clecklewyke

I am in the same situation abd have had difficulty finding a cost-effective solution - prices of decent aids range from 10s to thousands of pounds. If you are having serious eye sight difficulties you need professional help. Your GP can refer you for a Low Vision Assessment, which will allow you to try out and borrow alternative solutions but beware, waiting times can be long so shop around. Last week Darlington was quoting five months but I managed to get an appointment in Harrogate in January. I'lll report how I get on. Good luck! Ian

The GNR and L&Y did at Bradford Exchange, producing a very symmetrical station. I'd have the layout higher rater than lower. I think they look best at just below eye level - you can always make a little plinth to mount your chair on so you can sit and still have a realistic view. You don't view the prototype from a balloon unless your name is Branson! And radiators can always be moved or changed. Ian (Still an IAR supporter...)

If you want prototypical operation of the goods yard you will need to allow for derailments. So access to the back might be useful. Lovely plan but it's a shame it's not the LNWR station. (Ducks!) Ian

"Humber Dock" is a 1:76 (4mm/ft) scale diorama depicting the old town docks area in Hull (now the marina) as it was in about 1958. I have now lost 90% of my eyesight due to glaucoma and will be unable to continue to take it to exhibitions so I am therefore seeking a new home for it, preferably somewhere with a strong Hull connection. It needs someone who will care for it and exhibit it so that it will continue to be seen and enjoyed by visitors. I wonder whether anyone on RMWeb might be interested in acquiring it, maintaining it and exhibiting it?. It incorporates important elements of the area which I remember from my childhood in Hull, such as: - * Humber Dock lock gates and swing bridge, * the Minerva, * railway lines inset into cobbled streets, * wagon turntable, * the warehouse on Princes Dock which became a night club (the Waterfront/Sugar Mill/Atik), * the Ellerman Wilson Line offices, * a transhipment shed, * a Humber Street shop, * typical Hull terraced houses, * a bombed-out house with fireplace suspended from an outside wall, * golden-brown Humber water * the view across to New Holland with the Lincoln Castle paddle steamer as a background. The scenic section measures 150 X 80 cm and is self contained with built-in lighting. For exhibitions it has a fiddle yard and sector plate which brings its length to 300 cm. I normally took it to exhibitions in our Skoda Fabia estate and it requires just one operator, although a second man is useful to permit breaks etc. It has been exhibited widely, most recently at the Hull Miniature Railway Society’s exhibition on 11/12 Nov., where it was very well received, eliciting many reminiscences from viewers who knew or had worked in the area. I think it depicts well the slightly down-at-heel atmosphere of the old town area as I remember it in the 1950s - a great contrast to its current vibrant state. The track is currently to P4 standards but there are only two turnouts so it could easily be relaid to 00 or EM gauge. More photos and details of the model can be found at https://clecklewyke.wordpress.com Mike Megginson, a very respected modeller who was brought up in Hull, made these unsolicited comments: What a great photo with which to sign Humber Dock off from exhibitions. It has been my great pleasure to see this layout a few times and even to operate it once, a few years ago at Leatherhead. Being born and brought up in Hull, then your layout has always had a very special resonance, for it captures the essence of Hull's town docks so very well. Though the docks still exist, they are now a leisure amenity so they no longer exude the sights, sounds and smells of working docks as they did in the days of our youth. Standing by your layout, one can almost smell the salt water, hear the cry of the gulls and be transported back to those days. I do hope that the layout will continue to inspire those who see it to just stand and remember. Note that the layout comes complete with all elements needed for exhibition (including supports, lighting, backscene, fiddle yard fiddle yard with cassettes) but NOT rolling stock, controllers or sector plate, all of which are required for other layouts. Please p.m. me if you would like to make an offer. Ian

Mike, are you sure the picture was taken in 1937? It's odd that all arms on all the signals shown are "on" so I suspect it is an official LNER photo. Maybe it was done to record what was to be swept away by the re-signalling but I think this was the site of the famous "Greek meets Greek" head-on accident between an arrival from Withernsea and a Scarborough departure at West Parade in 1927. Coincidence? See this link and this Ian P.S. Note that in 1927 commuters could get on a train at Withernsea at 8.22 and be into the centre of Hull by just after 9.10. Try doing that now...

