Wednesday 4 June 2014

A West Country Diversion

The genesis of this project can be seen in my post on the Wealden Area Group blog

The Challenge
To summarise briefly - back in early 2013 Richard Benn realised he had been a member of the 2mm Association for almost ten years, and had yet to finish a layout, so set himself the target of completing one for the end of April 2013. That would be about two and a half year's membership for me, so I joined in the challenge by setting myself a suitably scaled down target of getting one quarter of a test track finished by then.

The Idea
In order for me to get it to Uckfield, it needed to be highly portable, so I went with the "layout in a boxfile" concept - though it inevitably expanded to become "layout in two or three boxfiles".

Nigel Ashton had earlier given me a nice scratch-built stone goods shed, so I was looking for somewhere suitable as a prototype to use this. The stock available from my main project narrowed the choice down to Edwardian GWR (fortunately this matched the goods shed too).






The initial intention was for a simple shunting plank, a goods yard comprising two or three sidings. Unfortunately, I was unable to find much prototype information, either photographs or track plans, for a simple goods yard.






Milverton?
After a wander through various West Country stations I discovered Milverton which had a suitable simple track plan, with goods shed and signal box adjacent to the passenger platform, making for a compact layout.

The station buildings at Milverton were described as being "similar to Bampton", and having a plan for the Bampton buildings, but not for Milverton, I started making Bampton station buildings, using styrene sheet, with stone embossed styrene for the outer shell.



Perhaps Not
Further research revealed a few problems:


  • Milverton station buildings were built in brick, not stone
  • Even without the brick v stone problem, the layout of the buildings was actually significantly different between the two, other than the "H" shape which seems to have been widely used in the area
  • Milverton used facing points for entry to the goods yard, which was going to draw complaints that it was "wrong".
  • So I changed my plans and decided to go with Bampton for the station layout, rather than Milverton - rather larger than my original plans, but an interesting project.

    Bampton
    Bampton was towards the north end of the Bristol and Exeter line between Taunton and Exeter, via Tiverton, known as the Exe Valley line. Passenger traffic was a fairly light service using 0-4-2 tanks (initially 517 class, latterly 4800/1400) and a few carriages - four or six wheelers in early years, autotrailers in later years. Apart from the usual general goods traffic, Bampton was the source of some other significant freight flows:


  • There was a fairly substantial complex of limestone quarries nearby, together with a lime-burning site, linked by a horse-drawn narrow-gauge railway. So there would be coal imports (probably from South Wales, but possibly from North Somerset), and export of limestone and of slaked lime.
  • In October each year wild ponies on Exmoor were rounded up and sold at Bampton Fair, generating lots of traffic as these ponies were transported to their new homes in cattle wagons.


  • Building it
    It's a long time since I built anything large in styrene sheet, and I was surprised at how much it warped in the construction process (at least that's my excuse for why nothing ever quite lined up as it should). Apart from that, construction went fairly smoothly. The other significant problem was that Bampton had large expanses of glass in the conservatory-style waiting room across the front of the station building and in the greenhouse at the side, and none of my selection of glues was entirely successful in sticking these in place.


    Whilst it wasn't actually ready for the target date of end of April, the first baseboard was sufficiently complete for a trip to the Wealden Area Group's May 2013 meeting. No backscene yet, but the platforms were in place, using fine sandpaper to represent the surface, track laid, wired and ballasted (though some of it came loose in transit and needs replacing), and most of the necessary stone walls and grassy areas were looking reasonably presentable.



    What Next?
    Lots of details to add, such as the elaborate B&E bargeboards for the station buildings, the statuary and low hedges for the station garden, a few bushes/trees/lamps and some fencing for the platforms.

    And the next baseboard section will need a couple of turnouts and a crossover (should be a single slip, but I'm not convinced that's really of much benefit) to provide access to the goods yard, cattle dock etc on the third and fourth baseboards.

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