Richard Hall

Longframlington summarised: N gauge 6' x 1'6" or thereabouts Ex North British Railway in north Northumberland. Longframlington is a village about halfway between Morpeth and Alnwick. It never had a railway but might have done. Period - late 1950s to early 1960s. Track: plain track is Finetrax Code 40. Turnouts are a mixture of modified Finetrax kits and handbuilt. Fiddle yard is Peco. Control: 12V DC using an AMR handheld controller with feedback, Turnouts are servo-operated using MERG control boards, frog switching via relays. Buildings: railway structures are scratchbuilt from card, based on Scotsgap Junction on the Wansbeck Valley line. The houses, shops and pub are Metcalfe kits bodged about a bit. A couple of photos to start with before I go into the layout in a bit more detail. I'm still working on the layout, adding little details but trying not to overdo the clutter. Borders branch line stations weren't exactly busy places post-war.

Reading this sad news sent me to Railscot where I have spent an hour gorging myself on Waverley Route photographs. I can only echo 'Chard's sentiments. I think I have just found my perfect all-time favourite WR photo: sadly not one of Mr Gray's, and it may have been featured here already, but just imagine the sound. https://www.railscot.co.uk/img/22/970/ Richard

Track plans are all very well but trying to model a railway carving through the landscape I was having trouble picturing whether the sightlines and scenic breaks would work. So... A model of a model, one inch to one foot, knocked together out of card, foamboard, balsa, some Polyfilla that was starting to go off, and a bit of Woodland Scenics material for trees. Comparing this to aerial photos on Canmore I need the trees at the front to extend down to the road (there is a photo on there showing them as young trees in 1945), but otherwise it's not a million miles out. Hidden sidings are fractionally underscale but give an idea of the general layout. I have put in a fictitious bridge at the right hand end as a scenic break, the other end is well hidden by trees. Richard

The lack of scenic breaks make almost every WR station unmodellable even in N gauge unless you have a ridiculous amount of space. Stobs is unusual being hemmed in by woodland: I still have to cheat, but not too much. Imagine trying to model Steele Road and its approaches. I'm feeling a bit Waverley this evening: one of the local supermarkets is stocking that iconic Scottish delicacy, tablet. Time to put the "Railway to Riccarton" LP on the turntable... Richard

That was my second thought. It's a bit far to drive up for a look, and there will be a lot more forestry by now to confuse things.

Any suggestions for where the second photo was taken? My first thought was the southern approach to Shankendshiel but looking at a couple of other photos I'm not so sure now. That wood on the hilltop is very distinctive but I can't place it. It's probably very obvious where it is, could someone please put me out of my misery. Richard

A tiny bit more progress. Working from photos I used a 2D CAD program to create a simple line drawing of Stobs signal box, printed it onto self adhesive paper and then stuck it over a crude foamboard shell, just to see if I had got the size and proportions about right. I think it looks about OK, maybe 1mm narrow and 1mm tall but that is easy to sort out. I haven't tried using this technique for building drawings before, and I wish I had done it for the ticket office as the dimensions are slightly out and a 3D mockup would have picked up the error. Richard

Footbridge just about done, etch primed and almost ready for paint. The railings are a little overscale but I'm not too unhappy with them. Unfortunately I have now realised that although the smoke deflectors are off-centre as per prototype I have skewed them the wrong way - the Up deflector should be closer to the staircase than the Down. Oops. Luckily they are only glued, not soldered. Stairs were made by glueing together lots of 0.8mm balsa strips. There are still a few rough bits but from normal N gauge viewing distances I think it will do. I have printed out some of the large "Cross the line by the bridge only" notices and still have to sort out a couple of lamps. Signalbox next...

