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Portable 00 Goods Yard - 1926 SR


ThePurplePrimer

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I have finally decided that I am going to build a layout and after much thinking and mind changing I have actually decided on what it is going to be - at last !

 

My intention is to make a copy of someone else's model railway and that is the 00 gauge layout built by A.R. Walkley in 1925/26

That layout is very interesting to me in a number of ways - it appears to have been one of the first 00 layouts and also the first Inglenook

There was an article in the June 1926 Model Railway News ( would love to get a copy ) but all I have to work on is some poor photos reproduced In a few more recent articles that refer to it

He built his own M7 loco in SR livery 

The layout is just 6 feet long and folds in half but could easily have a fiddle yard fitted as one end exits into a tunnel

This layout also used a very early tension lock coupling system with auto uncoupling and even a single semi automatic signal

My intention is to re imagine his layout - depending how I get on with this I might make 2 versions in time

One to work everything out using rtr or plastic kits and peco track work and then possibly a second one at a later date with hand laid track and 'better' locos and rolling stock 

 

With many thanks to David Thomas I now have some better pictures to work from 

 

Here is one for starters 

 

 

 

post-20732-0-25816100-1386261818.jpg

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  • 1 year later...

Just been searching the forum for something else and have stumbled across this... Fascinating to see the images of the original concept and the images of Mr Walkley's layout! I take it this project never progressed any further, but would love to be proved wrong! The original idea must have given rise to thousands of layouts over the last 90 years! :O

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My only concern is that I do not see a run-round. So, the train having arrived, how does it get shunted into the sidings, and how does the loco get into its shed? A small station like this would not have a local shunting engine to take the train off the loco that pulled it in. Surely the layout does not envisage every train arriving as a propelling move?

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Maybe the engine shed houses a little shunting engine ?

 

Could the incoming engine pull the train into one of the sidings - uncouple the wagons - these get attached to the shunter who then bungs them ( propelling ) into another siding.

 

This releases the original loco who pops back out through the tunnel and then the shunter shunts the wagons all about - leaves them for the incoming loco to take away ( a third loco ? ) and then the shunter returns to his shed

 

Actually that sounds like fun to me for not a lot of space

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Hi guys

 

I think this one is one my to do list one day - be nice if it was dine and finished in 11 years time so there is no rush yet.

 

I managed to find a buy a copy of the original 1926 magazine

 

Part of me is quite tempted to do a quite close replica of it

What a great find! I bet it makes fascinating reading.

 

I too am tempted to make a version of this, although I might reduce the length to 5 feet. I don't think I would use a loco shed on the kickback siding either. The folding espect certainly appeals though.

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My only concern is that I do not see a run-round. So, the train having arrived, how does it get shunted into the sidings, and how does the loco get into its shed? A small station like this would not have a local shunting engine to take the train off the loco that pulled it in. Surely the layout does not envisage every train arriving as a propelling move?

Well there could be a loop just off scene. I think the beauty of these types of layouts is the simplicity. An inglenook for example doesn't need a fiddle yard in it's purest form. Neither does this.

Actually that sounds like fun to me for not a lot of space

Completely with you there!!

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The loco shed and goods yard could be some distance from a passenger station, so the shed serves the branch not the goods yard. It would add interesting complications to shunting when the branch passenger train arrives off scene, and the train engine needs to visit the shed for coal and water! I have a similar annoying interruption to shunting planned on Ingletyme, in the form of a Heljan Railbus shuttling back and forth!

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Just been searching the forum for something else and have stumbled across this... Fascinating to see the images of the original concept and the images of Mr Walkley's layout! I take it this project never progressed any further, but would love to be proved wrong! The original idea must have given rise to thousands of layouts over the last 90 years! :O

 

By this project do you mean Walkley's original layout, in which case it probably progressed to much of our hobby as we now know it, or Rob's project to recreate it? I note that June next year will be the 90th anniversary of the full article describing the layout in Model Railway News but the first mention I can find of the layout is in a report on the Wimbledon Club's 1925 exhibition on December 21st where it won the first prize.

 

Hi Rob are you still planning to go ahead with this?

As you know I have the original MRN magazine in a bound volume and several other contributions to MRN by Walkley. I think the scans are actually a bit clearer than the photos in the original magazine- larger anyway.

 

I think a recreation of Walkley's original layout would be interesting keeping to the original design as far as possible and maybe it should be in British H0 scale. Too many changes and it would just be another Inglenook and Walkley's portable goods yard was far more significant than that.

 

First of all, it's worth noting that though it's described as a 00 gauge layout it was built to a scale of 3.5mm/ft. That's not a detail but was the real point of the layout. In the mid 1920s 00 was still a fairly new gauge and there was an argument, probably more amicable than it seems in print, about the appropriate scale to use. The Model Railway Club, heavily influenced by Henry Greenly, announced in April 1926 that it had settled on 4mm/ft as the scale for 00 gauge but a small group, including A.R. Walkley, at the Wimbledon club had been pushing for the correct scale of 3.5mm/ft with a fresh chance to  avoid the "tinplate" tradition that had so plagued 0 gauge.

 

Walkley had shown a small level crossing diorama in 3.5mm scale late in 1924 but his Portable Goods Yard seems to have been the first complete layout in this scale and its purpose was to demonstrate its practicality.  Making it a folding layout that could be carried like a suitcase  (rather a heavy one since it was built from half inch planking !) emphasised the space saving virtues of 00 at a time when 0 gauge was still thought of as very small. 

