North of Rickmansworth these Met trains were of course worked by steam, originally Met locos, which ran to Aylesbury and, formerly, to Verney Junction, a remote country station in the middle of nowhere, where one could change for the LNWR Oxford-Cambridge line and their branch to Buckingham and Banbury.
At one time some of the trains conveyed a Pullman from Verney Junction to Baker Street - and I think, at one time, Liverpool Street.
Eventually, the Met gave up their revenue-earning steam locos (as opposed to service engines which were used for departmental service for many, many years) and the LNER (later BR) 'horsed' their trains to Aylesbury.
Later still, the electrification was extended to Amersham. This was actually a cutback as Met trains no longer ran to Aylesbury. And of course, the new trains were just normal underground EMUs, not loco-hauled.
The whole line was of course Metropolitan and Great Central Joint north of Harrow, an arrangement reached to solve the endless quarrels between the two companies over the use of the line. (The GCR had previously had just running powers.) Meanwhile, the root of the quarrel had been dealt with by the creation of the GC and GW Joint via High Wycombe, a slightly longer journey for GC trains but better graded and better laid out.
At one time some of the trains conveyed a Pullman from Verney Junction to Baker Street - and I think, at one time, Liverpool Street.
Enabled by a brilliant sleight of hand by Sir Edward Watkin, the lines chairman and an MP. which meant that uniquely in British railway legislation the Met was able to retain land that it compulsorily purchased but didn't need for the line - everyone else had to sell back on completion. This meant that the Met was able to develop suburbia around its stations - Rayners Lane station, when it opened for example, was a rural lane in the middle of nowhere. Verney Junction was a speculative endeavour that never took off - if Metroland had really surged then it would have been a new town.
There was a real problem when going going along an undulating line with loose-coupled wagons. Unless held back on the descent by a brake van, the wagons would all close up; then, as they reached the bottom of a dip and started to climb, the couplings would suddenly pull tight - known in Scotland as a "rug", this could snap the couplings.
There was a style of loose coupling with one strangely-shaped link, called the Instanter, which sought to alleviate some of the problems. I think the GW used them.
The Instanter coupling had come into fairly common use across BR in the late 60s, and I can proudly claim to have handled one when helping to putting a train back together after a minor derailment at Culloden Moor in 1967. It was a neat and simple device for reducing the slack in a loose coupled goods train, but needed cautious backing up before you could drop it in the hook. A 3-link coupling is heavy!
Some years ago, a friend of mine who was involved (as was I) with one of the narrow-gauge railways in Wales became an active volunteer at one of the standard-gauge heritage railways here in Kent.
He did indeed confirm that the 3-link coupling was f*****g heavy, and IIRC he transferred his allegiance to a much smaller gauge!
The early steam loco drivers had incredible skill. As is well known, this country is not a billiard table by any means. Imagine hauling 40 or 60 coal wagons down steep grades with, at best, a brake on the loco and another on the brake van. Early steam locos didn't even have brakes on the loco, only a hand brake on the tender, and wooden - as opposed the steel - brake shoes were common. Sometimes the brake vans were as light as 10 tons. 15 tons was quite normal.
Of course, on the steepest grades you were supposed to stop at the top and pin down wagon brakes before descending. But again, early wagons (up to 1911) often only had a brake on one side, and sometimes just a sledge brake on one wheel, not four! Imagine the poor old guard, at a chilly locus like Dunford Bridge, having the walk down the train, constantly switching from one side or the other to pin down a brake - perhaps in the dark, or in falling snow or rain. What a lovely job! And any error - as in not pinning down enough as judged by the boss - and you get blamed for any accident.
It certainly wasn't an easy job. Those who complain about it on today's heritage railways don't know the half of it! Some of those lines do run freight specials, on gala days and so on, but AFAIK they don't have to do a lot of shunting en route.
An old friend of mine, now long passed to the Great Marshalling Yard In The Sky, was at one time (around 1950) employed as a shunter on the Southern Region. He told me once how he was caught in a tight place between a rake of wagons and a rapidly approaching locomotive (a Q1), but managed to get himself lying down on the ballast, so that the Q1 passed over him as it whacked into the wagons (it was travelling too fast).
He wasn't hurt, but he left the railway soon after (!) and found a safer job driving buses for London Transport's Country Area...
The best place to read about hair-raising goods train adventures (including one where the guard went to sleep) is in David Smith's "Tales of the Glasgow & South Western Railway". Well worth a read!
