whart57

1 minute ago, Nearholmer said:

 

Despite my passion for the EKLR

 

 You are talking to someone who has walked along the remaining stretches of the EKLR trackbed, built a 3mm scale model of EKR No.2 and has wondered about how to reproduce the gravity shunting at Canterbury Road ........

OK, I have had a thought, and one a little less radical than changing the entire coastline. It does involve the fiction that Reculver was a more important settlement at the dawn of the railway age than it was in reality. In reality Reculver's glory days were in Anglo-Saxon times, things went downhill after King Ethelbert. Which was incidentally the name of the pub in Reculver.

So first a map:

Let's go through the growth of Reculver first, using the example of next door Herne Bay as our guide. We start with the old town which we suggest grew around the church and the Roman fort. Let's say medieval monks set up shop inside the ruins of the Roman Fort which would have provided ready made walls and after Henry VIII and the dissolution of the monasteries that became the basis of the post-Tudor town. I've given the North Stream a bit bigger role, one that permits a small barge harbour, typical of the North Kent coast, in the shadow of the town. In Victorian times land speculators laid out a new town on the clifftop. We can gloss over the fact that these cliffs are unstable and tend to fall into the sea, but that speculative development is what actually happened in Herne Bay in the 1840s. Any one interested can look at Googlemaps for Hanover Square, Brunswick Square and Oxenden Square in Herne Bay. They were meant to become smart squares like those in London. In reality those clifftops were covered with caravan camps after WW2. An indication of the passenger potential of those camps can be found from East Kent bus company services in the 1950s. Summer service, a 20 minute headway on the 39 route to Reculver using double deckers. Winter service a small 29 seat single decker shuttling back and forth four or five times a day.

Now unlike with Herne Bay it would have been an easy route for a railway from the SER mainline to Reculver. Sturry to Herne Bay would have required some hefty earthworks, Grove Ferry to Reculver can follow the Roman coast line. So in 1846 or thereabouts you get a single track branch from Grove Ferry.

In 1861 the East Kent Railway - the later LCDR - turns up with their Kent Coast line from Faversham to Thanet. Now, I have pushed this a little further south, closer to the present day A299 road, my excuse being that the need to pass under the SER branch forced this. Would the LCDR pass by Reculver without trying to steal traffic from the SER? Would they hell. So they lay a branch from Roman Galley Junction (I give you that name, it has a nice ring I think) to terminate next to the SER station. This again would be fairly easy to lay out and would be laid out as double track.

After World War One, land speculators lay out more plots for people to build houses on - again just as at Herne Bay, the residential streets around the station and at Hampton are these - and after WW2 there is the usual 1960s and later development. I haven't drawn it in but a light industrial estate next to the railway is a highly likely development, again that happened between Sea Street and the railway in Herne Bay.

So where does that leave you with your layout? I would say platforms 1/2 are the old SER station and platforms 3/4 the later LDCR station. Platforms 3/4 would certainly have been electrified in 1959 when the Kent Coast Railway was, but the old SER line to platforms 1/2 might not have been. If you want more than a two car Thumper in those platforms though then you need the third rail there.

So your operation patterns c1979 would in my opinion be:

• A frequent service from platforms 3/4 to London Victoria. To my mind, and only bending reality slightly, this would be a four car set which would couple up at Herne Bay to one or two four car sets that have come from Thanet.
• Peak hour services from platforms 3/4 to London Cannon Street made up of older compartment stock. In my mind these would couple up at Strood with a similar train coming up from Paddock Wood and Maidstone
• The most obvious service from Platforms 1/2 would be a two car unit shuttling back and forth to Canterbury West. A bit boring to my mind and also not that believable given that the bus services in East Kent were generally much better for these short runs. Canterbury's stations aren't that well situated either. I'd say that you have that sort of service once a day as a schools service, anyone that passed the 11plus had to attend grammar or technical high schools in Canterbury or Faversham, and there was at that time a special train from Herne Bay to Faversham for pupils at Faversham grammar
• If the third rail is present on the platform 1/2 side, and we assume the junction at Grove Ferry permits it (Grove Ferry station itself was closed in the 1960s btw) then another possibility is a Reculver-Grove Ferry-Minster-Sandwich-Deal-Dover Priory service

How does that all sound?

There was a tramway from the Dutch naval port town of Den Helder to a beach resort called Huisduinen

The main function of the line was transporting sand from quarries in the dunes which is why the passenger carriages have curious underframes, they are the same as the ones under the sand tipplers.