 

With this layout Walkley also pioneered a few other things we now take for granted including: two rail electrification, using very small permanent magnet DC motors to enable directional control by reversing the current, a practical automatic coupler and uncoupler, and even frog switching of points. He also stuck to his principle, argued in an article "Too Much Model Railway" in January of that year,  of not filling every available square inch with track. He sought instead to create a more realistic scene and he included a number of buildings including a small cottage and its garden. 

 

Walkley's layout wasn't really the first Inglenook at it was a demo layout rather than a shunting puzzle, we might today describe it as a proof of concept, and it was also rather longer. Alan Wright who did build the first Inglenook Sidings as a four foot long  5-3-3 puzzle in 1979 said he'd never heard of it though W. Hardin Osbourne  who described a five foot by six inch TT Christmas shunting puzzle in RM in December 1963 might have done. The puzzle there was to reverse the order of a five-wagon-plus-guards-van goods train in as few moves as possible. 

 

Walkley's layout didn't lead to an immediate spate of imitators, possibly because so few people were actually working with 00 gauge at the time, and I suspect his ideas were slow burning ones that came into their own a few years later.

 

I'd very much like to know more about A.R. Walkley; he seems to have been the first person to use the term Half O to differentiate 3.5mm/ft scale from the 4mm scale that was becoming dominant in Britain and he could well claim to be be the father of the world's most popular scale. MRN as almost*  the first dedicated railway modelling magazine found its way into a lot of other countries and seems to have influenced a lot of early development. He didn't just pioneer H0 though, when Greenly stated yet again that 3.5mm/ft was impractical, Walkley promptly responded by building a fully functioning 2mm/ft scale layout. I've not though seen any trace of him beyond the 1930s and have long wondered what became of him. 

 

* update.  MRN wasn't quite the first model railway magazine. In 1909 Henry Greenly, who had been assistant editor of Model Engineering from 1901, started  "Model Railways and Locomotives". That that ran monthly until 1916 when Greenly went to work for the Royal Aircraft Establishment. The magazine was edited by Greenly and later with W.J. Basset Lowke and  I now have bound volumes of its first three years. I don't know its circulation but it had been gone for some some time when MRN started in 1925. For a few years it does seem to have been the world's only dedicated model railway journal. 

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How about a challenge to recreate various variants of it, to show as a comparison?

For example:

- Reproduce the original as closely as possible

- Produce it using the latest RTR models to show have things have advanced

- As the original objective seems to have been accuracy, produce it in P4 using all the best technology and methods available

- Produce it in all the different scales and gauges that couldn't even have been dreamed of then

 

I might be up for the 4mm broad gauge version!

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Hi David

 

I have the original magazine now ( a single unbound one with a tatty cover ) and have a folder full of ideas and scribbles.

 

I find the whole thing quite interesting - lots of early ideas going in with that layout from what I understand.

 

I am intending to do a version of it and Inhave discussed the 'baseboard' with my brother at some length - he is a keen woodworker.

 

My latest idea of what I would do is a fairly close copy but not an indentical replica.

 

My version would be very close as far as the scenery goes and of course the trackplan but I would build it in hand built copperclad ( just started playing with that ) but it would be in 00

 

I decided that Sprat & Winkle couplings might be most suitable

 

I have got as far as building a temporary baseboard so I can lay the track out and get the buildings built and in place - when I have all the oroblems solved I will then get my brother to build the real box - I have some ideas for that in regards to access to wiring etc but it being 'blind'

 

I will have a seperate and optional fiddle yard on the LH side that feeds into the tunnel

 

I am glad other people are interested in his layout.

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Hi John

 

You can see from my above post what my idea is

 

A 4mm scale version

Using hand built copperclad track

00-sf

Sprat and winkle couplings

A very close copy of the scenery and buildings

I might slighlty pre date the stock to LSWR

My 3 locos would be a terrier, a M7 and an Adams Radial ( great timing on that one )

 

The wagons I will mostly scratch build

 

Figures mainly from the new Stadden ranges

 

I will also copy the signalling

 

Oh and it will be DCC

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6 feet x 11 " x 5"

 

BUT

 

that was in 3.5mm to the foot 

I don't think that will cause many problems even if you stick with six feet though you might want to widen it to 12" and the clearance height might need to increase a tad.  The layout doesn't seem to have been based on any particular siding capacities and I'd guess that Walkley just chose six feet folded to three as a handy length and worked from there. The 11 inches was probably just the width of the planking he used.  The arrangement of the two points does seem a little awkward with two right hands giving a double reverse curve but he may have wanted to test how rolling stock behaved- the layout does seem to have been something of a test track- or possibly he'd already built the points before laying out the layout. He mentions building a test point in an earlier articel

The design of the box allowing the covers to be fitted and held with catches seems particularly well thought out and I couldn't help fantasising about this solidly constructed box still sitting in some attic with nobody having any idea what it contains !!

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I agree with David that the width and height may well have been a simple fact of the planks available

 

I will be scaling mine up to match 4mm

 

You can see the row of catches that David refers to if you look hard - that style of catch is still easily available

 

If you look at the right hand end of the folded box I think you can see a keyhole - mine will be having a drawer lock fitted so it will lock it closed when folded

 

David - wouldnt it be great if it was still around

 

My version will be called ' Lye Walk Yard ' - its near a small soap factory

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