Windjabbers

Bit of an update to show that this project is moving forward slowly. Thought I had better get a move on given the J70 will arrive in a few month time. I have wired up the layout for DCC and installed the point motors and switchs. Just need to sort out the frog's and it will all be up and running. Some dull pictures to show 'progrees'

Not so sure, the National Barclay Liberation Front would like to see all cute little industrial locomotives released harmlessly into the wild on outrageously improbable light railways in rural Wales.

Splitter’s, we in the People’s Front for Barclay Liberation would never support such a thing….

Hi, I am looking at modelling a couple of signal for a local group project of Histon Railway Station. (On the line between Cambridge and St Ives).

The two signals can be seen in the photo on the following, very good, website

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/h/histon/ Pictures 4,5 and 6 as you scroll down

and this one: -

http://www.eastanglianrailwayarchive.co.uk/Railways/East-Anglian-Railway-Archive/i-qGwnBSD

The two signals in question are the up starter and the down home.  These are the questions that I need help with.

1. Both signals are clearly not the original GER lower quadrant version. Does anyone have any information about when these versions were installed? I believe it may be post WW2 from looking at other pictures but can’t be sure.
2. As they are not the original GER signals, what are they, LNER or BR?
3. What type of post is it, it doesn’t look like LNER lattices version, is it a rounded tube style, which makes me think it’s a BR signal>
4. The up starter is a very tall signal, is there a way of working out just how tall it is rather than guessing? It looks twice as tall as a standard signal, but was it built to a set height/
5. Does anyone know of any more photo’s which show these two signals?

Thanks for advice and comments.

Best Wishes

David

I have been looking back through some MRJ for an artical, which I found, but came across the Inkerman Street, 7mm layout.

Just wondering if anyone knew what happend to it?

Bets Wishes

David

David - I'd rather like you to be right as I like the green! Have you any idea when they would have been painted green?  I re - read the part of Tim Shackleton's book which I referred to this morning, and that states the trams ended up in black with the later emblem and wasp stripes. I've found a colour picture on the net of D2201 shunting at Elm Bridge in 1964. The loco appears to be in black livery, with wasp stripes and the later crest. It could have been painted green by 1966 though!

Alex

Hi Alex,

I assume you mean this photo of D2201 still in Black with wasp strips and late crest in 1964. I was surprised to see this and is new photo since I last looked at this.

https://transportsofdelight.smugmug.com/RAILWAYS/WISBECH-UPWELL-TRAMWAY/WISBECH-UPWELL-TRAMWAY/i-vxmpxpR

In ‘Branch lines to Upwell’ by Middleton Press in the caption to picture 103 states that 11101 became D2201 in September 1961 with revised livery of green with wasp strips. Which contradicts the photo above. And which I had based my statement that they ended up in green.

There is an article in Railword from September 1981 by Mike Fell, which state that all four loco’s (D2200 to D2203) were in BR Green with Wasp Strips by September 1966.  Which is after the Line closed in May 1966. So, is it possible that D2201 and 2 were only repainted after they left the line?

It’s impossible to tell from the black and white photos between the back and green livery. So, you could be right. Interesting!

Best Wishes

David

Hi Nick. Thank you for your kind comment. You've made me realise that D2201 is now over 21 years old!  The model is made from a Dapol kit, with the skirts, cab and cowcatchers from an etched conversion kit from Impetus. The chassis was a Bachmann 03. The Impetus kit is no longer available, and the Bachmann 03 became an 04 - I'm not sure how easy that is to get hold of these days.

I used a very good article by Monty Wells in MRJ no 3 on the 04s, which included extensive prototype notes, and drawings of the tram version. Worth getting hold of if you haven't seen it. There was also an article by Tim Shackleton in MRJ 87 on using the Impetus conversion, and a chapter by him on the same subject in his book "Modelling Diesels".

 

I'm planning to have another at the tram, hopefully this year, to address the shortcomings of my model of D2201. If I can get hold of one, my stating point will be the Bachmann 04, with a new cab, skirts and cowcatchers from styrene sheet.  When I built D2201, I wasn't sure whether the livery should be black or green, even with wasp stripes and the late type crest. I went for green, but I'm now pretty certain it should be black.

 

If you follow the link to my gallery, there's some more pictures of the model there.

 

Alex√

The liveries of the 04’s used on the Wisbech and Upwell is something I have been looking at.

From the pictures I’ve seen they arrived in all over Black with red bufferbeam and end up in BR Green with wasp stripe ends.

However, they do seem to have been in a mixed livery of Black with wasp stripes ends for a number of years.

