After almost three and a half years, my
builder has finally been engaged to floor out the loft, insulate it in the
roof and line it all out in plywood. It has lights, power and
ventilation. All the remains for me to do is to paint it and get it
carpeted and a space some 29 feet by a tad over 11 is available. After decades of
modelling of one sort or another, I may actually succeed over the course of
the next couple of years in building myself an operating, useable, railway.
Over the years there have been numerous plans for all kinds of layouts, none
of which ever got anywhere near being built. Largely, I suspect, because
they were far too ambitious, but there never was the space, the time or the
money anyway. (It's called armchair modelling.) I
retired in September 2010 and so have begun to make concrete plans
and cost, while not immaterial, is less of a problem that it was some years ago.
I suppose, like many others in the past I had visions of an intensive
passenger railway with long trains and lots of tail traffic. I would really
love to see trains of diverse carriages being hauled by immaculate express
engines. The reality is that I would need a huge space to do it justice.
Even the loft here with 29*11 feet useable space would be hard pressed to
produce a realistic railway based on such a premise, assuming I could afford
to convert it (which it transpired I could).
However, over the years I have found more and more enjoyment in building
goods stock. The carriage of goods was the life blood of the railways and,
in the era I propose to model (circa 1900), the carriage of goods provided
by far the bulk of the Great Western's revenue, about 60%. Having worked many times on
Horton Regis (The Epsom club's layout) I found I got a greater kick out of
shunting the yard than running passenger trains. So this railway will be
almost entirely goods.
The one drawback of that though is that wagons arrive either empty or full
and should then leave full or empty. Since we do not have 7mm robot people
to load and unload them we need to find a way to provide for loading and
unloading.
My intention is to build twice as many open wagons as I need to operate the
railway, half of them loaded and an identical set empty.
Wagons will disappear into factories with a load and emerge later without,
or vice versa. There are plenty of examples of this in real life. Indeed,
it used to happen at Curzon Street Goods Depot, where I began my short
career on the railways. Vans on the other hand do not need this strategy
and so can be parked in roofed over sidings against a dock where they can be
unloaded or loaded in the imagination. I have yet to think of a way
of making the doors operational!
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To make matters even more 'interesting', I intend using a wagon turntable
too. I know this can be done because Ian Hopkins achieved it on his
'railway in a clock' St Georges Hill and they were a feature of Curzon
Street too. However, I was also inspired by the Slough railway system where
the GWR provided direct rail access to many factories and ran regular trips
to each as required. I am placing my railway to the North of Snow Hill but
have yet to decide which part of North Birmingham will be demolished to make
way for this factory complex with its tight clearances and cramped yard.
By the way, it will be either 31.2 or 31.5mm track gauge.
Now being subjected to more revision because I could build a 'roundy-roundy'
or an end-to-end some 29 feet long. So who knows what will finally see
the light of day? Temploting for it will be a nice diversion when
a break is needed from completing the remaining commissions
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