Bradford North Western

Latest draft plan for BNW

Very bravely, I have published a plan showing my latest ideas for the eventual
Bradford North Western branch, and I invite your comments (constructive, I
hope). I suppose that the following is also the germ of a potential article
for S4News or some such.

I have struggled to get all the elements I want into the space available,
albeit that the space is by most standards, very generous – 22′ X 10’6″- but
I think I finally found a practical solution. This is the first sketch that
I have made in pen rather than pencil – Templot comes next!

Bradford NW Signalling Diagram (umpteenth version - approved by Mick Nicholson!)

I wanted to incorporate the following:

1) The LNWR (BR period) in the West Riding, because I love the LNWR’s simple but elegant style and the rugged, hard-working beauty of the West Riding, with its conjunction of intense industry and wild scenery, demanding pretty spectacular railway engineering and a maze of interlinked railway companies’ lines.

2) Operational interest for a lone operator and for several operators when
our far-flung Cumbrian Area Group congregates. This has several consequences, listed below.

3) Three major loci – Bradford North Western (secondary terminus in a major city), Gormley Junction (junction with other railway companies and site of MPD and exchange sidings) and Clecklewyke (town station – because it is already half built!).

4) Several off-scene destinations – the main fiddle yard representing the
LNWR destinations (Dewsbury, Huddersfield etc.) and simple spurs with
cassettes where appropriate, to represent the GNR, L&Y and NER connections.

These are primarily  sources of traffics – a push-pull will connect Bradford
NW to the NER, giving scope for my G5, the GNR line will also connect to a
mine, and so require trip freights between the LNWR and GNR yards and full
and empty coal trains, which will be made up and broken down in the exchange sidings and there will also be a notional connection via the main fiddle yard to the Hull and Barnsley (which nearly made it to Halifax at least), allowing me the nostalgia of seeing trains from my home town of Hull – K3s, D49s, J39s etc.

The co-location of the LNWR and GNR fiddle yards allows empty and full coal wagons to be easily exchanged between the two and run in the right direction at all times.

5) To allow timetable operation, the main fiddle yard will have at least
four roads. These will be cassettes but will have turnouts to connect them.
Thus, I can start the session with four trains in the fiddle yard, and have
four departures and four arrivals before I need to turn the cassettes, with
more if DMUs  or push-pulls are used. There will also be lots of shunting at
Gormley Junction and BNW, and movements between BNW and Gormley Junction and to the other two spurs, so we should be able to run for some time before the fiddle yard needs to be touched. Cassettes will make train manipulation simple and safe and allow storage of extra trains on shelves.

6) I propose to use my Digital Crispin (see an early MRJ for a description)
which acts as the next signal box and offers and accepts trains according to
the timetable.

7) Although the above implies end-to-end working to timetable, I acknowledge that there will be times (especially when I am at the work-bench) when I just want to see a train circulate, so the GNR connection will have a removable link to complete a circuit and allow continuous running.

8) There will be four control locations. For single-manning, I will use (2)
and (3A), which are within easy reach of each other, with occasional visits
to (1), when shunting the pick-up at Clecklewyke. When there are two
operators, the BNW control panel will be moved to (3B) and the second
operator will operate BNW and Clecklewyke. More operators would allow the duties of signalmen, drivers, shunters etc. to be further split. This means
that BNW will not have a back-scene when at home and must be modelled
“in-the-round”, unlike the other locations, which are dioramas.

9) (and I should have mentioned this earlier) Although the plan is for a
system with three locations, running around the operator “well”, each of the
three locations could also be exhibited on occasion. Hence the straight
alternative run-off tracks from the left hand end of Gormley Junction, which
at exhibitions will be connected to a cassette fiddle yard. So both
Clecklewyke and Gormley Junction will be L-shaped and need to be situated at outside corners of exhibition halls. I think this should be o.k. with
exhibition managers? (Mike Peascod and Geoff Bridges please comment!)

10) Recognising that time is finite (and becoming more and more finite at my
age…) the scheme is designed to be built in phases so I will not have the
awful situation that I recall on a previous occasion that I tried to fill a
railway room, of having acres of bare baseboards, on which detritus
inevitably gets dumped. The left hand end of Clecklewyke is now complete.
The next phase will be Bradford North Western, which will give me a terminus to fiddle yard via a through station. The connections between BNW and Clecklewyke will be temporary. Next will come Gormley Junction, for which I have already obtained most of the pointwork and the MPD buildings from Don Rowlands – beautiful models for LNWR sawtooth-roofed shed and coal hole from his original Rhuddall Heath. I am not sure when Clecklewyke will be completed but I already have made the station building for it, so I might be tempted to fit that in early in the project.

So the idea is always to have a layout which is largely complete, scenically
and operationally, with work on extensions to that being separate from the
existing layout.

10 The curves on the main line have a minimum radius of four feet, with the
GNR branch being 3’6″. The eventual layout will have transition curves but I
have not incorporated them on this sketch.

11 The walk-ways on the plan look tight but there is scope to make the
Gormley Junction baseboards narrower.

12 Note that the double-track GNR line, to which the branch from Gormley
links, is purely decorative.

13 And now – the BIG decision…

Should I do it in P4? I find this a really difficult one. The only real
advantage of OO is the ready made stock and track but I have lots of kits to
build and I don’t think I could go back to Peco Streamline, so the choice is
between EM and P4.

For EM:-

P4 requires a bit more work at the building stage (although the arrival of
the P4 Track company means that P4 trackwork is probably easier and faster
to make than C&L’s EM).

P4 definitely requires more maintenance of rolling stock and pointwork than
EM, because tolerances are so much closer and movements of baseboards,
track, wheels on axles etc. are so much more critical.

EM would allow tighter curves. I would use this to create more space for
scenery or the use of a smaller room, rather than in fitting any more
trackwork – there is quite enough of that to keep me busy for a long time!

It would be simple to change my existing wagons and coaches to EM, simply by swapping wheel-sets.

I cannot at normal viewing distance tell the difference between a P4 and EM
wheel-set.

My eyes are definitely deteriorating and will continue to do so.

Reliability in running is crucial to me.

I recognise that this is a much larger project than most successful P4
layouts. I only know one really large P4 layout – “Preston” – and that is
progressing very slowly. I have heard (off the record) that when “Dunwhich”
was converted to P4 as “Ufford” it was almost unusable. I find it
significant that someone as experienced as Roy Jackson chose EM rather than
P4 for Retford. Is P4 really suitable for a complex, large project by a lone
builder?

For P4:-

P4 is “right”.

I already have quite a lot of stock built to P4 standards and have a lot of
kits in drawers, already with the correct P4 wheels. The work of converting
at least the locos would not be trivial. There would also be a cost for
replacement wheels.

Its narrower flangeways really do look better, but is this so important on
an eye-level layout?

I like the problem solving necessary to get P4 to work reliably.

The P4 Track Company’s track looks good and is relatively easy to make.

I like AJ couplings: they combine simplicity, invisibility and reliability.
Would they work as well in EM where there is more sideways play between
flanges and rails?

I will be vilified as a traitor to the cause if I abandon P4. Could I
happily remain in S4Soc? What would Ted Scannell say… :>) Actually this is
very important to me because members of S4Soc have given me a lot of support and encouragement.

There is lots more I could say but I hope you will find the above
thought-provoking and if you have any comments on my plans please do shout!