terryd147

Thanks for your good wishes; there's a long way to go yet, but it'll keep me busy. It's good to put a name to your nick-name, too. ATB Terry

Beast, thanks once again; it's a fascinating piece of footage and it points up some of the spatial relationships between buildings that aren't necessarily evident from photographs. That "fish & chips" building behind the up platform looks bigger than ever! Also the LNWR up starter before the footbridge doesn't have a sighting board, which it seems to have acquired by the early 50s. No doubt there is more that will leap out at me. The rest of the clip is fascinating too; it's a good game to try and guess locations! Thanks Terry D

O.K. It's a fair cop, guv!

Hi Dukedog As a resident of the Aberystwyth area, I can say that you've captured the character of the locality to perfection. I recall speaking to you at the Wolverhampton show when you were there with Pen y Bont. I think Morfa Bach was then just a twinkle in your eye? Just shows how well you've progressed. Keep up the good work!

Hi HerbertHopkins Thanks for the comments. Yes, knowing Gilbert too, I think you're probably right; why would he even refer to Locoholism otherwise. One little point; I can't agree with your motto about "not having buses". How else are passengers going to get to the railway station to catch a train? ATB Terry Davis

Thanks beast 66606 for the additional signalling info. All extra snippets are welcome. Just been doing some research on the buildings which form the scenic background; there are lots of residences which front Marine Drive up on top of the bank. Many of these are going to be represented more figuratively than actually, because I don't have enough lifetimes! Dapol's bungalows are probably going to be there in number - not accurate, but I think that anyone with local knowledge might still recognize it and that's really the whole idea. Just found that Google maps street view facility is brilliant for getting a handle on what buildings are where, so this has helped in placing models on the layout.

Hello Mark Just to check with you that you are who I think you are, i.e. your father is Trevor, formerly a member of Wolverhampton MRC. I am still a member ( have been since 1977!!) and having lived in Wolverhampton from then up till 2009, the station site is very familiar. Shame that the heritage project for Low Level which was mooted back in the 1980s never got anywhere and that the place just underwent the inevitable decline since then. Nice project though! Incidentally, may I draw your attention to my own efforts under Hest Bank, also on this page. All the best Terry Davis

Hello Beast 66606 Thanks for your message. The info I got from Mr Rigby was an extract (handwritten by him) from the WTT from June-Sept 1954 giving a detailed chronological sequence of freight workings between Carlisle Upperby and Euxton Jct. I'm afraid I have no special instructions for Hest, if indeed any exist. If you have better info, I would be glad, but I don't want you to go to extra effort, as I think it will be a while before I even bring operation up to the standard of my existing info. On another topic, thanks for alerting me to the splitting signal at Hest. It's as clear as day that the post is a welded fabrication which supports a platform on which are mounted two subsidiary tubular posts. Not only that, the whole ensemble seemed to have been moved north entire during the Dec 1958 rebuild to a new position on the end of the up platform.

Just a few extra pictures and captions to flesh out the information on Hest so far. Yet another "Super D" on an up empty minerals working. This time it's one of Bachmann's excellent offerings, to supplement the two ancient Gem versions of this archaic but very strong prototype loco. It is all too evident that it still has its front coupling (which will be replaced by a screw link type in due course) and that there are no lamps to denote that it's a partly fitted freight working. Yet another view of the storage yard, this time showing the stagger between the down and the up yards and pointing up the difference in lengths between the various roads. By having dedicated roads it is possible to fit the longest possible train into any given road. It also means that the operator alone is responsible for his train from beginning to end of a train movement, so there is no question of blaming someone else for one's mistakes! Finally, it means that every train can be run round on a continuous basis. I surely can't be the only one who feels that once is not always enough? View north from behind the "Cinderella bridge". This is only roughed out in plasticard at the moment, but I have plenty of evidence of what is should look like. Project number 34! The bridge apparently acquired its name because it gave access to a building which was once used as an orphanage. One of Hornby's 8Fs hauls a long up partly fitted mixed freight. View of the station area looking south as a down Manchester-Glasgow runs through behind a Newton Heath Jubilee. It was only yesterday that I realised that the Hornby footbridge, which I thought would be capable of being doctored into a fairly reasonable representation of the old bridge is, in fact, a good scale 6 ft too tall. Major surgery is therefore required before everything is fixed in situ. Heigh-ho. You think you're getting somewhere near and suddenly the goalposts have shifted themselves. The same train from the opposite view. The coaching stock is a mix of modified proprietary and kit-built vehicles, which typefies the sort of mix which the real thing would have consisted of. The loco is a venerable Jamieson kit towing a Mainline tender. Finally a lengthy oils waiting to venture forward onto the down main, having come from the Heysham oil terminal. I honestly don't know if the mix of tank vehicle ownership is prototypical or not, but I do like a nice long weathered tanker train. The loco is a DJH WD 2-8-0, which has been later augmented by the odd Bachmann one. I am very much indebted to Peter Rigby for a very comprehensive extract from the working timetable for Hest Bank which will enable me to ensure that freight movements on the layout are as much in accord with prototype practice as can be achieved.

