The making of Dennis

The Snailbeach  Railways wasn’t exactly flush with locomotives – it only ever owned 6 throughout its 80 odd year history. The longest lived was its first - a second hand cast-off 0-4-2ST from a colliery named Belmont – of which there are no surviving photos. If there was a loco which is synonymous with the SDR its the third loco Dennis, this was purchased new from Bagnall in 1906 and named after Sir Henry Dennis the SDR’s Engineer and Director. It was an 0-6-0T of monumental proportions for 2’4” gauge; Dennis’ size tells us that the SDR thought it had more in common with its 2’6” gauge near neighbour at Welshpool, than the 2’ gauge railways of North Wales. 

Dennis was a direct replacement for the SDR’s second loco Fernhill a Scottish made 0-6-0ST of similar size showing that there was a clear purchasing policy for hefty locos. When Fernhill was bought in 1881 traffic was heavy in both directions (smelted lead trains of 100t downhill) and similar amounts of coal for the mines and smelter back up grade. By the time Dennis came along however, the up grade traffic was dwindling, and quarry products were surpassing lead ores as the main mineral traffic. The size of these loco’s appears to have been mainly required for downhill braking effort on unfitted (i.e. no continuous train brake) mineral trains.

Dennis had a short but brutal working life with very little maintenance, by 1920 she was out of service, and horses worked the empties back up hill for the final year of the old company. Disassembled for a major overhaul when Col Stephens bought the railway in 1923, the work was never completed and she was eventually scrapped in the 1930s. 1920s photos of the partly disassembled loco next to the Snailbeach shed show how much bigger she was than the reguaged 2’ gauge locos Col Stephens bought to re-power the line. 

The model

A 00 scale (1:76) white metal kit for Dennis has been around since the 1960s made by GEM - the range is currently sold by Lytchett Manor Models but are definitely beginning to look a bit dated. Typical of early 009 kits this required an N gauge donor chassis to complete – in this case from a Graham Farish Pannier tank. The chassis is reasonably close in terms of wheelbase, but is of course inside framed. 

I purchased a part complete Dennis kit for my first attempt at building part of the Snailbeach in the early 1990s; it must have been at least 10 years old even at that point. The early Farish chassis either run well – or they don’t; with no apparent reason for the difference. Some say its all in the motor brush spring pressure – who knows; I got a good one.

Despite the fact it ran reasonably well, the inside frames just looked horrible on what was supposed to be an outside framed loco. So when I started thinking about having a second go at modelling the Snailbeach rebuilding Dennis to a more prototypical appearance ended up being the catalyst for the whole project.

For a start I ordered up a set of BR class 08 shunter wheels from Graham Farish’s spares department (by now part of the Bachmann group). These have a much finer wheel standard than the 1980s era models, and have plastic axle and crank extensions for outside frames; this makes the modern 08 chassis a go to source for 009 steam loco mechanisms.  The wheelset comes assembled and is not a direct replacement for the old pannier tank one - the connecting rods need to be swapped, and the main drive gear on the centre axle is different (a smaller nylon spur gear on the modern 08, whereas its a brass worm gear on the 1980s pannier chassis). Swapping the rods was straightforward enough, but the gear was a more technical challenge. 

The nylon spur gear on the modern wheelset is off-set and supported by an central boss cast into the axle, this had to be removed to make room for the brass worm gear to fit. To do this I used a gear puller to remove one wheel and then the nylon gear. Next I placed the wheelset in a mini-drill to make an improvised lathe and “turned” the boss off with a jeweller's file. I then carefully tapped the brass worm gear into place, and reassembled the wheelset using a quartering tool.

The chassis then needed a set of dummy outside frames. I fabricated these out of styrene sheet and glued them to the chassis block with CA.

Power for the wheels

The old style Farish chassis are nearly impossible to convert to DCC due to the bottom motor brush being integral with the frame (and yes there are ways to do them, but the results aren’t always good). Instead I thought I would experiment with “dead rail” – that is no power to the rails but on-board battery power with radio control. I thought this might improve slow running – as rail pickup is usually the problem at slow speeds in smaller scales. Li-po batteries and r/c receivers are now small enough to make this possible even in such a small scale. I initially set Dennis up with a DT (DelTang) Rx63 r/c receiver and 9v inverter to boost the 3.7v output of the single re-chargeable battery to a voltage suitable for the motor. 

