Brettell Road, 1960s black country (ish)

[john lewsey]

Hi Jim great video love this layout

 

[Jim smith-wright]

Thanks John

Need to do a steam video next

 

[john lewsey]

That would be nice Jim

 

[Jim smith-wright]

This is the view of the real inspiration behind Brettell Road. This is taken from Moor Street bridge looking towards Brettell Lane/Stourbridge. The remains of the sidings can just be made out to the right of the running lines. There is nothing to show it now but this location was, in 1858. the site of what was, at the time, Britain's worst rail disaster.

The story starts on the morning of the 23rd of August and The Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway Company (which was known as the worse and worse, a nickname it never lost) had organised a day trip for Sunday School children from Wolverhampton to Worcester. In the event the ticket offices mostly ignored the instruction that the trip was for school kids and many sold the tickets to anyone. The train set out from Wolverhampton made up of a tender loco, 24 4 wheel coaches and a guards van (info is sketchy it seems that the guards van was a good van although apparently some guards coaches were included in the train).

It picked up passengers and vehicles along the way as by the time it arrived at Worcester it was made up of 2 locomotives, 42 coaches and at least 2 brake vans. The outward journey hadn't been without incident as they had coupling failures at Brettell Lane, Hagley, and Droitwich. It was estimated that there were between 1500 and 2000 passengers on board when it got to Worcester. The train was examined by the inspector of rolling stock at Worcester, the repaired or replaced side chains were replaced by four-link goods couplings before the return journey, but no attempt was made to repair or replace failed centre couplings as the inspector considered that a re-made screw coupling was weaker than the goods couplings.

For the return trip the train was divided into 2, the first being made up 2 tender engines, 28 carriages, and 2 brake Vans (one at each end). The other was made up one tender engine, 14 carriages and a brake van. The second train followed the first 15 minutes behind. The line was worked on the interval system, in which trains were allowed to follow the previous train without positive confirmation that it had reached the next station, relying instead on it having been an adequate time interval ahead at the last station. The guard on the first train was a man called Frederick Cook who it was alledged had allowed passengers into the brake van and even let them operate the brake while he played cards and drank with them. He was normally tasked with being the guard on freight trains and might not have been all that suited to passenger work.


The line from Brettell lane rises on a 1 in 75 gradient towards round oak so the second train had an additional engine added to cope with this at Stourbridge. It was after 8pm when the first train arrived at Round Oak, the second arriving at Brettell lane at about the same time. Reports say it was dark and there was a lot of smoke blowing across the tracks from the local factories. The train of the first crew hadn't spotted that another coupling had broken and 17 coaches and the brake van, with about 450 people on board were now rolling back towards Brettell lane. A porter tried to chase the carriages but they soon became to fast for him. The last hope was that the guard would stop the train. Frederick Cook was not on the train though, he was on the platform.

A telegraph message was sent the staff at Brettell Lane to warn them. Unfortunately the second train was actually departing the station at the time and the telegraph was missed. The second train was struggling with the incline and when the driver did spot the runaway, very late, he slammed on the brakes. Hit train slowing to 2mph at the point of impact. The free coaches were doing about 16 mph but construction at the time meant that the brake van and 2 coaches as good as disintegrated. 12 people died in the crash, 150 were injured of which 2 would pass away later. All of the victims were on the first train. The driver of the second was said to be 'shaken'. His loco had its buffers ripped off but was otherwise not too badly damaged.

Amazingly several hours later the track was cleared and the 2 trains carried on their journeys to Wolverhampton. Some of the injured getting back onboard as they just wanted to go home.

Frederick Cook claimed at inquest that he never left the train, that the brake hadn't held the train and he had jumped for his life at the last moment. He changed his testimony when it was established the brakes were off and he looked remarkably clean and uninjured for someone who had apparently jumped from a train doing 16 mph! Tests showed the brake would have held the train and he was charged with manslaughter but acquitted. Some alledge the jury was bribed.

