Blacker Lane Disposal Point NCBOE (4mm/OO)

[Dave]

The reason for Harboro Stone being stored is this new layout. I sold my old O gauge shed layout and began work on BL earlier this year.

It is based on British Oak opencast disposal point at Calder Grove, near Wakefield. A site who's claim to fame was the orange Jinty and similarly liveried ex-BR Paxman 650HP diesels.

Opencast coalmining began during the Second World War under the Directorate of Opencast Production and later, after Nationalisation, under the National Coal Board Opencast Executive, although many sites were operated by private companies, who provided their own road transport and locomotives.

British Oak is particularly interesting as a site as it also had a line to the Calder & Hebble Naviagation, where railway wagons were unloaded at a staithe into barges, mostly bound for Ravensthorpe power station. The site was also unusual in crossing a road on the level, directly under a railway bridge. The name of that road was Blacker Lane and as my layout isn't intended to be an accurate scale model of British Oak I have called it Blacker Lane.

Twenty different locomotives are known to have worked at BO, between 1943 and 1993 and I will attempt to model them all. The rolling stock and road vehicles can be changed to reflect the different periods of loco operation but some things will have to remain fixed.

The former L&Y line from Horbury Station Junction (left) to Crigglestone Junction (right) passed over Blacker Lane. The NCB line passed underneath the bridge. Photo taken April 2023.

 

[SouthernFan Ian]

Hello Dave,
This is one of my favourite industrial sites. If I modelled industrial, this would be my go to inspirational location.
I worked in Wakefield for a few years and received permission to take photographs on site at Blacker Lane.
Here’s a couple you may like….

The 03 was, I think 03037, an ex Norwich based loco and the Gronk was a Class 11 maybe but I’m not sure. I have pics of the weighbridge building and the end of the line loader but not the canal loader.
I hope this helps.
Regards,
Ian

 

[Dave]

Hi Ian The Class 11 in your photo would be 12122. 12099 worked there and was later transferred to Bowers Row D.P. but 12122 was only ever there as a source of spares and never did any work there.

 

[Dave]

I am away from my computer at the moment but I do have some photos here on my phone and will attempt to add one.

A little more progress from the previous photo. The track has been ballasted and the mock-up cardboard bridge has been replaced by the proper one. A haul road, made from Cork sheet, has been added. Lorries we're used to transport the waste from the screens to the tip and ran on this cast concrete internal roadway


The loco is a Heljan BR/Paxman 650 that I repainted into the livery of site operator Hargreaves. Two of these, D1/9513 and D2/9531, worked at British Oak from 1969 to some time in the mid 70s.

 

[Dave]

The layout occupies a space of approx. 11x7ft. inside my shed. The trackplan has been altered from that shown and no wagon repair shop or siding has been added.
The Midland viaduct is being modelled as a sort of scenic break to hide the obvious curve. Below is a photo that I took in 1993 that shows a light engine returning from the exchange sidings on what was one of the last trains to leave the site of British Oak before closure. The photo was taken beneath the former L&Y Bridge, with the loco about to cross the haul road and then Blacker Lane itself, and with the Midland viaduct in the background. Scanned the wrong way around but corrected only after adding my copyright

 

[Dave]

The Midland viaduct is being made as a series of laser-etched modules that will make up into 7 arches. Additional detail, such as the refuges and fancy brickwork, will be added on as layers.

Test pieces.


Mock up in place.


As you can see, compared with the real viaduct, mine is rather dumpy, with thicker piers and being much lower overall. This is because there isn't the headroom to make it to a scale height and if the piers were narrower and the arches wider, the effect of it partially hiding the curved track behind it would be lost.

https://flic.kr/p/2jtj7AL

 

[simond]

That’s a scary kink in the track on the right of the brick shed just this side of the crossover.

Does it drop and then come up again, or kick to one side?

 

[Osgood]

That’s a weighbridge - I wonder if there might be a slight grade on the line here and the weighbridge, being level, might be giving the impression of a severe kink?

 

[Jordan]

Could it originally have been a Gantlet (gauntlet?) track that avoided the weighbridge deck, that has been kept as the 'main' after the weighbridge was closed?

 

[simond]

Doesn’t look like gauntlet now, but it’s an interesting thought - it might have been.

 

[Osgood]

Regardless of the weird angle posed by the wagon in the siding adjacent to the weighbridge (which I reckon has more to do with some serious damage than the slope of the siding), the whole line seems to be on a fairly steep slope up towards the viaduct compared to the line on which the Jinty is running, and the weighbridge will be level.

