Irwell street

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Simon Moore

Irwell street

Postby Simon Moore » Sun Jan 31, 2021 7:20 pm

I thought i would start a layout post which is very much in it's infancy at the moment.

I conjured this idea up after reading far to much Rice! About 2 years ago i picked up Iain's latest book on cameo layouts whilst in llanfair station. This really opened up a can of worms whilst on holiday in deepest Wales.
Having had a big layout in the past it was very much something that could never be operated properly by 1 man & the thought of building something so big now could put me off modelling at all for months. I much prefer small but interesting layouts now especially of the light or industrial variety. This got me thinking of micro layouts or cameo scenes. I wanted to make a layout that was small & something i had a chance of getting finished. I had a piece of ply spare in the garage which was about 3ft x 18inchs & i wondered what might fit.

This plan was successful in that i built it in copperclad in EM but due to my limited skills it wasn't the best running layout. If i am perfectly honest i have never been great in the permanent way department.

20210131_182842.jpg


My move to P4 was because i like building locos more than anything especially industrials so i have out sourced the turnout building to someone better suited. This layout in its EM form i named Salts wharf with it being based just down the road from me in the mill complex at Saltaire. This P4 version is still going to be the same kind of setting although i might move it over the pennines to Blackburn, Bolton or Manchester. I drive Hgv's & i get to see a lot of the old mills & victorian architecture that is still with us which is great inspiration for a industrial layout.

20210131_182858.jpg


My mk2 version is a little larger but still a tiddler coming in under 4ft long. The fiddle yard will consist of a couple of cassettes about 18inch long for a small loco plus 3 or 4 wagons.

20210131_182918.jpg


The sidings are longer than the templot drawing, this was just drawn more for the turnouts than anything else. One part is missing which is an extra siding accessed from the fiddle yard for the coal drops. For now i am going to carry on building stock & i intend on making a start on a few buildings to go with it.
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Last edited by Simon Moore on Fri Feb 05, 2021 7:39 am, edited 1 time in total.

Steve Carter
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Re: Small industrial shunting yard

Postby Steve Carter » Sun Jan 31, 2021 8:46 pm

I will look forward to seeing this project develop Simon. I'm quite partial to industrials as well.
Steve Carter

Simon Moore

Re: Small industrial shunting yard

Postby Simon Moore » Sun Jan 31, 2021 8:53 pm

Thanks Steve.

I'm very much looking forward to making this mk2 version of the layout. One thing i forgot to mention is that i want to include my great grand fathers coal business into the layout. The stable building still stands & you can just make out the original name. That has been on the build over 100 years now. I am very proud to say it has survived as long as it has.

20201130_120546.jpg
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Winander
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Re: Small industrial shunting yard

Postby Winander » Sun Jan 31, 2021 9:56 pm

Simon,

Looks to be interesting. did your grandfather have any of his own wagons? I was surprised to learn some merchants in my home town had wagons even though it was little more than a village.

Simon Moore wrote:i get to see a lot of the old mills & victorian architecture that is still with us which is great inspiration for a industrial layout.

I hope you take your camera along, even if you don't know what you will do with the pictures.
Richard Hodgson
Organiser Scalefour Virtual Group. Our meeting invitation is here.

Simon Moore

Re: Small industrial shunting yard

Postby Simon Moore » Sun Jan 31, 2021 10:06 pm

Hi Richard

Yes he did, i did some research via the lancashire & yorkshire railway society & he had a few wagons that were loaded at cortonwood colliery. I have a few slaters kits for chas roberts wagons which is prototypically correct. My friend is making me the transfers for them. My great grand father also was the first man in Nelson lancashire to have a steam wagon. It was a 6 wheel sentinel & it was named after my grand mother Eileen. He used to take victory v lozenges from the factory in Nelson to Liverpool. It must have been a hell of a drive that. I have a photo for it somewhere, again something else i want to model.