The view looking towards Round Oak/ Wolverhampton

 

[Jim smith-wright]

The point of the above picture is nothing more than the drainpipe. Yeah so what? you are no doubt thinking, we've seen this stuff before! Well you would be right but modelling this sort of stuff is now a lot easier thanks to some useful bits from Alan at Modelu. See Pipes & Fittings – Modelu
I still need to add the actual gutters yet.

Speaking of Modelu a couple of Alan's figures discuss the latest delivery of real ale to the pub. The chaps umbrella is actually a parasol intended for Z gauge. The lights and indicator on the lorry do work as can be seen in this little video of a wander around the layout.
brettell road walk around, night - YouTube
For those who like to see things, here's a daylight version too!
brettell road walk around - YouTube

Finally a couple of images starting with Brettell road trying to impersonate a small depot somewhere!

 

[john lewsey]

Cracking stuff

 

[Jim smith-wright]

Originally I wasn't going to really have 'through trains' on Brettell Road - the through line was only going to be used by the industrial shunter but like most of the plans for this layout it all went a bit wrong. So now that the branch is used by BR as well it made sense to have a short parcels train. I had already done a LMS GUV from the Lima model but in another hark back to my childhood train set I always liked my Lima Siphon G as well. I'm not quite sure what happened to the original one I had but I found a bashed up one on Ebay for a few quid and set to work.

The Lima body has had the lower vents added from the cooper craft (ex blacksmiths) etch. Kindly picked up for me from Scalefour southwest last year by Steve Carter of the Scalefour Society. The bogies are MJT on the brassmasters frames, as are the buffers, with small steps from the Frogmore Confederacy Range. The gangway is a Hornby DMU one which I cut into from the bottom and glued back together to give that characteristic drooped look.

The other side with some of the vents left open.

In terms of somewhere for the guard to sit, the good old Mainline LMS BG. just new handrails, glazing and underframe bits on this one.

A couple of RTR wagons from Bachmann. The grain wagon has had its axleboxes replaces with Parkside spares and the brakes moved to line up with the wheels.
Finally below just a few images of my Jinty pottering about.

 

[john lewsey]

Lovely detail on this layout
John

 

[Jim smith-wright]

Afraid there's nothing new in this post, just tweaks of things already seen.

Ok so you can't see this one really but in testing the parcels stock shown last time, this point wasn't as reliable as I liked. I have a view that all stock should go everywhere and while the parcels stuff probably wont run over this point at shows. it did show up the problem. To be honest its always been not quite right so having tracked down the problem to the nearest point blade the old one was removed and a new one filed up and put in its place. The old one and a few dead chairs can be seen in the ballast and I thought why not let the layout have a bit of its own history, so they are now firmly glued there.

Looking the other way nothing more than a bit of oily track. After the initial coats of track grime and gunmetal I treated it with AK interactive wet effect and engine oil.

At the recent Derby Show (where we were showing Moor Street) my friend and fellow layout operator Paul pointed out that railcar 14 had lamp irons on the nose. I dunno how I missed this. So given that I hadn't sorted the horns either (should be 4 not 2) I have set to work. I also found that there were cab end handrails and Dapol had missed the double door handrails as well.

Another small tweak that I've been meaning to do is to sort out the cab side windows on the class 20. The original Bachmann ones slid open and like most RTR gimmicks were a bit naff. So using a spare pair of window frames from Extreme Etches that I had lying around I've fixed this little bug bear.

My Derby lightweight was always a bit of a rush job for Scaleforum. The gap between the vehicles being much too big was the main eyesore!

Closed up and a masokits gangway fitted.

Another problem was that the on board lights lit up the cab. Some simple blinds from black paper resolved that.

Moving on to the warehouse. I've finished the guttering and added a low handrail along the top of the wall. Although Brettell Road is set well before the health and safety culture we have now there was still a reasonable chance of a driver falling off the wall!

A bit of the gutter has fallen off at some point. So some water stains and higher weeds below are the results.

 

[Jim smith-wright]

I've always liked bubble cars (let's be honest, who doesn't?) and i recently stumbled across a cheap Lima class 121 so Brettell Road will get a class 122 to play with. Here it is ready for paint.

