Tuesday 24 May 2016

New layout - the "back story"

As I have said before, I like my model railways to have a convincing reason to exist, even if they are entirely fictitious.  So we are back in Border country and ex North British territory once again.  Just for a change I am going to build a through station (or a "roundy-roundy layout" as some people might say) - more on that later.  The location is Alnham, which (unlike Belstone) is a real place a few miles north of Rothbury on the edge of the Cheviot Hills.  It never had a railway, but one was planned.  The Northumberland Central Railway was intended to leave the Wansbeck Valley line at Scotsgap Junction and head north through Rothbury, Alnham and Wooler to join up with the branch from Berwick to Kelso somewhere near Ford.  In the end the line only got as far as Rothbury before running out of money, and later on the North Eastern built their own line from Alnwick to Coldstream via Wooler, which killed off any prospect of the Northumberland Central ever being finished.

But what if it had been completed?  It could have been a rather useful little line, for one reason - the large Army training area at Otterburn, established in 1911 and served for many years by rail from West Woodburn station on the Wansbeck Valley line.  Otterburn was the main reason the "Wanney" survived as late as 1966, despite losing its passenger service in 1952.  A line from Scotsgap to Berwick would have taken a lot of military traffic from Scotland off the East Coast route between Berwick and Morpeth.  Which provides me with all the excuse I need to build some interesting wagons (Warflats and Warwells) with interesting loads.

What would Alnham station have looked like?  Probably much like the stations between Scotsgap and Rothbury.  Single platform, simple wooden building, goods siding with a "kick-back" and a second siding for cattle traffic.  So I will be pulling in elements from Ewesley, Brinkburn and Longwitton to try and recreate a typical Northumberland Central Railway wayside station towards the end of the line's existence, circa 1960. Longwitton?  That name rings a bell...

Back in the late 1970s, every Easter my dad and I used to go to the two big model railway exhibitions, York and London.  One year there was a small EM Gauge layout which absolutely fascinated me.  It is the only one from all those shows that I can still remember.  It was built by Ian Futers, and was (as I can now see, having tracked down the December 1977 edition of "Railway Modeller" in which it made its first appearance) a pretty accurate and highly atmospheric recreation of  Longwitton station in around 1952. It was circular, like a clockwork train set, which was rather unusual.  Ian Futers built a whole series of layouts in the 1970s, all based on various bits of the North British empire in Northumberland.  He built a new one each year, and has had more influence on my own modelling than anyone else (possibly excepting David Jenkinson of "Garsdale Road" fame).  So "Alnham" will be to some extent a recreation of "Longwitton" but with a few differences.

Obviously it will be "N" rather than 4mm.  Ian's "Longwitton" being 4mm scale had a hole in the middle of the circle for the operator to stand in, but that won't work in "N", not in the space I have anyway.  I don't want anything less than two foot radius curves in the scenic area, and I only have about 4 x 3 overall to play with.  So I have ended up with a "squashed oval" - a continuous two foot curve through the scenic area, tightening to 9 inch "train set" curves round the back., with a passing loop in the hidden area, possibly two.  That means I will have to construct my own pointwork which should be interesting.  I've done soldered PCB pointwork before, but in EM, not N.

At this stage I haven't built anything, so nothing is settled.  Since I will have to build my own track, one possibility would be to do it in 2mm finescale (9.42mm gauge).  That has the advantage that you can actually buy track gauges for it (no-one seems to do them for code 40 rail to 9mm gauge), but will require a lot of mechanical work (new chassis for starters) and there is some debate about just how tight a curve the 2mm standards will allow.  The constructional methods favoured by 2mm loco builders look as though they don't allow a lot of sideplay on the centre axle, and it all looks a bit complicated.  It would be nice to get something running this year, so I'll probably stick with 9mm for now, and find a small machine shop to make some track gauges for me. Then I'll build the pointwork (only three points, but all of them curved) and if those work, I'll start on the baseboards.

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