I apologise for your wasted time, I didn't realise you were already working on this. Best wishes, Richard

Has anyone been through that photo album yet? It's huge, but I've found a few WR images so far, as well as some good shots at St Margarets. Mostly undated and with almost no information attached. V2 at Whitrope: https://www.transporttreasury.com/p677100019/hbcd10582#hbced5d42 V2 60970 at Hawick. https://www.transporttreasury.com/p677100019/hbcd10582#hbcede23c 2MTs at Hawick: https://www.transporttreasury.com/p677100019/hbcd10582#hbcee29c5 https://www.transporttreasury.com/p677100019/hbcd10582#hbcee29dd https://www.transporttreasury.com/p677100019/hbcd10582#hbcee2926 Heriot signalbox. https://www.transporttreasury.com/p677100019/hbcd10582#hbcee5b56 A nice view of Jedburgh: https://www.transporttreasury.com/p677100019/hbcd10582#hbcee7ba5 A Black 5 light engine at Galashiels: https://www.transporttreasury.com/p677100019/hbcd10582#hbcee7ce6 Level crossing on the Selkirk branch. Lovely. https://www.transporttreasury.com/p677100019/hbcd10582#hbcee92bc D5301 heads north from Hawick. https://www.transporttreasury.com/p677100019/hbcd10582#hbcee9365 2MT loitering outside Hawick shed. https://www.transporttreasury.com/p677100019/hbcd10582#hbcee93bb 60027 Merlin, location given as Riccarton but it obviously isn't, any ideas? https://www.transporttreasury.com/p677100019/hbcd10582#hbceea6c9 60031 Golden Plover at Galashiels https://www.transporttreasury.com/p677100019/hbcd10582#hbcd10548 https://www.transporttreasury.com/p677100019/hbcd10582#hbcd1056b

I assume that's what it is. Here's a photo (from Disused Stations) showing the gated walkway leading to the woods on the Up side: Looking at old OS maps the track seems to run along the edge of the wood above the cutting, and then bears left to join the driveway leading to the castle. It's a fair old walk but I can't think of any purpose for the gate and walkway other than access to the castle.

An iconic WR structure starts to come together... This is somewhere the wrong side of "insanely fiddly". All-soldered construction using code 40 BH rail, 0.7mm nickel wire for the handrails and 0.3mm phosphor bronze for the wires. I have never attempted anything like this before and probably never will again. It's a little wonky in a couple of places, if I did another one I would put some thought into assembly jigs to keep it all square. One staircase still to do, plus the gate for the private entrance to Stobs Castle, and lots of stair treads. Most of the WR footbridges had open treads but Stobs looks to have been solid which I think will make the job a bit easier.

I don't think the brickwork is rough as such but there's a lot of variation in colour. I had a look at a few brick papers but couldn't find anything quite like it. Might be worth experimenting with picking out individual bricks in slightly different tones if my eyesight is up to it. I still have a fair bit to do to finish the building, at this rate I might have something I can run trains on in time for the 60th anniversary of closure.

Straws in the wind... Footbridge under way with the main span sides soldered up from code 40 bullhead rail using a resistance soldering unit. Dimensioned up from photographs. Ticket office nearly complete, all card construction. Again dimensions taken from photographs and a bit of counting bricks, I'm happy with the proportions on the end with the door, but I have a feeling the sides are not quite long enough. The porch should have had twelve panes of glass but ended up with eight so I have screwed up somewhere. Still I think it just about captures the essence of the building but I'll have to do better for the station house.

A Fort William Black Five - what on earth was that doing at Hawick?

An un-named NB chairman in 1858, quoted in "Rails Across The Border" By Alexander Mullay. The actual phrase was "the flourishing manufacturing towns along the line by Liddesdale". It would be interesting to have the full context of this quote. Richard

No more far-fetched than the promoters of the original route explaining how it would serve all the industrial towns of Liddesdale... Richard

The WR purist in me says no. I know those new Bachmann Freightliner flats look tempting but it's a slippery slope. Start changing the prototype to accomodate the latest shiny things from China, and next thing you know, Mosspaul will evolve into a six-road TMD full of garishly painted diesels with glittery LED headlights, thirty of them all farting and fizzing through tiny little speakers. Stick to Conflat As. Pretty little things they are.

Obvious places for stations are Branxholme, Teviothead and Arkleton. If anything the Mosspaul Pass route is even more lacking in human habitation than Liddesdale. One of my planned but never built layouts was the Teviot Light Railway - a Lauder-style enterprise running from Hawick up to Teviothead. There didn't seem to be a lot of point in extending it much further south unless it was possible to sell tickets to sheep. My OS map (dated 1976, Lynwood and Sandholm still intact) also has a line from Hawick to Ettrick pencilled in, and I don't even remember coming up with that idea.

