the track himself - on fibre sleepers. 

[edcayton]

It was Stewart; in the Model Railway Constructor, sometime in the late '70s/early '80s I believe. There was an A3 on the cover. 

 

Bert also wrote 'Last Tango in Hitchin', where he described the construction of an O2. Great stuff!

 

He also wrote the modelling supplement to a prototype mag' at the same time, Railway Reflections, edited by Hugh Ramsay. It used to have some very good stuff inside, usually ER-biased. 

 

I've got 2 or 3 issues of that mag, but nothing about modelling, or was it a separate supplement? I met Hugh several times, he was a lovely man.

 

Ed

Edited August 31, 2015 by edcayton

[Tony Wright]

I've got 2 or 3 issues of that mag, but nothing about modelling, or was it a separate supplement? I met Hugh several times, he was a lovely man.

 

Ed

Ed,

 

I don't think the modelling supplement was in every one. My memory is of a centre section on different paper - but my memory isn't what it was!

[glo41f]

Why the LNER or ECML?  Simply because it is the best. Any fule kno that!

 

Martin Long

[t-b-g]

Inspiration comes in many shapes and forms. I often find that the modelling that inspires me most is done by people who achieve the sort of work that I would have been proud of if I had done it myself.

 

Part of that involves how the layout is operated, which is why Buckingham and Borchester were my two favourites from days gone by. They both had a lot of very good modelling but also looked to be very absorbing and interesting to operate. In the case of Buckingham I can vouch for that as we can have two sessions a week for around 3 hours and after 18 months of working the timetable, we are showing no signs of getting tired of it. 

 

I have the article "Last Tango in Hitchin" which appeared in the November 1973 Constructor. The article was a description of the layout but didn't go into any great detail on techniques. It was written by Ralph Cooper, rather than by Bert Collins himself.

 

I thought that it looked realistic for its time as a layout but I could never work out how it would work operationally. It was basically 4 circuits but from the plan there didn't seem to be anywhere for the trains to go to. I have never really got into "watching the trains go round" type layouts, although I fully appreciate that is a purely personal matter and many folk do like them very much indeed.

 

Funnily enough I had the opportunity to visit an O gauge layout this week. It has virtually no scenery and is very much a "watching the trains go by" affair. But when it has more than 20 superb locos, mostly scratchbuilt, running long trains at a scale 90mph with very well done DCC sound, it has a certain "wow" factor" and I was quite won over.

 

Tony 

[CUTLER2579]

One superb WCML layout is the one of Vincent Worthington  which is called "Camden Bank".  I was privileged  to see this layout once after visiting the Wigan Show.

 

Regards,Derek.

[thegreenhowards]

 

With the current RTR excellence, I cannot do better than Hornby's A4 at source. All I've done here is to discard the awful bogie wheels (replacing them with Markits ones), renumber/rename and weather this one. The A2 is a DJH one. 

 

 

 

Tony,

 

Many thanks for more inspiration.

 

One question about your comments on the Hornby A4. I note that you replace the bogie wheels, but what do you do with the fixed Cartazzi truck? The flangeless one looks pretty naff, but the flanged one struggles on even quite generous radius curves. Do you have a solution for this?

 

Apologies if this has already been addressed in your forum - I'm wading through from the beginning, but only reached page 27 so far!

 

Andy

[New Haven Neil]

I wasn't aware of Hitchin either, but that would be because Constructor wasn't stocked by any newsagents I had access to back then.

 

I don't like layouts without 'staging' as I have come to call fiddle yards after years of US modelling, but hanker for a continuous run just to let 'em go occasionally!  My current layout is staging - junction scene - scenic break - country/mine scene - staging, and despite being almost 40 feet in length I find it very limiting.  Too much track used for staging.....8 freight car train maximum isn't enough to look realistic, but the house (retirement bungalow) is tiny and the layout shares garage space with my other hobby, 5 motorbikes!

 

The operational aspect of Buckingham is superb and has set me thinking....still no continuous run though, nor likely to be until I give up motorcycling.

