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Ashover light railway – Brian’s

Brian, the Brit in New York, has been in touch with his latest project: Ashover light railway.

“Hi Al,

As a population of railway enthusiasts, we have been remiss in not celebrating the birth of passenger trains 200 years ago, the first being on September 27th 1825. It was pulled by George Stephenson’s Locomotion 1 travelling at 15mph between Darlington and Stockton in the North-east of England. What a change we have seen since then!

I want to let you know what I have been doing recently in the model railway area. I took down the mountain railway I posted to you earlier this year and decided I would make something a bit more traditional but using the 009 light railway concept.

First, a bit of background. I have always signed off as “Brian, the Brit living near New York” but now I need to give you more of my background.

I was born and brought up in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, a town with strong railway connections. When I was a kid it had 3 separate railway lines and 3 stations; now thanks to Beeching there is only one. Chesterfield’s railway claim to fame is twofold:

Horns Bridge was one of only 2 three level railway bridges in the world. It carried the Grand Central railway on the lower level, the Midland Railway on the middle level and the Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast Railway on the upper level. It also crossed 2 rivers and the junction of 2 main roads.

The Father of railways, George Stephenson who built the Rocket and Locomotion 1, lived for a time at Tapton House and is buried in Trinity Church, both in Chesterfield.

When I was at senior school, I was asked to write a report on some local subject and with my mother’s help we wrote a report on the Ashover Light Railway.

Ashover is a small village a few miles south of Chesterfield where my mother grew up on a farm. When George Stephenson was surveying the route for the North Midland Railway between Sheffield and London, he realized the potential for the development of a colliery near Clay Cross.

Following his death, the George Stevenson and Company developed further mineral deposits in the area and in 1920 the company, then called Clay Cross Company built a 2ft gauge narrow railway from Ashover to Clay Cross where it met the main line to carry the minerals to other parts of the country.

Most of the engines and rolling stock were army surplus from the War WW1. Construction was completed by 1922 for goods traffic, and it started a passenger service in 1925. The quarry at the Ashover end closed in 1950 and the last train to run was on 31st March 1950.

Sadly it can never be resurrected as in 1966, part of the valley was flooded to create the Ogston Reservoir where coincidentally I learned to sail when I was a schoolboy.

Below is a map of the railway also showing both the Ashover Light Railway and the main Sheffield to London LMS line which it linked up to, which took the coal and minerals to other parts of England, including London. Ogston Reservoir is at the bottom of the map flooding Hurst Lane and the Ford Loop.

My layout will be loosely based on this map. I will have a main line (OO gauge) running parallel for part of the route to the ALR (009 gauge).

Off the bottom of the map is a stately home, Ogston Hall which I will also model. I also hope to show Clay Cross as a typical mining town and Ashover at the other end of the line.

I have a corner in my train room which has available wall space 8 feet and 6 feet long. I have built the infrastructure using a storage shelf system which seems very stable.

The layout will be L shaped with trains going end to end. Because I need to access the space below the stairs, the shelf is 52 inches above the floor. I have my work bench under it, and yes, I have to be careful not to bang my head when working!

Base showing the shelving system

Entirety of the railway, Ashover will be on the left and Clay Cross is on the right

View showing Ogston Hall in the corner

View of Clay Cross. In addition to the houses there will be a coal yard for transferring the coal from the narrow-gauge railway to the main line.

I will post more when it is complete.

Al, you do a great job managing this blog for all of us railway modelers. Thank you and thanks to all the contributors, I look forward to the emails every morning.

Brian, the Brit living near New York”

A big thanks to Brian for sharing his version of Ashover light railway. I’m really looking forward to seeing his updates.

(You can see one of Brian’s earlier posts here: Narrow gauge railway.)

Next up is Wayne:

“Al,

I have been reading your blog for about six years, but never sent anything in before. I picked up an idea from one of your post several years ago and decided to give it a go.

Using N gage to serve a a backdrop for my HO railroad. I tried to keep every thing as close to scale as I could. I even downloaded a dimensional drawing of a trestle from the internet which I used to scratch build my trestle.

For a title, just say “we had better call dispatch to let them know that we are going to be late. There are bear cubs on the trestle.” We hope mama papa bear can get them off because they are not afraid of all the noise we are making.

Wayne”

That’s all for this time folks.

Please do keep ’em coming.

And if creating your own model railroad is an itch you just have to scratch, the the Beginner’s Guide is here.

Best

PS More HO scale train layouts here if that’s your thing.