The boards are not difficult to wire in, but a certain amount of reading is required first. I found the UK based Micron RC website very helpful.  I tested this installation a few times - operation was slow and smooth, but I found that even with the largest Li-po battery (70mAH 50C) I could get inside the model, there was only 15-20 minutes run time. This may well have been improved with a modern low resistance motor drawing less current or requiring a lower voltage than the old 3 pole open frame type. A second battery pack running in tandem would have also lengthened run time – possible in HO or larger scales but not in 009. I removed the r/c gear and reverted to conventional 12v DC analogue control via the rails. This decision meant that Pontesbury Sidings was to be my first conventional analogue layout I have built in 20 years.

With a body to match

The whitemetal body kit was entirely disassembled, and stripped of various layers of previous paint, the parts cleaned of glue, filed for a better fit then re-assembled with CA. Parts of inside of the kit under the boiler and tanks were trimmed back to make way for the r/c gear. Even with this metal gone the kit remains very heavy for this scale, so no problems with tractive effort here! 

I replaced the cab roof with a new one fabricated from brass sheet, installed “turned” cylinder lubricators and fabricated injectors with control rods. Where areas of rivet detail had been damaged due to paint removal I added this back in with Archer 3D decals. The body then got a coat of primer, followed by an apple green colour (mixed from Revell and Tamiya paints) on the cab, tanks and boiler, red buffer beams and black smoke box and below the running plate. The tanks and cab got a squirt of gloss varnish, and then Fox Transfers lining decals were installed. I always use Microscale Micro Sol to settle decals it melts them onto the surface and providing they are on a shiny surface gets rid of any film silvering. 

Once dry I gave the body a coat of Testors Dullcoat (I won’t use any other matte clear varnish), then I added hand rails, and etched maker's and name plates by Narrow Planet. The final steps were a driver figure (Masterpiece by Falcon Figures – the manufacturer doesn't have website but you can get them here, or direct from the manufacturer at UK shows or mail order) and some weathering using Lifecolor pigments and inks. 

Oh no! Not another bike trail....

One of the things about the model railway hobby is that it incorporates a lot of different disciplines and interests in a wide variety of prototypes. So whilst I am busy finishing off scenic details like trees and buildings on my very English Snailbeach & District Railways inspired Pontesbury Sidings, like the butterfly my attention is being drawn to the next attractive flower that has just opened. What other layouts with other themes might also fill the same space in my study?

Well I own a reasonable collection of New England railroad models in HO, ranging in date from 1945-80 so that started me thinking. The larger New England railroads in the 1940s/50s started spinning marginally profitable branchlines off to newly formed shortlines; selling or leasing not only the line but lots of second hand equipment. 

One of my favourites of this ilk is the St Johnsbury & Lamoille County (at various times also called St Johnsbury & Lake Champlain RR, Vermont Northern RR, Lamoille County RR and finally the Lamoille Valley RR). Originally operated by the Boston & Maine this bumbled 100 miles from the New Hampshire border across northern Vermont on old light rail traversing pastoral meadows and sylvan hills with numerous picturesque covered bridges along the way. By the 1950s as an independent shortline it dressed its roster of mostly second hand GE, later EMD and Alco, road-switchers in snappy paint schemes, and was tacking a caboose on the end of its daily freight well into the FRED era.  It was a bridge route for forwarding traffic towards the ice free tide port at Portland, Maine but also served a surprising number of industries on its own line too (feed mills and milk, gravel and stone quarries, lumber, furniture and plywood mills, an asbestos plant, and a heavy engineering works to name a few); from a modellers perspective there’s really nothing not to like about it. The StJ & LC soldiered on for 120 odd years until the mid-1990s, finally succumbing to flood damage and becoming yet another bike trail.

A few years ago I built a layout called the White Mountain Branch layout in my garden shed - this was set in New England supposedly somewhere near the eastern end of St J & LC line. Maybe I'll post some history some other time? When the White Mountain Branch was dismantled for a house move 10 years ago, I kept the scenes I'd called West Cambridge and Johnsboro engine terminal more or less intact in the hope that I could re-use them at some stage. The engine terminal has not weathered being stored in the garage well, but the West Cambridge scene which was the most complete is in reasonable condition. With some track realignment to provide a loop and narrowing the scene down it fits the space nicely.