Simon Moore

Re: Small industrial shunting yard

Postby Simon Moore » Tue Feb 02, 2021 5:04 pm

I've been throwing around ideas in my head to try give this yard a bit of fictional history. The other thing has been a suitable name to call it. I'm toying with Ordsall street or Irwell street both which have a mancunian flavour to them.

The other thing i like besides industrials are pre groupers particularly the L&Y & LNWR. I think I'm going to incorporate the old goods warehouses from Liverpool rd Station with a wagon turntable into the rear siding. I have some lnwr kits for stock & locos which could easily be used here. I'm thinking maybe the yard could be something like liverpool rd which has been taken over by a manufacturing firm with a internal railway, nothing much changing structure wise since the victorian era.

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steve howe
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Re: Irwell street

Postby steve howe » Sun Feb 21, 2021 12:47 pm

I'm liking the look of this Simon, just the thing for a couple of ex L&Y pugs to shuffle about on! (I can heartily recommend the High Level chassis kit for the Hornby body) :thumb

Steve

Terry Bendall
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Re: Irwell street

Postby Terry Bendall » Mon Feb 22, 2021 8:32 am

steve howe wrote:The other thing has been a suitable name to call it.


For urban layouts, one method is to look at a street atlas index for the area and find names that appeal and perhaps change "road" to "street" or other similar changes. That is how Elcot Road got its name.

Terry Bendall

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steve howe
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Re: Irwell street

Postby steve howe » Mon Feb 22, 2021 10:06 am

Are you thinking of extending the siding the train is standing on, back parallell with the 3-way into the cassette deck to create a run-round facility?

Simon Moore

Re: Irwell street

Postby Simon Moore » Mon Apr 05, 2021 9:29 pm

Hi Steve, yes the bottom line & 3 way create a run around which will go to small cassettes which will hold a loco & 5 wagons.

Today i took stock of all my rolling stock & locos. My original thought was to make this a inner city goods yard now in private use but the location & industry is changing.
As the majority of my wagons are coal wagons of some kind & the 3 locos i am currently working on are all NCB i thought i would change this layout to a small colliery.

I follow the Bowes railway on facebook & they posted a old photo from 1910 i think it was of Hobson colliery at Burnopfield. This tiny colliery will suit my layout perfectly so i am going to use this as the basis for the layout although run whatever takes my fancy on the layout. So it could be north eastern area ncb one minute the north yorkshire area group the next. It means i can models lots of different prototypes all based on colliery engines of one place or another.

Simon Moore

Re: Irwell street

Postby Simon Moore » Tue Jul 06, 2021 10:42 am

Woth my wedding taking up a fair bit of time I have not done a great deal of modelling & Irwell Street was put on the back burner. I have now sorted everything for the big day so now I am getting back into modelling again.

This layout plan has been ticking over in the back of my head for some time now & I have wanted to make a start. I decided against someone making my points as me & my mate from the em group I am part of have built timber based track before so some C&L point kits have been ordered along with some track components.

If I am to break out into P4 it needs to be something I have done more or less on my own with a little help from friends. I've still a few bits to purchased but I have the point kits & trackwork which is a start. Next week I am going to get some timber cut for the baseboard & then it can be assembled before we layout some track.

I am still not sure what kind of industrial setting it is going to be. I feel a colliery would be a bit limited as its coal wagons only. I am thinking of it more along the original idea of a mill setting. It might end up becoming Salts Mill mk2.

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steamraiser
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Re: Irwell street

Postby steamraiser » Tue Jul 06, 2021 12:37 pm

Why just one industry being served by the sidings?

Gordon A

Simon Moore

Re: Irwell street

Postby Simon Moore » Tue Jul 06, 2021 5:15 pm

I have been toying with a few ideas today whilst driving up the M6. I am drawn to R B Tennan'ts Whifflet foundry at Coatbridge. This had the little sentinels pottering about & with transfers from BR with 06 shunter's does give extra interest. It would also mean a variation in stock from slag ladles & internal user wagons to br wagons & the odd tanker.