The best place to read about hair-raising goods train adventures (including one where the guard went to sleep) is in David Smith's "Tales of the Glasgow & South Western Railway". Well worth a read!
Don't think I've told this one before, and apologies if I heard it on here but I don't think I did - remote branchline in Scotland in the 1950s (where just now escapes me so I'm not going to guess) with multiple level crossings. Driver and fireman on a freight working.
loco crew have both had a skinful the night before. Approaching the end of the run the fireman wakes up, realising he's been asleep for who knows how long, and turns to thank the driver for letting him sleep it off.
Only to discover the driver is also asleep.
Fireman shakes the driver awake and they bring the train to a stand in the correct position in the yard. They dismount and are stunned to see large bits of wood and twisted metal festooned over the front end of the locomotive.
Light dawning, they're joined at the head of the train by an extremely irate guard, red in the face and out of breath having run the length of the train, who exclaims:
'were we not doing the f'ing crossing gates the day then!?'
It was thought at one time that the mysterious Grantham disaster of 1906 was due to the loco crew having fallen ill/gone mad/fighting (!), but recent investigations come up with other explanations:
Other accidents may have been caused by the crew falling asleep - not entirely unknown in the days of incredibly long working hours - but, if the poor men were killed in the accident, as often happened, no-one would ever know if they were asleep.
Reverting for a moment to the Rickmansworth engine change, on a damp day the sound of the steam locos slipping as they struggled to get their trains moving on the sharp curve and steep gradient out of Ricky was clearly audible at Moor Park, on the other side of the valley, where I was at school.
And, re Verney Junction, I don't think anyone had any plans of anticipating Milton Keynes. There are a number of large country estates and big houses nearby, which would explain the Pullman service. But the branch from Verney Junction to Aylesbury existed before the Met extended to Aylesbury and absorbed it, so the Surplus Lands exemption would not apply,
Incidentally, it is interesting that the erstwhile Brill branch off the Aylesbury - V.J. line was ar one time envisaged as extending to Oxford. This has, in a way, been achieved more effectively by the connection at Bicester enabling Chiltern trains to run to the cily from Marylebone.
The delightfully rural Brill branch was perhaps the most unlikely of London Transport's outposts! Worked latterly by an ex-Metropolitan 4-4-0T (I think there were two, used turn and turn about), it closed in 1935.
And, re Verney Junction, I don't think anyone had any plans of anticipating Milton Keynes. There are a number of large country estates and big houses nearby, which would explain the Pullman service. But the branch from Verney Junction to Aylesbury existed before the Met extended to Aylesbury and absorbed it, so the Surplus Lands exemption would not apply.
Re VJ it was/is local lore that it was the Verney family themselves who were hoping for a proto Milton Keynes on *their* land.
[quote="Bishops Finger;c-625601"Worked latterly by an ex-Metropolitan 4-4-0T (I think there were two, used turn and turn about).[/quote] There were, L.23 and L.45. The former took part in the Met Centenary parade (1963 I think) and is now at Covent Garden.
Re VJ it was/is local lore that it was the Verney family themselves who were hoping for a proto Milton Keynes on *their* land.
Yes, I think so. Incidentally Claydon House is now NT and our Bible Class once camped in its grounds c.1972. There is some sort of Florence Nightingale connection. As a child I read a rather good 'thriller' by John Verney called "Friday's Tunnel".
A friend of mine has just requested a book on the history of Micheldever railway station ("Parsons and Prawns") for Christmas, so I've ordered that for him, but others here might find the bookshop interesting, if not already aware of it, as they're a specialist railway publisher.
There should be a ship's 11th Commandment about this: "Thou shalt not post links to railway booksellers, because so many shipmates are hopelessly weak in the spirit and are unable to resist them."
But until that is enacted, let me recommend a delightful shop in a delightful location at Wemyss Bay station: https://friendsofwemyssbaystation.co.uk/bookshop-test/. Their prices are astonishingly low and the selection is usually excellent.
At our local railway museum, we have a locomotive which was used on the Western Front, was the last of its type returned to the UK and later imported for use on a coal-hauling railway. Each year since 2018, the area around the locomotive has been appropriately decorated with symbols of remembrance, and when possible a short observance conducted. Today we were on site for a function, but beforehand a small group gathered, an ex-serviceman recited the Ode, we observed the silence and I concluded with a couple of short prayers for peace and for those who served. Simple but moving even for one of our youngest volunteers, a teenager.
