Prototype Bazzing Around... Tractors

In a small homage to the late Bernard Wright's double page features in Model Railways, years before I came along, but much admired since, I took it into my head to wander around Southampton yesterday with my camera and have a think about the unconsidered elements of a particular scene. 'Lineside Look' in ModelRail (back when it was a worthwhile supplement rather than the glossy full size magazine) did something similar, and both included rather nice sketches. If you want to draw some, please feel free - or add your own scenes and observations.

I chose the Loveridge Lane Industrial estate purely because I happen to see it on most days of my commute. From the bridge at the west end of Southampton Central station it looks a little like this, the kind of light industry that appears on dozens of layouts and is seldom entirely convincing



A variety of sheds, housing, among other things, a car dealers, a music studio and goodness alone knows what else. Back centre is the former Southampton Central 'box. I think all the signals are now controlled from Eastleigh. The shed nearest the camera is clearly a bit of a mongrel - an asbestos shed extended on three sides with a flat-roofed brick-built structure. Or possibly the other way about. Note the different surfaces - poured concrete up to the door and compacted gravel to the side, gradually disappearing into undergrowth. Note that 'clutter' is deposited out of the way, beside the gate and that the surface rises up from the road which is at the bottom of the site.



Note also the sign attached to the fence and the lack of uniformity of that boundary - chainlink fence attached to concrete posts, a comparatively heavy gate mounted on an upright RSJ, then a wall all set back from a dropped kerb (I don't think that I've ever noticed a model of something as ubiquitous as a dropped kerb).



The striped post clearly marks the edge of the road. Note that access to the two main doors is at different heights. Two different building phases? Not sure what the chimney's for.



What isn't immediately obvious is that there's another building round the back. None of these have any intrinsic charm, they're just machine brick and breezeblock with bits of ply panel. Modellers tend to guess or go looking for something 'cute'. You don't see many buildings like this on layouts, by and large or, for that matter, something as humdrum as this, er, public convenience. Nice hipped roof, louvre window above head height, couldn't really be any other sort of building and it's surprisingly large, easily wider than the neighbouring Portacabin (looks nothing like the ubiquitous Knightwing kit).



Over the road from the car repair 'shop is this thing, again, several times rebuilt note the different coloured brick divided by a pillar (they'd have been a pair of doors once) with a large RSJ serving as a lintel. The rebuild probably occurred at the same date that the compound was erected and this relates to a large pair of roller shutters at the rear of Southampton Central's platform 1. My assumption is that these all relate to Post Office or Red Star parcels traffic. The original side door of the building is covered up with a roller shutter. Note that the cars hereabouts are strikingly anonymous, middle of the range types. No Chelsea Tractors here.



Potholes and faded street markings, but beyond these, we probably have the earliest buildings on the site, this set of post-war workshops of the type seen absolutely everywhere. Tin roof one the one on the left (judging by the windows, these were meant as offices), asbestos on the right and these were presumably the workshops. Again, the ground level goes up from the road and the floor level of the buildings requires steps to reach them. Note that office visitors get a neat little glazed lobby. The untidy maze of downpipes and water outlets are nicely characterful. The flowerbeds are something else I've never seen modelled but which turn up in all those wonderful Pathe newsreels about factory openings - you see them in the midst of steel works and collieries too; anywhere an office worker had a lunch break. They live on here and seem to be full of marigolds. Note also the phone(?) post and lamp post; two things also under represented in model form.



The joy of the mundane, in this case of the '50s and probably the late '70s and 80s. A wonderful mix of materials, finishes, surfaces, levels and, increasingly, vegetation.

Adam

Perhaps this is out of place, but the challenge (I passed through reading on the way to somewhere else, yesterday), is to find something useful to say. On one level, this was just a record shot - it's the first time that I've seen the new GWR livery on a Turbo in daylight - but it occurs to me that there's something about the new, and it is new, Reading station. I'm not burdened with nostalgia for the old one: it was an awful place to change trains, which is how I generally experienced it, and I'm especially glad to have seen the back of the rather narrow platform 4 and the old footbridge with its exceedingly steep steps. It was nowhere near as bad as New Street though. The thing that strikes me is that Reading is envisaged as a new junction and station to serve an existing set of route rather than a reworking; I'm not sure that the railway in Britain has actually done this since the '60s.