Best Wishes

David

Sometimes you can have enough of building girder rail......

 

A hastily mocked up shot of part of the idea...

 

262EA10C-ACCD-4A9D-8CAA-F16D9D14C3F6.jpeg

 

Phase 2 baseboard now in build this is a hinged part to this one which will create a box for transit, but feature ‘the bit behind the railway’ more buildings and another simple tram line on an incline, going to try a little bit of forced perspective by doing this in 3.5mm including the tram line (thank god for 3D prints!)

 

Backscene on this will form the top part of the transit box, corner bits for this area being done in curved ally sheet for strength and durability, that and I hate corners in the sky!

 

Hopefully a fair bit of progress to be made over Christmas break...

Looking good, even at this early stage its got the essence of Sheffield in the 1950’s...

Best Wishes

David

Hi,

I’m trying to find out what livery the WD 280 were delivered in as they were built in in 1943/4. 

We would like to model one which was lent to the LNER during this period before the WD took them back for duties overseas towards the end of the war.

Is the correct livery for a WD 280 operating on the LNER in 1944 is green or black?

Would welcome comments and advice.

Best Wishes

David

I couldn’t agree more.  Given its about 25 years since Iain Rice first started to talk about this, it’s really surprising it’s not been more widely taken up.

I go to about 6 -8 show a year and one thing I am always sure off is that at least two to three layouts will be let down by their presentation.

Whatever your standard of modelling, it will always be improved by presenting you layout well!

Best Wishes

David

It's been a while, did you ever progress further with this?

Hi, thanks for your prompt.

Yes, I am still working away at this project, although for various reasons progress has been much much slower than I had hoped.

All the track is down and wired up for DCC operation. I am currently putting in the point motors.

I hope to have it all working by the end of the year. So that when the new J70 come out I will have a layout ready for it.

I will try and post a couple of pictures at the weekend.

Best Wishes

David

The building at Outwell Village is still standing. Although is is now surrounded by houses which have been built on the depot site.

Their is a picture here:-http://https://howlingpixel.com/wiki/Wisbech_and_Upwell_Tramway

With the forthcomming J70 from Model Rail I think there will be an upsurge in the number of tramway layouts!

Best Wishes

David

As the author of the Rail Express guide to Network Coal trains I can direct you to that article which you will find, complete with formations, in the July 2008 issue.

Thanks, I don't have a full set for 2008 so need to fill in a few blanks.

Best Wishes

David

Thanks everyone for your comments. As the writer of all the Retrospectrum features, the main reason they ceased was lack of time. They take a long time to research and after taking over as editor of the modelling section, there just weren't enough hours in the week. They may come back one day as I would certainly like to do some more.

 

As for the Modellers Guides, these are by no means dead - there are a couple on file that will run next year along with others in development. They are again time consuming to put together and need a suitable space to be available. We've done MoD formations previously so that's partly why they were missing from the recent MoD Speedlink article. There have been discussions about reissuing the older ones in some form but they would all need updating and most of the formation graphics redoing to the current standard.

 

I'm open to suggestions as to what readers would like to see covered by future Modellers Guides, keeping in mind that a lot of the most obvious subjects have bee done.

 

Simon

Simon,

Thank you for your comments back.

A couple of suggestion from me, but I am sure that I others will have more.

Livery Articles

1.     BR Green to BR Blue - Clearly given that the whole fleet was treated listing everything would be out of the question but a table which says had first and last for each class would be good plus a focus on a few examples and interesting loco would be worthwhile.

2.    TOC’s - Some TOC seem to have been very slow in getting their fleet in their livery and some liveries seem to have outlasted their original owners by a mile.  For example, you can still get on a Class 170 which is basically in “ONE’ livery.

Covering some of this would be helpful. We now a we have a number of defunct TOC it is difficult to remember what exactly happened. For example, did Central Trains get everything painted green before the lost their franchise?

Train formations

What I would find really helpful is more information on Speedlink formations. Looking at pictures some trains seemed to have quite changed over time.  I am not sure that you covered Network Coal formations which would be helpful.

Hope this all helps.

Best Wishes

David

Both the livery and train formation articles are a great resource, but once printed there's not much point in re-running them and with liveries only so many that can be done. Train formations could be continued (would have been nice to include something with the MoD/Speedlink trains in the current issue for example), but then you end up getting very specific to keep up with demand.

 

It would be great if both series of articles could be published in a book so all the information is in one place.

 

 

Steven B.

Would agree with you on the liveries front and that a book would be welcome.