The roof has had the grooves filled (not sure why lima did this when the retooled the 117 as the roof was the only bit of that model they got right ) with new vents from MJT. The cab domes are spares from the DC Kits 304 kit with my own etched fronts. The exhausts are spares from Dapol (with thanks to Geoff of this forum for pointing out they were available as spares.) and the headcode boxes are microstrip. Buffers are from 51L and the bogies are Hornby class 110 as per most of my DMU's. Buffer steps are my own etch and the underframe had has some strategic holes drilled in it to open it up a bit.

 

[Jim smith-wright]

I was kind of hoping to avoid a repaint on the bubble car even thought the lining was closer to a class 121 than a 122, but when tried to remove the number and the roundels (which were off register) the underlying paint came with it so a repaint it was.

I toyed with doing 55012 as it has a local significance. Being one of a few bubble cars that on the Stourbridge Town shuttle had a bit of a problem and ended up hanging over the road (see Dodger smashes through buffers : 1977) but ironically I had already done it for New Street. I don't recall selecting it specially so 55018 it was instead.

 

[john lewsey]

I do like this

 

[farnetti]

I agree with you John, the detailing is fabulous. It's been ages since I last saw you, I wish I had space for Hartley Hill but sadly no room.

Ken

 

[Brian T]

What a cracking little layout this,especially like all the little details here and there like the rail built bracing for the wall.
so much to get lost in....excellent stuff.

Brian.

 

[Jim smith-wright]

So, I found a pretty cheap Bachmann 1f on Ebay and as usual, attracted to its somewhat out of proportion looks I snapped it up. First stage was to see just how easy the Brassmasters Easychas actually was. Ive used one of these before on my Kirtley but i didn't use it as intended so this time I decided to do things properly.

For those that don't know the easychas is designed to fit around the RTR chassis and provide springing. Its designed to be used in 2 distinct ways. The super easy way that uses the original Bachmann coupling rods and brake rigging and the not quite as easy etched version. Naturally I went for the latter. If you decide to go for the former however you can get a sprung P4 (or EM) loco without even having to fire up the soldering iron! As it was the full monty approach only took an enjoyable afternoon to put together anyway. To coin an advertising slogan it does indeed do exactly what it says on the tin!

 

[Jim smith-wright]

Moving on to the body of my 1F I removed the plumbing on the right side as my chosen prototype didn't have vacuum brakes. I also replaced the splashers with scale sized ones from Brassmasters. I decided that the lamp irons were a bit too chunky so replaced those too.

The Brassmasters kit includes new coal rails. I thought the tool box on the the RTR model was too small so I used a spare left over from my Kirtley build. I also removed the cab doors which due to the Bachmann design was dead easy to do. The moulded rear window bars were very crude and hadn't been moulded properly anyway so those too were replaced. After these pictures were taken I replaced the buffers with Lanarkshire models examples. Below are a few images of the finished loco.

The fireman (modelu) takes a breather!

 

[Jim smith-wright]

Although no one has said anything I've never been that happy with the back scenes on Brettell Road. Back scenes are a bit of a quandary as you dont want them to be naff but then you dont really want the viewers of a layout to notice them either. They kind of need to be there but not there at the same time. Initially I used a combination of brush painting and car aerosols to do them but with hindsight and a sprinkling of self reflection I probably didn't put in the time and effort I should have. Below is the first incarnation.

Above is my revised version. I downloaded some textures from scalescenes and set to work on photoshop. I could have rendered my own textures but given what scalescenes charge it really not worth anyones time to do this in my opinion. Below are some more images before and after.

 

[Jim smith-wright]

Below are a few images of how it all looks in the intended light.

 

[Overseer]

Jim,
They look good. Not that the painted buildings looked bad in context but the wall textures and crisper lines do add finesse. I am not so sure about the roofs though as the new ones look a bit flat compared with your paint tone gradations on the originals. Maybe they look a bit dry?

 

[Jim smith-wright]

I wanted to tone them down as it’s supposed to be cloudy. I thought the originals were a bit too moon lit.