Note the herringbone tiles and textured paving. The yellow brick edging to the platform faces is a departure too - pre-cast concrete is what you might expect (and what most modellers would reach for). The horribly uncomfortable seats with the hand holds over on platform 5 are also a typically modern feature as are the blue Pandrol clips - now there's a challenge - as are the construction works just visible off site in the background.

Then there's the train. Hmm. I know the livery has excited much comment over there, as new liveries always do but never having travelled on Turbos much I don't really have much of a view on them (though I understand that were due do get them as replacements for the 158s on the Cardiff-Pompey runs. My periodic trips to Cardiff will be noisier and less comfortable in future though the people of Devon and Cornwall will be spared two hour trips in 150s which is fair enough), but the livery is interesting in as much as I'm not sure anything like it has really been applied to UK railways before.

The green is a curious bluish bottle sort of shade, quite unlike the mid-chrome/Brunswick green that GWR and BR used and the matt diagonal band is just odd. The mid-height silver stripe is a good move, I think, since it breaks up the green quite well and lifts the eye further up the bodyside. Note that the typical WR treatment of non-HST stock has already set in and looks, for all the world, like the RTR manufacturers attempts at weathering or at least, on the bodyside it does (the darker colour is rainwater).



Adam

...the kind of light industry that appears on dozens of layouts and is seldom entirely convincing...

Click to expand...

What's particularly unconvincing about these on most layouts set in the modern era is the railway siding serving them....

Jordan said:

What's particularly unconvincing about these on most layouts set in the modern era is the railway siding serving them....

Click to expand...

Yep! That said, down at St Denys, Southampton (where the old Bevois Park yard was), Network Rail are putting exactly this sort of siding back in (though probably as overspill stock storage rather than for industry).

Adam

EDIT - in fact it's for stone traffic.

This is as close as I can get to replicating and original Bernard Wright piece since he did actually visit Yeovil Town and based one of his Model Railway News (or was it Model Railways by that date?) on a overview of 'Town station from the west. Since the sum total of surviving railway infrastructure at 'Town - featured elsewhere - it seemed better to visit 'Pen Mill...



Now 'Pen Mill is an interesting station, in terms of its layout - platforms 1 and 2 serving a single platform road - and the surviving yard regularly used by the engineers - all those panels, a rare old mixture of types of rail, track fixings are from local re-railing rather than removal of sidings.



The fact that it retains semaphores is also of interest, even if these abominations erected by Network Rail are both ugly and point upwards... Anyhow, note that all the track easily visible is of flatbottom rail, probably relaid about 40 years ago and intermittently re-sleepered ever since. Here's a view from 1974: Yeovil Pen Mill 1974

And another showing the yard more clearly: Yeovil Pen Mill 1980 46022

The platform road on the left has at least five different types of rail fixing. The original yard offices - the slate-roofed structure on the right of the above picture - were abandoned many years ago are now in the process of falling down.

The Station

The basic form and buildings have been present since the opening of the railway in the 1850s and, like the layout, have changed relatively little.



Compare the above image with this one from Flickr: Yeovil Pen Mill 1986 50047 & 50005

The key differences are the amount of 'clutter' on the platforms. The Flickr image (from 1974) has parcel trolleys of Great Western type as well as BRUTES, more benches, again, GWR, but of two types and, notably the loss of the building under the canopy on the island platform. Note also that at some time in the last 40 years the platform numbering has reversed, the toilets have closed and that the lighting, obviously has changed completely. The Southern Region green paintwork has long gone too...

While we're at this end of the station, a couple of continuities from long ago:



The concrete hut - probably from Taunton concrete works, its a Western type - is on a plinth built for an earlier structure. The clue is the arrangement of the railings which flank the steps up from the platform which don't really match up with the building - my suspicion is that this was a lamp hut - it is now a gardening equipment store.



Finally from this end, a feature of Pen Mill since at least the '50s is this hut housing the token equipment. Now this only serves the route to 'Junction (shortly to carry scheduled services again) and the section to Maiden Newton for down trains thus saving a long walk down to the 'box. Note the WR pattern relay cabinet next to it and the changes in platform surfaces, together with the drain. More from the other end of the station, later.

Adam

The signalman walks down to the driver to hand over and collect the token for the single lines.

The track panels are from the single line between YPM and Maiden Newton, there is an ongoing program of reap,ding the jointed train with CWR. Although we still get up to 70 on the jointed track !

