Wolverton 152

Progress on the proposed layout has quite literally stalled.

There are all kinds of excuses I can make, but there is no point. Selling the 7mm surplus made good progress, but then one of us had a change of heart. Being unable to persuade the party in question that it would be best to sell as much as possible, stasis has taken hold. Without clearing the shed for the 2mm Wolverton, we simply cannot make any progress.

Life, as ever, has also thrown its hand into the ring, making all sorts of demands on our time which has also made it all but impossible to proceed with the project.

So, nothing to report since April, which in itself was a report that nothing had occurred. Will Wolverton152 ever make it off the drawing board? It’s a worry that it may just become yet another unfinished project—except this time it hasn’t even started!

It’s been ages since my last update, and the chief reason has been it’s taking a while to get the funds together to make the next step. Moreover, until all the 7mm stuff has been cleared we won’t have room to start advanced planning for the layout in the shed.

So, as in much of life, several other things have to be sorted out before the fun can begin. Hopefully, later in the summer, things will begin to progress again.

The format of this blog makes it quite difficult to post a plan of the proposed layout. The viewing side in this plan is the right hand side. Mentally rotate the image ninety degrees clockwise, and you’ll get a better idea.

This is based on the 1930s OS map of which we have a copy. I have traced and redrawn, including selective compression at each end. The purple lines represent the modelled area. The Wolverton works buildings such as the Old Lifting Shop and the Paint Shops will be represented on the backscene. I still haven’t quite worked out how the Park will survive compression — until we start mocking things up on the baseboard, it’s going to be a bit speculative at best.

The off-scene areas will have track that will loop back, allowing continuous running on the main line in both directions. A train will pass left to right, then turn the loop (it’s not decided whether this will be inside the shed or outside) to pass right to left. Potentially, we could have four trains in each direction. The Newport Pagnell branch will give pretty much the only operational running.

Anyway, I hope this plan gives an idea of what our model hopes to encompass.

It’s been a while since my last update, what with Christmas and snow and all that getting in the way. As I reported in another post, the Wolverton152 project does rely on several things coming together before we can really make any physical progress.

I’m happy to report the 7mm stuff has been listed, and we’ve even managed to sell a couple of items. The sale will continue into the summer, and proceeds are mostly earmarked for the 2mm project. Now things are beginning to move, and the weather shows signs of getting a little warmer, we can decide our next moves.

I’m currently working on some drawings I can post here to illustrate the scheme we’re planning. Watch out for those in a while.

While I’m here, I’d like to thank everyone for their comments, suggestions and support in this project. I can’t wait to make some material progress, to move from paper and internet to three-dimensional modelling.

Recently, we’d lent a couple of our books to a friend who models the LNWR. He just returned them, and I was pleased to note that one contained an image we have been seeking for a while. Odd that I didn’t recall seeing the photo before, but there you go.

The book is LMS Lineside, Part One, by V R Anderson and H N Twells.

In the section covering stations, on page 11, can be found a set of three photos of Wolverton station. There’s the obligatory shot of the building atop the bridge, one taken on platform 4 looking towards the north which shows the subtle curve to the platform canopy and a good view of the building on platform 3, and a shot from the top of the Park steps showing the elusive back of the buildings on platform 1!

All three photos appear to be in the collection of Bob Essery, with whom we have been acquainted for a number of years through membership of the ScaleSeven Group. I think we may contact him to see if we can get better copies of the images, and whether he’ll let us reproduce them here.

In other news, we have received a list of aerial photos from the National Monuments Record which will prove useful. I must knuckle down and order the proof copies to make sure they fit the bill.

Things have calmed down a good deal here. There are several irons in various fires. We need to organise a few things before we can get on with modelling in earnest.

As I write, this is the situation:

• We’re still waiting on the drawings from Milton Keynes Museum; 
• We need to choose the relevant aerial images from the ones held at in the English Heritage collection; 
• We need to clear and reorganise the shed where the layout will live; 
• We need to raise some funds to pay for the project.

It’s the last item which is taking the time. I’m currently seeking employment, while picking up the odd freelance job to make ends meet. The core of Wolverton’s costs will come from the sale of 7mm kits and bits, and we need to catalogue that lot and make the sales before we can get much further.

So, for now, Wolverton is kind of in stasis. Lots of research is still ongoing, though, and I really ought to sit down and get a trackplan uploaded here, as well as some of the other things we’ve been working on behind the scenes.

This hiatus may last well into the new year, so I apologise if the initial flurry of excitement when we kicked off this blog has led you to expect a bit more modelling action than has happened so far. Once we get going, the pace will pick up again.

I thought I’d give myself a bit of a scare, so I priced up buying and converting a steam loco to 2FS. I don’t mean this to sound negative, by the way. The total cost is similar to buying a complete 2mm kit, so I’m not unhappy about it. It did, though, give me some momentary thoughts of sticking with 4mm OO!

The loco in question is the Dapol Ivatt 2MT 2-6-2T, best price about £65.00. There’s a nice replacement chassis kit from Nigel Hunt, which is £10.00. Then you add in Association wheels, motor and gears. Here’s the breakdown:

• Loco – £65.00 
• Chassis Kit – £10.00 
• 5ft driving wheels (x3 pairs) – £18.75 
• 3ft bogie wheels (x2 pairs) – £10.50 
• Motor – £13.50 
• Gears – £3.95   
• Total – £121.75

Of course, that total doesn’t include couplings, transfers, and postage costs. I also have to dispose of the N-gauge chassis.

