THORNBURY 

AND SOUTH GLOUCESTERSHIRE 

MODEL RAILWAY CLUB 

44TH ANNUAL EXHIBITION

  SATURDAY 26 AND SUNDAY 27

NOVEMBER 2011

ACE trains started production at the end of the Twentieth Century in China, Thailand or Czechoslovakia - first copying early Hornby designs with modern electric motors and later producing more realistic outlines.

The track used at Thornbury was a mixture of original Hornby and Chinese made Lionel.

0 Gauge 7mm Scale

The real Thames Wharf Yard is in east London close to Canning Town and the North Woolwich branch although the layout's track plan and engine shed - subservient to 30A Stratford and a base for the engines shunting in the yard and nearby warehouses - were fictional.

As well as the highly convincing vehicles, structures and brass or plastic kit built roling stock I also appreciated some less obvious steam motive power, including ex LNER Class J69 0-6-0T 68633. 

Built at Stratford from 1904 and originally classified as S56, these twenty "Buckjumpers" were a development of James Holden's earlier Great Eastern Class R24 (LNER J67) with higher 180 psi boiler pressure, larger tanks and firebox rolling on four foot driving wheels turned by a pair of inside cylinders worked by slide valves and Stephenson gear.  With their condensing apparatus for working in tunnels and variable orifice blast pipes, the Class S56 0-6-0Ts operated the "Jazz Trains" - one of the most intensive steam hauled suburban services in the World -  from London's Liverpool Street station until replaced by larger locomotives from the 1920s.

 68633 was withdrawn from shunting duties in 1960 and is now preserved at the National Railway Museum in York as GER 87.  As they say in Essex, hunjed pahcent reem!

0 Gauge 7mm Scale

All locomotives modelled on Wheal Elizabeth (Cornish for Elizabeth Works) had been photographed on a clay train somewhere and in model form were hauling era-appropriate rolling stock.  As such, motive power ranged from Beattie well tanks circa 1958 through to class 08's and 37's in the early 80's. Also appearing were Types 2 and 3 on trip workings and a number of Type 4 mainline engines on running-in turns from St Blazey Depot.

A public wharf (siding) also allowed some variety of rolling stock while the track was made using the ply and rivet method, C&L components and hybrid ply and plastic.

D2508 was one of a twenty strong class of diesel mechanical 0-6-0s built by Hudswell Clarke and introduced to British Railways from 1955, just as a more logical system of "D" numbers was taking over from the practice of allocating diesel locomotives identities from 10000 upwards.   As such, D2508 had been numbered 11147 from being outshopped from Leeds as Hudswell Clarke works number D941 in June 1956 and joining 6C Birkenhead depot.  The 204 bhp Gardner powered 36 ton 7 cwt shunter was renumbered in May 1957 and withdrawn from 12C Penrith a decade later, never having been integrated into the later TOPS five digit numbering system.  It was cut up by C.F. Booth of Rotherham in April 1968.

EM Gauge 4mm Scale

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 (although DC operation was still possible) and featured in British Railway Modelling magazine in December 2006.

Colford was based quite closely on the Severn and Wye Railway station at Coleford, the Forest of Dean's north western centre of population which unusually had two stations, both terminii, adjacent to one another and connected by a convoluted route which required five reversals to transfer trains from one to another.

The Colford Goods Shed was also very reminiscent of the one at Parkend on the Dean Forest Railway, just to the left of which was a model of a corrugated GWR oil lamp hut similar to a 12" to the foot example which recently arrived at the DFR's Parkend station after being recovered from a farm at Awre.  It is presumed to be the same hut that was originally located a few hundred yards from Awre Junction station and although looking a little rusty will hopefully be restored with minor repairs and a new coat of paint.

Whitcliff meanwhile was inspired by Whitecliffe Quarry although the Fred Watkins stone crushing and storage plant was a much reduced version of the real thing.

00 Gauge 4mm Scale

Also used by other train operating companies from South Wales and the West of England, Hillton TMD - modelled with working yard and shed lights - was very busy with locomotives of Classes 37, 56, 60,66 and 67 arriving and departing for turns of duty, maintenance and refuelling.