Thanks once again Beast 66606 for more sage advice re the signals. If I look more closely at the photos I have, I may be able to confirm the nature of the upright for the up splitting signal. Sound advice is always appreciated.

Thanks to you, Sandside, for your kind offer of more recent photos of Hest. I did make a site visit on 2 occasions a few years ago and got a pretty good selection of views of the location, so I suspect I have milked the place pretty well! Yes, it was quite encouraging that the place is still amazingly busy; it seems to me that the level crossing gates are down more than they are up. It sort of restores your faith in the role of the modern railway to see so much traffic using this line now and these Pendolinos are amazing, although as a fairly tall bloke, I do find them a bit claustrophobic. Nevertheless I am encouraged by a belief that (1) railways are the best way to fly and (2) I must have landed on a reasonably good choice of prototype in the first place. Secondly, Great Northern (or may I call you Gilbert?), thank you for your kind remarks. As far as "locoholism" is concerned; 1 I plead guilty as charged, M'lud. 2 In mitigation, I plead the fact that psychiatrists might suggest a certain tendency to retentiveness of the rear variety. More simply, I can't get rid of anything! This is evidenced by the fact that several of my freight locos are old Hornby Dublo 8Fs which have been mucked about a bit, but are nevertheless still very effective haulers after more than 50 years, working turn & turn about with much younger locos. 3 If it comes to numbers, then yes, I may have a substantial collection (about 140), but I think it may be a question of "never mind the quality, feel the width!" 4 There is still a certain virtue in the old ways. One of my delights is to take an ancient Hornby Dublo Duchess (more than 50 years old, albeit with scale wheels and a new paint job) and hang on to it a train that is so long that the layout can't cope with it. Then you watch the 22 coach ensemble simply walk away without a slip. I think I read in Piccolo Pete Johnson's memoirs about an incident when the Midday Scot, loaded to 19 coaches behind 46248 City of Leeds, was obliged to take a Fowler 2P as a pilot loco. The crew complained that not only had they to pull 19, they also had to push the pilot too! Happy days; I am eternally grateful that I actually am old enough to have had the chance to watch the steam railway function as it should. Mind you, I do also believe that nostalgia isn't what it was.

Hello Gilbert Last time we met was at Spalding when I was there with the Stoke team. May I just add my words of appreciation for the way Peterborough North is turning out. It really is excellent. That's praise indeed from a confirmed enthusiast of the wetter side of the country (WCML). However, just to show that I'm not entirely one-sided (!) I would point to my ownership of 2 A1s, 2 A3s, 2 V2s, an A4, an A2/3, a B1....... and many items of ex LNER coaching stock, too. It's good to see how much enthusiasm the layout is generating and rightly so, too! If I can just draw your attention to my own rather less meritorious efforts, I have got a thread running re my own WCML layout, Hest Bank, to be found under the "Modelling real locations" section. I'm ploughing a solitary furrow here, however, so don't expect miracles. Best regards Terry Davis