 

[simond]

Looking at it again, I think you’re right Tony.

I think the wagon is “one that got away”.

 

[Dave]

Regardless of the weird angle posed by the wagon in the siding adjacent to the weighbridge (which I reckon has more to do with some serious damage than the slope of the siding), the whole line seems to be on a fairly steep slope up towards the viaduct compared to the line on which the Jinty is running, and the weighbridge will be level.

It was a quite steep gradient up to the exchange sidings. They were just the other side of the viaduct and joined in to the Horbury Junction to Crigglestone Junction line. The photographer would have been stood on the bridge above Blacker Lane, which was the Horbury Station Junction to Crigglestone Junction line, so the NCB line below had to climb up to the same height as where the photographer was stood within a quarter of a mile.

This map predates the use of the site as an opencast disposal point by almost 40 years and shows when the line extended all the way to what is now the National Coalmining Museum, at Caphouse colliery. It also served Victoria, Denby Grange and Hope pits when owned by Sir John Lister Lister Kaye Bart. As well as including a zig-zag on the adhesion-worked section, it featured three inclined planes and two tunnels. All in the space of about 2 1/2 miles.
I imagine the map can be dated from the fact that the Midland viaduct is shown as being under construction. I think this would be about 1907.

 

[Dave]

Messing about with some photos of part of the layout that looks almost finished.



There was no signalbox there with the real location, but as I may have mentioned, this is a "based on" rather than a true depiction of British Oak. I put the signalbox there to act as a view blocker of sorts - to give something that at least partially hides the fact that the BR line ends abruptly at the backscene.

 

[Dave]

I'm surprised that no one mentioned that the brickwork on the viaduct sample parts is wrong. There is now a delay in getting the parts made as the main brickwork had been done in plain bond, where it needs to be English bond, and the 5 rows of bricks in the arches had been done as stretchers, where they ought to be headers.

So with no viaduct yet, the scene now looks like this after some static grass has been added.


The cottage at the end of the dirt track has been under construction for a while but is now finished with the addition of some Modelu chimney pots. It still needs bedding in to the ground around it.

 

[Dave]

I get easily distracted from working on the layout itself. This time it's wagons.

The intention is to operate the layout set at different time periods by changing the engines and rolling stock and so I dug out some PO wagons that I've had in a box for several years, since I sold the layout that they ran on. To bring them into the 1950s period, all I have had to do is to give them some extreme weathering and add British Railways 'P' numbers. I have finished 5 and have another 8 to do.

 

[Dave]

A few more. These were done yesterday but I hadn't made enough couplings to finish them.

Wakefield (25A) 4F 44019.










There are more but I didn't photograph them.

I went to the EM exhibition at the weekend and spent far too much money on wheels, gearbox and motor to use in the reconstruction of an old and already built Craftsman kit of an L&Y Class 27. I also bought a London Road Models kit of a Class 25 to go with it, plus wheels etc. I'm going to try to resist working on these and get on with the layout. Like the Midland 4F, they will be numbered as Wakefield engines and specifically ones that are underlined in my father's 1956 London Midland, Scottish Region ABC. I know this is primarily an industrial layout, but I can't resist running main line engines into the yard. I've never in all my years modelling owned a locomotive that has a tender before I bought the 4F and I must admit that the 1950s BR period is quite tempting.

 

[steve50]

Love those wagons. There's a lot of detail there, replaced planks, rusting ironwork and the interiors look great and very careworn!

 

[Dave]

I went to collect the viaduct parts on Friday. I made a start on it and then discovered that although the CADs had been revised to change the brickwork and arches to the correct bond, the file hadn't automatically updated in the laser cutter and it spewed them out with the old (wrong) bond. No progress there then and I now need to buy some more card to be cut.

Instead I did some work on the waste tip. The form has been done for some time now and was made using a honeycomb of corrugated cardboard, topped with newspaper papier mache. Today's task was to cover it with a mix of crushed shale, sand, coal dust, broken brick and model ballast.

The white areas are PVA that has yet to dry.

 

[Rob Pulham]

Hello Dave,

When I saw this I had to share it with Chris as this is very familiar territory for her. Back when British Oak was still operational, Chris rented fields under the viaduct, adjacent to the canal, where she kept her horses. She clearly remembers the coal stacks and clanking of wagons. At the time she lived nearby in Calder Grove.