To avoid a tangent that doesn't belong in the Remembrance thread, the locomotive concerned sounds very much like one of the ROD 2-8-0s of Great Central Railway origin that were sold as war surplus to J&A Brown for coal haulage, and later preserved. (I found that in an old Observers Book of Australian Locomotives, and then asked Auntie Google about it). Perhaps there were other types as well?
The GCR 2-8-0s were originally class 8K and built from 1911 onwards. During WWI, many more were built for the ROD as a standard type - the ROD having previously requisitioned various locos from several railways. The main differences were that the RODs were not vacuum braked and (unlike almost all GC engines after Mr Robinson was appointed) did not have scoops for taking water from troughs. On the other hand, they had Westinghouse brakes and continental buffers and couplings.
After WWI a vast number of RODs, practically new were sold to a number of purchasers at popular prices. That is, dirt cheap. The LNER naturally bought them in large numbers - it saved them from building new goods engines in any number for years. The GW had a batch, as did the LNWR. Several other companies had some on loan - but did not necessarily buy. Whether all available locos went to someone I don't know. The GW certainly used the tenders of some locos that it simply scrapped.
Sadly it's a bit far to go. I missed the Cardiff one, which was last month.
Ipswich used to do a good thing (may still do): model railway exhibition, open day at the society of model engineers, and open day at the transport museum, all on the same day, with a combined ticket and linked by a free vintage bus service.
Ah! I remember with affection the long-ago days of the great Model Railway Exhibition in London - originally at the Central Hall, but later at the New Horticultural Hall.
We once had an excellent local exhibition in Our Town, though not AFAIK since Covid. I used to take part as an exhibitor, running my 16mm scale live-steam locomotives on our Association layout...
🚂
I did once (at age 17) exhibit a small N-gauge layout at the Hemel Hempstead show.
I also remember watching the Gauge 1 Association's trains (some live steam) at the Oxford Show around the same time. Someone had a superb model of the whole "Silver Jubilee" train.
Yes, the Gauge 1 people do it in style...though my impression was that they always seemed to run their trains just a little too fast...
Mind you, we narrow-gauge types were just as guilty of non-prototypical speeds, although my trusty old Archangel Marmaduke (a freelance 040T) was so controllable that I was actually able to shunt wagons in and out of sidings without smashing them up, or derailing!
The Glasgow event used to be held in the McLellan Galleries (now used by Glasgow School of Art), a rabbit warren of a place in the city centre. It had big rooms and a grand staircase but also lots of wee side-passages and smaller rooms. You'd wander along an empty Kafka-esque corridor and end up in a cosy room where they were showing Night Mail, stumble on the home-baking cafe by accident, or climb a quiet stair and end up in a room with a huge roaring layout and a stall selling OO Gauge trees.
Now in the Scottish Exhibition Centre. A big hall in a big shed with expensive corporate catering.
Last year ago, after many years at a school, Cardiff's show was at the Ice Arena (not on ice, you understand). It wasn't a good venue (a bit out of the way and terrible parking, for one thing). This year they went to the Conference Rooms at the County Cricket Ground.
The London Model Engineering Exhibition used to be at the Seymour Hall. I always suspected that, underneath the floor, there was a swimming pool full of water!
Back when the London exhibition was in the Central Hall, I can remember being very, very impressed by a Gauge 1 layout where there were live steam engines controlled by electricity through the track using a third rail. This would have been over 60 years ago, and long before any sort of radio control.
I haven't done model railways since I went to Bible College in 1975. Both the prices and modelling standards today rather frighten me, too.
I've obviously got no idea of your personal finances, but as someone who got back into modelling in 2019 I share/d exactly the same worries:
Modelling standards I'm less bothered about in truth because I can only do the best I can do - and given I've got no aspirations to either exhibit or indeed appear in Railway Modeller no one else will ever know. I'm not building Buckingham Great Central, but at the same time even being super critical I can look at where I've got to and it's not dreadful.
Price, absolutely, but it's a bit like tech in general - unless you want something ultra rare the ever quickening dash for greater fidelity means that you can buy very good models indeed from 2-5-10-20 years ago on online auction sites for a song. The only stuff I've bought new has been the rare items that simply haven't existed long enough to have a second hand tail yet. So I've paid Over £200 each for a couple of items (over several years) and a lot of others at £50 each.
