Gauge and Scale

Symington Hoo Railway is a narrow gauge line, but what is narrow gauge.

Gauge is the distance between the two rails of the railway track.

UK mainline railways operate on standard gauge which is 4 foot 8 1/2 inches

Railways running on tracks wider than 4 ft 8 1/2 inches are known as BROAD Gauge and on tracks with a gauge less than 4 ft 8 1/2 inches are known as NARROW gauge. Common Narrow gauges are 2ft (most common in UK), 2ft 3in and 2ft 6 in.

The Leighton Buzzard Narrow Gauge Railway runs on 2 foot gauge track

www.buzzrail.co.uk 

Scale

Building a model railway requires scaling down the prototypical elements of the real thing to a suitable size to fit in the space available to store and use the model.

As children we would be given toys to play with of different scales, so our toy motor bike was bigger than our double decker bus, the houses smaller than the toy people who we imagined lived in them.

So when we want to build a model everything has to be to scale, a common / standard unit of measurement needs to be used for everything.

Modelling of mainline standard railways in the UK is known as OO, for distances, length etc. measurements are taken as 4mm = 1 ft and OO gauge has a track gauge of 16.5 mm.

As seen above British main line railways operate on a gauge of 4 ft 8 1/2 inches (4.75 ft), commercial available OO track is gauged at 16.5 mm so we are not working to true gauge, WHY ?

Well in the UK we model at 4 mm = 1 ft, so 4.75 feet at 4 mm to the foot = 19 mm not 16.5 mm so there is some compromise when dealing with commercially produced track. In other countries (including the USA) model railways are modelled in HO scale which is 3.5 mm = 1 ft, so standard gauge of 4.75 feet = 16.625 mm (taken as 16.5 mm)

                            

For Hazel Markham I am not looking to build a standard gauge railway, I want a narrow gauge railway.

However for easy and availability I want to work with 4 mm to the foot scale, this means I can get and use OO gauge houses, people, animals, trees, structures, signalling and scenery all off the shelf.

But being narrow gauge I need the track gauge to be narrower than standard OO track.

The next readily available track a size down from OO is N gauge. 

N gauge track is produced at a gauge of 9mm.

So what prototypical gauge will that give me?

We know 4mm = 1 foot, 8mm = 2 feet etc

Therefore 9mm divided by 4 = 2.25 feet or 2 feet 3 inches, which we can see from above is a more than suitable gauge for as narrow gauge railway.

So a model railway scaled to 4mm (OO gauge) running on a track gauge of 9 mm is known as OO9 

The track I will be using is from Peco and is made for OO9 modelling, the sleepers are more to scale in size and spacing, than the closely spaced tiny N gauge sleepers.

Station Sign

1st draft

Hazel Markham - Buildings

To start with I am keeping to the basics, a station, signal box, waiting room and a goods storage shed. Space on the layout will be restrictive so I need to get the baseboard and track laying started to see about room for other buildings.

The Symington Hoo Railway is a narrow gauge line, so I wanted to keep the buildings small and light rather than the large buildings used by main line railways. At first I thought about a small wooden station building, but looking at photo of Harpenden East I wanted to have something that was better representative of the original station building, so an exception was made and one larger building is planned.

Harpenden East Station C.1960 - from the John Mann Collection

I decided to use the Wills CK16 Country Station from their Craftsman’s range. The beauty of this range is that the “kits” are supplied as sheets, the parts need to be cut out by the builder, so as the plans show a mirror plan to the actual station building layout this is not an issue and the kit can be easily adapted. I don’t want an exact copy of the original station building just a flavour of what it was like.

So why such a large building?

Well as I said I wanted to kind of pay homage to the now lost Harpenden East station and my justification is that Symington Hoo House is just up the road from Hazel Markham and Lord Highfield wanted a station to provide the status and comfort, he and his family required.

All trains carrying the Highfield family (who have their own coach) use the down platform regardless of which direction the family are travelling, this is to save the family from having to trudge over the foot crossing to the other platform and wait for the train in the cold and wet with the hoi polloi, but can cause problems for the signalman.

The other buildings I have chosen to use are more in keeping with the setting and the scale of the railway, they are wooden structures, these are –

SS63 Goods Yard Store from Wills

SS60 Station Platform Shelter also from Wills

503 Platform/Ground Level Signal Box from Ratio

The goods shed and signal box will be adapted to sit on brick rather than steel and stone as supplied and the platform shelter will get a tiled roof to give all three a more uniform look.

All the above have been bought and are waiting to be built.

Hazel Markham - Baseboard and track plan

Been playing with AnyRail 5 ( https://www.anyrail.com/download_en.html ) and got the track plan together and it fits on a 7ft x 2 1/2 ft baseboard

I was using the trial version which limits you to 50 items, so I scanned in the plan inserted it into a Word document and added the locations of the main buildings and signals.

I did plan to have a fiddle yard behind scenes but have gone for two traversers which should give me more storage for the available space.

The red lines represent the back scene boards, the dashed lines the edge of the bridges and the red line nearest the front will be the forward limit of the traversers which will be cover.

The diagram of the baseboard framing. I am looking to make the baseboard frame from 12mm ply cut into 100mm strips to give me the depth for the traversers mechanism and turnout motors plus anything else I may want to mount under the board.

The baseboard deck will probably be 6mm or 9mm ply.

