RobboPetes

The biggest problem I have at the moment is what type of building is the transit shed going to be? I could make it a typical railway company goods warehouse but that would make it dominate the layout, something I do not want to. If it was to be a goods warehouse that would tie the layout down geographically - again something I don't want to do. I could model a typical British Railway railway building - a fabricated unit consisting of a roof on top of a steel frame, such as the one at Pensnett. No, this is too simple and would not hide the manual unloading of the loads off the wagons. Hmmm...too simple! I could model a brick-built structure such as the one at the Tyneside Central Freight Depot. Trouble is, when I passed the site back in '93 the buildings had been razed to the ground. The last option would be to have the sidings as a part of a former steelworks, similar to Warrington Dallam sidings on which the layout is based. Once the company have closed the site would they have dismantled the building??? The building would have had a crane inside to allow for the unloading of opens/flats within the building itself. Nice. This is what I want but how to justify it without restricting the layout to the movement of steel traffic only, as I would like to be able to incorporate other wagons on the layout as well. Answer: whilst doing some research for Lucy's Burton on Trent layout I was looking in the Freight Only - Volume 2, Southern and Central England, where I found the solution. There are 3 exBR-owned steel terminals at Wolverhamton, Wednesbury and Brierley Hill. Wednesbury deals with sawn timber from Luxembourg and Brierley Hill deals with aluminium billets from Fort William. All I need to do now is to add some modeller's licence to the proceedings and away I go!!! Oh, and do some more planning and building of the layout as well.

The weathering on the Cargowaggon is awesome! I'm just going to start weathering my own stock and have been massively inspired since seeing this item. I feel the buildings will look fine once they are finished and bedded in.

I believe they were Regi Rail Mk 1s.

The Skegness trains plied their trade through Burton on Trent with double-headed 20s working them. Are you a member of the DEMU group? They have their annual exhibition (held in early June) in Burton on Trent and this might provide you with any pictorial evidence you might need (some of the members of the society might be local to the area). Hope this helps.

Nice bit of weathering. I would like to try my hand at airbrushing, as I have only used dry-brush weathering in the past. I feel that each has it's own advantages, but both could really enhance a model! I will do my BR blue model (37 ???) once it has been renumbered and lowered (as per bcnPete of coombe junction - moorswater fame). As for removing the factory applied numbers, I scraped them off with my fingernail on one of my peaks before renumbering it as 45 056. It appeared in the December 2011 edition of the railway modeller (the bogies have been narrowed as per that article). Regards, Robert.

Look forward to seeing how the chassis etches for the VDAs come out, as I'm considering replacing the Farish chassis with these on all my stock. I currently have all the van types (VA/C/D types as well as the OAAs).

One option would be to run 2 separate trains - one empty and one loaded - only having one of these on the layout at a time would give the impression that both loading and unloading is done off-stage. Another option would be to run a train either empty or loaded only, but needing to access the runround loop, as access to the siding is only available in/from one direction i.e.,empty sleeper trains for the Constain works at Rye House in Herts had to run to Hertford East, run round, then access the works at Rye House by reversing in.

I have been wanting to build a small layout for some time but was not sure what to do. I model B.R. in the early 80s until the end of Speedlink in '91. Trying to design a small layout running both passenger and freight during this time would be hard to achieve. Steam modelers do not have this problem. The move away from 10-foot wheelbase to longer vehicles exacerbated the problem I had. My interest is in freight trains, as I find these far more interesting than passenger trains. As an example, a VDA van can carry Cook-in sauces, Spillers pet food, rolls of news print, Cider, fertiliser, steel products, car components, bagged china clay, bagged cement, etc or used as a barrier vehicle. Looking back at old photos of an 08 dragging a single Cargowaggon through Didcot station provided just the inspiration I needed. Checking the track plan from the British Rail Track Diagrams, Western Region (Quail Map Company) book and checking the site of Dicot Distribution Centre on Google Earth spurred me on. I like Hereford yard but that would have to wait for another day. Looking through The Freight Only Yearbook, No 2, Michael Rhodes & Paul Shannon, page 63 gave me just what I was looking for. The same picture appears in the book - Modelling The British Rail Era, Flemming, Flint, Gibbons and Taylor on page 44. Warrington Dallem Lane sidings was built on the site of a former steelworks. Following this would limit the traffic I could run. I decided to make it a Distribution Depot. The diagram below is the plan I have settled on: I have added a transit shed as I would like to be able to unload flat/open wagons away from public view when exhibiting the layout. All too often these types of wagon are run on and off a layout loaded??? The final width of the layout hasn't been determined yet but will be between 1'6" and 2 foot. Total length will be about 8 foot. Heavy use will be made of a sector plate in the fiddle yard and I will be using DG couplings throughout.

Looks very nice. Keep up the good work and look forward to seeing more. Regards, Robert