Essentially it's probably not something you can do on no budget at all - though there are people out there still building all their stock out of cereal boxes - but equally it doesn't have to cost a fortune either. I've been fortunate to be able to buy a couple of things at full price, but I certainly couldn't have bought everything new.
Current stud (I did this on here a couple of years ago but just to show how it has relatively inexpensively grown) to represent Northants in the early 1950s:
O7, 9F, Ivatt 4MT, 69XX, 68XX, 10XX, 2 x A3, V2, 2 x B17, J39, K3, B1, O1, 2 x L1, D11/1, O4, 2 x J11, A5, C13, L3, 2 x B16/1, 2 x N5, GT3*.
(we don't talk about the full stud of Lynton and Barnstaple locomotives in OO9..., or the J15 for a Mid Suffolk Light Railway diorama that I haven't built yet either)
*not right for the early 50s, but right for the location
Little factoid: my town, Pullman WA, was named after George Pullman, the industrialist that developed the Pullman car. The hope was he would come to the town named after him, but he never did. He did send a small donation that went to the development of Washington State College, now University. The original name of the town was Three Forks.
I once travelled on the *Brighton Belle* electric Pullman train, shortly before the three 5-car sets used were withdrawn (1972?).
Alas! the coaches weren't particularly comfortable, although I suppose they were long past their sell-by date...and they'd been painted in that horrid corporate Rail Blue and Grey, instead of the proper Pullman umber and cream,
As regards models, over the past 70 years I've dabbled in Hornby 0 gauge clockwork, Triang 00 gauge electric, 00n3 (using Triang TT parts), 009 (Peco/Liliput/Eggerbahn), H0e (Austrian narrow gauge), 5-inch gauge coal-fired steam (!), 16mm live steam (2-foot-ish gauge prototypes running on 32mm gauge track), and back again in my dotage to 00...I have a number of small shunting layouts/dioramas based on the classic Inglenook Sidings design. These are all more like three-dimensional impressionist paintings, based on British light railway practice...
I haven't done model railways since I went to Bible College in 1975. Both the prices and modelling standards today rather frighten me, too.
I've obviously got no idea of your personal finances, but as someone who got back into modelling in 2019 I share/d exactly the same worries :...
Current stud (I did this on here a couple of years ago but just to show how it has relatively inexpensively grown) to represent Northants in the early 1950s:
O7, 9F, Ivatt 4MT, 69XX, 68XX, 10XX, 2 x A3, V2, 2 x B17, J39, K3, B1, O1, 2 x L1, D11/1, O4, 2 x J11, A5, C13, L3, 2 x B16/1, 2 x N5, GT3*.
(we don't talk about the full stud of Lynton and Barnstaple locomotives in OO9..., or the J15 for a Mid Suffolk Light Railway diorama that I haven't built yet either)
*not right for the early 50s, but right for the location
Wow and well done! Sounds a bit like the 1960s "Borchester" layout, seen at Central Hall.
Have you been to the preserved "Middy"? I went a few times when we lived in Ipswich. On the last occasion I was invited to ride on the footplate of the Cockerill tram engine - together with a lady who, the day before, had been firing a 9F on the North Norfolk Railway, a very different experience!
I started collecting N-scale in about 1968-9, just before I graduated from high school. For decades I concentrated on German outline. Following a visit to Japan in 2018 I now also have a sizable collection of their high quality and reasonably-priced models.
Like @betjemaniac I picked up many fine items secondhand either online or at club shows. I struggled to build layouts until just prior to retirement, when I finally completed one that was of a quality fit to display. Then I discovered Kato UniTrak [having previously used Peco Setrack and Streamline]. It is so standardised and easy to use that I've since built three layouts, all of which have featured in our local shows.
The first is a fiddleyard to terminus design, with a tramway oval in the town above the fiddleyard. It is designed to show my collection of push-pull and multiple unit European models.
The second is a modified BendTrak modular design. This was prompted by my acquisition of Japanese models, which started at the insistence of Mrs BA when I spotted a Tomix model of a DF200 Red Bear diesel loco in a hobbyshop in Kushiro, Hokkaido, for the equivalent of $65 Australian. I have attempted to interpret the Hokkaido landscape.
The third uses UniTrak compact radius curves, again a European village scene, mounted on a child's study desk. This displays my stock of small tank engines, railbuses and 4-wheel rollingstock.