Due to public pressure and a grant from the Welsh Assembly, the old station was also re-developed as a transport hub and terminus on a single branch line off the main Gloucester to Newport route.  Passenger workings included top and tailing Class 37s in the manner of Arriva Trains Wales on the Rhymney Line and rolling stock was super-detailed ready to run with respraying, renaming and weathering.

A series of 2-6-2T tank engines was first proposed within the London North Eastern Railway in 1928 to work London's Metropolitan City Widened Lines. The initial drawings featured condensing gear and a short chimney for this work but by the year's end these features had been discarded and the 82 Class V1 Prairie tanks built in five batches from 1930 to 1939 grew around a modified D34 Glen boiler working at 180 psi to feed three 16" x 26" cylinders cast in a monobloc with the outside pair inclined at 1 in 30 and the central chamber sloping at 1 in 7.96 to clear the leading coupled axle.  The leading truck was of the same double-swing link type used on the Gresley K3 2-6-0, and the trailing pony truck was of the N2 0-6-2T radial type.

The initial batch of twenty eight locomotives worked the suburban services around Edinburgh and Glasgow, the first of forty class members eventually to haul local passenger trains in Scotland, while the largest allocation south of Leeds were fifteen locomotives on the Great Eastern Section, based at Stratford apart from three at Norwich and two at King's Lynn.  However, in 1948, Thompson L1 2-6-4Ts replaced the Stratford V1s which were moved to the Scottish and North Eastern Sections.

From the mid-1930s, twenty five V1s were allocated to the North Eastern Area where they displaced many Raven designed Class A8 4-6-2Ts due to their superior adhesive weight and in 1936 the North East Area first considered the idea of raising the boiler pressure to 200psi. The first of these high pressure locomotives were built in 1939 and given the designation V3.  Ten more V3s were built in 1939 and 1940 and by Nationalisation in 1948, four of the earlier V1s had been rebuilt as V3s. During BR ownership, a further 67 would be similarly modified.

During World War II, five of the North Eastern V1s were moved to Leeds to help with the increased services to the Royal Ordnance Factory at Thorp Arch and these returned to Tyneside in 1948. Bt this time the Whitby coastal route had had its restrictions eased, enabling the V1s to work well in a difficult environment.

However, the arrival of diesel multiple units and Type 2 diesel-electric locomotives from the mid 1950s displaced the Gresley 2-6-2Ts from local passenger, empty carriage stock and parcels trains and their withdrawal started in 1960.  The V1s were extinct by the end of 1962 with the V3s all being scrapped as well in 1964.

TT Gauge 3mm Scale

N Gauge 2mm Scale

Much as all of us have our favourite main and branch line eras - covering anything from Stroudley Terriers and birdcage guard's vans to the Voyagers and Pendolinos of 2011 - the sixty one years of voluntary effort since the Bluebell and Middleton Railways founded the idea of standard gauge line preservation have largely been ignored by modellers. 

Perhaps this is because on one hand the idea of running any mixture of trains rather than those of a set time and place is too easy, but perhaps too because the idea of recreating the sheer messiness of some preserved railways is too hard.  For example, nowhere before the preservation era would you have seen Mark 1 Second Class Corridor carriages covered in tarpaulins lashed down against long term open siding storage - or roving gangs of lineside photographers for that matter?  So let's see more modellers embracing a phenomenon that has become as much Britain's gift to the World as the steam railways founded in the Nineteenth Century themselves.

N Gauge 2mm Scale

Set in the early 1980s, Mallingford Central represented a terminus station in a fictional large town south of Birmingham close to the boundary between Western and London Midlands of BR and connected to the Birmingham -Bristol main line by a triangular junction near the real life station of Kings Norton. The town was large enough to warrant regular calls by Inter City cross country trains together with locomotive hauled trains on provincial routes and DMU services between Worcester and Birmingham. The depot provided servicing facilities for freight locomotives allocated to Bescot shed, and passenger locomotives laying over from their duties. Operation was based on the 1982 timetable with mainly blue diesels. Buildings were scratch built or modified kits, the track was standard PECO N gauge and the rolling stock mainly by Grafar.

