nomisd

I have just found these whilst sorting out and thought that this is probably as good a place as any for an airing. There was a time when my daily commute was from Haringey Green Lanes to Gospel Oak and onwards to points west on the North London Line. These were taken the week (I think late August 1999 but I am sure someone will tell me the exact date) when 33013 and a 4TC were spot hired to cover stock shortages (I think they were changing from the last of first generation DMUs to Sprinters at the time?). They are arriving at Green Lanes on my morning commute and at Gospel Oak on my evening journey home. I went all the way to Barking in the evening and remember it being utterly rammed. Somebody had seen fit to put a TTI on the train, I think the only time I saw such a thing on that commute!

I braved the task of sticking the back scenes to wall yesterday, ably assisted by Mrs nomisd. It went a lot better than I was expecting, on all sorts of levels. The back scenes are 3 sets of id Backscenes overcast sky, 2 of set A and 1 of set B. The idea was to try and match them but the reality didn't really work out like that. We placed them all flat and decided which sheet we thought matched to the next. Once they were on the wall we realised that we were mostly wrong! Mrs nomisd thinks that there should be some sort of indication on the sheets which join with which. Overall though I am not unhappy with the end result. The ply has now been fastened down so I can now think about track.

Well, I am not too disappointed with this Everything seems to match and I think that the roof is going to go on correctly. However I had to walk away from it as cutting the roof was starting to fry my head. So I went onto this I think the brickwork is far too brown - that was mainly Vallejo Burnt Red with a couple of drops of a dark grey and a few drops of flat earth. I think it needs to go more yellowy brown.

And you are right, its not something that you see often. Industrial railways in model form do tend towards the grubbier end of the scale and I am not really sure why. I have to say that I have always have had a bit of a soft spot towards industrial railways in food factories. One of the first visits that I can remember was a visit with my dad to Batchelors Food at Wadesley Bridge in April 1980 to see their Thomas Hill. It was particularly memorable as at the end of the visit we were each given a box of Batchelors products (see IRS Record 242 for a complete record of that days visits)

Nice photo, thanks for that. I was thinking about this the other day. Whilst I started this as something to do with what I had, I was giving some thought to how hard it would be (in time) to make it somewhat more prototypical. Greenford had six standard gauge locos - five steam and one diesel. The first was a Manning Wardle K class. Interestingly this came from Pauling & Co who had a plant depot on the site that became Lyons - was this loco used to build the site? It was sold/scrapped date unknown. RT Models produces a kit of a K class in OO scale. The next was a Hawthorne Leslie 0-4-0ST 12 inch loco that came second hand from Royal Arsenal , Woolwich and was not scrapped until 1957. As far as I can see there is no model of a 12 inch HL but there are 14 inch HLs. The Sentinel photo was the other steam loco that was owned by Lyons. It was obtained from Cohens in 1944 and was scrapped in 1955. The other two steam locos were both hired from GWR. One was another Sentinel. GWRs No 13. This was purchased to work at the Park Royal Trading Estate but was occasionally hired to Lyons, Herts & Middlesex handbook says between 1930 and 1933. The other was GWRs 1340. The Sentinel is available as discussed and I believe that 1340 is available as a kit. The diesel was a Planet that was obtained new in 1955. It was sold to Thomas Hill in 1967 when the railway system closed who sold it to Rugby Cement for use at Barrington. It was sold back to Thomas Hill in the early 1980s; it then went to an opencast site in Scotland. It stayed there until the start of the 21st century when it ended up preserved at Tanfield. Of course a Planet is available as kit from Industrial Planet. So out of the six locos used at the real world Greenford, one third of them are still in existence and all of them are sort of available as models. Which means that it would be possible to accurately model the locos used at Greenford. It was always my intention to model a freelance version of a Lyons-like site from the 1960s to the 1980s using what I already have. And I think that is what I will be doing. However.... lets never say never! I think that at least a Planet, if none of the others, will probably be obtained at some point. But a nice set of 1930s trains - a Sentinel, a 14xx and autocoach and a LNER J52 - at some point in the future can't be entirely ruled out.

