The Heybridge Railway, 1889 to 1913

[RichardG]

Hello from Essex
I have been modelling in 0 gauge for less than a year. Last summer I bought a Minerva Manning Wardle K class loco. The idea at the time was to put it on a low loader and to build a 7 mm street scene to show off a rather lovely row of shops I was able to buy from the estate of a modeller who had bought commissions from Allan Downes. Who in turn inspired me a lot when I was modelling in my teens about 40 years ago.

Well, I just sort of looked at this model for a month or so. Put it under a Perspex cover and admired it. I had a look for a suitable “heavy haul” tractor in the diecast ranges and found nothing, and ended up just buying two yards of track and a couple of Dapol wagons as a sort of a fix. I discovered Peco BH rail uses their FB rail joiners. Then I realised the loco ran perfectly out of its box and ran better than most of my 16.5mm gauge models, and I enjoyed this so much I bought a Setrack point and a third yard of track and built a simple baseboard for a little test track.

Well the big mistake I made was to buy two wagons and to keep them near each other without a trip to the vet. Nature seems to have taken its natural course now I have four more RTR wagons and I am doing my ninth kit-built one. I have joined the North East Essex group of the Guild, and now signed up to Western Thunderer. Both seem like friendly places to share new models and ideas and progress and so on.

As a beginner in 7mm scale I may well not have much new knowledge to contribute here, but I am hoping to model a railway set in the 1890s; this is a relatively unpopular period and so maybe I can be useful here. I do know, I have given up on the idea of the low loader

Related topics
A private coach in the 1890s
Heybridge Basin (first part of a layout)
Small traverser with added vertical movements (abandoned design for a layout)
Using a R/C loco as the power plant for a small 0 gauge layout
Women are difficult (railway passengers 1889 to 1907)

 

[Northroader]

It all makes perfect sense to me. Hope you prosper with this.

 

[Rob Pulham]

Welcome to WT Richard, you will fit right in.

 

[RichardG]

Thank you all for your kind comments.

This is my second wagon (my first is a bit dull), this shows quite a bit about where I am in the hobby at the moment:


The prototype is not well know, if it ever existed; but there is evidence of origins to those in the know. My railway layout (not started yet) will be a might have been, and I think its service vehicles should be might have beens as well.
I can cut parts so they fit together (no filler in this build) and I can apply a simple coat of paint from a spray can but my hands shake when I try to paint in details.

I reach a stage of impatience when my models are nearing completion and so the coupling links are unsoldered because I wanted to do something else. The buffers could have been a millimetre shorter for coupling up on Setrack curves but I had to build one wagon to find this out. Nevertheless, I set up the wheels in their bearings about right, they spin freely without side play and the model sits flat on a flat bit of track.

I am not feeling remotely photogenic at the moment so the end of this wagon can be my avatar to begin with.

 

[RichardG]

Cracked me up, that bit did!!
Welcome aboard and enjoy the ride down the slippery slope.

I was aiming for twelve wagons for the project, I already have more than this and none of them are remotely related to the GER operation next door. I will be up to twenty by the time I have some GER ones. It certainly is a slippery slope.

 

[adrian]

This is my second wagon (my first is a bit dull), this shows quite a bit about where I am in the hobby at the moment:

It's a good start, clean and tidy, nothing wrong with dull wagons though. I think I don't have enough dull wagons, I keep building the interesting ones but they were probably a minority of vehicles. I need to build some more dull ones.

As for the photo's please click on the "full" image [ I've already done it for this post ] rather than the thumbnail. I keep looking for the setting to remove the thumbnail setting but unfortunately not found it yet!

 

[RichardG]

Ah ha!

By 'dull' I mean having nothing special of note. I am still pleased with the model, and I mixed the shade of red myself and it looks pleasing to me if not "authentic" or "correct" - this is for the 1890s. This was my first wagon kit.

 

[Heather Kay]

If it makes you happy, and you’re pleased with what you’ve made, that’s the main thing.

Oh, and a belated hello from south of the Thames! *waves*

 

[AJC]

Howdo - welcome! I must admit that I am struggling with the idea of a 'dull' wagon, they're what the railways were and are for, surely? Much more interesting for the most part than the noisy things on the other end of the draw hook...

More please, as an when.

Adam

 

[RichardG]

Dull was the wrong word. Perhaps "unimaginative" would have been better, a token Victorian tank wagon built straight from the box to help to set the scene. As a first attempt I followed the instructions including those for painting, and the more I learn the more I suspect the solebars and tank ought to be the same colour. I have bought another of these kits to try for the kit chassis with a half-round or cyclindrical tank, to make something with a bit of input from myself.

 

[RichardG]

This is my take on the Peco/Parkside kit for a NB van. The parts for this were incredibly cleanly moulded and there is no filler in the model, though the photo suggests a scrap of filler behind the buffer headstock would be good. A friend told me about Microset and Microsol and this is my best ever attempt at putting on transfers, I feel they really do look like they were painted on. The paint is Halfords grey primer with Humbrol satin enamel varnish on the top, and the brake lever is posable.