N Gauge 2mm Scale

Thorberton's locomotives were Farish and Dapol, as was the rolling with additional Peco and scratch built vehicles. The buildings were also scratch built, and the track Peco code 55 with wire-in-tube operated points and decoupling achieved by electro magnets under the track.

In addition to the station infrastructure, Thorberton featured an army camp in the area occupied by the camouflaged staff car including 2mm scale tanks scratchbuilt by Mr Teague, a skilled carpenter.

With 25 troop seats, the AS. 51 Horsa ( pictured above)  was much bigger than the 13-troop American Waco CG-4A (known as the Hadrian by the British), and the 8-troop General Aircraft Hotspur glider which was intended for training duties only. As well as troops, the AS.51 could carry a jeep or a 6 pounder anti tank gun.

The AS.58 or Horsa II had a hinged nose section, reinforced floor and double nose wheels to support the extra weight of vehicles. The tow was attached to the nose-wheel strut, rather than the dual wing points of the Horsa I.

The use of assault gliders by the British was prompted by the use by Germany of the DFS 230, which was first used in May 1940 to successfully assault the Eben Emael fort in Belgium. Their advantage -compared to parachute assault - was that the troops were landed together in one place, rather than being dispersed.

The Horsa was first used operationally on the night of 19/20 November 1942 in the unsuccessful attack on the German Heavy Water Plant at Rjukan in Norway (Operation Freshman). The two Horsa gliders and one of the Halifax tug aircraft crashed in Norway due to bad weather. The survivors from the glider crashes were executed on the orders of Hitler.

On 10 July 1943, 27 Horsas were used in Operation Husky - the invasion of Sicily - and large numbers were subsequently used in Operation Tonga, the British air assault on Normandy on 6 June 1944 when the first units to land in France captured Pegasus Bridge.  On 5 June  2004, as part of the 60th anniversary commemoration of D-Day, Prince Charles unveiled a replica Horsa on the site of the first landing by the Orne Canal and talked with the original pilot of the aircraft, Jim Wallwork.

The Horsa was also used by the USAAF on D-Day and was deployed by both fighting powers in Operations Dragoon (southern France), Market Garden (Arnhem), and  Varsity (crossing the river Rhine).

Assault gliders were towed variously by Douglas Dakota, Short Stirling, Handley Page Halifax and Armstrong Whitworth Albemarle and Whitley tugs with members of the British army's Glider Pilot Regiment at the controls, although Royal Air Force pilots were used on occasion.

Despite their virtue of silent approach, assault gliders still required large flat open landing grounds and were often damaged beyond repair on touchdown.  Even when landed intact, they were difficult to extract with tug aircraft using snatch hook equipment and as a result assault gliders were replaced by helicopters from the mid 1950s onwards.

Also dating from the mid 1950s as a concept was the airborne early warning and command and control aircraft, as exemplified by the Grumman E-2C Hawkeye pictured above in US Navy markings.

The first aircraft to perform this mission was the Grumman E-1 Tracer (a variant of the S-2 Tracker anti-submarine aircraft), which saw service from 1954 to 1964. The E-1's successor, the E-2 Hawkeye, was the first carrier-based aircraft designed from the outset for the all-weather airborne early warning and command and control function.

Since replacing the E-1 in 1964, the Hawkeye has been the "eyes of the fleet." served the Navy around the world. After seeing combat in Vietnam, Hawkeyes directed F-14 Tomcat fighters flying combat air patrol during the two-carrier battle group joint strike against terrorist-related Libyan targets in 1986 while also working with AEGIS cruisers to provide total air mass superiority.

More recently, E-2Cs provided the command and control for successful operations during the Persian Gulf War, directing both land attack and combat air patrol missions over Iraq and providing control for the shoot-down of two Iraqi MIG-21 aircraft by carrier-based F/A-18s in the early days of the war. E-2 aircraft also have worked extremely effectively with U.S. law enforcement agencies in drug interdictions.

The newest version of the Grumman Hawkeye, the E-2C, became operation in 1973 and the tailplane with four vertical surfaces on the high wing turboprop compensates for the complex airflow around the rotating radome. The more efficient and less noisy Hamilton Sundstrand NP2000 digitally controlled, all-composite eight bladed propellers were first flown on a Grumman E-2C Hawkeye on 19 April 2001.