What a lovely drawing of a signal gantry full of character. I love the mixture of NER period slotted posts with LQ arms and fancy finials and UQ arms on flat-cap posts. I wonder whether the latter were additions or replacements? Ian

Not a bad picture*, despite featuring one of those horrible EE Type 3s which ousted my beloved B1s from Dairycoates' top link passenger duties. Apparently some otherwise sensible modellers such as Chris Pendlenton liked them. * Non-Yorkshiremen should note that is the highest praise ever known to have escaped grudgingly from a Yorkshireman's lips.

Thanks, Kevin. Yes I was clueless, having effectively left Hull when I went to University in 1965. What a lovely story! Ian

What a superb show. I apologise for the lack of trains on Humber Dock on Saturday. It was due to an intermittent electrical problem which quickly became terminal. It worked fine at home but I suspect a poor joint was made worse by the vibration of the van. Humber Dock was showing its age. Roy Jackson's "it would have worked if it was EM" was funny but unhelpful! It was resolved on Sunday by fitting extra feeds but in the end was not really that important because most viewers were much more interested in looking at the buildings and talking about their reminiscences of the area. I even met one chap whose first wife was in my Eastfield Road Junior School class. I wonder how many others remember Miss Sharp? (Sharp by name and by nature.) Anyway that was Humber Dock's swan song. Glaucoma is preventing any more fine scale modelling and maintaining models is now beyond me, so it's "so long and thanks for all the fish!" I leave you with a memory of nightfall on Humber Dock And yes, Humber water really is golden brown! Ian

What was the speed? Ian

Exactly - you're two thirds of the way there! Having uncoupled from the train the train loco draws on to the headshunt then leaves the goods yard via the departure line, on to the up main line and usually on to the MPD (which in my case is imagined in the fiddle yard. It's at this point that I add the pins. I take a fist full of pins and insert one into a pre-drilled hole in the roof (or load or body as appropriate) of each wagon just as they come out of my closed fist, i.e. randomly. In my imagination they take the place of the way bills which wagon carried on its sole bar which gave the shunter (the man not the engine) instructions about what to do with the wagon. I then bring the shunting loco from wherever it's been lurking on to the headshunt and drive it to the front of the train and couple up. The driver - you - has then to decide how best to create order from chaos. He has a train in random order and has to move it backwards and forwards to get all the red-pinned wagons into siding one, the white pins into siding two and the black pins into siding three - in the fewest possible number of moves. Once this is achieved I remove the pins so the trains look better. The brake van is then added to the end of one of the trains and at the appropriate time the shunter pulls the train out of the siding into the headshunt and then propels the train on to the departure line. A train engine then arrives on the down line and after a shuffle across the facing crossover (points 6) and the goods departure crossover (points 7) couples on to the front of the train. The fireman checks the fire, fixes the correct headlamp code,fills the boiler, has a final cup of tea (during all of which the driver is sitting having a snooze or filling in his pools couppn - yes, his name is Vernon Littlewood) and the guard checks the train, releases the brakes, puts a red lamp on the back and white lamps on the sides of the brake van, checks his watch and when the starter signal (8) is pulled off blows his whistle and the train leaves on the up line. Phew! Of course a lot of that is in the imagination but I try to get as much as possible right. Of course this is a drastic simplification of how real shunting yards worked but the point is to give shunting a purpose and to exercise the little grey cells for a while. You've got me thinking - it might be worth doing an illustrated posting on my BNW thread explaining all that in pictures but that will be a few weeks away as Humber Dock needs to be fettled (and I jave an urge to add seagulls) for the Hull Show on 11/12 November. Ian P.S. Brian, I got your message while I was composing the above. A p.m. will be with you shortly. Many thanks.