The latest photos from West Cambridge would seem to suggest that the now 10 year dormant line is destined to be yet another bike trail as the rails are being torn up. But wait! The line has been sold off to the newly incorporated Johnsboro & Lake Champlain Railroad. The demolition work is in fact the start of some track realignment that the new shortline needs to do now its not part of the B&M/MEC family. They hope to be recommencing service to the local industries soon....

This article first appeared in the "Rail Replacement News" newsletter of Alton Model Railway Group

Underneath Pontesbury Sidings

One of the most appealing aspects of the model railway/railroad hobby is the range of skills it helps you develop. From research and draughtsmanship, woodworking and electrical, electronics and computing, paint and artistry, even the core model construction part of the hobby means working with a range of materials (wood, resin, plastic, metal, plaster) and therefore a range of workshop skills to match. There is always a new skill to learn, technique to master or new product to try out.

I must admit that woodworking is not my strongest skill set, but still wood underpins the majority of model railway layouts, so you need to know some basics. Wood does have advantages: it is widely available from hardware and builders’ stores, its not expensive, and not that difficult to work – on top of that in our environmentally conscious world its from a sustainable resource. Pontesbury sidings is no different, indeed it was designed to fit in as the middle shelf of a wall mounted rack. 

The base is 12mm exterior grade birch-faced hardwood ply shelf, 6ft (1.8m) long by 1ft (300mm) wide. With a narrow-gauge prototype its amazing how much you can fit in this modest space – without having to resort to the unrealistic “rabbit warren” beloved by many 009 modellers. 

After fitting the shelf to the wall mounted brackets it soon became obvious that the ends were going to droop without some stiffening. Many would have added a dimensional lumber frame, but I wanted a smooth base to slip on and off of the shelf brackets; instead I added a stiffening piece (a ply strip) along the back of the layout. This would later help mounting the backscene.

Pontesbury sidings were raised about the natural ground level on a substantial earth embankment – the railway needed to pass above the main road between Pontesbury and Minsterley (now the A488), and also end up being raised above the GWR standard gauge so it could tranship its main loads by gravity. I created this embankment by using 12mm ply risers which were glued to the shelf – clamping these while gluing gives a much better bond. Holes were drilled in the risers for threading wiring before the track bed of 6mm ply was glued and screwed on top. This all added to the structural strength of the layout. 

Not quite the quickest layout baseboard I’ve built, that was from extruded foam, but not far off. So far so good. 

Next time – I’ll look at track laying

The Shropshire Minerals Light Railway

A lot of model railway enthusiasts say they model the railways they grew up with; maybe its a form of nostalgia. By rights then I should be modelling British Railways in the late 1970s and early 1980s - so that would be filthy plain blue DMUs, and ageing MK2 stock hauled by class 47s. However, I have been fascinated by narrow gauge steam from an early age; growing up in Cheshire I was introduced to the then re-emerging Great Little Trains of Wales in my formative years – a visit to the Llanberis Lake Railway in the mid 1970s particularly stands out. 

I started trying to make models of these quirky pint size trains in the early 1980s, initially in 009 then in 5.5mm/ft (1:55) scale under the tutelage of the late Malcolm Savage. Malcolm was extremely knowledgeable on all things steam and had an extensive library of narrow gauge interest, and suffered my teenage self to devour anything of interest. It was so I came across Eric Tonk’s slender volume on the Snailbeach District Railways (Industrial Railway Society 1974 ISBN 9780901096173) – its lack of detail on this highly individual railway compared to works about other similarly obscure railways left lots of questions to be answered. Some of these remain unanswered even after the publication of Andy Cuckson's much more definitive work (Twelveheads Press 2017 ISBN 978-0906294901) . 

The Shropshire Minerals Light Railway

The Snailbeach District Railways is one of the lesser known British narrow gauge lines, possibly because it never carried a fare paying passenger in its entire history. It is often wrongly considered an industrial line, but this isn’t strictly true as it was a fully functioning public common carrier railway established under an Act of Parliament. Indeed it would not have lasted until 1962 if it had served only the original lead industry as it changed its main purpose and customers at least twice during its 85 year history.

