4mm Polthorpe & Pallingham

Jon Gwinnett

Jon Gwinnett

Western Thunderer
All,

In other quarters the new 31 is getting the froth, so I'm going to quietly sneak my plan out under the radar.

On Neil's ever inspiring Morfa thread, I have mentioned my East Anglian ambitions, and the inspiration of Jan Mark's novels. Her Carnegie winning stories are set around the fictitious towns and villages of north-east Norfolk. The town is Polthorpe, which sounds suspiciously like Stalham, got a link the the Broads and a disused railway station which gets swallowed under a bypass.

Well not any more. My own fiction has the line branching off around about Wroxham and heading north-eastwards through Polthorpe, Pallingham and on to a terminus at Happing.

001 (1280x931).jpg

Now I'm afraid that this won't excite those who like pictures yet, as its not much of a trackplan, but I wanted to share my initial thoughts and get any feedback you care to share.

This is to be a rural backwater in its dying days, but I can offer various potential freight traffics to get in the way of the Cravens wheezing and rattling its way from Norwich to the coast.

Polthorpe has a small coal yard, mentioned in the books, which receives a few wagon loads as the year slips into Autumn. Spot traffic of fertilizer or seed arrives in 12t vans. When beet season gets going the empty coal wagons will return west loaded.

It all starts to get a but more sketchy as we head over to Pallingham. Here we might see a solitary siding loading beets, or possibly a small Section 8 grant type grain loader (think I might be too far east for this, but hey ho...). No coal any more, the merchnat roads it over from Polthorpe.

On we rattle to Happing (Happisburgh perhaps, offstage anyway). I have two thougths for traffic here - either stone or cement inwards for sea defence work, or sand outwards from the dunes.

What do you think. Are the curves too ambitious in EM. Is the traffic too optimistic. (I plan very light loadings). Does the plan work better (or not at all) with Polthorpe as a junction (DMU only northwards?) or with a sneaky continuous run from the Happing curve back round. Could I get away with a bigger industry (Sugar/Grain/Sand?) in Polthorpe?

Could Happing or Polthorpe justify parcels, or are they just too small? Pallingham definitely is.

Thoughts on layout for the coal yard or freight sidings also gratefully received.

Lots of questions, not many pictures. Awful isn't it. But I want to get this one built.
 
Simon

Simon

Flying Squad
Good concept - a great era and atmospheric locations:thumbs:

I like your idea of the different traffics worked in to the scenario and if it were me I'd definitely be wangling a continuous run into the plan, even if it is laid out as if it isn't a running line, even in a "Maurice Dean" sort of way.

Presumably you'd be able to model those lovely timber buffer stops the GER had too?

I hope you pursue it and look forward to seeing it develop.

Simon

Who went on the Fakenham Flyer in 1978 and drove through Wroxham a couple of times in 2004:))
 
Osgood

Osgood

Western Thunderer
Nice.

I'm struggling to get a date when rail movement of sugar beet to the East Anglian factories finally ceased - I understand rail traffic at Cantley (beet and maybe latterly just limestone from Derbyshire) had ceased by the late 1980s but I'd have thought in the mid to late 70s it was all but finished in Norfolk. So maybe 1974 is just about ok?

One great thing about the imaginary scheme is that traffic can be tailored to just what takes your fancy. Certainly the agricultural commodities could be developed with a fertiliser distribution depot (Gt.Yarmouth can't have it all its own way :D). Silica sand was nearer to Kings Lynn and aggregate deposits further east were not substantial enough - keep your mitts off the sand dunes! - but who is going to argue? Good grief, I'm trying to justify an ironstone deposit in Suffolk at the moment!!

North Walsham had a substantial manufacturing base in Crane Fruehauf - now didn't they open a container making plant just outside Polthorpe? And weren't gas byproducts were piped into NW? But they could just as easily have had a railhead for tankers in the middle of nowhere i.e. Pallingham.

The possibilities are positively endless. Certainly beats 4 trains per day :)
 
Jon Gwinnett

Jon Gwinnett

Western Thunderer
Thanks chaps. I think Osgood is right about the sand but I reckon I can stick to "goods inwards" for Happing. Interesting ideas for traffic - I think 1974 is just too early for North Sea inflows but I can stretch the dates a bit.

I would like to include the continuous run. I'm hoping that once I get up in the loft with the flexi track 14ft will be long enough for sinuous curves rather than a train set like roundy roundy. I had thought the continuous run could be overgrown and derelict looking?
 
AJC

AJC

Western Thunderer
Going on the dimensions, I guess the ruling radius would be about 3'? 3' 6"? That's fine or at least, it works for me and a 31, for example, won't look silly doing it; I guess the largest loco' you'd be looking at would be a type 3? Going on the pictures of traffic I've seen at Fakenham and so on in latter years the light loadings sound about right. I'm with you Jon though,missing out on the possibility of a continuous run would be an error. There's something very relaxing about watching trains go by very slowly while drinking tea. Pragmatically - though this is probably less significant for re-wheeled diesels - the possibility of home-based test running is a real boon.