My son has now launched me into 009 with the gift of two Kato/Peco models of Ffestiniog locomotives, so construction has commenced on a tabletop spiral layout using the Kato compact curves and points once again. Blood pressure and vertigo issues have interfered with progress but I hope to have that one operating by the time of our local show next May.
All of this occupies one half of our double garage, which is one advantage of the scale - lots of layout in a relatively small space.
Excellent! - I'm myself a member of the national N-gauge club over here in Wesleyshire, Continental Europe.
Like others say, most of my own models are secondhand too, although I buy the occasional new one when they're not available of old. I think it adds to the appeal of it, and you sometimes have to rework carriages and locos so that they work well again - the locos I have mostly done by a good local dealer and repair shop.
I have a test layout of 60x220cm with provisionally installed tracks. Most are Minitrix or Roco, which are compatible (Arnold and Fleischmann tracks aren't), and the points are Peco Code 55. Peco Code 55 flexy track will be used for further modules.
I was extremly lucky a while ago, and was able to buy 3 formidable modules for an N-gauge layout which were built by a young man here for his end-of-school examinations. He was about 18 or 19 at the time when he made this from scratch, to his own design! It even won an award in a regional competition for its impeccable, realistic modelling of that particular type of landscape, buildings and scenery. I have all the documentation and images he created for the school, and that went with the project, and even his drafts.
The back story to this: Many years ago, I saw his layout in a newspaper (online) when he'd just won, and so was totally taken aback in 2020 when I found it on an local auction website - amazingly, there were no other bidders, and so I purchased the whole thing! Currently, I'm working with members of the N-gauge club to make it compatible with the national club's N-gauge module system; we have our own rules and regulations, and can combine dozens of modules, e.g. 40/60cm by 120cm, or larger for stations and loops.
Fascinating hobby.
Doesn't have to be expensive, but selling things on will never make you rich.
Well I've just seen the Scots Guardsman standing at Banbury Station, waiting to go south, with dark red West Coast carriages attached, some named after women. A beautiful sight with lots of steam, someone shovelling coal, the passengers comfortable and ready to go. Hadn't expected to see this. Anyone know where it's going?
(Yes, not very technical of me but I just like looking at trains)
It's the Capital Christmas Express. However you've been lucky as the rostered loco was "Black 5" 44392.
Hardly an "express" though as it was scheduled to take nearly 7 hours from Chester to London Paddington (and both departed and arrived about 10 minutes late). It took a long way round via Shrewsbury, Wolverhampton, Birmingham and Oxford! It's a bit quicker going back.
Perhaps ... cooped up, ten coaches from the loco, in a full train with lots of strangers and so much condensation on the windows that you can't see out.
And standing still for two or three extended periods (40 minutes was scheduled at Banbury) to fill the tender with water or let faster trains pass ... perhaps not.
Those things are rarely on time. I've sometimes hung out with the people waiting on the bridge for the Flying Scotsman and it's always been delayed for some reason or other.
No condensation that I could see.
I've sometimes thought about booking a couple of tickets for my friend and myself to go on one - he'd love this - but they are really quite expensive.
Perhaps ... cooped up, ten coaches from the loco, in a full train with lots of strangers and so much condensation on the windows that you can't see out.
And standing still for two or three extended periods (40 minutes was scheduled at Banbury) to fill the tender with water or let faster trains pass ... perhaps not.
Indeed. Steam heritage railways are more fun to watch than to ride on IMHO, though it's the passengers wot pays the £££ the railways need...
That said, it might depend on the sort of coach one rides in. Some of the 1930s and 40s Maunsell and Bulleid coaches are very comfortable, especially if it's a cold day, and the steam-heating is on! Older pre-grouping stock can be less comfy, but still interesting to ride in...
It might depend on the sort of coach one rides in. Some of the 1930s and 40s Maunsell and Bulleid coaches are very comfortable, especially if it's a cold day, and the steam-heating is on!
It might depend on the sort of coach one rides in. Some of the 1930s and 40s Maunsell and Bulleid coaches are very comfortable, especially if it's a cold day, and the steam-heating is on!
Indeed so, but not allowed on National Rail.
Yes, I appreciate that. Shame, but there yer go...
Comments
At one time some of the trains conveyed a Pullman from Verney Junction to Baker Street - and I think, at one time, Liverpool Street.
Eventually, the Met gave up their revenue-earning steam locos (as opposed to service engines which were used for departmental service for many, many years) and the LNER (later BR) 'horsed' their trains to Aylesbury.