 

[allegheny1600]

Hi Richard,
Welcome to WT, it’s great to see you here.
Cheers,
John

 

[RichardG]

I have a theory that Pre-Grouping railways are becoming more popular now partly because no one who saw them for real is still around to tut-tut and point out anything they perceive as an error.
This is especially true of colours....

Well it is helping me a great deal. There are only a few colours, grey and red plus black and white. There is enough variation possible in these to make a train look "realistic" at a casual glance. Few people will try to create an argument in the first place. I have finished a Victorian wagon using Railmatch Diesel Roof Grey (to use it up really) and no-one has raised an eyebrow yet.

Also, the trains were smaller. This is important to me because my house is quite small. I can imagine a 7 ft layout with one of Jim Read's sloppy traversers making the run-round loop ('7mm micro' channel on YouTube) or an 11 ft layout with half a run round loop modelled; both will give enough space to run trains of three or four wagons.

 

[RichardG]

Re colour, arguably the Pre-Grouping railways were the most colourful that Britain's steam trains ever were, but they were photographed in black & white....

Sorry yes. I am in a Victorian mindset, so grey, red, black and white. White lead and red lead for pigments. Anything else would be a luxury for a little railway like mine, and the wagons which came to visit it.

 

[RichardG]

If it makes you happy, and you’re pleased with what you’ve made, that’s the main thing.

Oh, and a belated hello from south of the Thames! *waves*

I have always obtained more enjoyment from making models than running trains, so at the moment tackling small prototypes in 7mm scale seems sensible. The NB van can stand beside a Dapol RTR model without one looking 'home made' so this sets a standard for me which I can reasonably hope to achieve. I have probably put too much emphasis on 'period' rather than 'geography' so far (this will become clearer when I post more pics of models) and a long-term objective now is to make my postulated layout look like an operation in Essex. This will become easier if I can develop the skill set to build a GER loco, I would love to try the J15 from Jim McGeown and I have my third brass wagon kit to do before his Nellie/Polly starter loco. I enjoy being able to watch a train on the club test track, and I have built such a variety of wagons now I can be confident it is unique to me.

I have waved back but I expect you are blocked from sight by the dizzy heights of Danbury Hill (all 112 metres of it) between us.

 

[RichardG]

The first break van for the H&LLR comes from the Mid Wales Railway. The prototype worked there before becoming the chief engineer's vehicle (saloon?) on the Elan Valley dam project. It could do the same roles for me; an early break and let it be superseded by something more modern like the Slaters MR van in Edwardian times.



This is a laser-cut MDF kit by Sixteen Mill. I struggle with some of the parts and you can see where the wood split trying to do the hand rail bottom right. The roof structure was a completely new, from strip styrene. The wheelbase is only 7 ft 6 in so it sort of looks the part.

 

[Flaxfield]

Welcome, Richard.

These wagons are lovely. Sure, nothing flash but full of character. You choose your prototypes very well. The brake (or would it be break ?) van in particular is rather jolly.

A few on here have tried to influence a shift to 7mm on my part. I am easily led (!).......and this charming idea of yours isn't helping my resolve.......anymore than an emerging interest in the Bishops Castle Light Railway........


Rob.

 

[john lewsey]

Lovely work Richard, very very nice
John

 

[RichardG]

Welcome, Richard.

These wagons are lovely. Sure, nothing flash but full of character. You choose your prototypes very well. The brake (or would it be break ?) van in particular is rather jolly.

A few on here have tried to influence a shift to 7mm on my part. I am easily led (!).......and this charming idea of yours isn't helping my resolve.......anymore than an emerging interest in the Bishops Castle Light Railway........

As far as I can make out, BCR was a law unto itself. I am very glad we had railways like this, because I want to do a "might have been" railway for myself (my Heybridge branch) and the precedent of the BCR lets me propel a train without a brake van and I just need to explain, "the line climbs a bit out of sight from here".

I think these vans were 'break' vans when their main task was to deal with the effects of broken couplings and so a train in two pieces, and later 'brake' vans when their task was to tighten the couplings so they didn't break in the first place. I will guess this happened gradually as trains became longer and the slack towards the back of a rake was likely to receive a greater snatching force as the loco picked up speed.

The Mid Suffolk had a brake van built by G R Turner in 1906, very similar to the asymetric MR one in the Slaters kit. I have bought one of these to build and I expect I will call it a brake van, so I will have one of each.

 

[RichardG]

I built my chaldron wagon before my break van and it got out of sequence because I wanted to try out my new camera. This is a Nikon D7200 from Cameraworld in Chelmsford who guided me towards a sensible secondhand replacement for my ageing Fuji s5 Pro. The new camera seems to cope with near-blacks (very dark greys) and black and white rather well.

I am still pleased with the wheels on this, I tried quite hard because they are so conspicuous.

The Surrey Iron Railway had wagons similar to this, the basic shape is not exclusive to the North East and I thought my railway could acquire one so a horse could move small quantities of coal around the place.