Then there is one - of several - that will have to be considered "honorary narrow gauge", namely the tramway from Alkmaar to Bergen in North Holland. It was the seaside trippers traffic that kept this line going until the 1950s

One of the locos of this line was plinthed in Bergen for many years and then taken to Hoorn where it was rebuilt as a working engine and is today a star attraction of the Hoorn-Medemblik museum line

36 minutes ago, Ray Von said:

Could you (or somebody) sketch out what you mean?  I'm sure you're correct but I'm not sure I'm following your "train" of thought (oh dear!)

Do you mean - extending the "platform 1 and 2 line" down to Canterbury East territory is too much? 

I will do so tomorrow

22 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

 

If you are objecting to an extension of the EKLR from Wingham to the coast near Birchington, then you are objecting to a proposal made in reality, and for which powers were sought, as noted back up-thread.

 

 

It was a proposal, but then the EKLR threw proposals around like confetti. The line was probably never properly surveyed and the Wingham line petered out in a field just beyond a level crossing on the Canterbury to Sandwich road. The EKLR was planned on the basis of there being a much larger coalfield under East Kent than was the case. But when borings at Wingham, Hammill, Ash and other places failed to find economically extractable coal the case for the northern end of the EKLR fell away. The one successful colliery at Chislet was right by the mainline and didn't need the EKLR

There was an intriguing map I once saw in Herne Bay library. It was a 25" to the mile map of the Reculver area and on it someone had drawn - in pencil - a junction on the Kent Coast Line with a double track line heading south. I've never found out what this was about. Possibly the Southern was considering a link line between the Kent Coast line and the Ashford-Ramsgate line, possibly it was sketched out in 1953 when the line across the marshes was breached by the floods. Who knows.

I have a problem with this scenario, and it comes from the fact - as I've already mentioned - that I grew up in Herne Bay, just a few miles from Reculver. A terminus at Reculver is well within the normal parameters of model railway what-iffery but if you want two lines going out then one of them surely must be the KCR to Faversham and beyond. A branch line from Grove Ferry is acceptable what-iffery, I've had ideas along those lines myself, but a second line up from the south, particularly if it's an extension of the East Kent Railway, is going too far.

Now from that part of the NE Kent coast, the shortest route to London has always been the LCDR route via Faversham, Chatham and Bromley and that is the route the fast trains take. Somewhere around 1910 the SECR laid in a junction between Strood and Rochester linking that route with the Maidstone West - Charing Cross via Dartford over the North Kent line (this was using the white elephant Chatham Central branch) and after that NE Kent could have trains to Charing Cross and Cannon Street. In the 70s and 80s there was an hourly service but they were slow trains, stopping everywhere after Strood. There were, I think, peak hour trains to Cannon Street over the Kent Coast Railway for City workers and they were fast(-ish)

The Ramsgate-Canterbury West-Ashford line was a backwater. Only in the 1990s did this start to see significant numbers of trains going direct to London. The meandering coast line Ramsgate-Deal-Dover was also a backwater

Things today are a little different thanks to Eurostar and the greater importance of Ashford, but in your period that is how things were.

I had to go back to the original drawing to check, but yes, you're right. The exit to the traverser should probably be double track too with a scissors crossing so that both platforms can be used for arrival and departure. However it would be better for platforms 3/4 to be the former SER lines as they are the ones that would serve the dock facilities. I would be inclined to model the dock sidings with car terminal (that being my idea) as a way of hiding the traverser.

There is another possibility, though it would require some rebuilding. The SER and LCDR were notorious for not cooperating on station sharing so you could have one line at high level and one at low level. The only problem is that with this scenario it would be the LCDR which would have approached Reculver over the ridge from Hillborough that would have been at high level whereas the SER would have come along the river bank at little above the tide line.

Right, I'm getting competitive with Nearholmer here  

I offer this map of an alternative East Kent, this is the result of a medieval storm which changed the course of the Stour to flow north instead of east and the result that the Wantsum became a large bay rather than a marsh.