Built in 1876-7 the line was the work of the renown mining and railway engineer, Henry Dennis of Ruabon. He is probably better known for his re-working of the Glyn Valley Tramway, with which the Snailbeach shared a common gauge (2’4”) - well bar the odd 1/2 inch. The shared interest of Dennis meant that borrowed Snailbeach locos were in fact the first to work the Glyn Valley Tramway.

The Snailbeach was built to transport lead and other mineral ores from mines on the Stiperstones in mid Shropshire about 6 miles to a connection with the LNWR/GWR joint Minsterley branch at Pontesbury, and to take coal back in the opposite direction. The Act enabled two sections to be built – railway no.1 from Pontesbury to Crowsnest, with a spur to Snailbeach Mine (lead, spar and barytes); and railway no.2 from Crowsnest to Tankerville Mine. As usual the first section cost far more than the estimate, and the money ran out with only railway 1 built. 

A number of schemes were mooted to extend the railway to serve further mineral interests over the next 20 years. None got quite as far advanced as the final one – the Shropshire Minerals Light Railway.  This actually received parliamentary approval in 1891, unfortunately just as lead prices plummeted, and as a result no capital was ever raised or construction started. 

Had it been built it would have been a challenging railway to operate. Whereas the original SDR was a constant 1:40 down to Pontesbury this was in the direction of the principle load (smelted lead parcels and crushed mineral ores), with decreasing amounts of coal was worked back up grade. The SMLR however went over a summit with 1:30 grades in both directions before dividing and heading either into the Hope Valley to reach Roman Gravels Mine or curving right round the end of the Stiperstones ridge serving a number of mines almost reaching as far as the village of Habberly.

Pontesbury Sidings 

About 12 months ago I decided I would attempt to build a model of part of the SDR / SMLR. This "layout" is my second attempt to build a model of the Snailbeach, adopting the uniquely British scale of 009 (or if you are on the other side of the Atlantic 00n2 1/4). My first attempt was 25 years ago, and was eventually abandoned due to poor planning, over ambition and the bad running qualities of most of the locos (except perhaps Dennis but more of that perhaps another time). 

The present layout is based on a 6ft plywood shelf in my study, a space it will need to share interchangeably with other similar size layouts for my various other railway interests. The size was felt to be manageable in terms of relatively rapid completion by one person, and portable for exhibition or house moves.

Layout Design Elements

The model is based on the actual SDR Pontesbury Sidings, its not 100% prototypically accurate but uses the “layout design element” philosophy espoused by Tony Koester and other American Model Railroaders. This takes the key features of the prototype and combines with some modellers licence to give an overall impression of the place. In the case of Pontesbury Sidings key layout design elements include the narrow gauge being raised on a tree lined embankment, a distinctive girder bridge over the main road, and a timber transhipment trestle over a standard gauge siding, and in later years a similar arrangement for road lorries.

For size constraints arrangement of the sidings is both compressed and reduced in number. A run around loop is included, whereas in real life there was none until the tarring plant was installed in the 1930s, instead use was made of a kick back siding allowing the loco, which was always at the downhill end of a loaded train to escape; the loaded wagons being then run down to the transhipment areas by gravity. This is not really practical in model terms and the track arrangement has been altered to suit.

Next time - I'll talk about layout construction

What it's all about....

So what's it all about then? Well, in the midst of the Covid19 pandemic there appears to be ample reason to stay at home, either by good sense or sometimes by legal requirement. For some that's a challenge, but for others it's more of an opportunity - maybe finding a new skill or rediscovering an old pastime.

Model making lends itself to being a stay-at-home activity; I've been making models in a variety of scales and subjects for more years than I care to remember, so its quite natural that I fall into the "opportunity" camp. With all the places that like-minded chaps (and the odd gal) go to share ideas closed, at least here in the UK, I thought I would create a space to share thoughts and ideas about my model making activities, or the prototypes they are based on. This could be quite random, or it might develop into themes and chapters - shall we find out as we go along?

In praise of the humble horse ... (1/55 scale diorama)