Edited August 31, 2015 by New Haven Neil

[manna]

G'day Gents

 

Think of all the trains you could buy, if you sold the bikes.

 

The operational side of things is what Bert loved best, the two roads through Arlsey would have made it fun.

 

manna

[t-b-g]

G'day Gents

 

Think of all the trains you could buy, if you sold the bikes.

 

The operational side of things is what Bert loved best, the two roads through Arlsey would have made it fun.

 

manna

 

Do you know how it was operated? The article I have says very little about it.

 

A friend of mine once designed a fiddle yard free layout that was a little like Hitchin in concept. The idea was that you took some carriages out of a siding and a loco off shed and made up a train in the platform, then ran it round the circuit and then it became a terminating train from the other direction, with the loco going off to shed and a pilot loco shunting the carriages to the sidings.

 

That is my guess as to how Hitchin would be worked, with freight trains on the other two roads waiting for a turn through the double track section.

 

Can anybody say if that is how it was run?

[Focalplane]

I like the concept of an out and back layout except that it rarely has a prototype. Think of modern HSTs at Paddington, for example. Mainly their formation is first class at the London end though occasionally we do see one "running backwards", causing much consternation at each station along the route, particularly if there is no announcement.

 

So how do these rare events occur? Are there empty stock movements that manage to reverse an HST? If so, where?

 

Another modern example is the loco/DVT operated Chiltern Mainline services between Marylebone and Birmingham. Here the DVT is always at the London end because of the Class 67/68 fumes spoiling the clean London air in the trainshed.

 

With steam era operations there was the turntable at each end of the line, but the coaches would have stayed in the same orientation both in and out.

 

Dies this criticism sound a bit severe? I suppose it does. I like the idea of the train being the focus of a layout rather than just the locomotive dragging a miscellany of stock around. After all, most of us have enjoyed being passengers during our lives. Enginemen are entitled to see things a little differently.

 

For this reason I think the ideal model railway is probably an end to end with two termini. A continuous run can always be coiled into the plans, as C J Freezer so often demonstrated.

[newbryford]

I like the concept of an out and back layout except that it rarely has a prototype. Think of modern HSTs at Paddington, for example. Mainly their formation is first class at the London end though occasionally we do see one "running backwards", causing much consternation at each station along the route, particularly if there is no announcement.

 

So how do these rare events occur? Are there empty stock movements that manage to reverse an HST? If so, where?

 

Another modern example is the loco/DVT operated Chiltern Mainline services between Marylebone and Birmingham. Here the DVT is always at the London end because of the Class 67/68 fumes spoiling the clean London air in the trainshed.

 

 

 

Diversionary routes - both planned and unplanned are often responsible for sets being "the wrong way round".

Other factors such as faults with the stock. I was on a Pendolino from Glasgow and it was delayed with a AWS fault in the south facing cab. It was turned round somewhere in the southern suburbs. As an aside, I remember the day well as this was the day of the Grayrigg derailment in 2007 on the Friday of the Glasgow/SECC exhibition. If we had been on time, we would have been past the site of the incident, as it was, we were the second nearest southbound train and terminated at Penrith.

 

cheers,

Mick

[chris p bacon]

G'day Gents

 

Think of all the trains you could buy, if you sold the bikes.

 

The operational side of things is what Bert loved best, the two roads through Arlsey would have made it fun.

 

manna

Arlesey, a meer whippersnapper compared to Sandy. 

[Clive Mortimore]

Arlesey, a meer whippersnapper compared to Sandy. 

Hi All and Dave (called Chris)

 

In the 1980s there was a group from Colchester that modelled Arlesey with its bottle neck, it was in BR blue period. I can recall operating it and the trick was to run a freight slowly towards the station hoping the operator of the fast line would get the express through the station in time that you didn't have to stop your train, and that you then cleared the station in time for the next express to thunder through. Looked impressive but how realistic?????

[Woodcock29]

I have been inspired by many of the layouts mentioned over the last few days.  Starting with Buckingham of course and on which I had the privilege to run a few trains when I visited Tony G in 2013 - thanks for that Tony it was terrific.