Great Western

A few pictures from the early 1990's

My favourite picture of the signal box:


Mainly because of this beauty still in use in the 1990's!

And the other side of the road bridge the remains of the cattle pens:

Here's a shot from earlier times. It isn't a wonderful quality of photograph, but it is interesting in what it shows. Following the closure of Yeovil Town and the line to Taunton the main goods handling facility for the town - Hendford Goods - became isolated from the network but remained in use for a few years. The upshot was that the yard at Pen Mill became very busy for a spell and this slide taken by dad records that. The subject is an SR-designed, but BR-built 5 plank open, built unfitted (probably at Ashford) but converted to vacuum brake some time in the 1950s. It has clearly been the subject of some recent attention, indicated by the OLEO buffers in primer and the newly repainted planks. Other modifications from new include the lamp iron, probably added with the vacuum brake conversion - note too the offset door protector and spring - and the metal strips on the exposed plank ends. @hrmspaul has a collection of similar vehicles (and other SR opens) here: SR open merchandise OWV ZGV ZGO ZVR KSV

Next to it is an extremely rusty LNER-pattern steel high while in the back road is a BR standard van, planked with ply doors. Next to that is an Italian ferry van bringing (so dad tells me) leather for Pittards just beyond the boundary fence. In between is the resident Shelvoke and Drewry 'Freightlifter' which used to trundle back and forth to Hendford on occasion. These were remarkable looking things and Oxford Diecast have just produced a 4mm model. I've bought one, partly to replicate elements of this scene (though Oxford's is the twin cab version and this is the single), bit more on that in due course. It was certainly painted yellow later, like this one shown 'over there': Railway Motors - Page 50 - Scenery, Structures & Transport but may have been in the original chocolate and cream here.



That's all for now,

Adam

As an aside, there's a splendid picture of Bridgwater goods yard here:

Bridgwater Goods Yard April 1959

Note the Freightlifter (this one definitely in chocolate and cream), Ransomes and Rapier electric crane, pair of Blue Circle liveried tippers (both Kew Dodges, I think), Scammell Mechanical Horse, a Presflo, a rake of Conflat Ls with associated containers (one being discharged) and assorted bogie bolsters delivering steel rod. I especially like the wagon sheets draped over the buffer stops at the siding end. Wonderful!

Adam

Having banged my head quite firmly against the hook of a very similar, if not identical, R&R mobile crane, I should very much like a model, in 7mm.

Anyone know of such a thing?

Best
Simon

AJC said:

Then there's the train. Hmm. I know the livery has excited much comment over there, as new liveries always do

Click to expand...

I commute daily into Leeds and find you only notice the livery change on a train once then ignore it. To be brutal, I'm more interested in service improvements and reliability - not what colour 'Blue Peter sticky back plastic' has been stuck onto the train. However, if livery changes are being discussed then they are having the desired effect for the TOCs.

As your photographs show, disused goods yards have motley collections of buildings from all eras and you can strike lucky and find an original railway structure lurking among the later additions.

When I first moved to Yorkshire 15 years ago the 'LONDON MIDLAND AND SCOTTISH RAILWAY GOODS WAREHOUSE' lettering on Bingley goods shed was clearly visible. Weathering has taken it's toll and underneath you can clearly read 'MIDLAND RAILWAY GOODS WAREHOUSE'. Both are painted white lettering on a black background. The building today is a plastics factory.

Yorkshire Dave said:

When I first moved to Yorkshire 15 years ago the 'LONDON MIDLAND AND SCOTTISH RAILWAY GOODS WAREHOUSE' lettering on Bingley goods shed was clearly visible. Weathering has taken it's toll and underneath you can clearly read 'MIDLAND RAILWAY GOODS WAREHOUSE'. Both are painted white lettering on a black background. The building today is a plastics factory.

Click to expand...

Saw that and photographed it when we went through the Bingley 5 rise last year. A most impressive structure (as is the Damart building across the road).

B

Edit - Forgot obligatory photos! The lettering is difficult to read but can be extracted by careful adjustment of colour and contrast.

Terrific picture of your Dad's there Adam!