So, a potted railway history:

1830    Canterbury and Whitstable Railway opens

1845    South Eastern Railway arrives in Canterbury from Ashford and pushes on towards Ramsgate

1847    SER branch from Grove Ferry to Reculver opens (Reculver at that time more important than Herne Bay which was then just a few houses)

1859    East Kent Railway (later LCDR) opens line from London to Dover via Canterbury

1861    East Kent Railway (later LCDR) line from Faversham to Reculver via Whitstable and Herne Bay opens

1898    Isle of Thanet Light Railway opens line to run from Ramsgate round the coast of Thanet to Westgate on Sea

1899    SER and LCDR merge to form SE&CR

1923    Grouping. Southern Railway also takes over the Thanet Light Railway

1926    Southern Railway upgrades Thanet Light Railway to be an extension of the Ramsgate line and closes the Margate Sands branch

1948    Nationalisation

1952    Canterbury and Whitstable line closed

1959    First stage of Kent Coast Electrification sees Faversham to Reculver electrified

1961    Second stage of Kent Coast Electrification sees Ashford to Ramsgate electrified. Grove Ferry to Reculver considered for closure but dieselised for now

1969    Roll-on-roll-off dock built at Reculver, but as roads not upgraded it proves a white elephant as far as car ferry companies are concerned

1976    Desperate to do something with the ro-ro facilities at Reculver government instigates a car export service ferrying cars from Midlands factories to Reculver for export by ferry to Europe.

So at the end of the 1970s you have a regular electrified service made up of 4-CEPs from Reculver to London Victoria. These join up with a Dover Priory to London service at Faversham.

The Grove Ferry to Reculver line remains in place for car carriers and as its there also sees an hourly service to Canterbury with a 2 car set. If that line is electrified you could also have peak hour services to Charing Cross/Cannon Street running via Canterbury and Ashford

4 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

I'm no expert on the economy of N.E.Kent c1980, but recollections:

 

- tourism/leisure;

 

- pasturing sheep and cattle on the semi-marshy bits;

 

- arable on the drier bits;

 

- a fair bit of light-to-middling engineering manufacturing (one of my bro's is a production designer, and he worked for several years for a specialist vehicle builder in the area, mostly designing bin lorries and street sweepers for export to Russia, although that was c2000, and Triang-Hornby probably fit this bracket);

 

- some food manufacture/processing;

 

- coal mining and associated support industries;

 

- servicing some of the cross-channel ferry industry;

 

Any locals with long memories out there?

 

Besides coal, most of the N.Kent heavy industry, paper, cement, oil, estuarine gravel, military traffic etc. was a bit further east than we are here.

 

Mind you, the military are always a good fall-back when trying to think of traffic sources - we could always inflict a gunnery range on the area.

 

You mean the heavy industry was further West surely.

There wasn't much in the way of industry requiring rail in that area, either in the chosen period or earlier. Goods yards were mostly closed by the 1970s. I remember seeing coal wagons, and only coal wagons, in the goods yard at Herne Bay c.1962, but no freight stock at all c.1970. Coal for town gas works was not needed after the mid 60s as this region was one of the first in the country to switch to natural gas. Pfizers at Richborough might have brought some chemicals in by rail, and there might have been some food processing requiring van traffic, but most of that went by road. Whitstable harbour after all lost its rail link in 1952.

On 10/02/2021 at 16:11, Nearholmer said:

Hmmm .........

 

For the basic passenger service, I suggest that we assume it to be a short spur from the Faversham-Margate Line, served by an hourly 4-CEP, detached at the junction from the Down train from London, and attaching to the Up train to London ........ which is a bit dull, but very realistic! You could add variety, and make things even more realistic, by buying a 2-HAP, which could shuttle back and forth to the junction all day, with the CEP only forming morning peak Up, and evening peak Down London services.

 

 

Look at Sheerness for inspiration.

Now as someone who lived in Herne Bay until the early 70's this is my patch so I would point out that you can have two types of EMU here, the 4-CEP on an hourly Victoria service and a suitable door for every compartment class for the hourly Charing Cross via Dartford service.

Another suggestion, and an idea I have toyed with, is to change hydrological history. Imagine that in some medieval storm the sea surged up the Wantsum, diverted the Great Stour and carved out a great bay. Come the railway age and the line from Faversham to Whitstable and Herne Bay terminates at the harbour town of Reculver. That might give you a fair bit of scope for freight. What about import or export of new cars?

It's not just that these lines need to survive WW2, but also that they need to get to the revival of light rail in the late 1990s. When we get to that period possibilities open up.