Thanks, Beast 66606, for the clarification that it's a Type 4 box. I have managed to get one or two photos pre 1958 of the old box, and the Bachmann one will be replaced in due course. It shouldn't be too difficult to make a plasticard base with brick overlays to go with London Road's etches, but it's a job which will have to take its place in the queue! The photos I have suggest that it will be possible to make the up Morecambe branch bracket signal from Ratio's kit. Do you concur? There are two signal installations that really intrigue me. First, and much simpler, is the LNWR lower quadrant home (complete with sighting board) controlling the up line just prior to the level crossing. Secondly and much more complex, is the lovely gantry (complete with gallows homes) controlling the down lines prior to the junction. I was steeling myself to start work using MSE components to create this when someone told me that Mick Nicholson had built one for Bingham MRC's own version of Hest. This layout, apparently, was sadly destroyed in a clubroom fire, but I understood that the gantry had survived and when I was at Spalding show last autumn, I spoke to a very pleasant gentleman who suggested that I could contact the club to see whether they wanted to sell it. He gave me a contact phone number and I put it somewhere safe. Yep! It was so safe I can't b****y well find it. Help! The gantry is so distinctive that it has to be a high priority.

Thanks for the comments, and yes thanks also, I have seen the film of the aftermath of the 1965 derailment. There have also been some aerial photos published of the same event (I think in Steam World) which proved very useful in placing various structures in relation to one another. Confession is good for the soul; I have to confess to a lot of shortcomings with the layout (and some of these might even be clues tp personal shortcomings too!) Many nice RTR models have been acquired recently but have I removed the front couplings, fitted lamps to them, dirtied them? No. Has the trackwork been ballasted? No. Signals? Uh-uh! Buildings? Not nearly enough. Speaking of couplings, I used to use the time-honoured hook and bar method for coaching and freight stock, but the more recent standard tension-lock couplers now seem so relatively unobtrusive that I have reverted to using these and locos are gradually being fitted with 2 coupling bars, one between the buffers and one lower down at tension lock coupling height. In my defence, this is now a one-man project, although in addition to the thanks mentioned previously to friends in the Wolverhampton MRC, I must also thank Oliver Howarth for kindly building the station buildings and station staff house. As a one-man project, priorities have to be set and the principal one now is to get all the point motors wired up to the control panels. Power packs are being built to give 24v for that and also 18v supplies to the Modelex controllers. The H & M point motors which have been mounted (very obtrusively at present) on top of the boards in the scenic section will in due course have a nice tussocky grass bank built around them to disguise their presence, and removable bits of scenery on top. The 65 odd point motors in the fiddle yard are clearly going to take a while to wire, so that may be a long-running saga. To return to something I mentioned earlier, which was the issue of up trains entering the Morecambe branch and how they returned to the up yard, I hope the enclosed photo can explain how this is achieved. The road nearest the camera is the Morecambe branch and a train moving up the branch (left to right) can take the left fork of the point, cross over the down main and access the outermost 3 roads of the up yard. It's not an ideal solution, but it was the best I could manage in the space. This view a bit further round shows the three roads which can be reached and also the relatively easy way that traffic from the down main (extreme right hand road) can reach the Morecambe branch. Note also the embarrassing amount of rubbish bottom right hand corner which you never see through the camera viewfinder! Now for something a little more photogenic. A very old Millholme Patriot (scratch chassis and X04 motor) wheels a parcels train up towards Lancaster. The prominent fish & chip shop behind the up platform is currently represented (very badly) by a Hornby station building and the very nice Bachmann signal box is in the right place, but sadly is not tall enough to be a good replica of the old box demolished in Dec 1958. A DJH Duchess (City of London) whisks the up Royal Scot (no headboard yet) at a very respectable pace past Hest. The very old diecast lower quadrant signal is due to be replaced by a Ratio plastic one (Job No. 38!) A Gem "Super D" built by the late Pete Lander, chassis by Tony Wright, late 1970s vintage, wheezes up towards Lancaster and beyond with an empty steels.