I have started to paint the factory buildings without track. After giving everything a quick coat of the French equivalent of Halfords primer, I started to brush paint the window sprues. I got bored after four and decided to order a rattle can of emerald green paint. Much quicker but I really must overcome my fear of my air brush and just dive in and go for it (one day). When fitted it has also given them a toy like quality, I am sure this can be toned out at a later date. The concrete framed buildings have (or will be for the one not yet done) a spray from a rattle can from the Army Painter range, Skeleton Bone but I think it has a fair approximation to concrete. I am going to tackle the brick parts of this next. Which brings me to a question - what colour would 1930s brick be? I realise that is very much a "How long is a piece of string" question. You would assume that in real life there would be a good chance that the bricks to build this would have come directly by train to the site from the Bedfordshire brick fields. The scant research I have done would suggest a sort of pinky red colour. Any advance on this? The other building has had a quick going over with a Vallejo white rattle can.

The shells of all the factory buildings are now up. My initial idea was to have the low relief buildings without track the other way round. However when I placed them like that its didn't look right with all the higher buildings in the corner. I think it looks better this way round (but am wondering why the builders built the site like this... :-)) . I am very pleased with the overall look of it.

A start to the North Light roof - as long as the next one comes out the same and I see no reason why it shouldn't, I think this may work! Lining the inside has worked alright too.

It is funny that you say that because I had exactly that thought last night. I have some Wills flexible brick sheet that I purchased in error. Its designed to be a bridge and tunnel liner and is like the name suggests a bit thinner that normal brick sheet. I think that it act as quite a nice laminate sheet. The only thing that I can see being an issue is the windows are going to be wrong. The brick on the inside will make the window opening a lot deeper and I am wondering if this will the first outing in anger for my 3D printer?

I have always loved building Walthers kits. They are a encapsulation of what a good kit should be. I know in a scale world they are are a bit small but they are just too nice not to have. Despite the size of it, the four floor whole building took less time to build that the half relief background building. The tape is only holding one bit on! The idea of combining the kits went out of the window when I realised the fundamental flaw in my plan - roofs. Whilst I can mix and match the wall sections, I need roof parts. I couldn't actually work out how to do it from the roof sections in the kits. Perhaps it was possible but I decided that it was over complicating things. I will paint the windows and doors separate from the shells and put them altogether when painted. The next view is an overall view of the Lyons site from the canal The space on the very far left hand side is where the loco shed is going, which I have also started. The Wills Two Road North Light Roof Loco Shed should have a very prominent warning on the box - Only Take This On If You Are Really, Really Sure About Your Modelling Skills. I will let you know how sure mine are once I start cutting the roof walls...

Rather stunningly, the back scenes that I ordered last Tuesday have already made their way from theUK to France and arrived this morning. Very nice they are too and I am now even more intimidated by them (I am sure with some forethought and patience they will go up just fine).What also arrived with them are all the other goodies that I ordered at the the same time. So with some bits from the buildings that I already had, I decided to see what the look like together. Given that the Airfix GMR van is the best part of 50 years old (if the 1975 copyright date on it is anything to go by) its actually a really nice model. Quite possibly completely unprototypical but for its context for this layout it is almost perfect (even if the running number on the van, a six figure number starting with 8 is a bit high). My intention is to use it as an internal wagon. Now surely someone must have made a Lyons Maid van because I'll have one of those too (said possibly the first serious modeller ever)!

I think I owe you a beer the next time I am in London. That is a very useful site visit, especially as I am unable to do one. Thanks for confirming that the only way the idea works is by modellers license. Its not the end of the world given that I intend to have my locos and wagons couple up using a big hoop and hook on the front - hardly prototypical! The Aladdin factory is something, that having passed it for three years (the other two years I commuted down the North Circular, I went the other way at Hanger Lane) on my way to and from work, I am now very intrigued by. I haven't searched yet but as an aside, does anyone know of any photos of the railway there?

Many thanks for those images, very interesting. The container in the field looks very much like it was painted the orange and blue of the Lyons Tea enamel sign. Its also interesting that Duramin are yet another west London link being originally located in Park Royal, before moving to Lyndney after WW2. The container is also very timely as the link that @Pacific231Ggave for the Three Bridges bridge has a photo that was obviously a Lyons publicity shot of the site which includes what looks suspiciously like at conflat (or whatever the GWR called them) with a Lyons container on it, although painted white (and I would imagine blue). This however has given me a traffic idea.