 

Borchester Market would come next along with Hitchin, which my Dad got to see about 1987 on one if his visits back to the UK.

 

The layouts that inspire me in recent times are The Gresley Beat, which I was privileged to see and run a few trains on also in 2013, along with Retford and Peterborough North also visited that year, Retford for the second time.  They all offer something different but are of course all LNER or ER focussed which is the key for me. Another layout I have enjoyed is David Woodward's Oakwell Central - in which case the locos and rolling stock were the key - many of which I have also got either running or waiting to be built.

 

The other layout I'm inspired by is of course LB which hopefully I can visit on my next trip back to the UK probably in 2017.

 

Although I'm retired, having been able to take an early retirement nearly 4 years ago, time is still the key factor in achieving one's modelling aims.

 

Last evening I spent operating on a large South Australian layout here in Adelaide, Huntingdale and Grange that was featured in Continental Modeller in June and July this year, which I took Phil Parker to see when he was here nearly 12 months ago.

 

Tony W likes to see what we build so I have inserted a photo of a B17 I built about 2002 based around the original Hornby body, but which has a Comet chassis - with three layered expansion link - I think these look wonderful, a tender body based on the Triang B12 body but with new top and front and additional height added to the base of the body and a scratchbuilt underframe.  I even cut the old Kings Cross nameplates to remove the gap between the words as Hatfield House was so long there was no space between on the real loco.  I have also included a photo of A2/2 Thane of Fife that I built from a DJH kit for a friend here in Adelaide and which was seen in the article on his layout London Road in the July 2015 Hornby Magazine.

 

Anyway I must head out to the shed to continue building the pair of D&S GN 6 wheelers I'm currently working on.

 

Woodcock29 (Andrew Emmett)

Edited September 1, 2015 by Woodcock29

[Andy R]

Many thanks for your lovely reply Tony and of course for the photos from its Cornwall location. I found the photo of the workbench really interesting- just think about what Peter Denny produced from that workbench for over 50-60 years...Incredible!.

 

I have tried undertake some work on my own meagre layout from scratch, to respond to your point about being creative and not a slave to RTR stuff; I have built all the station points using SMP/copperclad sleeper technique, having never built a point before I started, and most of the buildings are card/foamboard creations overtime. This I have really enjoyed, but I have not ventured into the world of loco or other stock building. That is a step too far at present, and best left to experts.

 

I got some good photos of the Buckingham layout at Tony Gees on my last visit particularly and they continue to provide inspiration and a record of not only a pleasant half-day spent with Tony 'in the shed' but of one of the most influential layouts around, lovingly re-erected and 'fine-tuned' by another fine modeller. During my first visit 5-6 years ago Tony generously took me also across to see Redford and that was a masterpiece in the making, but not with the intimacy and operational joy that we get from Buckingham (in my humble opinion).

 

I am pleased with the comments and pleasure your recent photos have generated from other members. It just shows how much impact this layout has created over a lifetime.

 

I will try to sell the idea of another visit to Buckingham and a related one to LB (I don't know where you are actually located Tony?) in our next visit in June 2016, but it may be a hard-sell to the other half...we live in hope.

 

Regards, Andy R

[Bernard Lamb]

 

 

Bert also wrote 'Last Tango in Hitchin', where he described the construction of an O2. Great stuff!

 

 

Did he not carve up a Trix A4 in order to get the nose shape more accurate?

It might well be the one in the photo. But you can only see the tender.

Still got a Trix A4 some where. It does show how RTR has improved.

Bernard

[manna]

G'day Gents

 

From what I can gather from a couple of articles about Bert Collin's Hitchin, was that it had to run like a real railway, as said, by Clive Mortimore the challenge was to get trains through the two road station without any delays.

 

I know it was a challenge to get through as I've had to wait there myself with either parcels, or goods trains, on a summers evening, sitting there with only the sound of birds singing and the bells from the signal box (diesel engine shut down) and then hear the rails next to you start to sing with the approach of a train, and knowing it would be your turn soon.

 

manna