The Kirtley Branch Legacy

When the May 2013 Gazette (Vol 18, No 11) dropped through my letter box it brought with it a blast of clean fresh nostalgic air. Yes, it was David Hodgson's feature on his Nelson County Peninsular Railway, a system that could trace its beginnings back to pre-war days. His story encompasses a time familiar to many of us, and I for one can so easily associate with his trains of the forties and fifties. It was a time when model railways were fun and did not have the rigid disciplines that now sometimes engulf us all in some form or another.

The great outdoors was common ground to many in those days. I can trace my yearning for a railway in the garden back to about 1938 when an article in the Meccano Magazine told of a group of youngsters at a local public school who had laid their tinplate tracks around a shrubbery in the grounds. This was the spark that set my young mind in the direction of a model railway in the garden, and that is where my lines have always been situated. A very early visitor to the embryonic line with a clockwork Binns Rd product to the fore.

Growing out of short trousers and out of tinplate rails, I slowly entered the world of standard O gauge; the norm at the time, and finally in about 1950 I experimented with fine scale. At least, that is, with fine scale rail. It started in 1943 when I was sent, as a trainee reporter, to interview a market gardener who had a large O gauge model railway in his grounds. From the moment I saw it I was completely hooked. I was set on a course that has given me a wonderful hobby an absorbing interest that has lasted for seventy years.

It was Dave Rowlands, no less, who told me that I must be a bit of an iconoclast (I think that was the word he used) to have built my garden line with fine scale rail, but utilising coarse standard wheels and all sited only a little above ground level. After gnawing at that bone for quite some time, I came to the conclusion that perhaps he had a point.

But what a ghastly time it was to get involved in this model railway business; absolutely nothing was available. Raw materials were almost nonexistent and those that were available required ‘permits’. Secondhand items were sometimes advertised in the model railway press, but things from that source often proved unsatisfactory. The first such items I was able to obtain were assorted track parts; odd lengths of brass or steel rail (mainly rusty) and chairs that fitted where they touched. The rail sections differed so much that they resembled a miniature steeplechase course and the borrowed clockwork loco and rolling stock had a very bumpy ride. It did not make things any easier inasmuch as trainee reporters were paid in shillings rather than pounds.

A strip of breeze concrete laid just above ground level and alongside the garden path formed my first track base. My parent’s garden was the scene of these early exploits and remained so for about a dozen years and was the anvil on which I learned the trade. A few more yards of very coarse scale rail with many dozens of chairs were acquired on the second hand market together with some rolling stock, and a sort of shuttle service was run.

Inevitably my call up came, but the RAF soon came to the conclusion that as a wireless operator/air gunner I would be of more danger to my compatriots than to the enemy, and medical discharge soon came along. After demob the model scene was still pretty grim with no happier state of affairs in sight. Despite that, a few more lengths of rail were obtained and the line was developed into a U-shape around the garden. A rather plain concrete viaduct was attempted (shape of things to come?) and a 1930 vintage clockwork Bassett-Lowke, Royal Scot was bought from a friend for £4. The beginnings of the first layout 1949-50 The first record of the use of fine scale track 1950 or 1951 An earlier photo of the first lengths of bullhead fine scale tack laid along a strip of breeze concrete by the garden path.

This saw my first venture into rebuilding, if I dare to use that word. The clockwork mechanism was changed to an electric one from Lowke’s, a few lengths of centre-third rail was laid and a dry battery attached. There was a satisfying run up the garden and back, and we were in business; until the battery conked out. But the incentive for 12volt was there.

The first task was to make the Scot more attractive. The tender was fitted with a shaped wrap-around Stanier type profile while the front end developed smoke Deflectors; all made from a handy biscuit tin. Painting and lining followed after a fashion. Lining was by poster colour applied with a very ordinary pen, and nameplates were made in the photographic department of my newspaper. It became Black Watch and Bonds transfers provided the number 6102 for the cabside and the letters LMS for the tender. I think I ought to have left it as it was! A year or so later, to my absolute shame, I painted this loco in a horrible shade of green; that awful product of nationalisation. I repented later and made my way back to the Crimson Lake fold.

Soon after the war, some very useful supplies became available through ex-WD surplus stores. There were transformers, selenium rectifiers and all sorts of nuts and bolts, which were a godsend not only to we modellers, but to the model engineering hobby as a whole. I constructed a controller on a sheet, of asbestos with bolt heads for contacts, a springy brass arm as a rotary contact, and a section of electric fire element as resistance wire. It worked too!

About that time I joined Leicester Model Railway Group and came across a lot of brainy chaps who knew what they were talking about. Between them they had designed a very efficient stud contact collector. It was arranged on the parallel ruler system, was sprung, and trailed at an angle of about 30 degrees. I am still using this design now. The group also experimented with 24 volt supply using 12v motors. I found this ideal for garden model railways as track rarely needs cleaning. I use this principle today.

Television gradually came into the public domain and after the coronation the viewing numbers burgeoned and reception interference reared its ugly head.

In what were euphemistically called ‘fringe reception areas’ the problem was acute and defied the best efforts of the GPO engineers that were trying to suppress it. For instance their detector van picked up signals from my model railway several hundred yards away. The situation became so intense that I know of one or two modellers, not all in O gauge, who gave up the hobby in despair. It was not until the transmission signals were changed from 405 lines to 625 that most of our problems were overcome. Nevertheless, the situation had left a nasty taste in the mouth and it put me off television for many years.

