COTSWOLD MODEL RAILWAY SHOW

 22 & 23 OCTOBER 2011

Click on picture above for review of the 2009 show

Click on picture above for review of the 2010 show

It was also the second show to feature The Exhibitor's Cup, in memory of Bert Hawkins, the Gloucester Club President who sadly passed away late in 2009.  Bert was an active member of the Gloucester Club, joining in the mid 1960s.  His larger than life charisma rubbed off on the entire membership from day one.  He was the fulcrum of the GMRC, holding every committee position over the years.  When the GMRC President, the Reverend Wilbert Awdry, passed way, Bert was made President, a position he valued and held with great honour and distinction.

An excellent modeller, his layout - Kingsgate - was popular on the exhibition circuit and appeared at the 2009 Cotswold Show.

With the full support of Bert's son Nigel, The Exhibition Committee introduced The Exhibitor's Cup, to be voted for solely by the exhibitors, and awarded to the layout that they consider the best in show.  The first winner of The Exhibitor's Cup was Cheltenham South and Leckhampton and the second was Chris Hopper's Pixash Lane. Both are pictured above.

Pat Arnold was a long standing stalwart of Gloucester MRC and the Cotswold Show and the winning layout is voted for by the visiting public to celebrate the very best of design, operation and presentation with particular attention to layouts which display the enthusiasm in modelling that Pat promoted for many years.

"Percy's goods trucks grumble about the heavy loads they carry.  Their wheels go bumpety-bump over every rail joint.  Thomas's usual coaches are being repaired.  He has borrowed one named Helga from a railway in Austria.  The passengers like Helga because she has a van to carry their luggage."

The three locomotives and most of the rolling stock were kit-built using realistic three-link couplings with the locomotives often bearing different names on either side.  Thus the Sentinel 0-4-0 "Cowhill" appeared as "Kington" - another Severnside village - when facing in the opposite direction, just as the 0-6-0ST "Severn" was also named "Thornbury" when its smokebox was facing away from the station.

Thanks to the kind operators from Thornbury & South Gloucestershire MRC I was also able to take the picture below of the famous Gloucester RCW built Burtt Beehive Manufacturer 10 ton coal wagon posed next to a scale beehive.

Great Western 0-6-0PT 6410 was built in November 1934 to Swindon Lot 294. First and last GWR sheds were Aberdare and the Yellow route available locomotive was withdrawn from Tondu in November 1962. Autocoach 41 meanwhile was one of Lot 1126 built to Great Western Diagram N in 1907 and numbered 36-41.  Of these 59' 6" long vehicles, number 38 has been preserved on the Telford Steam Railway.

The six plank end-tipping open coal wagons were built by the Gloucester Railway Carriage and Wagon Company to 1887 vintage Railway Clearing House specifications although the firm of A. Vitti and Son of Swindon remains obscure and possibly not related to actress Monica Vitti of "Modesty Blaise" fame.  Unless of course you know different.

The figures and resin cast buildings were originally produced for wargaming and the scenery also featured a mixture of real cacti and Anita Decor models desert plants.

The majority of locomotives, passenger and freight cars on Layout with No Name were from the Bachmann 0n30 range, most either heavily weathered or kit bashed.  Some of the freight stock had been re-wheeled and also fitted with scale Kaydee couplings.

Such was the across-the-board appeal of Layout with No Name that it was voted second in both the Exhibitors and Pat Arnold Cup competitions.

Train cassettes are used in the hidden fiddle yard beyond the road bridge. Trackwork was by SMP and points were hand built and controlled by rod and slider switches. Magnets under the track operated Sprat and Winkle couplings. Rolling stock was kit built or modified ready-to-run. Buildings and scenery were scratch or part kit built. East Street Wharf was DCC controlled and featured in British Railway Modelling magazine in December 2006.