I am currently in process of starting a layout that sort of uses Greenford as it basis. Whilst it doesn't really affect what I am doing, it has piqued and interest in the actual, real life freight operations around Greenford. Whilst I was aware of the Lyons factory at Greenford, I wasn't aware at all of the other potential freight destinations around Greenford. with in the 1930s (at least, I don't know how much longer they lasted) there were three other factories that wagons could be worked to. This doesn't take into account the GWR/BR goods yard/coal staithes. Does anyone have any idea how the goods traffic would be worked a) to and from Greenford and b) when it got there? I have ideas in my head of pick up goods trains in either direction a couple of times a day with Lyons receiving enough traffic that it may have had trains just to and from there. What does intrigue me is how traffic was worked to and from Aladdin Industries (what I believe has become Dunelm on the A40). Did Greenford have its own shunting loco? Any info, pointers etc are gratefully received.

My thanks to @Ruston for changing the topic name. The way on and off the layout, through the big bit of wood in the sky. Its something that I think can make or break a layout. Its another one of those things that I think if you need to be happy with in order to build your layout convincingly. So the idea of having a canal at the exting side was like manna from heaven. The simplest, cleanest of exits. So how to approach it? Having thought about how you would carry a large body of water over anything, I typed canal aqueducts UK into Google and saw what it brought back. Turns out there is a whole page list on Wikipedia, all with photos. There are surprisingly few canal aqueducts in the UK. There are however some very interesting variations on the theme. I am particularly taken with the Edstone Aqueduct, Stratford on Avon as a structure but its too early for my purposes. I did however find a nice photo of it with train action. The Telford short aqueducts over roads are also nice but given my structures would have built when the Greenford Green works was built in the late 1920s/early 1930s they are perhaps a little to 19th century looking for my purposes.. I then came across one entry in the list that gave me that "hold on..." feeling - the North Circular Road Aqueduct. And whats this in the next column? Grand Union Canal (Paddington branch). And the notes say it was open in 1933. Right canal, right time period, I think I have winner here. So I went and looked for an image of it from the North Circular and I found this. Yep, I have the winner. There are also a couple of other shots of it from the early 1930s here and here. The last one is very interesting as it appears to show one of the 2ft 0in gauge Motor Rails that Willesden UDC hired for work on the North Circular Road construction. It would be almost rude not try and make some representation of this. I think that this photo is the best "from the track view" so using this as the bench mark, I think that the idea is to take one carriage way and make this the track bed. All of the concrete appears to be associated with the tow path, the actual aqueduct is the cast iron (I assume) trough under the bridge. This raises a question as to whether I need to put the concrete in as if my model really existed then the tow path would be on the other side of the canal. A concrete surround would be visually quite appealing though so maybe I stick two tow paths in. The other thing to consider is what length? I have two options - a) is to go the whole length of the back scene and create a 500 ft long aqueduct or b) create two short aqueducts with a bit of embankment in between? I think that b) is probably the preferred option. What is quite amusing for me is that I spent the best part of six years going underneath the aqueduct on the North Circular every morning and evening on my motorbike going to and from work. I know that the aqueduct was changed when the North Circular was widened in the mid 1990s but I had still gone under the original aqueduct quite a few time when I lived in London in the late 1980s. I have been under this bridge hundreds, probably thousands of times and I never knew it was an aqueduct. You do live and learn.