Later still, the electrification was extended to Amersham. This was actually a cutback as Met trains no longer ran to Aylesbury. And of course, the new trains were just normal underground EMUs, not loco-hauled.
The whole line was of course Metropolitan and Great Central Joint north of Harrow, an arrangement reached to solve the endless quarrels between the two companies over the use of the line. (The GCR had previously had just running powers.) Meanwhile, the root of the quarrel had been dealt with by the creation of the GC and GW Joint via High Wycombe, a slightly longer journey for GC trains but better graded and better laid out.
Enabled by a brilliant sleight of hand by Sir Edward Watkin, the lines chairman and an MP. which meant that uniquely in British railway legislation the Met was able to retain land that it compulsorily purchased but didn't need for the line - everyone else had to sell back on completion. This meant that the Met was able to develop suburbia around its stations - Rayners Lane station, when it opened for example, was a rural lane in the middle of nowhere. Verney Junction was a speculative endeavour that never took off - if Metroland had really surged then it would have been a new town.
The Instanter coupling had come into fairly common use across BR in the late 60s, and I can proudly claim to have handled one when helping to putting a train back together after a minor derailment at Culloden Moor in 1967. It was a neat and simple device for reducing the slack in a loose coupled goods train, but needed cautious backing up before you could drop it in the hook. A 3-link coupling is heavy!
He did indeed confirm that the 3-link coupling was f*****g heavy, and IIRC he transferred his allegiance to a much smaller gauge!
Of course, on the steepest grades you were supposed to stop at the top and pin down wagon brakes before descending. But again, early wagons (up to 1911) often only had a brake on one side, and sometimes just a sledge brake on one wheel, not four! Imagine the poor old guard, at a chilly locus like Dunford Bridge, having the walk down the train, constantly switching from one side or the other to pin down a brake - perhaps in the dark, or in falling snow or rain. What a lovely job! And any error - as in not pinning down enough as judged by the boss - and you get blamed for any accident.
An old friend of mine, now long passed to the Great Marshalling Yard In The Sky, was at one time (around 1950) employed as a shunter on the Southern Region. He told me once how he was caught in a tight place between a rake of wagons and a rapidly approaching locomotive (a Q1), but managed to get himself lying down on the ballast, so that the Q1 passed over him as it whacked into the wagons (it was travelling too fast).
He wasn't hurt, but he left the railway soon after (!) and found a safer job driving buses for London Transport's Country Area...
Don't think I've told this one before, and apologies if I heard it on here but I don't think I did - remote branchline in Scotland in the 1950s (where just now escapes me so I'm not going to guess) with multiple level crossings. Driver and fireman on a freight working.
loco crew have both had a skinful the night before. Approaching the end of the run the fireman wakes up, realising he's been asleep for who knows how long, and turns to thank the driver for letting him sleep it off.
Only to discover the driver is also asleep.
Fireman shakes the driver awake and they bring the train to a stand in the correct position in the yard. They dismount and are stunned to see large bits of wood and twisted metal festooned over the front end of the locomotive.
Light dawning, they're joined at the head of the train by an extremely irate guard, red in the face and out of breath having run the length of the train, who exclaims:
'were we not doing the f'ing crossing gates the day then!?'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grantham_rail_accident
Other accidents may have been caused by the crew falling asleep - not entirely unknown in the days of incredibly long working hours - but, if the poor men were killed in the accident, as often happened, no-one would ever know if they were asleep.
And, re Verney Junction, I don't think anyone had any plans of anticipating Milton Keynes. There are a number of large country estates and big houses nearby, which would explain the Pullman service. But the branch from Verney Junction to Aylesbury existed before the Met extended to Aylesbury and absorbed it, so the Surplus Lands exemption would not apply,
Incidentally, it is interesting that the erstwhile Brill branch off the Aylesbury - V.J. line was ar one time envisaged as extending to Oxford. This has, in a way, been achieved more effectively by the connection at Bicester enabling Chiltern trains to run to the cily from Marylebone.
Re VJ it was/is local lore that it was the Verney family themselves who were hoping for a proto Milton Keynes on *their* land.
Yes, I think so. Incidentally Claydon House is now NT and our Bible Class once camped in its grounds c.1972. There is some sort of Florence Nightingale connection. As a child I read a rather good 'thriller' by John Verney called "Friday's Tunnel".