I offer up as an example the former LNWR branch to Coalport in Shropshire. Not a Stephens line admittedly but a single track branch that slowly expired as the industries it served expired alongside it. However, in the twenty years after the line closing for regular traffic new housing estates - part of Telford New Town - sprung up beside the line as did Telford Centre, a shopping and business complex. When these were built in the 1970s and 80s the planners thought only of cars and not of public transport. (I can tell you from personal experience that the bus services in the late 70s were infrequent and slow). It is not impossible that the planners of the late 90s would have instead converted the old branch line to something they would no doubt call a super tram or something. The conversion of Buildwas power station away from coal burning in 2010 would also give the opportunity to repurpose the line to the power station to be a branch to Coalbrookdale and Ironbridge as well. An ear-shaped line linking Wellington, Oakengates, Telford Town Centre, half a dozen housing estates and the world heritage sites of Ironbridge and Coalport? What's not to like?

The light railways and minor branch lines still running today as revenue lines (not heritage) have gained new purpose because of developments beside the line. That might have happened to the WC&P if it had lasted long enough to ride the wave. I don't think any other Stephens lines are in that position.

It is said that sail power was also used on the short lived Hampton Tramway and on the Herne Bay Pier tramway. Hard irrefutable evidence is lacking though.

Would you model it using a leaf blower for power though?  

18 hours ago, Horsehay Railway Modeller said:

I went to haberdashers abraham darby  as it now is. It changed to an academy in around 2009. 

 

 

So you were an Ab Dab then

14 hours ago, Hando said:

My interactive map of my fictional railway: The Isles of Scilly Railway

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/d/embed?mid=1VwlyRNUQlhPno_2FO_V1uotr9W95jeFc

 

It may appear absurd for there to have been such a diverse system of railways over such short distances on these tiny islands, but I have been writing an alternate history up to rationalise reasoning for why such lines were constructed.

 

Hmm, there are parts of central London not as well served by rail transport.

That said there were railways on Guernsey and Alderney, two of the smaller Channel Islands, so while I would not believe your dense network of lines I could believe a line linking the Old Town with the harbour and the Garrison walls. It could be standard gauge, the lines on Guernsey and Alderney were, but a Terrier would be overkill as far as pulling power was concerned. I'd be inclined to go for something like a Manning Wardle 0-4-0ST like this.

Slaters do a kit in 7mm scale.

Another possibility would be Wantage Tramway's Shannon

I don't know if anyone does a kit of this.

Done as a small 7mm scale layout, with handlaid track necessary to show what would be undoubtedly a very light rail profile, with locos like that and a handful of ancient wagons and carriages, you might get away with it.

Or you could apply the first rule of model railways of course.

OMG, spelling Darby as Derby would have led to ostracism ........

Getting off topic here but I don't recall a high school in Coalbrookdale in the late 70s. There was the William Brookes at Much Wenlock (I worked there for a few years) and the Abraham Darby between Madeley and Ironbridge but I'd guess these were both from the 1960s from what I recall of the architecture and construction. Could be just brain fade on my part of course

11 hours ago, Northroader said:

The two coaches are both GWR designs built at Swindon. The nearest is a 61’4” 1929 corridor third, C60. The next is a 64’ 1948 corridor brake third, not too sure of the diagram, there’s slight variations in the windows, but in the low D130 series. I model in 0, so not au fait with model availability, I’m afraid. Corridors on a branch set? Well, the school kids used them between Wenlock and Coalbrookdale CHS, (mixed ed) and it was thought “things might happen” in non corridor stock, they still did, even with a master patrolling the corridors.

Was that between Wenlock and Coalbrookdale, or Coalbrookdale and Wenlock? There was a high school in Wenlock right by the station.

Anything is possible in the model railway world, but aside from that, one reason for picking the S&M is that it was run as an MoD line until 1960. In the imaginary scenario that could be extended to 1970 or so, which would be around the time those 4 wheeled railbuses would be available as second hand kit. Along with an 03. It was a place where the roads were awful and there were four ex-MoD sites awaiting re-use but lorry transport would have been very unpopular with the locals. Fanciful yes, but it would make a somewhat different layout.

I've spent a modelling lifetime thinking up "what if" scenarios for layouts and they always have big gaps in their credibility. The best ones I have come up with are either set a long time ago, such as the London and Surrey Railway scenario described in the Creating a Believable Freelance Pre-Group Company  thread, or rely on general ignorance of the subject such as Maenamburi, my terminus of Thailand's (non existent) South Eastern Line. Of course there is the fact of growing private car ownership to consider in the real world.

In the model world however the impact of that can be minimised. We can envision a passenger service being kept sort of viable by a County Council schools contract. We can envision a fuel depot serving rural locations over narrow lanes providing enough freight to keep the lines open. I worked in Shropshire schools in the 1970s and every two bit bus operator had a schools contract to keep their heads above water. And west of Shrewsbury the minor roads were not ones to take an articulated fuel tanker down.