Before I actually get round to do something drastic like laying track, a few points of housekeeping. Track MIght as well start with his one. Peco Code 75. I have a number of unused points from previous flights of fancy including a double slip and a three way point. This a) both scare me a little bit and b) make for a much more interesting tack layout. Electrics Good old fashioned DC. It does also give a chance to finally use the 3 track Gaugemaster with inertia control transformer that I purchsed about 15 or 16 years ago and have never got around to really using in anger (it did have a brief foray out with my French based layout a few years ago). What I think I have decided to do is have the factory operating on one controller and the BR operating on another (and as I am properly grown up I shall used the third to power a rolling road). The other thing the controller has are 152 and 16v outlets. These will come in handy for two things. The first is points. I have never powered points before but I feel that at least the 3 way and the double slip need remotely powering, if no other points are. The other is... Lights Mrs nomids is very vehement in her belief that a good looking model railway is a lit model railway. Not being one to disappoint her, it is my intention to light the buildings, street lights etc. I have decided to do this with my own concoction of lights using LEDs. A proprietary system would be a lot easier but cost. Fiddle yard Another thing that I have never really done. I have used other peoples but never built one myself. The thing that strikes me about them is a space issue. Now whilst I have the room to build a "proper" fiddle yard, I find the idea a bit unappealing. I think that I have decided a cassette system is probably going to be my best option. The unusual construction of my boards also lend its way towards this too. I have some ideas on how this will work but I shan't bore them with it at this point, suffice to say, it will be home made cassettes. So I think that that is all the preparation and what I am going to build, now to build it. I am currently waiting, with a little trepidation, for the backscenes to arrive. I want to affix the backscenes to the wall before I screw the ply down. Once thats done, I can think about laying track Actually the thing that will come first after the backscenes is considering how to start constructing the canal scenic break.. Hopefully in the near future the topic name will be changed to J Lyons & Co Ltd, Greenford Green Depot to actual reflect the layout.

Operations The Greenford Green branch was built thanks to Lyons building their Greenford Green Depot from the mid 1920s onwards. The developer of the land north of this, towards Northolt, heard of this and approached Lyons to see if they were building a branch from the GW at Greenford as part of the building of this new factory. He also approached the GWR to see if this temporary line could have a station built at the end of it, on what would be the developers southern edge of his housing development. He saw the sniff of an opportunity to build a station as part of this development with shops outside. A GWR railcar would operate an irregular service to Paddington (later diverted to Ealing after the decline of passenger services to/from Paddington). The GWR replied that if the developer was willing to pay for the building of the station, then they would. So Greenford Green was built at the expense of the builder which is why it never progressed beyond a platform and a pagoda building. There were never any station building or ticket office built as it was thought that they were superfluous as the railcars were paytrains so why bother with all that extra expense of buildings. The GWR also like an unmanned station. The thing was the GWR weren't that bothered as the line was to stay open anyway. There was to be a small three road exchange sidings where full wagons could be collected from Lyons by GWR (and other railways to with inter-regional workings to Temple Mills, Ripple Lane, Cricklewood, Willesden, Hither Green and Feltham). Empty inwards, full inwards and tank traffic would all be worked in by GWR/BR to the original (real) factory at the Greenford. Empty vans for loading at the Greenford Green Depot would be worked by (in an ideal world) the morning and afternoon pick up goods) or by a trip services to Greenford. This would be worked by a GWR/WR loco (08 or 35 or at an outside 42 or 52). All the inter-regional workings would be by suitable regional locos (SR class 33, ER class 15 and MR class 25). Inter-regional works can also drop vans off at Greenford. All tank traffic is worked through in the same way, the only difference this comes in full but is then worked by Lyons loco between the two sides. The empty tanks are worked back through internally for the empties to be picked up by GWR/WR from Greenford. This applies to all tanks - diesel, milk, syrup, molasses. Greenford Green ships loaded wagons only. It ships two things - ice cream and grocery products. Both are shipped on a wagon load basis to anywhere in the country and beyond. The SR working is shipping ice cream out to Europe in continental ferry vans. BR locos arrive light engine, where required with a brake van. Full wagons are picked up from the exchange sidings, having been placed there by Lyons locos. The milk tank wagons are a daily working, fulls arriving in the morning with the loading aimed to be complete by lunch time; the empties are then moved back to the other side by Lyons loco for collection by BR in the afternoon so the wagons can be on a night train to return to their west country depots for refilling. Other food products tanks would be on a couple of times a week basis. Loco diesel would be an occasional working. So the idea is when it finally comes to playing trains, in that dim and distant future, it should have enough operational interest to make running sessions (I believe such things do happen on layouts occasionally) interesting and dare I say it, somewhat prototypical. .