But until that is enacted, let me recommend a delightful shop in a delightful location at Wemyss Bay station: https://friendsofwemyssbaystation.co.uk/bookshop-test/. Their prices are astonishingly low and the selection is usually excellent.
To avoid a tangent that doesn't belong in the Remembrance thread, the locomotive concerned sounds very much like one of the ROD 2-8-0s of Great Central Railway origin that were sold as war surplus to J&A Brown for coal haulage, and later preserved. (I found that in an old Observers Book of Australian Locomotives, and then asked Auntie Google about it). Perhaps there were other types as well?
After WWI a vast number of RODs, practically new were sold to a number of purchasers at popular prices. That is, dirt cheap. The LNER naturally bought them in large numbers - it saved them from building new goods engines in any number for years. The GW had a batch, as did the LNWR. Several other companies had some on loan - but did not necessarily buy. Whether all available locos went to someone I don't know. The GW certainly used the tenders of some locos that it simply scrapped.
https://modelrail-scotland.co.uk/
One of the anchors of my diary, so to speak.
Back in Feb 2020 it was probably the last unconscious superspreader event I was at before Lockdown 1.
Ipswich used to do a good thing (may still do): model railway exhibition, open day at the society of model engineers, and open day at the transport museum, all on the same day, with a combined ticket and linked by a free vintage bus service.
We once had an excellent local exhibition in Our Town, though not AFAIK since Covid. I used to take part as an exhibitor, running my 16mm scale live-steam locomotives on our Association layout...
🚂
I also remember watching the Gauge 1 Association's trains (some live steam) at the Oxford Show around the same time. Someone had a superb model of the whole "Silver Jubilee" train.
Mind you, we narrow-gauge types were just as guilty of non-prototypical speeds, although my trusty old Archangel Marmaduke (a freelance 040T) was so controllable that I was actually able to shunt wagons in and out of sidings without smashing them up, or derailing!
Now in the Scottish Exhibition Centre. A big hall in a big shed with expensive corporate catering.
The London Model Engineering Exhibition used to be at the Seymour Hall. I always suspected that, underneath the floor, there was a swimming pool full of water!
Do you still do N-gauge, BT?
I've obviously got no idea of your personal finances, but as someone who got back into modelling in 2019 I share/d exactly the same worries:
Modelling standards I'm less bothered about in truth because I can only do the best I can do - and given I've got no aspirations to either exhibit or indeed appear in Railway Modeller no one else will ever know. I'm not building Buckingham Great Central, but at the same time even being super critical I can look at where I've got to and it's not dreadful.
Price, absolutely, but it's a bit like tech in general - unless you want something ultra rare the ever quickening dash for greater fidelity means that you can buy very good models indeed from 2-5-10-20 years ago on online auction sites for a song. The only stuff I've bought new has been the rare items that simply haven't existed long enough to have a second hand tail yet. So I've paid Over £200 each for a couple of items (over several years) and a lot of others at £50 each.
Essentially it's probably not something you can do on no budget at all - though there are people out there still building all their stock out of cereal boxes - but equally it doesn't have to cost a fortune either. I've been fortunate to be able to buy a couple of things at full price, but I certainly couldn't have bought everything new.
Current stud (I did this on here a couple of years ago but just to show how it has relatively inexpensively grown) to represent Northants in the early 1950s:
O7, 9F, Ivatt 4MT, 69XX, 68XX, 10XX, 2 x A3, V2, 2 x B17, J39, K3, B1, O1, 2 x L1, D11/1, O4, 2 x J11, A5, C13, L3, 2 x B16/1, 2 x N5, GT3*.
(we don't talk about the full stud of Lynton and Barnstaple locomotives in OO9..., or the J15 for a Mid Suffolk Light Railway diorama that I haven't built yet either)
*not right for the early 50s, but right for the location
Alas! the coaches weren't particularly comfortable, although I suppose they were long past their sell-by date...and they'd been painted in that horrid corporate Rail Blue and Grey, instead of the proper Pullman umber and cream,
As regards models, over the past 70 years I've dabbled in Hornby 0 gauge clockwork, Triang 00 gauge electric, 00n3 (using Triang TT parts), 009 (Peco/Liliput/Eggerbahn), H0e (Austrian narrow gauge), 5-inch gauge coal-fired steam (!), 16mm live steam (2-foot-ish gauge prototypes running on 32mm gauge track), and back again in my dotage to 00...I have a number of small shunting layouts/dioramas based on the classic Inglenook Sidings design. These are all more like three-dimensional impressionist paintings, based on British light railway practice...
