MARCH 21 Bacup

BACK TO THE LAYOUTS

BACK TO THE EXHIBITION

BACUP

---

Jason Thomas

BRM October 2014

---

FACT FILE 
Layout Name: Bacup
Scale/Gauge: OO
Size: 13'6" x 3'
Era/Region: BR North West 1950s/60s
Layout Type: End to end L-shape

I had always been a Peco user, happy with its looks, robustness and the way it functioned. But, at an exhibition a few years ago, curiosity got the better of me and I purchased a few yards of SMP flexitrack, took it home, and compared it to what was on Rubbishtown. Big mistake, no sooner had I done so, a voice in my head started telling me to rip it up and replace it. Even at that stage, I was thinking of using Peco turnouts in conjunction with SMP track but when it came to this layout, there was no choice but to learn how to build my own turnouts. To do this, I chose the easier route of bullhead rail and PCB sleepers, the first efforts being acceptable (as in, they worked but looked, well, wrong) and later ones looking better. Once you practice, it’s actually pretty easy to turn out (pun intended) turnouts to the dimensions you require.

The track was painted first with an aerosol can of Railmatch Sleeper Grime, followed by the rail sides and chairs being given a coat of Precision Track Colour. It is laid on C&L foam underlay and the ballast, all from C&L, is a mixture of 2mm Light Grey for the main lines and Ash Ballast for sidings and the cess.

Atmosphere

Bacup is a layout that owes a certain debt to RMweb. That might seem a strange statement but if it weren’t for the inspiration gained from seeing other layouts there, from the plethora of information available, the encouragement and advice of its members, then I would not have moved on from the standard of my previous layout, which I now refer to as ‘Rubbishtown’.

Now, ‘Rubbishtown’ was perfectly acceptable but when the baseboards warped due to a misinformed decision to use Sundeala, I had little choice but to tear it up and start again. There were a number of elements of the layout that I felt needed improvement and I was itching to move forward and try new areas of modelling.

WHY BACUP?

So why a grotty mill town in East Lancashire that lost its rail connection in December 1966? When I was 15, I bought a book called British Railways Past & Present, No. 3: The North West. On page 77 is a photograph of a run-down Bacup station, and a Cravens DMU departing as ‘Black Five’ No. 44728 idles in the headshunt with a brake van. There was no glamour in the station or surrounding area, no pretence of a past glory at this railhead. It was always a small terminus with no famous named passenger services, no exotic locomotives, or anything else that is supposed to appeal to railway enthusiasts or modellers. And in a strange way, that’s exactly why it appealed to me.

Bacup was at the head of two branches; one from Bury via Rawtenstall (part of which is now the East Lancashire Railway) and one from Rochdale via Facit. The station was a terminus comprising a double-sided platform, a goods yard that used the platform run-round as a headshunt, a couple of carriage sidings, and a junction just off the end of the platforms. A mile down the Rochdale branch was a locomotive shed, which closed in 1954. The station itself had a canopy of 12 pitches that covered about half of the full platform length.

I should point out at this stage that the layout is based on Bacup but is not true to prototype, as I did not have the room to do it justice. The trackplan is hopefully recognisable to those who knew the location but beyond the railway boundary, nothing is in its correct place. However, all the elements are from Bacup and the surrounding area. Think of it as ‘Abstract Bacup’.

GETTING STARTED

For me, the planning of a layout is as enjoyable as the actual construction. Researching the location you wish to model, drawing trackplans, imagining how it might look, even constructing mock-ups of various structures can be a real pleasure. It was during this stage that I realised that I was going to have to take a huge step up and build my own turnouts. When the plan was drawn using Anyrail software and Peco templates, there was just no flow to the station throat area. This was compounded by limits of available space and the baseboard joins. It would have meant having to use Peco turnouts of different sizes and radii and would have ended up looking scruffy, causing derailments and leading to no end of frustration. As such, I downloaded a copy of Templot (track planning software), swore at it a lot, deleted plenty of early attempts, and then finally twigged how to use it and quickly saved and printed off the plans before I forgot how to use it again.

The next step was key to progressing the whole layout. As the station buildings and canopy play a large part of defining the layout as Bacup, I built this first with the reasoning that if I couldn’t make a decent representation of it, then there was no point in continuing. After three months of cutting, gluing and painting a large amount of plastic card and more lengths of Microstrip than I care to remember, I was satisfied that I could pull the layout off and made a start with the track.

PROGRESSION

I wanted to avoid creating a flat landscape as Bacup is up in the Pennines where even the pool tables have hills and valleys. So, the decision was taken early to raise the trackbed above the baseboard frames and fill in the scenery above and below it. As such, other than the trackbed, there aren’t many level areas on the layout with even the road past the station entrance being on a gentle slope. As far as scenery goes, there is not a great deal of greenery, the majority of space being filled with mucky stone-built terraced houses and mills, stone setts and filthy retaining walls.

The vast majority of the buildings on the layout are scratch-built; the exceptions being a greenhouse and a handful of lineside huts. Having decided to model a town in the Pennines, there was no option but to scratch-build the sandstone houses, mills and other buildings; lots of them too.

All the non-railway buildings are based on real examples in or around Bacup. Google Earth is a highly useful tool in providing inspiration, details and dimensions. The railway buildings are taken from a number of other locations, chosen as their dimensions fitted better with the reduced scale of the layout when compared to the real location. The signal box is a model of one at Hebden Bridge, the goods shed is based on one down the Facit line in Whitworth; Bacup had a rather large goods warehouse and there just wasn’t the room for it on the layout.

The buildings are mainly constructed using a shell of mounting board, clad with embossed plastic from a number of sources and painted/ weathered using enamels. Slates are made from 150gsm paper. The majority have windows and doors made from plastic card and Microstrip, with a few exceptions, for example the signalbox, using etched windows. I was far too worried about making a mess of them and gluing on and cutting the Microstrip for such intricate windows would have driven me potty! Chimney pots on the houses have been a point of contention, as anyone who has followed my thread on RMweb will know. Initially, I used tapered pots and was happy with how they looked, but it was pointed out to me by a number of members that castellated pots were used in the Bacup area. It has been a running joke for some time but finally, I managed to source a vast amount of the correct pots from Freestone Models and attach them. Other areas of discussion (which have inevitably led to changes) related to the colour of gutters and drainpipes, stench pipes, diagonals on gates and most recently, the colour scheme of mangles!

WEATHERING BUILDINGS

Weathering of the buildings is achieved by first painting the embossed plastic with stone-coloured enamel paint and then, once dry, dabbing on brown and then matt black enamel paint with an old rag wrapped tightly around the index finger. Doing so leaves the paint on the raised section but not in the mortar courses. I have tried this method with brick too; it was not as successful.

WHAT MAKES BACUP A GREAT LAYOUT?

Although Bacup is Jason’s first ‘serious’ layout, he’s very effectively captured the atmosphere of a Lancashire mill town in the 1960s, towards the end of steam in the area. The modelling of mundane terraces and functional mill buildings is to an exceptionally high standard. The locomotive and stock weathering is superb and the layout runs very smoothly. The only drawback is that it isn’t an exhibition layout as it deserves a much wider audience. - Andy York (RMweb Editor)

If you have enjoyed Jason's style, look out for BRM April 2021, which features his collaboration with Chris Rogers for The Mill.

ADDITIONAL IMAGES

BACK TO THE LAYOUTS

BACK TO THE EXHIBITION