With all of the above preamble, a track plan. Building A is to be a combination of two Walthers kits - this one and this one. The second is a half version of the first. I had intended that the low relief one was going to be along that side but when I cut templates out for the building footprints I decided that I needed another. My intention is to build it with a long length of loading dock down one side with a half width other half. The design of the buildings is vaguely art deco, which would be in line with the actual development of industrial west London. It is my intention to full on art deco with these and paint it white and have suitable colour highlights a la the Hoover Building on the A40 and the Black Cat building at Camden. Building B is to be another Walthers combination - this one and this one. These are concrete framed with brick curtain walls, again fitting with period industrial architecture in the area. I am assuming that both of these grafts and mild kit bashing should be fairly straight forward, they are all Walthers Cornerstone kits and my understanding is that its fairly straightforward to join them together in unplanned ways (famous last words!). 1 is the standard out of the packet Ration oil depot. 2 will be something, either the Wills kit or scratch built. 3 is a pumping station - the reasons for this are three fold. The first and perhaps most important is it fills up a bit of other wise dead space. I decided I need it for the milk tanks at 4. Its all very well getting milk off tank wagons but you then have to do something with the milk. It would need pumping on into the production process. So that is reason 3, Reason 3 is that in planning the layout when the idea was still a light railway, one of the industries I had in mind was an oil terminal. I went as far as buying the Faller Oil tank Farm and associated pumping station and extra pipe work kit. As such I have a surfeit of pipe work that I would like to use and this is a good use for at least some of it. I also think that some random pipe work is what sets of an industrial location from a normal (?!) railway. Nooks and crannies. 4 is what I have labelled the Milk Tanks but there is probably more than one use for them - corn starch, molasses? Lets call it the Tank Delivery Point. 5 would then become the Tank Offices.

This is something that has occurred to me. Looking at the 1935 map it all essentially sits on the 100ft contour line which means in reality my scheme is a complete no-starter. Looking at the Street View from the canal tow path the north side is slightly lower but no significantly. But thats reality....I think that playing with geology is just as bad as replanning and rebuild a bit of London so its probably at the edge of tolerance for the application of my Modellers License. I have been looking at the map and there is only one place I think I could run the lines and in reality whilst the internal line might just have been built there a BR one almost certainly wouldn't have been. I think that also perhaps the word tunnel doesn't help, perhaps more of a long bridge - I mean some canal overbridges are fairly low, all I have to do is fit trains under them. So perhaps tunnel gives the wrong impression.

What is it that sells the conceit of a model railway? My answer came to me last night whilst I was sitting watching the first live music I have seen in three years (The Australian Pink Floyd) – the name. It was just after the thought, “well Greenford Green really is too good a name to pass up”. It was after I had come to the conclusion that if I am going to try a do a Lyons like factory, do a Lyons factory at Greenford. But there is already one there and I don’t want to do a reproduction, I want to do an extension built in the late 1920s early 1930s. It is in part true there was land “on the north side of the canal” to quote the only source I have found. Now having played around with the map I think that this the plot of land that is where all my hand writing is. This a clear plot. I think that this is where the land is. That is interesting as I had always envisaged using a canal on an embankment as a scenic break. If this were the piece of land it is not a big leap that Lyons would have connected their two factories by an internal line by way of a bridge/tunnel under the canal. The one thing that I could not pin point on any map, including larger scale ones was a loco shed. If I was going to have a two-sided site and only one loco shed. At the moment the factory roster is two, I do have two brass kits (a Judith Edge North British and a High Level RSH Husky) waiting patiently to be made. So the potential minimum roster is four. This is handy as I intend to build tis from a Wills diy kit. There is an outside chance I still try hand at scratch building a shed. I have been thumbing my way through the IRS Big Book of Sheds Parts 1 to 3 and I have to say that the Guinness brewery at Park Royal has a shed that would suffice with a bit lengthening and widening for two road shed. This also fits the bill of a bit of west London industrial railway architecture. Its not out of the question but I have a back up. Having the conceit of an internal line that exits via essential a tunnel solves a problem that I had mentally about my idea. I need a way for my Lyons locos/trains to enter/exit neatly. It has also opened up potential traffic flows (shan’t go to far with that now, could get a bit boring quickly but will come back one day). It also fulfils a long held idea I have had to link two sides of a factory via a neat on/off scenic break. I had always sort of envisaged it as a neat off/on for a quarry system at a cement works. But I think the idea works here. What is not so clear cut is how a BR branch line comes under a canal when you probably wouldn’t have done that in real life (but I have worked out why it was allowed). Also I haven’t really worked out yet where these line would be coming under the canal. Another part of the conceit. A third part of the conceit is that my scheme would go had just to north of it begun to be developed (as far as I can tell what you would describe as South Northolt and which was also a contender for name for a while). My scheme would slightly change the street plan but the would gain a railway station and a nice row art deco shops. There was another more fundamental reason that I decided it had to be Lyons was a discovery whilst placing an order. I was looking for some ID Backscenes overcast sky, which Hattons (my main supplier as they are French VAT registered and deliveries are smooth and easy) had. I had a look round and whist finding a 2nd hand Dapol milk tank, an Dapol Interfrigo kit (continental traffic – I know the drawbacks of it as being a scale model, put it down to another conceit!), a Pagoda building (surely every GWR station deserves a Pagoda?), they had a Airfix GMR Lyons Tea van. I felt like this was a sign and decided then it had be Lyons and the van is also on its way. So this is a very long winded way of saying this has become J Lyons & Co Ltd, Greenford Green Depot.