Wow and well done! Sounds a bit like the 1960s "Borchester" layout, seen at Central Hall.
Have you been to the preserved "Middy"? I went a few times when we lived in Ipswich. On the last occasion I was invited to ride on the footplate of the Cockerill tram engine - together with a lady who, the day before, had been firing a 9F on the North Norfolk Railway, a very different experience!
Like @betjemaniac I picked up many fine items secondhand either online or at club shows. I struggled to build layouts until just prior to retirement, when I finally completed one that was of a quality fit to display. Then I discovered Kato UniTrak [having previously used Peco Setrack and Streamline]. It is so standardised and easy to use that I've since built three layouts, all of which have featured in our local shows.
The first is a fiddleyard to terminus design, with a tramway oval in the town above the fiddleyard. It is designed to show my collection of push-pull and multiple unit European models.
The second is a modified BendTrak modular design. This was prompted by my acquisition of Japanese models, which started at the insistence of Mrs BA when I spotted a Tomix model of a DF200 Red Bear diesel loco in a hobbyshop in Kushiro, Hokkaido, for the equivalent of $65 Australian. I have attempted to interpret the Hokkaido landscape.
The third uses UniTrak compact radius curves, again a European village scene, mounted on a child's study desk. This displays my stock of small tank engines, railbuses and 4-wheel rollingstock.
My son has now launched me into 009 with the gift of two Kato/Peco models of Ffestiniog locomotives, so construction has commenced on a tabletop spiral layout using the Kato compact curves and points once again. Blood pressure and vertigo issues have interfered with progress but I hope to have that one operating by the time of our local show next May.
All of this occupies one half of our double garage, which is one advantage of the scale - lots of layout in a relatively small space.
Like others say, most of my own models are secondhand too, although I buy the occasional new one when they're not available of old. I think it adds to the appeal of it, and you sometimes have to rework carriages and locos so that they work well again - the locos I have mostly done by a good local dealer and repair shop.
I have a test layout of 60x220cm with provisionally installed tracks. Most are Minitrix or Roco, which are compatible (Arnold and Fleischmann tracks aren't), and the points are Peco Code 55. Peco Code 55 flexy track will be used for further modules.
I was extremly lucky a while ago, and was able to buy 3 formidable modules for an N-gauge layout which were built by a young man here for his end-of-school examinations. He was about 18 or 19 at the time when he made this from scratch, to his own design! It even won an award in a regional competition for its impeccable, realistic modelling of that particular type of landscape, buildings and scenery. I have all the documentation and images he created for the school, and that went with the project, and even his drafts.
The back story to this: Many years ago, I saw his layout in a newspaper (online) when he'd just won, and so was totally taken aback in 2020 when I found it on an local auction website - amazingly, there were no other bidders, and so I purchased the whole thing! Currently, I'm working with members of the N-gauge club to make it compatible with the national club's N-gauge module system; we have our own rules and regulations, and can combine dozens of modules, e.g. 40/60cm by 120cm, or larger for stations and loops.
Fascinating hobby.
Doesn't have to be expensive, but selling things on will never make you rich.
(Yes, not very technical of me but I just like looking at trains)
ETA: And here she is, Ariel: LMS Royal Scot Class 6115 Scots Guardsman with the carriages named after women, in early 2023!
Hardly an "express" though as it was scheduled to take nearly 7 hours from Chester to London Paddington (and both departed and arrived about 10 minutes late). It took a long way round via Shrewsbury, Wolverhampton, Birmingham and Oxford! It's a bit quicker going back.
And standing still for two or three extended periods (40 minutes was scheduled at Banbury) to fill the tender with water or let faster trains pass ... perhaps not.
No condensation that I could see.
I've sometimes thought about booking a couple of tickets for my friend and myself to go on one - he'd love this - but they are really quite expensive.
Indeed. Steam heritage railways are more fun to watch than to ride on IMHO, though it's the passengers wot pays the £££ the railways need...
That said, it might depend on the sort of coach one rides in. Some of the 1930s and 40s Maunsell and Bulleid coaches are very comfortable, especially if it's a cold day, and the steam-heating is on! Older pre-grouping stock can be less comfy, but still interesting to ride in...
Yes, I appreciate that. Shame, but there yer go...