I have just emerged fom my man-hole and I am afraid that I do not have that particular issue in my library - by 1975 I had stopped buying every issue - so if you could scan it easily I would be most grateful. Many thanks. Ian

Many thanks - but don't spend too long. Somewhere I have a copy of the original photo of the train of LNWR four-wheeled coaches in front of these buildings: I found it very difficult to work out how it all related - very few of their footprints were rectangular. An aside - I didn't know that the jnfamous Robbo R-C was the originator of the inglenook concept. I've used it for the same reasons as you on Bradford North Western as it gives plenty of shunting scope without lots of too-small goods depots. Here's a schematic of how I've done it. Rather than using cards I use coloured map pins stuck randomly into holes in wagon roofs etc. Each colour designates a different destination - red for Scargill Sidings, white for Bradford Hammerton St. and black for Bridge St yard, Each of the three sidings receives wagons for a particular destination. It sounds crass - one of my friends asked what the "balloons" were on the wagon roofs - but they are clear to see (important for my failing eyes) and are quickly accepted as they give real purpose to shunting. My trains, headshunt and sidings are longer than yours so disposing of one 20-wagon train can take a less experienced shunter hours! Ian

I've just discovered this gem. Great title, great concept, great modelling and brilliant writing! I too have seen this and thought it would be a good basis for some of the low relief roofs behind Bradford North Western. I remember the Don Townsley article; you couldn't possibly point me to it as I think it will be in a box somewhere under the layout? Ian

Six months on, the glacier grinds slowly but at least there is some progress to report. I try to spend a couple of hours modelling every day but there’s not much to show for it. The problem is that the layout is now operable, either by me alone or when friends come round and this is a major distraction, which is ironic, since operating a miniature realistic re-creation of a lost world is my main objective. So, what has been achieved? The conversion of the layout to OO from P4 is now complete, there is a new fiddle yard with points controlled from a small "geographical" panel and all thepointwork for Bradford North Western is functional, albeit manually-controlled for the moment. Work is progressing on restoring the Clecklewyke station area which suffered some damage during the house move and conversion to 00. The other main development is the creation of a continuous double track circuit by extending the goods arrival and headshunt lines across a removable section past the door way. This is completely unprototypical and is not used for timetable operation but it does allow me to “run-in” locos and it is pleasamt to see and hear trains running when I’m working at the desk. Here is a rough signalling diagram. The track plan is fixed but I am open to suggestions, criticisms and corrections of the signalling. It is deliberately simplified - there is a dinstict lack of shunting signals. nor are there facing point locks, detector bars etc, - but it should allow trains to be run with the minimum of talking. The block bells also help This time I wanted to be able legitimately to run a wide range of goods trains so, since there was not enough room for a proper city-sized goods yard, I have just incorporated a few sorting sidings which can be used for the disposal of any types of goods wagon. Shunting these can keep one operator quiet (apart from the occasional expletive) for hours! The actual layout uses curved points (Marcway) to give a nice sweep to the station throat. More photos will be posted asap but for the moment attention is switching to the preparation of Humber Dock for its swansong appearance at the Hull MRC's Exhibition on 11/12 November. See you there?

How about PD Hancock's Narrow Gauge Adventure? An absolute classic. Ian

Yes, the article was purely about the L&Y side. I don't know much about the GN side but the GNR did develop quite an extensive network of local lines in the West Riding (mostly gone, replaced by trams then buses). The crack train from Bradford Exchange GN side was its portion of the Yorkshire Pullman - two Pullman cars pulled by a scruffy tank engine - my type of train which I faithfully reproduce on Bradford North Western and Clive does on Sheffield Exchange. Ian

Re layover times at termini, I've been checking those for Bradford Exchange (L&Y side) which was featured in an article called "The ins and outs" in Model Railways of January 1990. This published the original platform working schedule for the 1954 summer timetable. This is my "bible" from which I have derived the fictional timetable for Bradford North Western. There are very few trains which both arrive and leave as passenger-carrying trains: the great majority either arrive or leave as ecs. The minimum layover I can find is 5 minutes but that was for a passenger train which I think arrived and unloaded then was propelled by the train engine to the carriage sidings. The great majority stay for 30 minutes or more. I guess Bradford Exchange was not a very busy commuter station. Ian