I'm currently on hols in Cornwall and obsessing over how things used to be

Did your dad ever photograph the ancient 6 plank wagon that appears a lot on the Wenford Bridge goods c 1961? Reason for asking is that I'm just now painting my (1/32) Slaters PO wagon up as oil axle box fitted late survivor and I'm attracted to a basically "unpainted with rusty ironwork" type finish, which the aforementioned wagon appeared to have. The wagon itself is, I think, an ex LNE 6 plank. In Michael Clemens' "The Withered Arm" book there is even a picture of a more appropriate RCH coal wagon at Wadebridge in 1962 (p.85) tantalisingly mostly hidden by the subject of the photograph No. 1368. This wagon has evidence of having been (at least) partially painted in grey, especially ironwork.

Any juicy colour pictures of anything related much appreciated...

Simon

It's possible Simon, but unlikely - I don't think dad made it to Wadebridge and beyond until later (he'd have been 10 in '61). I know he was on the final tours on the North Cornwall line and on the last day of services to Bodmin North, but living in Saltash these were a bit out of the way. There are a lot of wagon slides though - I need to see how the scanning is going (and whether he'll allow me to post them online in quantity).

Adam

Yeovil Pen Mill Signal Box Britain's General Railway photographs | Signal box @ Yeovil Pen Mill WR 75-08-28 � Paul Bartlett w I have various photos of wagons taken in the yard scattered around my site. The last place I witnessed RCH containers in revenue use. BR Conflat A wagons and containers FAV ZYV ZSV ZRV ZXA ZVV | B709631 BD50123B @ Yeovil Pen Mill 76-09-11 � Paul Bartlett w

Paul Bartlett

We've been away from the horrors on London for the weekend and visited Wool, one of those spots that no one really spends much time and, unless you have a pressing interest in tanks or apes and primates doesn't especially draw visitors. It is interesting, however, in that it has a station modernised in the '60s still in use, a live freight terminal, and remnants of the original Southampton and Dorchester Railway station, surveyed, drawn and published in the old Model Railway Constructor way back when. First the old, the original goods store:





This is quite a handsome, hip-roofed structure in local red brick with a nice slate roof. Ok, so one end is a bit overgrown and it has lost a couple of windows at some point - though they may have been built 'blind' for all I know - but it's otherwise in good order, despite the NSE or earlier BR red paint grinning through the (Railtack-era?) blue. The gates guarding the loading bank are also original SR fittings. The signage - and enamel advertisements apart, we modellers never include enough of the things - are either current, concerning some miscellaneous building work or, as the blue lettering hints at, NSE period signage.

The Sheffield stands (bike racks) are a ubiquitous piece of modern street furniture and have been for twenty-odd years but I've never seen one modelled. Note the rebuilt platform edge, probably dating to electrification (1985-6). Turning now to the up sidings, used, at least once a week, for the loading of sand. Here's a shot of the kind of thing you'd see today: 66 585 St. Denys 19/08/13. and here from a decade ago: Wool - 04/12/06

Anyhow, here's the end of the siding closest to the running line - the stop looks like an SR item, with later lights. These are still seen all over the region and are, even now, unremarkable.



A little less common is this job, fabricated from section and plate which, by appearances, may have been intended as an unloading ramp, something that the concrete base and chocks at the rail ends supports. The proximity of the training ranges at Bovington almost certainly account for this!



And here, again, in context. Note the TSR (Temporary Speed Restriction) signs and the simplicity of the 'facility' - even the loader comes in for the purpose. On the platform (right) there is the S sign indicating the stopping point for all trains, a feature of unit operation since the year dot and round here since - probably - the '60s when 33s and TCs were introduced.



There's no 'box or groundframe that I can see (I assume the points are operated from Dorchester or Bournemouth since the route was resignalled), but there is a surviving concrete platelayers' hut, Exmouth Junction's most ubiquitous concrete product. In the foreground, right, is a nice example of an expansion joint for Continuous Welded Rail - @Jim smith-wright has done one of these.



Note the radio mast for the railway's own comm's and I'm a bit hazy on the details. More in a later post: Wool has an interesting survivor of what we might call the 'Modern Image'. In the meantime, if anyone has anything interesting (or not!) to add, please do!

Adam

The Wool area signalling is controlled from Basingstoke signalbox by means of a panel. There are actually three separate panels located there, one for the SWML, one for the Poole to Wool area and a third for the Tisbury to Pinhoe (Exeter) area.

Hi Chris - thanks. I wasn't quite sure where the boundaries of the scheme lay, though I am aware of the SW mainline towards Exeter and the parameters of that scheme. The new signals are especially hideous.

Adam