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Archive for the ‘A view from the line’ Category

A view from the line # 10 Permanent way workers and huts

Posted in A view from the line, Fisherton Sarum, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 11, 2013 | 2 Comments »

Alongside the platelayers hut next to the main line a group of Permanent Way workers, sometimes also known as platelayers,  are taking a taking a tea break, one of whom is sat reading the newspaper and another has a mug of tea in his hand. The gentleman leaning on his ballast fork is, as I have stated on the blog a few times,  a representation of my Grandfather* in his role as a Ganger.
Gangers-1The permanent way team would have been made up of a number of Linesmen and look outs under the leadership of a Ganger who in turn would have reported to a local / area Sub-inspector (Permanent way). On Fisherton Sarum the look out flag man is just walking towards the hut to join the rest of the team in taking there tea break.

The classic concrete platelayers huts were seen all over the Southern railway and were a design and product of the Southern Railway’s own concrete works at Exmouth Junction. The distinctive roof shape was so that minus the chimney they could be delivered, within the loading gauge on a well wagon, in one piece to anywhere on the network.
800_embankment A number of 4mm models of these typical Southern Railway platelayers huts are available in kit or Ready-to-Plonk form from the likes of: Roxey Mouldings in white metal, as per this example along with the typical cast concrete ballast bin located alongside; Ratio in plastic and also in resin within the Hornby Scaledale range.

*My grandfather, Thomas Arthur Muspratt, in reality was a ganger for the Southern Railway, based at Salisbury for most of the period that I model before he gained promotion to Sub Inspector (permanent way) at Andover Junction during 1948.

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A view from the line #9 The ash pit gang and engine disposal

Posted in A view from the line, Fisherton Sarum, General, tagged , , , , , , on January 14, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

Although mentioned briefly in my first A view from the line post the ash pit gang are still working hard at the never ending task of removing the ash that accumulates around the sheds external pits.  When a locomotive comes on shed at the end of its duty it is ‘disposed of’ either by the loco crew as part of their shift or by dedicated shed staff from the ‘preparation and disposal’  gang. This gang sometimes comprised of loco crew on ‘light’ duties or near retirement who have come off main line working. Disposal of the locomotive involves dropping the fire and clearing the grate from any clinker, removing  ash from the smokebox, refilling the tender or bunker with coal from the coal stage, topping up the tender or tanks with water from the shed’s water cranes and turning on the turntable if required depending on the engines next allocated duty. The engine is then left in the required stabling position on the shed as advised by the shedmaster, although the fire has been dropped there is usually enough steam left to enable to final moves around the shed to take place.

chasewater_5Getting back to the ash pit gang, their role was to clear from around the shed the pile of ash and clinker that result from the disposal of the engines. This would be shoveled into wheel barrows before loading into open wagons that would occasionally be drawn into the shed area when the road was clear of engines. This was a particularly unpleasant job especially during dry and windy weather when the ash, quite often still warm / hot at times,  would easily get blown around including into eyes and making breathing difficult to say the least, so spare a thought for the conditions that these men worked in.

ST3_FS_5On Fisherton Sarum my ash gang are cast white metal figures from the Geoff Stevens’ range that comprises of  2 wheelbarrows (1 full, 1 empty), 2 men shovelling, 1 man pushing barrow, 1 man digging, I have used a number of the Geoff Stevens’ range of figures including cleaners etc. at various positions around the shed. The ash is in fact real ash from my wood burning stove, fixed in place with the time honoured method of diluted PVA glue. An open wagon is regularly shunted into the ash pit road next to the shovelling gang for loading. As in 4mm scale it is tricky for a wagon to fill itself, in reality the wagon arrives and departs half full!

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A view from the line #8 Train Spotters on shed

Posted in A view from the line, Fisherton Sarum, General, tagged , , , , , on September 27, 2012 | 5 Comments »

Although probably very tricky to spot from a passing train on the main line, and mentioned briefly in my first ‘a view from the line‘ post  about the little people, the shed area is hosting a couple of trainspotters. They are taking the opportunity to record and photograph the locomotives on shed being prepared for their turns.

A couple of trainspotters taking pictures at Fisherton Sarum shed

I can only assume that they must be armed with the letter of permission from the Head Office at Waterloo allowing them open access to the shed,  as although they are being kept an eye on by one member of the shed staff they appear to be able to freely wonder around to taking photographs.

Dad and fellow school mates about to try and duck under the ‘hatch’

My father and his fellow school mates never had the luxury of such official permission when trying to bunk the shed at Salisbury and therefore had to try and sneak in under the timekeepers office hatch on to the landing on the entrance steps and hope that a known or friendly member of the loco staff would turn a blind eye and stop them from being turfed out!
They are also imortalised on Fisherton Sarum just sneaking up the entrance steps of the shed and about to duck under the ‘ hatch’!