The fifties saw the demise of some well known O gauge suppliers and Bassett-Lowke and LMC were soon to leave the scene. As a result, in 1956 a few of us like minded souls corresponded mainly through the columns of Model Railway Constructor. This publication seemed more kindly disposed to O gauge and gauge 1 modellers, and a number of the 7mm scale fraternity gathered at Euston for a meeting.

As we thought we were a pretty decent bunch of chaps we talked ourselves into forming an official group and decided to call ourselves the Gauge O Guild. There are a few more of us now!

I was becoming rather disillusioned with the appearance of my trackwork and built several yards with slimmed down sleepers set at about 40 to the yard. It was a bit of an improvement, but the rail and chairs seemed too heavy in my eyes. Although this first railway was getting near to its sunset, I made the big decision to try Rocket Precision's fine scale nickel-silver bullhead rail with right hand and left hand chairs. I laboriously cut seemingly endless quantities of scale-sized sleepers from tomato box wood and set about assembling the parts on ½in wide battens.

This proved to be a vast improvement visually; although a price was paid in sore thumbs caused by forcing on all those die cast chairs.

Bonds wheels caused no problem as their flanges easily cleared the chairs, but other wheels were forced to conform by the old expedient of mounting them in a hand drill in the vice and turning the handle like a mad dentist and attacking the flanges with a naughtily-named coarse file.

Experiments were made with coach building utilising thin card. Three layers, glued and laminated were formed around a long wooden block shaped to the dimensions of a coach body. The card shell was heavily treated with shellac and when thoroughly dry oversize window openings were hacked out and carefully made coach sides, with quarter lights and door openings cut out with a craft knife, were applied to either side. Glass from disused press negative plates was cut to size and fixed in the window apertures in the body shell.

Hardwood ends and floor added a little extra weight. The bogies and undergear were hand-me-downs from earlier attempts. After adding a little detail, painting and adding transfers, those vehicles gave a little extra stock to run. After some timer warping set in and spoiled what was hoped to be an accepted system of coach building. Later, laminated very thin plywood, as used by the builders of model aircraft, was very successful. A case of one hobby helping another. The green Black Watch easily tackling the 1:72 bank on the line in the early fifties.

In 1957, the stud contact line came to the end of its life and my long-suffering parents could return to growing spuds and roses. A professional rubble remover took away all the concrete and breeze that I had smashed up and put into numerous sacks.

I married Joan and we moved into a bungalow with a garden behind it which was nothing more than a wasteland of mud smothered with builders' rubble and other detritus. Over time this became the site of the current Kirtley Branch, which has kept me entertained, exasperated and annoyed for more than 50 years. It is not really the end of the story of that earlier line because so much background knowledge and experience from those days was grafted on to Kirtley.

From the outset we decided that we wanted an attractive garden into which a model railway would blend comfortably. We wanted small plants and shrubs that would not look too out of place alongside the line. There were to be no supporting posts and miles of timber; we wanted something different.

We were fortunate in obtaining about 10 tons of granite from nearby Groby in Leicestershire. The load was due to form part of the base of what was to become the M1 motorway. Instead of going to the works which had by then reached somewhere near Lutterworth, the load was diverted to my home. I am sure it found much better use in my garden. 1958, the first steps in building the rockery for the Kirtley Branch

Building a sunken lawn generated a lot of surplus soil and this enabled the rockery to be built up on either side of the plot. The route of the railway was sculpted onto this and breeze concrete, a useful porous material, again formed the trackbed. Originally a multi-span girder bridge was in the plans, but the thought of what had happened one night over the Firth of Tay caused the plan to be amended to a 13 arch curved viaduct. The rockery finished showing the railway in its botanical frame.

Father in law, a joiner, introduced me to a wood called Western Red Cedar and he acquired a number of planks of this for me and cut scores of ¼ x ¼in strips for use as sleepers. The wood is very soft, is resistant to rot and takes track pins without splitting. I still have a few lengths of track that have been on the layout for about 50 years. Mind you, it had been well treated with genuine creosote. Try and obtain that now! Dad also got me some two-part resin adhesive that he had used in the war repairing wings and bodies of Mosquito fighter-bombers. This was something new at the time and these resins are in everyday use now.

The setting of the current Kirtley Branch with garden planting in progress.

As well as quite a lot of rolling stock, Kirtley Works have knocked out more than 20 scratch-built locos. The first engine actually tackled was a Gauge O Guild kit for a jinty. This is still running, although after over 40 years of use the gears are getting a bit noisy. It was provided by our then Trade Liaison Officer, George Hinchcliffe. A local scrap yard had a jinty to cut up and being able to view it enabled the correct placing of some of the fittings.

All those pre Kirtley experiments didn't go to waste. We have 24volt input to our controllers made by friends with mini electronic skills. We use fine scale track section still built to standard dimensions, Bonds and Leakey motors, and rail lengths with no battens, floating on 1/8 in granite chippings. The control centre is an old 18ft long greenhouse converted with doubleglazed side panels and a solid roof. It is all designed to be kinder to the models and to the poor old so-and-so who sits at the control panels thinking of what it was like in those days over 70 years ago! Morning down train with Crab 791 up front. The bridge was made with Woolworth’s brass curtain rail and mesh from the garden centre. The train is a mixture of LMC, CCW and home made vans. The GWR vans were built around 1930 from satin walnut by a friend.