68020 - pictured above -was one of the J94 Class formed in 1946 when the LNER purchased 75 Austerity 0-6-0STs from the War Department after trialling one of the Hunslet designed tank engines in November 1945.  Originally numbered 8006-80, they were classified as 4F under British Railways ownership and as well as shunting over tightly curved lines they replaced the ex North London Railway Class 75 2F 0-6-0Ts on the Cromford and High Peak Railway in Derbyshire.  Withdrawn from 1960 to 1967, some J94s were sold to the National Coal Board, who had already received 77 identical locomotives from private builders from 1948 to 1964.  Similarly, although only two actual J94s - 68077 and 68078 - have been preserved many ex industrial Austerity 0-6-0STs survive into preservation disguised as J94s.

Pictured below next to the canal meanwhile is one of six 12 ton salt wagons built for Chance & Hunt Ltd by Charles Roberts of Wakefield in 1911.  Painted Indian Red with yellow lettering, these wagons would have travelled between Chance & Hunt’s private siding on the GNR at Stafford Common and its depots.

Chance & Hunt were formed in 1898 when the Oldbury based Chance Brothers salt and chemical works - founded in 1835 - amalgamated with another similar firm of long standing, William Hunt and Sons of Wednesbury.  Oldbury and Wednesbury worked together for many years producing acids, saltcake, caustic soda, soda ash, ammonia compounds etc, and later on, Oldbury added copper, zinc and cadmium compounds and cement.

With the First World War came the manufacture of ammonium nitrate - and TNT in a new plant created by the laying of one million bricks in 19 days. In fact TNT was being despatched 14 weeks after the first sod was cut!

Brunner Mond took a controlling interest in 1917 after which both sites became part of ICI in 1926 and chemical production ceased in 1964 with the Oldbury works disappearing under the M5 motorway.

However, Chance & Hunt retained its London office for the sale of chemicals not made by ICI before moving to Runcorn in 1975, after which a management buy out in 1999 led to Chance & Hunt returning as a separate limited company.  Among their subsidiaries is the firm which supplies polystyrene to Cambrian Models who make a 4mm kit of one of Chance & Hunt's wagons carrying six jars of acid!
 

Indeed, having seen how well younger patrons responded to Alan Postlethwaite's dinosaurs, I decided to take the Doctor Who connection of Finsbury Park being the home to Freema Agyeman to another level with the model Daleks offered free with the recent issue 238 of Doctor Who Adventures Magazine.

Like the Cybermen and Sontarans also taped to the cover, these Daleks were slightly over scale - and also represent the new Dalek Paradigm with longer lower bodies and smaller "head" sections rather than the scourges from Skaro that my generation first hid from behind the sofa. However, once the silver, black and other colours were applied the old Terry Nation / Raymond Cusick menaces came back to life.

Taking my inspiration from www.thedoctorwhosite.co.uk , I started off with a red and brass Dalek Supreme before moving on to an overall silver warrior / scientist and my version of a Dalek Saucer Commander with RAF blue nodules on grey panels.  However, as only a few of the private owner wagons I was using lacked coal loads, the Daleks made only fleeting appearances, during which their brooding presence was best appreciated from a low angle.

Among the numerous visitors remarking on Moreland & Sons' new traffic was Nicolas Wheatley, creator of the Journey's End 009 layout seen at the recent M5-M50 Narrow Gauge Modeller's Exhibition at Corse & Staunton Village Hall.  As a result he now has some similar scale Weeping Angels, also given free with Doctor Who Adventures Magazine while a Cyberman - with historical justification - appears on my 4mm diesel depot layout Toucan Park.

As an update to the Doctor Who Adventures Magazine model Dalek saga, Issue 243 dated 10 to 16 November 2011 offered two figures complete with paints, brush and a back scene on the flip side of the cardboard box. The new Paradigm Daleks were 64mm tall which by my maths ( always open to question! ) made them 12mm to the foot or roughly 1/24 scale: therefore suitable for positioning next to some existing model aeroplanes and tanks or for representing radio controlled model Daleks in the 1/12 environment of a Doll's House.  Hopefully some 1/32 ( Gauge 1 ) and 1/43 ( 0 Gauge ) Daleks will be along in the near future.  Meanwhile, Issue 243 also contained a useful Dalek recognition guide.

And if four dimensional police boxes and time travel were not spooky enough, one of the ladies on the second hand stall in the same room grew up in Finsbury Park ( where the Park itself is built over a plague pit and the postcode is N4 not N1 as per the Campbell's Lane sign ) and her daughter lived in the real Folly Lane in Stroud!