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A view from the line #7 housing the locals…

Posted in A view from the line, Fisherton Sarum, tagged , , , , on June 15, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Fisherton Sarum is of course based on the ex LSWR shed at Salisbury (I am sure I might have mentioned that before) and although primarily is all about the shed itself I wanted to incorporate a non railway related scene on the layout. At Salisbury the rear of the water tank building very much towered over and backed directly onto Cherry Orchard Road, although there were some houses on the other side of the road, I moved the road to incorporate some semi detached houses. These houses and gardens are totally freelance and unlike most of the other scratch build structures on the layout are based on a modified Wills Craftsman Kit.

A Wills Craftsman kit forms the basis of the freelance house. The School children await the confrontation between the Postman and the households dog.

In the back garden of one of the houses the owner tends to his garden whilst in the other a gentleman rests on his bench watching, who we assume is, his wife hanging the washing. At the front of the houses the postman has made a mistake of letting the household’s dog get between him and his bike (the postman’s not the dogs) which he has left leaning up against the railings at the back entrance to the shed…

The houses are nestled below the water tower building and close to the Main line as a westbound train passes. The postman’s bike is leaning against the fence.

Two children on their way to possibly Bishop Wordsworth’s School, meet up on the road and chat perhaps about trying to bunk the shed later, or maybe just waiting to see the postman get out of his predicament!

My general method of building construction is using a mixture of Wills building sheets, embossed and plain plasticard and plasti-strut, very similar to methods published by the likes of Iain Rice.

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A view from the line #6 The turntable

Posted in A view from the line, Fisherton Sarum, tagged , , , , , , on April 8, 2012 | 5 Comments »

As part of the layout control changes currently being made to Fisherton Sarum (more of which later)  involves the turntable I thought it was about time I posted about the turntable itself. The turntable at Salisbury was originally a 65’ foot heavy over girder type. In 1958 this was replaced by a larger diameter under girder type.  An unusual feature of Salisbury shed was the the access to the stores building unloading platform was via a shunt across the turntable and I have replicated this feature on Fisherton Sarum and it often raises a comment at exhibitions.

N15 Class no 744 is on the turntable. Barrels of steam oil and other engine lubricants are stored in front of the turners mess hut.

On Fisherton Sarum I wanted to represent the original style of over girder table installed at Salisbury. I used a Peco kit for the well and the deck, modifying the deck by scratch building the heavy over girder sides and a the addition of the turner’s platform.

The shed pilot, T1 class no 10, shunts a box van of spares from Eastleigh works to the stores building unloading platform.

Thick plasticard and Plastistrut sections was used for the girder sides along with an overlay embossed with a punch to represent the rivets along the top of the sides. A small outbuilding was provided to act as a mess room for the turners employed at the shed, on Fisherton Sarum this is a modified Wills kit.

The turners work hard turning 21c151 'Sir Winston Churchill'

Ironically the Peco kit unmodified matches the later style at Salisbury.

Since I first built Fisherton Sarum the turntable was powered via a Frixinghall motor and gearbox that did not have any form of automatic indexing. This meant that the rotational speed of the table was not easy to control and track alignment had to be done by eye (sometimes easier than others) via a switch. This is in the process  of being changed to stepper motor and gearbox controlled via a Model Electronic Railway Group (MERG)  turntable controller kit, kindly built by Mark Riddoch, more of this in a future post.

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A view from the line #5 water from tower to cranes

Posted in A view from the line, Fisherton Sarum, General, tagged , , , , , , on April 3, 2012 | 1 Comment »

Following on from my last “View from the line #4″  post about the imposing water tower building at Fisherton Sarum it makes sense to look at the last item in the pipeline, so to speak, namely the humble water crane.

Fisherton Sarum, just like Salisbury on which it draws its inspiration, has two type of water cranes for filling locomotive tanks and tenders.

An original ex LSWR style water crane

The first type are of one of the original London and South Western Railway designs with a large diameter pipe complete with gloge type control valve with side mounted leather bag to reach the locomotive fillers. The type at Salisbury had round valve bodies whilst some of the other LSWR style cranes had vlaves contained within a  larger diameter pipes style body.

With the advent of the Bulleid pacific locomotives that had tenders with high side raves the original style ex LSWR water cranes were not tall enough to easily reach the tender fillers.

The later Southern taller style of water crane

Therefore a later taller Southern design with a swiveling top arm and separate standpipe style valve were installed replacing some but not all the older LSWR type cranes.

My models of the two types of cranes are scratch built and soldered together from a mix of brass rod, tube, washers  and wire with the globe valve body being a brass bead. The handwheels are etched brass from  Mainly Trains. I have represented the leather bags using rolled tissue paper, flattened slightly, soaked in dope (as used by model aircraft builders) to hold its shape and then suitably painted.