And should the line somehow survive into the 21st century then Green issues become more important. I like the idea of a hydrogen powered LINT unit for the modern day, bought with a grant from central government's "green" cash pile. Which I read is about to get a couple of billion tossed its way by Rishi Sunak.

There are less believable scenarios for about half the GWR branch models I've read about.

30 minutes ago, jhb171achil said:

Another thing, of course, is realistic banana palm trees. You can get models of crude toy-like ones with very gaudy green plastic leaves, but I wonder is there any scenery supplier that does realistic looking trees of that type, as seen all over south-east Asia?

If there is I've not found one.

The best I have managed is to take the banana trees from The Museum Models Collection and abuse them. These are a hard plastic - in a most unnatural green - and are a selection of three and four leaf sprues that need to be stacked together. Being hard plastic though they can be deformed using a hot air gun, mine is from Black and Decker and is meant for paint stripping. You can get the leaves to droop more before assembly. A coat of a more acceptable green paint and you get something that is acceptable for single plants. Might not be so good for a plantation though.

To be pedantic, the Derwent Valley was never part of the Stephens group.

Of course there are sound economic and operational reasons why none of the Colonel Stephens railways have survived except as heritage railways. However this is a model railway forum, and we can bend history a bit here.

My intention was to provide a means of building a German style light railway in a British context. Hence the suggestion of the Shropshire and Montgomeryshire and the idea of having four wheel railbuses provided with buffers and drawgear like the Eastern Region ones so they could drag the odd goods vehicle with them.

To then go off into flights of fantasy regarding operational interest I'd suggest the line had some unpowered trailer cars which were attached to a morning train into Shrewsbury and an afternoon train back to fulfil a schools contract and suggest that one of the former MoD stores sites became a fuel depot distributing heating oil and red diesel to villages and farms between Shrewsbury and Welshpool. A second-hand O3 would be needed two or three times a week for the limited freight traffic. (In reality the S&M terminus at Shrewsbury Abbey was an oil depot for many years)

To really go off to the most tenuous justifications there is also the sugar beet traffic in the autumn

Might make for an interesting layout.

Ballast Magic caused us major problems on the Great Model Railway Challenge. We ballasted the track on the second evening with this stuff but instead of setting the goo seeped into the pivots for the lock gates and gummed them up. Chris had to disassemble, clean and re-assemble and just about achieved it before the recording started for the final judging. We managed to keep the panic off camera though

I'm sorry I didn't see this thread the first time around, some interesting answers.

My take though is that we can't overlook the fact Holman Stephens died in 1931 and that the characteristic quirkiness of his light railway empire died with him. Austen ran the remaining lines in a far more conventional manner and hired locomotives rather than buy one second or third hand.

But let's continue the thought experiment through. Which lines of his light railways group would have survived into the modern era with only a slight re-telling of history. I would suggest not the narrow gauge ones, the Ffestiniog would have gone its own way, and not the ones that were gasping for breath even while the Colonel lived such as the Selsey Tramway. The predominantly freight lines such as the East Kent would not outlast their industries, the stub of the EKR that survived closed with Tilmanstone Colliery in the late 1980s.

So I'm settling on two: The Weston, Clevedon and Portishead and the Shropshire and Montgomery.

If the WC&P had survived WW2 it would likely have been operated by BR as an extension of the Bristol-Portishead branch of the GWR. Beeching would have closed it no doubt, but if the trackbed had remained largely untouched we might imagine the line to be shortly re-opened as part of Bristol's MetroWest network. Which then provides the steer on what stock it would have.

The history of the S&M is tied up with its use as a military line during WW2 and up to 1960. Lets suggest that when the MoD moved out the line returned to its original ownership. Let's also suggest that the former MoD ammunition stores were turned into light industrial parks and housing developments but faced with all that extra traffic on Shropshire's rural lanes, Salop CC gave grants to refurbish and upgrade in order to provide a regular passenger service from Shrewsbury. I would envisage that during the 1970s and 80s the line would be home to AEC railbuses, possibly upgraded ones capable of pulling a goods van or two. Perhaps the line would avoid the dreaded Pacers, it is after all still independent

Then in the noughties in a fit of "Cool Britannia" inspired modernisation the S&M gets the grants to buy a quartet of LINT 27s

Hydrogen fuelled ones perhaps in recent years