Symington Hoo Railway

The Symington Hoo estate in Hertfordshire is owned by the Highfield family and consist of Symington House and gardens, ancient woodlands, arable, cattle and sheep farms. A number of watercress beds have been established along the banks of Leigh Brook a small river that runs through the estate. Since mediaeval times gravel quarrying has taken place on the estate, and in recent years Blackbridge Quarry has become a major source of income for the estate, supplying gravel for the road and building industries.

With the development of the quarry business, Lord Highfield, looked for ways to transport the gravel across the estate and was struck by the idea of a railway, because of the lie of the land and financial restraint he opted for a narrow gauge railway running across the estate and reaching out to Welham in the south east to connect with the main line train service and Dunston in the north west to connect with the canal system at Linton Busar.

Not only would the railway be used to transport gravel, but Lord Highfield would use it for transporting agricultural produce and watercress to Dunstan and Welham, he was also interested in providing a passenger service between the two, to help pay for the railway.

The railway would be 9 ½ miles long with a passing loop at the mid-way point which was Hazel Markham, engine stabling and maintenance would be centred at Welham where there was more room to accommodate the buildings.

Lord Highfield used his contacts with the Great Northern Railway to obtain the help of their engineering department to construct the railway, bespoke rolling stock was ordered in from various suppliers and the locomotives were ordered from Beyer, Peacock & Co. Tram locos were required as the railway would run along or at the side of a number of roads in Dunston to reach the already established industries, brewery, bakery etc. and the cattle and agricultural produce markets.  

The Symington Hoo Railway opened on the 1^st September 1860

Facts

The route of the railway is based on the GNR/ LNER running from Welwyn (Welham) to Luton then Dunstable (Dunston) where it joined with the  LMS / LNWR and onto Leighton Buzzard - Linslade & Leighton (Linton Busar) where sand from the Leighton Buzzard sand quarries was load onto narrow boats on the Grand Union Canal.

Hazel Markham – is Harpenden (later Harpenden East) station

Symington Hoo – I was brought up in Harpenden, Hertfordshire and lived in Park Mount. Park Mount was a 1930s extension of what was then Symington Street, the whole road is now called Park Mount. Luton Hoo was only a few miles up the road.

The Highfield Family – Highfield Oval was the local National Children’s’ Home.

Leigh Brook – The River Lee runs through Batford to the east of Harpenden and within yards of Harpenden East Station – Watercress beds used to exist along its banks.

Blackbridge Quarry – actually existed to the south of Wheathampstead on the prototype line.

Linton Busar - Linslade & Leighton

1^st September 1860 – was the date Harpenden East station opened.

Hazel Markham - Conception

Hazel Markham – an OO9 model railway

Back as a kid, my dad built me a model railway, TT scale, on a standard door board which meant it fitted on the dining room table, then hinged to my box room bedroom wall then later in the alcove in the back bedroom.

When I was 17, I thought it would be a good idea to include a narrow gauge railway on the layout to serve the quarry. I then thought the narrow gauge would need somewhere to go, so checked with my parents’ then flattened my TT model railway, an action I still regret and feel guilty about (the work my dad put into building it and the money he spent on it) and needless to say the new layout never got built.

But considering laying a quarry line (and the odd holiday in Wales) did spark an interest in narrow gauge railways and after many years there was an interest again in building a new layout, there have been a number of false starts, but now the time has come.

The concept.

I wanted a smallish layout, there’s not much room at home, and I wanted narrow gauge and something that was interesting to operate.

Like many railway modellers I scanned the internet for ideas and whittled it down to a couple, the one I liked most was the Fairlight Works / Harrowgate Gas Works railway http://fairlightworks.narrowplanet.co.uk/2010/02/planning-harrogate/  so I spent some time putting my own slant on the track plan, I drew up the plans and built the base board, then start laying the track.

I then realised I had fallen into the old trap, trying to fit too much into too smaller space, not only that, but I realised the layout was too complicated, messy and wouldn't operate the way I wanted, so time for a re-think.

Two things came to mind -

1] I needed to come up with my own layout, not re-gig someone else work.

2] There are or have been a large number of prototypical track plans out there in the real world that worked operationally and fulfilled their purpose.

So where should I look, well I was brought up in Harpenden in Hertfordshire, which once boosted 3 railway lines the MR / LMS line from London St Pancras to Bedford and beyond, the Harpenden to Hemel Hempstead (Nickey) line and the GNR / LNER, LNWR / LMS Welwyn to Leighton Buzzard, via Luton and Dunstable, now I remember all three running and in steam, I also remembered that the latter was single track with a passing loop at Harpenden East Station, sounded interesting, 

so time for a look at the Disused Stations Web Site and yes Harpenden East station was listed http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/h/harpenden_east/ .

Looking at the maps, the station had a goods shed, cattle pen, coal siding, signal box and what looked like an interesting track layout. The Disused Stations Web Site also contains a number of photos.

I sketched out the track plan and had a play tracing various operations and yes it seemed to work well, the plan would obviously need to be condensed and with Ox Lane being made to go over the railway instead of below on one side and Station Road on the other I had my frame work and boundaries for the model.

The other advantage is I know the area and there are still some features existing I can use as reference.

So I had my track plan, I just needed a name - my partner’s name is Hazel and mine is Mark, be nice to use them so just to make it a bit more placey, stick Ham on the end – Hazel Markham