I like your thinking. I too have spent a lot of time thinking about what constitutes "essence of Waverley". Gradients and curves, traffic patterns and the people who worked and used the line. I want to build a model of a railway, which is not quite the same thing as a model railway. Good luck with the planning and remember to make it portable - see if we can get my layout and yours to the Hawick exhibition in around 2022... Richard

Thanks very much indeed to Matt for your help with the signal box. It is timber with a brick base, very small and bears no resemblance to anything else on the WR. It doesn't seem to match up with any other North British 'boxes elsewhere that I have found either. The closest I can find is the much larger 'box at Lady Victoria Pit which dates I think from around 1895. I'm guessing that the 'box at Stobs was added quite some time after the line was opened, and may have been bought in from one of the big contractors. The problem is that I can't find anything similar from Saxby & Farmer, Railway Signal Co etc either. I'll do some more digging. Richard

I have started working up some drawings for the various Stobs structures. As I am now finding, there was a desperate lack of standardisation along the route. Every single structure seems to have been unique to each station, and even the bricks at Stobs appear to be a non-standard size. I started with the ticket office which had survived in remarkable condition, and for which I have found several good clear photos. I worked out the dimensions by counting bricks, based on the common Victorian brick size of 9 x 41/2 inches, and ended up with a doorway about eight feet high. So I redid the drawings on the assumption that the door was 6'6" or thereabouts and now have something which looks about right in proportions. It's a lovely little building and the ticket window is a work of art. Hopefully I can do it justice. I then started on the footbridge and quickly realised there is something odd about it. It isn't symmetrical. The centre span is skewed to one side (assuming the smoke deflectors are actually above the rail centrelines) and the Up side has taller vertical supports than the Down. Presumably something to do with the cant of the trackbed as the whole station is on a curve. I hadn't even thought about this aspect: my baseboard joinery just got a little more complicated. The basic framework was built from lengths of BH rail bolted together, so hopefully I will be able to solder something together which isn't too flimsy. It really was a rickety looking structure even when the station was still open. I have yet to find really good pictures of the signalbox or Down waiting room. The upper part of the box looks to be much the same as Shankend but I can't tell what the base was made of - brick or timber? I have mined just about all the information I can get from the Stobs photos I can find on the Internet (Disused Stations, Canmore and Railscot, mainly), but if anyone knows of another source which I have missed I would be more than grateful. Richard

I think I'll ignore the difference between open and corridor seconds on the grounds of it being N gauge. The restaurant car is more problematic - I don't see a Stanier twelve-wheeler on the horizon from any of the major manufacturers, so a Farish RU will have to suffice for now. Buying stock is still a little way off, I'm currently working out material requirements for the three baseboards and trying to come up with a design which is light, easy to put up and take down, and has some protection from being bashed about in transit. Barry Norman ply girder construction looks like the way forward. I need to have a bit of a clearance sale of unwanted items to raise some funds, plywood seems to have become very expensive. Richard

Thanks very much for that. Fewer sleeping cars than I expected, to the point where a quick shuffle in the fiddle yard, swapping a restaurant car and TSO for the two sleepers and the second BG, would give me something close to the Waverley formation - close enough for N gauge anyway.

All the gradient profiles I have found show the gradient change starting to the north of Stobs station. (Possibly the 1 in 250 bit was just Barnes Viaduct.) But if the marker post was to the south that means that either the gradient profiles are wrong (possible if they are all taken from the same source) or the marker post was put in the wrong place. I hadn't realised that the gradient past Stobs Camp stiffens to 1 in 50. No wonder that section attracted photographers. My Christmas wish list: Information on the makeup of the St Pancras sleeper trains circa 1961. Presumably some Mk1 sleepers in there, but what else? Photos of the back of Stobs station buildings, especially showing the outbuildings. Some good photos of the signalbox. A good RTR model of a K3 (probably have to wait until Christmas 2035 for that one) Ditto D49 or D34 (Christmas 2050) Richard