Adam
 
Osgood

Osgood

Western Thunderer
Simon said:
S'Norfolk innit?

Ooops! Sorry, if it isn't S&D I haven't got a clue:oops:

Simon
Click to expand...

Actually Simon it would probably sit very comfortably in the landscape of plausibility by being a GER alternative to the M&GN routes :) I'm all for creative use of the imagination - beats unwarranted critical comparison to a prototype which can never be avoided altogether.
 
Jon Gwinnett

Jon Gwinnett

Western Thunderer
AJC said:
Going on the dimensions, I guess the ruling radius would be about 3'? 3' 6"?
Click to expand...

I think so, 3ft certainly shoudl be attainable.

AJC said:
That's fine or at least, it works for me and a 31, for example, won't look silly doing it; I guess the largest loco' you'd be looking at would be a type 3?
Click to expand...

I think so, although the thought of a Deltic when no one is looking appeals (IMTS rules apply)

AJC said:
There's something very relaxing about watching trains go by very slowly while drinking tea.
Click to expand...

I think you're right.

Osgood said:
Actually Simon it would probably sit very comfortably in the landscape of plausibility by being a GER alternative to the M&GN routes :) I'm all for creative use of the imagination - beats unwarranted critical comparison to a prototype which can never be avoided altogether.
Click to expand...

Yes, I think so far I've assumed this is an ex-GER line impinging on M&GN territory, although at a pinch it might be a bit of M&GN that survived the axe.
 
Wagonman

Wagonman

Western Thunderer
There was a grain loading silo thingy at Hoveton. I don't know when it was installed but it was still in use in the '90s. Bacton by-products still being loaded at North Walsham.

I'll second Osgood's comments about the sand: hands off our dunes! Any sea defence works in that period at Happis would probably have been in timber; later they shipped in Literally – on barges) huge rocks for sea defence work at places like Winterton.

Coal traffic would have been limited. Most of it had been concentrated in big yards then taken by lorry to the old station yards where the merchants had their stacking grounds still. Sugar beet traffic also more or less gone by 1970.

So, what colour was your diesel?
 
Jon Gwinnett

Jon Gwinnett

Western Thunderer
Sounds like I'm stretching reality more than a little, as my diesels will be resolutely blue, although very now and then I look at green Cravens and wonder :)
 
Jon Gwinnett

Jon Gwinnett

Western Thunderer
Hendry's BR Goods Wagons in Colour (think that's the title?) shows 12t vans with the remains of old animal feed labels and 16t minerals at Fakenham in 1971. Close enough in date and time to justify my plans? If not, then perhaps the diesels remain blue but the numbers become pre-TOPS.

PS the 31 was photographed in 1969, so I think turn of the decade at least is feasible, even if 1974 is pushing it.
 
AJC

AJC

Western Thunderer
Traffic wise, btw, I don't think you have too much of a problem with what you suggest - though gas by-products is probably stretching it a bit in time and scope, some construction material for the pipelines might not be. I've never worked out how the routes to Fakenham were deemed even faintly viable (though granted, that's rather further west than your scheme). Pre-TOPS is probably a better bet however.

Adam
 
Osgood

Osgood

Western Thunderer
Unless you're after recreating a specific location then the options are out there. All you need is for a hypothetical agricultural merchant to select Polthorpe as the ideal location for a distribution depot (and given its location why not?) - and as well as grain out with its attendant modest loading facilities as at Wroxham (forget the beet traffic by this date), you have justification for inbound loads of fertiliser (bagged Npk in vans - bulk bags hadn't arrived back then, maglime in hoppers - magnesian limestone powder ex midlands or northeast - it was close to happening at the old grain facility at Wroxham in the '80s...).

Polthorpe Locals.JPG
 
Jon Gwinnett

Jon Gwinnett

Western Thunderer
Thanks to Amazon I have acquired the recent Middleton Press book Branch Lines Around Wroxham. (Apologies to Simon as instantaneous gratification got in the way of finding out if it was in stock in Da Shop.)

Now Osgood mentioned the North Walsham tanks. It turns out that these started much earlier than I thought, and that whilst the North Walsham complex was being built, were loaded at a wayside siding in Coltishall, no less. If that doesn't sound like an open invitation to bend reality and load them at a previously disused siding at Pallingham I don't know what does.

So traffic now sounds like Grain outwards and fertiliser inwards at Polthorpe, with possibly the odd wagon of coal, and gas by-products outwards from Pallingham, whilst Happing receives odd wagons of coal and maybe stone? I'll keep my mitts off the sand dunes, so my solitary sand wagon will have to be repurposed into the departmental fleet. Have also spotted an early plate wagon in the background of a shot of North Walsham, so that might inspire a bit of Happing inwards traffic.
 
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