Need buildings for your layout? Have a look at the Silly Discount bundle.

N scale train portable layouts – Russ’s

Russ has been in touch. He’s added to the N scale train portable layouts on the blog:

“Hi, Al

Russ Jones here from West Virginia, USA.

I’ve been an avid follower of your newsletter and wanted to show you a project I’ve been working on for almost a year.

It’s a portable layout being built for my model railroad club (Hagerstown Model Railroad Museum at Antietam Station in Sharpsburg, Maryland).

It started out as a donation to the club in a very rudimentary and incomplete Z scale layout contained in a removable glass-topped wooden framework. The original dimensions were 47” X 24” with a depth of about 2”.

We decided to upgrade this to N scale and needed to add additional 1” x 4” lumber to give us the needed depth for N scale tunnels and structures.

The layout itself was started on a sheet of closed cell foam that was cut to fit the wooden framework and was inserted later when all of the track and structure wiring was installed.

Three tunnels were built with the largest in the center to separate a “country” scene with a fishing pond from a town area.

The tunnels were made with a base of foam blocks and crumpled paper that was subsequently covered with strips of plaster cloth. After drying, the plaster cloth was covered with a thin coat of joint compound then painted with Woodland Scenics Earth Base paint. All exposed foam also was painted.

The pond was constructed using a cardboard cutout with a stream outlet at one end, and covered with joint compound then painted.

A covered bridge and girder bridge were added over the stream outlet.

Landscaping was accomplished by painting all exposed surfaces with a 50:50 white glue:water mix, to which was applied light brown and light green fine turf using salt shakers. Coarser turf and finally trees were added later.

The pond “bottom” was painted by blending a small area of flat black at the center and slowly blending dark blue, light blue, light green and finally yellow brown outward to the pond edges. Once dry, I used Woodland Scenics “water” mixed with a few drops of light green paint and poured it into the pond base.

Although it self-levels, it unexpectedly shrank as it dried and it required a second pour to completely fill in the pond area. Before pouring, I added a few twigs to represent floating and partially submerged logs.

The hillsides were painted with the Earth Base coat and then dry brushed with sandstone grey to give it a rocky wall appearance. I laid out a country road on one side of the pond using Woodland Scenics Paving Tape and filling in the road surface with joint compound. After drying it was painted with a light gray, they given a black wash of water mixed with a few drops of black paint for a weathering effect.

Since the club had a train show and sale coming up, it was decided to drop the insert the foam insert into the wood framework and drop wires for lights, track power and switches into predrilled holes and display the half-completed layout as an advertisement for the club. At the end of the show, the layout came home to my basement so I could finish to town side of the layout.

Now work started in earnest on the town side of the layout. Using the paving tape again, I added sidewalks using joint compound covered with balsa sidewalk covers. A squarish road area 2” in width was painted directly on to the foam base and a rectangular courtyard made of cardboard and painted with the Earth Base Coat.

Trees, brick walkways, and fine green turf were added later. I then added road markings from Highwaysnbyways.com, and glued in a few vehicles and pedestrians.

As a final feature, I covered the central tunnel with a removable foam topper (held in place with Velcro strips). I felt that this feature was needed in the event of a derailment inside the tunnel.

Russ”

A huge big thanks to Russ for adding to the N scale train portable layouts.

I know it’s not portable, but Russ’s layout reminded me of Chris’s N scale coffee table.

That’s all for this time folks.

Please do keep ’em coming.

And if creating your own model railroad is an itch you just have to scratch, the the Beginner’s Guide is here.

Best

PS More HO scale train layouts here if that’s your thing.

Need buildings for your layout? Have a look at the Silly Discount bundle.

HO scale oil refinery – John’s

John’s been back in touch – this time with his HO scale oil refinery.

I have no idea how long it took to make, but seems very worth it – I can’t wait to see it on his layout:

“Hi Al,

Well, it’s been awhile since I wrote to you and the thousands of model railroaders but rest assured that I read the Blog twice a day – every day.

Since retiring in April last, I’ve been just to busy to get around to sending an update…it’s complicated.

Anyway, I’ve completed another module to “finish” all the scenes and main aspects of my West Virginia Energy railroad.

This is the shale to oil processing and refining plant. Here oily shale is separated from it’s sticky crude oil and refined into good old low sulfur diesel fuel.

As is the case with most of the WV Energy businesses, it’s working on a string and a prayer. Some leaks and stuff always needing help. Rust always attacking anything not covered in oil or old paint.