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A view from the line #4 The water tower a presence and pressure…

Posted in A view from the line, Fisherton Sarum, tagged , , , , , on December 12, 2011 | 3 Comments »

The imposing long building beyond the turntable at Fisherton Sarum is a representation of the water tower, dormitory and stores building at Salisbury. It dominates the turntable end of the layout and although over 2 foot long is actually a good 6 inches under scale length.

The imposing water tower, dormitory and stores building

The water tank at Salisbury held 110,000 gallons and fed both the shed and the station water cranes totaling 12 in all, with eight in the station and four in the shed yard. The water pressure at Salisbury was maintained unusually high to allow for double headed engines at the station to be watered at once. This meant that crews had to be somewhat cautious when using the cranes or risk getting very wet!

My grandfather when a ganger leans on his ballast fork looks down the embankment from the main line towards the shed building

The dormitory was provided to be used by locomotive crews on “Double Home” turns, requiring a night away. There is some conjecture if it was actually used as such and if it was possibly only for a short period of time after opening and certainly not after WW2. Double Home turns to points further west to Exmouth Junction and beyond certainly existed to the early 1960’s.

The Railway Magazine at the time the shed was first built in 1901 said in its description of the shed and the amenities: “the dormitories had comfortable beds, washrooms, latrines and mess facilities”.

A view of the water tower and stores building showing the covered loading dock

I feel that if used by crews it must have been far from idyllic being located so close to the shed area and I am not sure what kind of noise the huge tank above would make when refilling. It is noted, however, that double home turn arrangements at other locations could be at best local Bed and Breakfast lodgings or at worst coaches used as dormitories!

The van of items for the shed from Eastleigh works is unloaded at the covered dock

Even if the dormitories where not fully utilised the building was certainly used as a large stores for the large amount of parts and equipment needed to keep a shed the size of Salisbury going. There would have been regular deliveries of such items from the likes of Eastleigh works. A small covered loading dock area was provided, unusually accessed via and requiring a shunt over the turntable.

The freelance houses behind the water tower as Q class 0-6-0 passes on the main line with an up goods

My representation of this building whilst, as mentioned above, being slightly shorter in length to suit the space available is from the turntable side as close as I can get to the original, including the tall windows and blind arches, whilst maintaining the proportions. In reality the rear of the build building faced directly on to Cherry Orchard Lane which as it was much lower than the ground level on the shed side must have been a very imposing sight.

On Fisherton Sarum I have added a freelance cottage scene on this side of the building (so that the layout was not just railway infrastructure)  and also added a small office directly on to the rear of the building itself to provide a further access to the stores building and monitor access to the shed via the rear road entrance from Fisherton Sarum’s version of Cherry Orchard Lane.

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A view from the line #3. Taking coal at Fisherton Sarum.

Posted in A view from the line, Fisherton Sarum, tagged , , , on October 7, 2011 | 6 Comments »

The elevated coal stage at Fisherton Sarum like the shed, as discussed in my post A view from the line #2 below  opened in 1901.  Just like the Shed itself, the coal stages were also built in a house style and as such as well asSalisburysimilar stages existed at Eastleigh,Basingstokeand Plymouth Friary.  Construction was wooden lapboard panels within a steel frame and a slate roof.  Loco coal for Salisbury was supplied from the South Wales coal fields by the Southern Railway loco coal contractors Stephenson Clarke, their wagons were manually unloaded within the stage into wheeled tubs that could then be tipped into the coal space of the waiting engines.

The coal stage at Fisherton Sarum with ex Stephenson Clarke wagons already been emptied

Using photographs from the stage at Salisbury and scaling from known dimensions I was able to create a set of drawings prior to construction of the model. As per the original the model is constructed using a framework (in plastic strut rather than Steel) with Wills lapboard sheets infilling between the frame uprights. The additional ventilation sections just under the roof line were painstakingly made up from layers of micro strip. The roof is constructed from Wills slate sheet on plastic roof trusses.

The platforms from Wills wooden flooring sheets and contain piles of unloaded coal and also men filling representations of the wheels tubs, the railed ramps on the outside of the building to allow the tubs to be tipped are also modelled. Working lighting is also provided,  scratch built from small LEDs and plastic.

Resident Salisbury Z class 957 pushes loaded loco coal wagons up the ramp in to the stage.

The style of the embankment for the ramp up to the coal stage (albeit slightly shorter and steeper), the buffer stops and the walling at the end is as perSalisbury. I have also modelled the hanging tarpaulins on each end (presumably to reduce the effects of the weather on staff working inside) using doped tissue paper.

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A view from the line #2. The shed at Fisherton Sarum itself.