The earliest useful map is 6 inch to a mile map revised in 1868. On this the only things that are my map are the canal (which I have forgotten to label but is the Paddington Arm or Branch of the Grand Union – it opened in 1801), Oldfield Lane, the Black Horse pub and the Dye Works (marked D on my map). On this map, Oldfield Lane goes south to the place actual known at the time as Greenford, which appears to have been farms, a church, pub, school – the epitome of what we would now model as a typical English village. The area north of the canal is shown as being known as Greenford Green The 1896 25 inch to a mile map shows pretty much the same thing. The only differences are that the Dye Works is marked as disused and a row of houses have been built opposite the Black Horse pub. The area is, as my mate once said to his daughters as they were driving out of his local Tescos, all fields round here when I was your age (at which point he told me he felt like he had officially become old!). The 1915 25inch to a mile map is where it starts to radically alter. Small changes have occurred – the house opposite the Black Horse now have allotments behind them and a manure works has been built directly south of the houses. But the really big change is the railway has arrived. The railway now bisects the map as shown on my map. According to the London Railway Atlas by Joe Brown (I have the 2006 edition) the GWR opened the line from Old Oak Common Junction to Greenford in 1903 with the extension north west being opened in 1906. The line from Greenford to Ealing opened in 1903-04. Greenford station is shown in its original position (the site mark on my map) from 1904 to 1963 (I assume that the current combined Central Line/BR station was built at that point). The row of house on the east side of the road, just south of railway on Oldfield Lane are shown on the 1915 map. What is also interestingly shown just east of the station, on the north side of the line are a number of sidings, quite a few of which are not connected to any other track. This is I assume the plant depot, operated by Pauling from 1907 to 1925 and then by Caffin & Co until 1921. The IRS Herts & Middlesex handbook says that part of the Lyons factory was built of the western end of this yard. The other interesting thing about this map is that the area south of the railway line and west from Oldfield Lane to the canal is shown as a golf course. The next available maps are the mid 1930s one that my map is based on and as you can see the railway was the catalyst for much building. The Lyons factory was opened in 1921. I assume that all of the development south of the railway line took place at the same time. Graces Guide show the British Bath Co from 1928 and I have found a photo of the factory taken in 1930 which shows the houses just south of it being built – does anyone have any ideas as to what the straight sided building shown in this photo and on my map is? My guess is that it is a barracks for the construction workers. A tantalising glimpse of the Lyons factory can be seen in the background of this photo. (I will revisit the Britain from Above photos some other time as there are some good photos of the Lyons factory on i)). So what have I learned from this? The main things is that I need to give my surroundings a bit more thought. It would seem pointless if I am trying to evoke a place, West London that was developed from the end of WW1 to the 1930s, by using for example Metcalfe terrace houses. They would be wrong and it wouldn’t give the right feeling. So I have learned I am going to have to find some models of 1920s and 1930s London houses (I will not use the M word….).

I decided that in order to get a feel of where I am trying to evoke, I would have a look at the superb website of the National Library of Scotland and its collection of OS maps. This was twofold. The first was to try and look at the actual layout of the internal railway system at Lyons at Greenford. The second was to get an idea of how the area grew up and the style of architecture that would have been used. It was quite an instructive exercise. What I have done is knock up a map based on the 1936 6inch to a mile OS map for the area that I have then hand annotated (as I find it easier than trying to annotate in GIMP, my chosen drawing software) so apologies for the weird colours, I think my print heads need cleaning.