As I say, I don’t want this to sound negative. The end result from the expense will be a superb little loco which will definitely find a place on the Newport Nobby pull-push service from Wolverton to Newport Pagnell. I just thought it was an interesting exercise in costing, especially from a the point of view of a complete newcomer to 2mm finescale.

On our last trip to Milton Keynes, the Museum was holding a transport rally. We fell in love with a beautifully restored maroon Morris Minor Traveller.

I’ve been and shelled out some of my hard-earned cash on one almost like it.

Isn’t she lovely? I think I may have to change the colour (of course, I now find they do a maroon version, ack!) as it’s a bit 1970s, thin the edges of the wheel arches, and pull the wheels out a bit, but at £2.50 this is pretty sweet.

Most of our image sources covering the period we’re modelling come from published books. For copyright reasons, and the extra effort involved in gaining permission to reproduce them, we don’t publish such images here. Once the basic research phase is over, however, you will begin to see photos appearing of the models under construction.

We hadn’t considered it at first, but aerial photography might be of use to us. A couple of books have aerial shots of Wolverton Works and station area, and we reasoned these may well have come from the well-known source of Aerofilms. Equally, there may well be other frames from the same shoot that would give us more information.

Aerofilms has changed hands over the years, and while the company itself no longer exists and the organisation that last owned the name and rights to the images is still in the same general field of work, the actual photographic collection is now in the possession of the English Heritage National Monuments Record.

I contacted the NMR recently with a view to finding out just what they might have in the archives. I got a nice email back, telling me that the Aerofilms collection hasn’t been catalogued. However, thanks to a Heritage Lottery Fund grant, work will begin on cataloguing and digitising the collection. Which is great news, but not much help to us right now. 

The good news, though, is the NMR also has catalogued collections of Odnance Survey and RAF aerial photography. The basic cover search is performed free of charge, and we can either visit the Record in Swindon or get a set of photocopies sent. From there we can choose and purchase the prints we think most useful.

This is actually far better than I thought it would be. Most of the time, you get the impression that the places that look after such archives really don’t want to make it easy for you to get the information you’re after. I was really impressed with the service offered, and a phone number and name so that I can discuss things further with a real live person working at the NMR.

It’s going to take a couple of weeks to get any results through. You can be certain I shall update here when they do, good or bad.

In our ongoing research to gain as much information about Wolverton Station in the 1950s and 1960s as we can, questions keep cropping up. 

Richard Coleman and Joe Rajczonek published a series of excellent photo books through the Northamptonshire Libraries. One, Steaming Into Northamptonshire (published 1988, ISBN 0 905391 12 8), has a series of images taken by a chap called W S J Meredith, covering about 1930 to the mid-1960s. One image, already alluded to in a previous blog post here, is taken from the site of the villas on the west side of the Grand Union Canal. It shows a Stanier 2-6-4T with a 16-ton mineral and a brake van, standing on the up fast line in May 1962.

Bear with me, it does get to the point.

Obviously, we can’t reproduce this photo as we don’t have the rights or permission. The interest for us is it shows Wolverton No 2 signal box, albeit masked by the engineering train. It also shows the canal, and the total lack of towpath on the east bank of the canal. Having watched numerous narrow boats powering along the canal recently, I can quite see how the bank would have been washed away to such an extent.

I’m digressing, but this stuff fascinates me!

The photo also shows works being undertaken to modify the Stratford Road bridge across the main line in preparation for the installation of overhead line equipment for electrification. History tells us that many structures on the West Coast Main Line had to be lifted, reinforced or rebuilt to provide adequate clearance for the 25kV OLE.

Which begs the question, were the Stratford Road bridge and Wolverton Station building raised to provide safety clearance?

Meredith’s photo shows construction work to widen the bridge and give a footpath on the south side.

My photo was taken on 18 September 2010 on the north side. You can see the concrete reinforcing beams that were installed in the summer of 1962. So, was this bridge lifted for safety clearance?

We have photographic evidence that the essentially timber station and footbridge structures were not raised or altered in 1962. Was the road bridge? Again, evidence suggests it was not, otherwise there would have been a definite step down into the station building for the next three decades.

This shot I took before the footbridge was taken down shows little obvious evidence for any tampering or alteration. It seems the LNWR presciently built the structures for Wolverton Station version three with plenty of overhead space.

The reinforcing works on the station side of the bridge were much more subtle than the hulking great concrete and steel columns and beams to extend the bridge on the other side.

Here’s a shot taken from the edge of what used to be Platform Five, and is now the car park. You can see how the concrete beams have been shoehorned in to support the road. Sources tell me the bridges were originally supported on steel beams, so it’s likely the concrete beams simply replaced the steel ones, leaving the bridge levels the same.

In this shot, over the slow lines, you can actually see how the concrete beam across the bridge deck has been partially covered by replacement brickwork. There’s a good deal of repaired and repointed brickwork in evidence, too. The station building stood on cast iron and brick supports right here. The doorways with the arched fanlights are presumably barrow or lamp stores for the station, built into the bridge supports.

It seems, therefore, that the concrete structural work of the 1960s was intended solely to reinforce and widen the 1880s road bridge. The road bridge, timber station building and covered footbridge were not raised to cater for the electrification works.

Luckily, either end of the original bridge structure remains so we can reconstruct what the brick and stonework detailing would have been like on the section where the parapet wall was rebuilt to fill the gap left by the station demolition in the early 1990s.