The layout was conceived in 1997 and was intended to be an exhibition layout. As a long-time member of Wolverhampton Model Railway Club, I had been involved in the team exhibiting layouts like Fordley Park, Leighford, Stoke Summit and Charwelton. I had therefore managed to learn a great deal about the requirements of an exhibition layout as well as learning about the skills required for model making in general. Stoke Summit and the team who created it gave me much inspiration for my own project, which I intended to be based on West coast main line practice in the last full decade of steam operation. I had become convinced that I wanted to model a real location rather than create a fictional one, so the search was on! I toyed with various locations without result, until I happened upon a book called West Coast Steam by Antony Darnborough and the answer leapt off the page at me in the shape of Hest Bank. Until then I don't recall ever having heard of the place, but I rapidly realised that this met my criteria perfectly. It was a small station with a junction to a single track branch and could be fitted into a reasonable space with little compression. And, of course it was very busy with all the WCML traffic between Carnforth & Lancaster. So, the die was cast, and plans were drawn up for a layout on 11 baseboard section each 5'6" in length, the layout occupying a total space of 27'6" by 8'6". This would, it was felt, give an attractive layout to exhibitors without costing the earth in transport or manpower terms. Construction proceeded rapidly, but then a change in personal circumstances dictated that I store the layout for a while at the Wolverhampton Club headquarters. I was able to continue work with the help of friends in the Club and I record my gratitude not only to the Club members for their forebearance in storing it, but also with the considerable help in working on it. Thanks in particular to Norman Turner for beefing up the baseboards and to Dave Morris for helping with track laying. The plan to exhibit the layout then had to be shelved; our circumstances were altered by a housemove to the remoter parts of Ceredigion 100 miles west of Wolverhampton. A purpose built shed was erected and the layout was installed in it, but it was clear that there was no practicable possibility to take it to exhibitions, so I reconciled myself to having a permanent layout which just happened to be easily dismantleable should the need arise. The scenic section represents the stretch of trackwork between the overbridge where Coastal Road crosses the railway down through the station to a point just north of the level crossing. It has been possible to incorporate all the trackwork as it was prior to Dec 1958 when the layout was simplified. The major departure from the prototype is that whereas the station platforms were straight, on the model the main line has had to be bent to keep everything within the baseboard width. The track from the junction through the platforms are thus on a very gentle curve and while it's inaccurate, the overall visual effect pleases me. In this view, the down Midday Scot passes an up Carlisle-Euston working, while a 4F waits on the Morecambe branch for a path to Carnforth and sanctuary in the goods loops. It will be clear from this and succeeding photos that there is a great deal of work to be done on the scenic side. In fact there is a great deal of work to be done everywhere! Away from the scenic side, there is a substantial storage area. Recent experience with Stoke and Charwelton made me realise that the most economical approach to fiddle yard design was to have long loops in which 2 or even 3 trains can be stored in tandem. However, this poses a logistical problem in that someone has to be responsible, once a train has left the fiddle yard, for shuffling up the following train into "pole" position and thus allowing the train running round to have somewhere to land when it returns to the storage area. The alternative approach is to have staggered sets of loops, each holding one train only. This is what has been done. At one end of the storage area, there are 16 loops for up trains. A train leaves the up area, passes by the 16 sets of down loops on its way out into the scenic section and having traversed the scenic section, returns to the loop which it left earlier. This approach has the disadvantage of requiring twice as many points as the "shuffle" yard, but it does mean that each train has its own dedicated loop and it does away with the need to have a "fiddle yard" or "fat" controller, as the up and down operators are solely responsible for their train movements from beginning to end. It is hoped that the above photo will show the 16 up storage roads at this end of the fiddle yard while in the distance can be seen the 16 down roads. This approach means that the various roads are all different lengths, allowing trains of up to 13-14 coaches or 45 wagons to be stored, while elsewhere in the yard are short roads only long enough for 4-5 coach locals or short pick-up freights. Here we see the down storage roads and it will be noted that to the extreme left will be seen the solitary up road by which trains leave the up yard in order to reach the scenic section. Operationally then, it is perfectly possible to operate the layout with only 2 people. However, this rather ignores the possibilities offered by the Morecambe branch. The junction was, after all, one of the reasons for the choice of prototype and the additional operational scope offered. Built into the design, therefore, had to be the ability for down trains to traverse the Morecambe branch and rejoin the down main just before the station. More problematic, though, was how to deal with up trains crossing to the Morecambe branch and how to get them back into the up storage yard afterwards. Here we see an Ivatt 4 with an empty tube wagon train joining the down main from the Morecambe branch. The answer to the conundrum of how to get up Morecambe branch trains back into the up yard was only a partial success. By jiggling the design a bit I was able to build in a crossing to allow access, but it was only to a part of the up yard, in fact only to 3 roads.