Beckingham and South Wales Railway

[Budgie]

I wanted a proper name for the railway. My first thought was “The Bacheham Valley Railway” (Bacheham is what Beckenham is called in the Domesday Book), but after thinking about that for a while I decided that it is not on. So I started thinking about other names that Beckenham had in the past, such as Becceham (Beckenham was known as Becceham in the Textus Roffensis; this name is reflected in the Old Beccehmians rugby club). But eventually I came up with “Beckingham and South Wales”. The modern Beckingham is the name of two villages: (a) in Lincolnshire 6 miles east of Newark, and (b) in Nottinghamshire 2 miles west of Gainsborough. It is also an older spelling of Beckenham according to one of my local history books, and it is one of the misspellings of Beckenham that I have seen on mail addressed to me in the past. It is also a conflation of Beckenham and Bellingham, which is another district of London a couple of miles away. There is a history of confusion between the spellings Beckenham and Beckingham as shown by several entries on the world-wide web.

I grew up in south-east London, and went to secondary school in the 1960s by train and bus. That is why you will see many BR(SR) electric multiple units on the BSW, and many RFs, RTs, RTLs and RTWs on the roads and waiting outside the stations for the passengers. My mother's parents lived in south Wales, and we used to visit them for four weeks at a time during July and August every year, from the mid-1950s onwards, which is why you will see a lot of GWR 0-6-2Ts pulling trains of mineral wagons. It also explains why I am building a whole lot of Comet Collett non-gangwayed coaches, because the 0-6-2Ts pulled these before DMUs took over in the early 1960s.

Not only was (and probably still is) there lots of coal in south Wales, but there was lots of iron ore there too. Put these two together and you have the start of the industrial revolution, which spread out all over the world. So it's not surprising that I have developed an interest in coal and iron ore in both north America and Australia, any you will see trains from both of these continents on the BSW.

I am also interested in the occasional "never-wozzer", for example the 2-10-2T that the GWR thought about for use on the iron ore trains up to Ebbw Vale (it was to be a bigger version of the 72xx 2-8-2T and would probably have derailed wherever it went more than the 2-8-2T did) and the BR Standard 8F 2-8-2 (91xxx number series, if you were wondering where that went) that was abandoned when the modernisation plan caused all new steam locomotive designs to be abandoned. I don't know if I'll build any of these, but if I do, don't be at all surprised.

That's enough for the moment. More to follow.

[EngineDriver]

Hi, thats a great start, my layouts been on the go for almost 15yrs and I still have not got a name for it, I can't seem to come up with anything that I like or that sounds plausable. So well done so far.

Nige.

[Budgie]

Parts of the railway have been in place for the past fifteen years, and are now showing their age. I am also showing my age and would rather spend less time on maintenance and more on playing. So I am changing the layout. The fiddle-yard will now be at the bottom of the garden, because I have had a large shed put in down there, and the old fiddle-yard will convert to a single plain track with a passing loop. The main line will be reduced from four to two tracks, and I am going to use recycled plastic for the parts of the trackbase that need renewing.

What I am going to do is install some kind of barrier all along the layout, to keep the flowers and trees (and especially dead leaves) away from the track. I've been looking at fruit cages, but what I could really do with for supports is something shaped like a lower-case f, that will support itself on the ground, rise up and be screwed to the baseboard supports, then continue upwards and curve forwards over the track at a reasonable height.

Currently the layout is a continuous double-track dogbone, 113 yards round. That's just under 5 scale miles. I don't expect that distance to change, although, as mentioned above, it will be reduced from double-track to single-track dogbone. What I want to do in due course is automate it, so I can set it going, sit back and enjoy it. I've got a load of Heathcote Electronics IRDASC-4 modules ready to install for 4-aspect colour-light signals, and I'm going to get some other electronics for train detection.

More to follow.

[aussietmrail]

Hi Jane welcome back great to see two more layout's added to this thread and seeing different construction techniques, it is tough trying to find a name for your layout, I just discovered that my layout name is a real name of a district or province in Tasmania, was going to change the name keeping it now.

Be great to see some pics Jane of your layout as is and the new build under way, I like the way of those signals, I will be building my own t save on money, haven't decided if I will have them on the layout or on the control panel You need a circuit board to work three and four way signals wow be awesome to see them change I have only made two way signals for mainly point changing using them for block operation as well.

I won't feel bad now taking for ever to get the layout up and running, all goes well Christmas time.

Tony from down under.

[jimbob]

Like you, l suffer from leaf fall and have been looking differant ways of combating it.

At present part of the layout has removable covers

mainly just laying on top of it but as l progress, ok start putting scenery in they need to be raised up.

The f shaped bracket works, l covered them with fine garden netting it worked but tended to come adrift in high winds. Being a cheapskate l used bent wire coat hanger for the supports although they need to be stonger really.

Please let us know how you get on.

[Budgie]

I've been thinking about removable covers.

Double track formation width in OO is 100 mm.The recycled plastic boards I'm thinking of using are 140 mm. wide. My layout is mainly straight, except for the dogbone-style ends.

I've got some offcuts of plastic guttering lying around from when I had the gutters on the house sorted out. These are between 110 and 115 mm. across, and half-round/semicircular. You can also get "square-line" guttering (which isn't square!), which might be better. Both B&Q and Screwfix are offering 18m. of this stuff for £38.

I'm thinking about hinging them to the boards, so they can be raised out of the way and keep flowers, etc out of the way as well.

To stop the hinges and fixings rusting solid, I'm thinking of using brass or stainless steel.

Obviously, before deciding on buying in bulk I shall have to try some more experiments.

[Budgie]

Here's something to keep my interest going