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6th November 2024.

 

Railway Modelling: A personal perspective.

 

Including: Modelling in EM gauge and A ‘Sense of Proportion’.

 

Dave York gave an illustrated talk on the two subjects above and ended the evening with a selection of photos taken at Albion, on the Wolverhampton to Birmingham LNWR line and between Sharpstones Lane at Bayston Hill and ‘Shelf Sidings’ near Sutton Bridge Signal Box in Shrewsbury.

 

Modelling in EM gauge.

 

The first part of the evening covered modelling in EM gauge, where 18mm is the standard, or if preferred, 18.2mm to compensate for wheel issues. Dating back to WW2 the standards for EM were helpfully published by the British Railway Modelling Standards Bureau in 1950 alongside standards for other scales. The intention of the BRMSB was to assist manufacturers to produce compatible products.

In addition to have some of his models present, Dave included illustrations of some of his other models and included some bespoke trackwork, where EM overcomes the visual issue associated with 00 with its inaccurate track scale for 4mm modelling. This was supported with an interesting insight into his layout WOODSALL.

 

A ‘Sense of Proportion’.

 

Railway operation influencing our modelling was the undertone to this part of the evening and was based on the British Railway ‘facts & figures’ for 1951, published in 1952, and comparison to statistics from 1938.

To encapsulate a large amount of interesting data in a nutshell, it was concluded that our stock of models could (or even, ‘should’), reflect the stock used in the real situation.

The statistical outcome from the data was, that for a representative sample of 10 locomotives used by the LMS, only one should be ‘red’, and none with 4-6-2, wheel arrangement. Which one should be ‘red’ is unclear, so it’s up to the ‘modeller’. The majority are seemingly 0-6-0 and 4-6-0 together with the odd other wheel arrangement. Accompanying these a modeller should have 23 coaches, with the majority non-corridor, 8 non-passenger coaches and 611 mixed goods wagons – yes, 611. Again, the majority should be open wagons.

 

It looks like wagon kits for Christmas!

 

Graham Betts.