Posted in A view from the line, Fisherton Sarum, tagged , , on September 19, 2011 | 1 Comment »

The shed opened in 1901 at Salisbury was the fourth to be built and replaced the two older sheds that were near the Station itself (on what then became the west yard) that were together known as Fisherton shed (Fisherton Street being the name of the road next to the station, and forms one of the reasons for my layout being called what it is). Just in case you were wondering, the first shed (of the four) was located at the original Salisbury Milford terminus.

One of the two malachite liveried N Class Locomotives simmers outside the front of of the LSWR Style shed at Fisherton Sarum

The London and South Western Railway realised at the end of the 1800’s that they required larger engine sheds and servicing facilities at Basingstoke, Eastleigh,Salisbury and Plymouth Friary. All of these sheds, despite being of differing sizes for example Salisbury at one of the scale had ten roads whilst Plymouth Friary at the other had three, were built to a common ‘house’ style in substantial brick with large arched style windows, slated covered gable style roofs with longitudinal glazed sections, glazed end gables, ventilators running the length of the shed atop each gable. Each shed was provided with wooden smoke troughs over each line and a number of offices including those for the shed master, timekeeper, washroom, stores and mess room. There was also a sand drying room with its associated furnace and chimney.

A vew of the rear of shed showing the offices and to the right the bottom of the chimney for the sand drying. As at Salisbury the entrance was up a set steps from the road at a lower level.

Using original drawings of the shed at Plymouth Friary along with measurements and photographs of the foundations still evident at Salisbury itself I was able to build, mainly from Wills embossed plastic sheets of the two different brick bonds and slates etc, a representation of this classic style of LSWR shed for Fisherton Sarum. Some Slaters plasticard and other plasticstruct / microstrip of various shapes and sizes were also used.  I used sixteen Peco inspection pits to form the track and basic floor of the shed infilling with plasticard to represent a concrete floor.

A of the inside of the shed from above minus the roof

Even though this is much smaller version of the shed from the original it is still nearly three feet long and the roof in particular and therefore access inside the shed was always going to be a challenge. I therefore opted to make the pair of gables roofs removable providing access to the interior of the shed, At shows more often than not I leave at least one half of the roof off to allow visitors to view inside, usually because if I leave it on they ask me anyway if they can look inside…

Looking in through the front doors of the shed

General shed clutter, work benches, tools, lathes, water taps and hoses etc. have been made from a mixture of GEM, Langley Models, Springside and scratch built parts.

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A view from the line #1. The little people…

Posted in A view from the line, Fisherton Sarum, tagged , , , on August 22, 2011 | 2 Comments »

Any model railway layout needs the little people to complete the scene. I try where possible to position them in natural groupings. This post, the first in a series of ‘views from the line’, looks at the little people on Fisherton Sarum.

My Grandfather on a break leans on his ballast fork with his colleagues as an M7 passes.

Alongside the typical Southern concrete platelayers hut next to the main line my grandfather can be seen taking a break. He is leaning on his ballast fork, with his co-gangers and linesmen, one of whom is sat reading the newspaper and another has a mug of tea in his hand. The look out flag man is just walking towards them to join them in their well deserved tea break. My grandfather in reality was a ganger for the Southern Railway, based at Salisbury for most of the period that I model before he gained promotion to Sub Inspector (permanent way) at Andover Junction during 1948.

My Dad and school friends try to bunk the shed

On the steps at the entrance to the shed my father in his younger, short trouser days, along with some of his school mates can be seen trying to bunk the shed. To gain entrance undetected involved ducking under the time keepers office hatch that overlooked the access steps fromCherry Orchard Road. Once in the shed it was hoped that engineman that that they recognised as being friendly was about.

In and around the shed itself various locomotive crew are preparing for their next duty, obtaining items from the stores such as oil cans and engine head signal discs. The cleaners go about their role utilising ladders and platforms to reach the slab sides of Bulleid’s air smoothed pacific’s.

The Ash Pit gang hard at work as other staff walk past with 34004 Yeovil simmers behind

The ash pit gang are trying not to get the ash in their eyes as they remove the loco ash from in and around the pits into wheel barrows before it is loaded into a 5 plank open wagon that appears occasionally to take the ash away from the shed.

Also in the shed area couple of trainspotters,  armed with the letter of permission from the head office at Waterloo allowing them open access to the shed,  can be seen taking the opportunity to record the locomotives on shed being prepared for there turns.

Away from the shed and walking along the carriage siding a wheeltapper awaiting the next rake of rolling stock to ding the wheels in order to check their integrity.

School children watch in hope as the dog eyes up the postman

By the houses, a couple of school children heading home watch as  the postman has made a mistake of letting the household’s dog get between him and his bike (the postman’s bike not the dogs) which he has left leaning up against the railings at the back entrance to the shed. In one back garden the owner tends to his garden whilst in the other a gentleman rests on his bench watching, who we assume is, his wife hanging the washing!

At least this is what we see of the little people through the lens, what they do when we are not watching who knows….

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