An overview of the rest if the layout. The rest of the layout is intended to be very simple. A three road exchange sidings (modelled pretty much that of the Barrington Light Railway) and a very simple single road dead end station, with perhaps a single siding for loco layover. Where Ratio carriage shed and various other Walther buidings are - currently a toss up between a builders merchants (I have been fascinated by the builders Merchants between the mainline and DC on the way out of Euston since I was a kid - I always thought it was such a strange place to have a builders merchants) or a bus garage. The rest will be a houses and shops, probably slightly raised as per the Metcalfe house. Any comments or ideas are welcome.

I spent some time today playing around with track that is left over from previous projects and cardboard template of buildings that I have obtained to start the facility. All of them are Walthers and will be the first order of construction. The tank is one of five that I have that will be the milk tanks, they are from another Walthers kit, this time a oil distribution depot. The office is from another one, a grain silo kit. The points in front of that are my idea for the location of a loco shed. The curved track is the mainline. The idea is to bring all of the tracks to building C at the back. Buildings A and C both have track running trough them. Looking back from the scenic break (where the strip of ply is) and the fiddle yard. My initial idea for the scenic break is a canal on an embankment.I think I am going to need more low relief factory buildings from the Milk tanks to the embankment. This is the are for the loco shed. Another general view of the factory site.

I would guess that I am not alone in being an inveterate designer of potential layout ideas. Very few have ever seen the light of day. But I have had some good ideas! I think that almost every idea that I have ever had has in someway revolved around the idea of an industrial scenario. Recently as part pf preparing the room for the layout that this is all about, I came across a whole folder full of ideas, track plans, jottings. This included my idea of a whole series of layouts based around a fictional dock system named PFA (never really decided what the F stood for, the P and A being Port and Authority), a cement works and quarry, a lumber mill. My last serious one was a whole light railway. The light railway progressed enough to buy locos and wagons. In the last couple of months I have finally got around to building the boards for the layout (well I didn’t but they were built). In the intervening time between starting to buy the stock and getting the boards built, I started to change my mind on the light railway idea. I had changed the location from the initial idea but the idea didn’t really sit right with me. I wasn’t completely sold on the idea and started to think about what to do. The question was what to build instead. I had sort of stymied myself by actually buying stock. The thing was I hadn’t invested in any old everyman stock. Whilst my rtr industrial locos – a 48DS Ruston and a Hunslet built BR class 05 (plenty of which became industrial locos after withdrawal) were easily enough to locate at any sort of industrial location anywhere in the UK, the mainline stock that I had got was a bit more difficult to place geographically. They are a BR class 15 in green and a streamlined GW railcar in blood and custard. After much cogitating, I came to the conclusion that there was only one place that I could set a layout – London. With a location decided, what to model? There was only one thing to do – break out the London and Hertfordshire and Middlesex IRS handbooks and look for inspiration. I wasn’t looking for an exact location to model, more somewhere to base an idea on. It didn’t take me long to come up with somewhere – J Lyons & Cos Greenford Depot. The real-life site at Greenford opened in 1921 and was responsible for the manufacturing and packing of tea, cocoa, chocolate, confectionary, coffee and other foodstuffs as well as being a distribution warehouse for goods produced elsewhere. Raw materials were mainly received by road or canal with finished goods being dispatched by rail and road. The connection with BR was finally removed in 1969. In total they had five steam locos and one diesel loco (that is all straight from the Middlesex handbook). As soon as I read this, I knew this was it. It gave a nice easy traffic flow – vans for outward traffic and that basically is it. Throw in a few milk tanks for inward traffic (especially after I found a photo of milk tanks at the Lyons Maid factory), a diesel tank or two for loco fuel and that is it. Despite being mainly the factory I want to base the layout around, the premise is that it set at the end of a short branch which terminates at a station, which means I can run the railcar. Initially all the trains that come in and out on BR are coming to and from the Eastern Region, although that will change I am sure. As will the GW railcar not be the last word in passenger trains. I am fairly flexible in a time period – early 60s to early 80s (just because Lyons closed in the late 1960s doesn’t mean that mine will). I haven’t come up with any names yet, either for the place or the factory, although as far as place some portmanteau of bits of real west London names – Greenvale, Periford, Greenwell etc – will be end up being the station name, possible with a cardinal direction or a Park thrown in!