JOINT HARRIER STRIKE FORCE by Alan Drewett
 4mm Scale

One of the joys of exhibiting layouts and dioramas is that they often prompt informed comment based on personal experience and Joint Harrier Strike Force was fortunately visited both by a retired Rolls Royce engineer who had worked on Pegasus and Gem gas turbines as well as former Blues and Royals officer who had commanded a troop of Scorpion tanks.  Apparently the 76mm rifled gun did not last long in service before being replaced by the Rarden canon, which could be made to fire continuously with an expert loader constantly replacing ammunition clips.  More importantly from the crew perspective, the Scorpion's boiling vessel worked efficiently and the British army always allocated enough rations to feed four operators when the Scorpion only had a crew of three!

For 2011 the layout was Cherington, named after a real village near Tetbury and being created to 4mm finescale standards with 00 track on 9mm plywood baseboards covered in cork to help deaden sound.  The buildings were to be a mixture of kit and scratchbuilt and chosen to represent a fictional ex GWR British Railways Western Region terminus from the mid 1950s to early 1960s. 

For this particular event however, guest Great Western rolling stock was being used including 4970 "Sketty Hall" pictured above.  These 4900 Class 5MT 4-6-0s were introduced in 1928 as a Collettdevelopment of George Jackson Churchward's "Saint" Class of 1907.  4970 "Sketty Hall" itself was built in 1929 to Swindon Lot 254 and allocated new to Paddington Depot in December of that year.  Its last GWR shed was Penzance and it was withdrawn from Duffryn Yard in July 1963.

Having spent two days in the same room as Folly Lane's ever changing moods it was difficult to pick just two images for the illustration of this article - not least as my main memory of the public openings was that of the backs of spectators eager to see Jason's Flying Scotsman wreathed in oil-produced smoke!  The sound system was also highly impressive, not least because the General Motors 12N-710G3B engine in a Class 67 diesel starting up sounded just like one of the Rolls Royce Pegasus engines used in my two Harriers!

As such I was delighted to see Jason's hard work pay off with a third placing in the public vote and am already looking forward to the next version of Folly Lane which is to be produced in association with Giles Walburn's Elite Baseboards.  Meanwhile, for the only mobile video disco in Bristol and surrounding areas, why not visit www.totallykaraoke.co.uk ?

Inspiration also came from the BR Western Region photo books of Laurence Walters and some of the RCTS and Oakwood Press books on the ex GWR Bristol to Bath route around Keynsham and adjacent to the former Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway joining this at Bath Green Park

Pixash Lane was based on the idea of a short branch line with a halt for occasional passenger services and freight workings to local industries. The Squaregrip Reinforcement building is still in use on an industrial estate and the paper mill with its landmark water tower is also still working.  The small cement loading terminal was freelance but drew on inspiration from such Bristolian locations as Lawrence Hill and Avon Street.

Other 1960s rolling stock, such as English Electric Type 3 D6801 seen at the top of this article, appeared from the Forest of Dean or South Wales and similarly modeller's licence permitted the odd blue diesel or 1950s British Railways vehicles.

Most of the buildings were scratch built, Kaydee couplings allowed some hands-off operation and track was a mixture of Marcway, SMP and Peco in the "off-stage" areas.

Buildings on previous layouts had been scratch built but in order to save time modified kits were used - the goods shed and footbridge being Heljan and the locomotive shed by Airfix. Both the station building and platform mounted signal box were Ratio models built from the kits without modification, although the latter did boast a fully fitted interior in keeping with the layouts working Ratio semaphore signals.

Like Pixash Lane, Stonebridge was set on the Western Region of the 1960s and is still being updated with new equipment such as  smoke generators in the locomotive inspection pit.  Fitted in 2010 these gave the impression that locomotives were in fact blowing down their cylinder drain cocks before moving off!