The original Salts wharf that got built in em had a number of buildings & a coal siding so again had scope for different wagons. It will come together eventually, it doesn't help that I like so many different things.

davebradwell
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Re: Irwell street

Postby davebradwell » Tue Jul 06, 2021 7:26 pm

In my youth, the Team Valley Trading Estate was not far away and this had it's own railway system and locos which interchanged with BR and there was also an NCB system nearby which shared some track. It was a sprawling system but in making a small layout it's what you perceive to be off-stage that's important. You can have your foundry, but by making it part of a system, other things can happen. A large bridge girder might be towed past from the structural steelworks, or a string of internal user coal wagons going to the coke-works.

DaveB

Simon Moore

Re: Irwell street

Postby Simon Moore » Sun Jul 11, 2021 8:57 pm

Dave it's funny since you posted this a Facebook page I follow, industrial railway enthusiast's have posted a number of images of the team valley trading estate. Some lovely photos of a saddle tank hauling 4 to 6 ncb hoppers across sets the scene nicely. I am now looking for more for a bit of research as it makes perfect sense to have as much variation of traffic as possible. A colliery is fine but in such a small space doesn't offer much scope to rail traffic.

davebradwell
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Re: Irwell street

Postby davebradwell » Mon Jul 12, 2021 9:02 am

I threw the Team Valley in to give you some ideas as some sort of system seems the way forward for you and there were many of them, all different. The colliery was actually off the end of the estate and pretty independent, running to its own incline which was part of the Bowes system. There's plenty of photos because one of the drivers would take those that showed an interest for a ride - I was taken there by one of the regulars. The true estate railway formed a U, sharing a bridge at its base (over a rare dual carriageway) with the NCB line. The interesting traffic, which had ceased before I knew of it, was from the NCB screens bottom left up the LH leg of the U passing the doors of various businesses and off the system across the bottom of Lobley Hill Road, apparently without gates, to Norwood coke works and worked by BR N10 0-6-2Ts. The right leg had the BR exchange with engine sheds at the top. It's all on Old-Maps.

Most other systems would be steelworks but you might consider port and harbour lines. Bristol had a fine system but information on these could be scarce because they were meant to be secure areas to reduce theft. All you're looking for is a background story, really, to justify any extra traffic.

DaveB

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Noel
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Re: Irwell street

Postby Noel » Mon Jul 12, 2021 10:29 am

davebradwell wrote:Bristol had a fine system but information on these could be scarce because they were meant to be secure areas to reduce theft.


Bristol city docks are fairly well documented, as much of the infrastructure outlasted their use as docks. Some still exists now, and photographs exist of much of what has been redeveloped. The major problem would be picking a particular bit to model; the whole thing is far too big to cope with. I could be tempted by the nearby Redcliffe Goods Yard, right in what was then the industrial centre of Bristol, but even that was a bit big.
Regards
Noel

davebradwell
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Re: Irwell street

Postby davebradwell » Mon Jul 12, 2021 11:54 am

You've rather taken me out of context, Noel. My "these" refers to an expectation that harbour and port lines in general might be rarely photographed. I recall an article in the prototype press on Bristol harbour system, so this is likely better documented and might be examined. My next sentence explained that I was proposing possible themes rather than suggesting a prototype. As you say, problem is scaling them down - I was trying to stir up ideas.

DaveB

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Noel
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Re: Irwell street

Postby Noel » Mon Jul 12, 2021 1:32 pm

Not intentionally Dave, just following up on the example you used, as I happen to be familiar with it. My point is that docks were very big, but it is possible to cherry pick certain elements [to borrow from Iain Rice] and reassemble them to achieve what you want, but you have to remember that individual elements would themselves normally be quite big, and rather limited in what each one does. Elements could be taken from more than one set of docks, of course; Preston docks are not too badly documented, for example.

Given my interests, I would tend perhaps to look at something derived from Redcliffe goods yard in Bristol, Shallcross goods yard near Whaley Bridge and Cockett station goods yard near Swansea. These were all fairly restricted goods only locations, all in different environments, but which could accommodate a variety of traffic, and hence of rolling stock. Items could be added from elsewhere to cater for a specific traffic if required.
Regards
Noel


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