It was the repeated semi-quaver arpeggios that defeated the old dear in Crail kirk. She determinedly tried to play them all but could not at the tempo required - after all the most she had played were hymns with nice block chords - so she slowed it down to a quarter speed. Oh dear! I have seen a version which has a quarter the number of notes of the original - it was a shame she did not know of it. (I speak as an enthusiastic listener, definitely not a performer.) As for Ave Verum, there's a nice feedback loop. If you sing it too slow you run out of breafh so you simply have to speed up! I would choose it because 1) it is lovely 2) most singers know it so minimal rehearsal is needed for a scratch choir to perform it at short notice (and one rarely gets much notice of a funeral) and 3) I've been singing it since I was an 8 year old church choir boy and still sing it regilarly with the Spennithorn choir (two sopranos, two altos, one tenor (me!) and one bass). We are all over 70 and may not sound very good but in our imaginations... Ian

I have heard Vidor's toccata played on a perfectly good organ by a dear old lady who had been asked to play for a wedding but had evidently never heard it before. At a quarter of the normal tempo it might have surficed as a funeral march but... I would suggest that with such difficult music the organ is only as good as the organist! Ian

So it looks as though the GWR in Cardiff (5min) was more efficient then the SNCF in Paris (10min)! Pacific231 has shown us this diagram in another thread and it is absolutely fascinating. I wonder whether any British termini had such a logically arranged traffic pattern? Many thanks to Johnster, Pacific231 and the others who have commented on my posting. I can now plan my timetable with much more confidence. One point which should be remembered about CJF's plan was that it was based on the use of the rtr pointwork available at the time which comprised simple straight lh and rh points - no curved , tandems or slips - to create a smoothly flowing station throat. In reality pw engineers would have used more complex pointwork in such confined spaces. His "eureka" moment was to see how sharp S bends could be eliminated. This was relevant for the time but I would suggest is irrelevant in the days of Templot, hand-built track and even the variety of rtr track from Peco, Marcway etc. I've used curved Marcway turnouts to get a reasonably smoothly flowing throat without sharp reverse curves on Bradford North Western, Howard Bolton's P4 Minories is much better because he was able to use Templot to create a lovely smoothly curved layout. Ian

That reminds me. I must look for my copy of Hanford's recording of a wildy out-of-sortts Caley Jumbo (I think) coughing and spluttering into Carstairs station. After it expires the driver can be heard in broad Glaswegian saying "I need anither injin". Sounds appropriate! Ian P.S. 66 responses - I seem to have touched a nerve...

I realise that I am reaching that stage in my life when time is running out, peers are increasingly "slipping off the edge" and Plans Need To Be Made. So, to cheer myself up I am considering what music I'd like to have at my funeral. Shame I'll miss it. So to start with, as my coffin is brought into the church (or humanist temple, which are distinctively lacking in Upper Wensleydale) how about something slow and meditative to make everyone nice and unhappy, like a Mozart slow movement or Bach's Air on a G String. Definitely not Pachelbel's Canon, which my organist friend Malcolm says is driving him nuts, it's so popular. During the service I'd like members of the choirs I sing in to perform Mozart's Ave Verum - nice and simple so would not take much rehearsal. Are you weeping yet? Hymns? Haven't decided. And for my departure? How about Tommy's Holiday Camp? The camp with a difference, when you come to Tommy's the holiday's for ever. What would you like? Please, not My Way! Ian

That was certainly CJF's idea. Can anyone say: 1) how long it would take to uncouple the loco of the incoming train, couple a new loco to the "country" end, connect pipes and test brakes etc. and be ready for the train to depart? 5 min. 10, 15, 20...? and 2) how long it would take to clean the fire, and top up coal and water ready for the next duty? Of course I am asking for minimum times at a busy station, not for Ashburton! I ask because I am modelling the timetable for such a station (Bradford North Western). Ian

Thinking on, I have to say that Tony has a good point, moreover it is based on real experience of operating Leighton Buzzard. I've onlyhad 10 minutes such experience (at the famous MRJ exhibition at Central Hall (in 1990?) but that was enough to show its worth. One virtue of your plan is that the goods sidings point in different directions. Peter Denny was a strong advocate this principle in improving operational interest. I realise now that I should have read the original posting more carefully. Clearly access will be needed for the the fiddle yard. My concerns about jamming too much in were ironic. Of all small termini Leighton Buzzard is one of the "busiest" with even a gas works fitted in. In most hands this would be over-kill but Peter Denny carried it off somehow, to create one of my favourite layouts. I'll withdraw gracefully, before I become a modern equivalent of Robbo Ormiston-Chant and await developments with interest