Also featured in the picture above was a short wheelbase variant of the 1934 vintage Scammell Mechanical Horse.  From the late 1920s railway companies had been searching for a vehicle to replace real dray horses and the LNER approached Napiers - later famous for their Deltic locomotives - who created some possible designs before selling the project to Scammell Lorries.  The Watford firm's designer O.D.North then created a simple three-wheeled steel channel framed wooden-cabbed tractor with optional canvas doors, automatic coupling and uncoupling to articulated trailers and a nosewheel that could swivel 360 degrees.  Highly manoeuvrable and capable of both 20 mph and a 10 to 20 mpg fuel economy, the Mechanical Horses were sold in sizes to haul either a three or six ton load and powered by Scammell's own side valve petrol engines of  1 125 or  2 043 cc.

Scammell's Mechanical Horses were also popular with other industrial concerns, aboard aircraft carriers and with the Army, some arriving aboard gliders to resupply Operation Market Garden at Arnhem in 1944.

After the Second World War the tractor unit was redesigned in steel and given more rounded styling and a prime mover with a lower centre of gravity for increased stability.  The result was the Scammell Scarab seen above next to the J94 on East Street Wharf.

The L shaped layout measured 5' x 3' and on this occasion I was particularly fascinated by John's conversion of a Waggon und Maschinenbau four wheeled railbus into something like its bufferless equivalent, produced by AC Cars of Thames Ditton and used on the Tetbury and Cirencester branches from Kemble.
 

The baseboard of this layout was made of plywood with PECO track ( with PECO electrics ) laid on a cork base and the DG couplers on the in-depot RES rolling stock could be worked with in-track electromagnets, as could the home made couplings on the Railfreight wagons.  

Now that Barton Hill - originally built more than five years ago by Don Dickson of Nailsea & District MRC - is owned by Stan Potter the trompe d'oeil  elevated road bridge has been extended into a third dimension to carry model vehicles and new buildings and working lights have been fitted to the depot itself.

Passenger trains were in the care of SBB Re442 and Re460 locomotives whilst freight trains were hauled by members of Class Re6/6 locomotives and newer Re481 were beginning to appear on international goods workings. 

A local two coach push-pull train also ran into Unserstadt from Germany powered by 218 356-4, one of the final and most powerful of Deutsche Bundesbahn's B-B diesel hydraulics built from 1968 to1979.  Ranging in power from 2 500 to 3 000 bhp and fitted with electric train heating, the Class 218s are also known as "rabbits" due to the rabbit ear shapes of their roof mounted exhausts. 

Dominating the picture above though is one of the original Class 401 Inter City Express sets, developed as a response to the French TGV and designed to run on dedicated high speed Neubaustrecke.  However, only the third ICE service introduced linked the EMU's home depot in Hamburg with Frankfurt, Karlsruhe and Basel with some trains going on to Zurich.

Inspired by several visits to Switzerland, Unserstadt was built in 2000 and among almost 100 exhibition appearances won the Washimgley Challenge Trophy for best layout in show at The Peterborough Model Railway Club's show in 2003.  On this occasion Unserstadt came a very credible third in the Exhibitor's Cup poll.

Although the current range of British rolling stock for Z gauge is limited, Looseley Warren did emphasise the panoramic sweep and small detail that can still be achieved in this small scale.

In the beginning there was 12 volt dc.  Then came isolating sections, multiple feeds from multiple controllers and nowadays point motors, working signals and Digital Command Control: all of which require increasing levels of electric and electronic know how. 

At the same time, nailing track around the edge of an old door and calling it a layout is no longer enough and I know only too well that I can only lift so much 18mm MDF out of a car and into an exhibition hall!

One solution to both these issues is to have a strong but light baseboard made for you and allow your creativity to focus on scenery, buildings, tracklaying and trains.  Which is where Seligsoft Limited introduced strong but light Elite Baseboards, as illustrated here.  For more information visit www.elitebaseboards.co.uk

The Park Iron Ore and Coal Company Limited was set up in 1896 to take over the Norchard drift mine and Tufts Iron Level, both of which were under the Bathurst family's Lydney Park Estate rather than Crown land like all the other Forest of Dean mines.  These mining activities were in turn taken over by the Park Colliery Company in 1912 and after 1923 a large proportion of Norchard's output went directly to West Gloucester Power Company's electricity generating plant next door, on what is today the headquarters of the Dean Forest Railway.  Mining ceased at Norchard in 1957.