I also thought that the MoD/Speedlink article would have been much better with a train formation graphic.

In the end, I assume that it’s a resource issue at Rail Express. I know that the margins at tight on such publications and I would guess that producing train formation graphic is time consuming.

Best Wishes

David

Taken from https://railexpress.wordpress.com/retrospectrums/

 

ScotRail (RE95)

Railfreight (RE97)

Loadhaul (RE99)

Railfreight Red Stripe (RE101)

Large Logo blue (RE103)

Network SouthEast (RE105)

Provincial/Regional Railways (RE107)

InterCity Executive (RE109)

Parcels red/grey (RE111)

Mainline Freight (RE113)

British Railways green (RE115)

General grey (RE117)

Stratford silver/grey roofs (RE119)

Network SouthEast – revised (RE122)

Transrail Freight (RE124)

Civil Engineer’s ‘Dutch’ grey/yellow (RE126)

GWR green specials (RE128)

InterCity Mainline (RE130)

BR specials (RE132)

Rail express systems (RE134)

Railfreight General (RE137)

Railfreight Distribution/Speedlink Distribution (RE138)

Railfreight/Trainload Petroleum (RE140)

Railfreight/Trainload Construction (RE142)

Railfreight/Trainload Metals & Automotive (RE144)

Railfreight/Trainload Coal (RE146)

British Rail Telecommunications (RE148)

Research Department & Technical Services (RE152)

InterCity Swallow (RE154)

Railfreight Distribution ‘European’ (RE156)

Direct Rail Services  – original  (RE158)

Porterbrook purple/white (RE160)

British Steel (RE163)

Royal Train Claret (RE165)

Waterman Railways black  (RE167)

Freightliner grey (RE169)

 

Steven B.

Thanks Steve, that it really helpful.

It's a shame that Rail Express don't still do these sorts of articles, along with the train formation graphics they used to do.

Best Wishes

David

Hi David

 

General was in No. 137 Oct 2007 with the introduction piece. Distribution was No. 138 Nov 2007. Railfreight original grey was No. 97 June 2004 and Red Stripe was No. 101 Oct 2004.

 

Simon

Thanks Simon thats really helpful. Looking through a couple of other back copies I have I see that they covered other topics such as NSE. Is there a full list somewhere? I cant see one on their website?

Best Wishes

David

Rail Express Modeller had a series of articles on the 1987 Trainload Freight Liveries.

I’ve manged to find the intro article which was in the October 2007 edition (137).

 I have also tracked down the following articles

140- Jan 2008 – Petroleum sub-sector

142 - Mar 2008 – Construction sub-sector

144 - May 2008 – Metals sub-sector

146 - July 2008 – Coal Sub sector

Does anyone know which editions had the follow up articles on Railfreight Distribution and Railfreight General sub sectors?

Additionally, did the cover the Railfreight red strip livery?

Thanks

David

Hi David,

I may take the layout out, but currently I have nothing planned. With my  previous layout, I found myself rushing to get jobs done in time for exhibitions and  I found that did distract from the actual enjoyment of creating the model.  I didn't want that to happen with this layout and so progress has been more relaxed and therefore more enjoyable, with no deadlines to meet.  Although there is still much to do,  the layout is now looking  a bit more scenically complete, so I will give some thought to taking it out.

Many thanks

Andy

Hi Andy,

Thanks for your reply. I understand what you say after all, enjoyment should be the priority when it comes to the hobby.

 I am sure it would be a welcome addition to any show if and when you feel that what you want to do.

Best Wishes

David

I've just found this thread, superb modelling and layout, Are you planning to take it to any shows?

Best Wishes

David

Always great to see pictures of this layout. Is the bridge based on one specify one or a composite of those over the Ouse between Huntingdon east and Godmanchester?

Best Wishes

David

Will follow this one with interest, like the idea of trams and trains all working.

Best Wishes

David

ECML diverts

I am looking for information on diverted ECML workings and the route they took in the LNER and BR Steam Period.

My specific question is when diverted from ECML between Hitchin and Peterbo’  did any go via the Cambridge – St Ives – March Line?

Addition to this what was the RA of the Cambridge – St Ives – March Line?

Thanks

David

Hi David, probably by the end of the summer depending how much other work comes in.

 

Dave Franks.

HI Dave, just wondering if you were any closer to producing the GER Bufferstops?

Best Wishes

David

Thanks for the update and the pictures of the J15 crossing the river, could be straight out of a JD Mann book.

This is a real favourite for me, you have captured the feel of the area really well.

PM'd you

Thanks Rex. Best Wishes David