MARCH 21 Buntingford

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Factfile

Layout Name: Buntingford

Scale/Gauge: OO 4mm/foot

Size: Scenic 13’ x 3’; 3’ link to 5’ x 2’ fiddleyard

Era/Region: Late-1960s; BR Eastern Region

Location: Attic

Layout Type: Fiddleyard to terminus

 

 

The layout owner

Graham has lived in East Hertfordshire for 23 years and returned to railway modelling when a move to his present house eventually presented the opportunity to renovate a dilapidated roof space as a bespoke modelling room. Growing up in a house overlooking the busy railway line at Market Rasen in Lincolnshire had fostered a childhood interest in railways, but crude youthful modelling lapsed after leaving home for university, aged 18. He has enjoyed the steep learning curve associated with returning to modelling in his 50s, and values the hobby as a great way to relax from a busy and stressful professional role.

Key Details

The layout is 4mm/foot OO gauge, using Tillig trackwork. If starting again I would now consider modelling in EM, inspired by the wonderful work of the ‘EM Gauge 70s’ team, but feel that the fine Tillig track when ballasted and weathered does look at least reasonable. When embarking on the layout, the single biggest decision was to opt for DCC control, eventually opting for a Gaugemaster Prodigy system that has proved reliable and flexible. The layout is therefore wired with all rails connected to a copper strip running on the surface of the baseboard – soldering was new to me and I did not fancy learning this lying on my back under the baseboards! This does mean that the electrics are now covered in scenic materials, but to date have proved reliable. Tortoise point motors operate all points – again, wiring these was initially a challenge to an electrical novice but their slow movement is a huge virtue.

With one exception (the pub), all buildings are scratch-built and are modelled as closely as possible on the original buildings found at Buntingford. I have used Wills and Slaters plastic sheets for buildings close to the front of the layout where brickwork relief (or any lack of it) is more obvious; buildings further back were constructed primarily using foamboard or card covered with the excellent Scalescenes materials.

Locomotives are all ready-to-run models, although heavily weathered and with some re-numbered. Wagons are a mixture of ready-to-run and kits, again with extensive weathering. Most rolling stock operates with 3-link couplings, although as eyesight declines I would love to find a realistic automatic alternative!

The goods shed is also constructed from Wills sheets. Windows were assembled from kit sources; the white shed doors were constructed from card and plastic strip. There is little photographic evidence for this side of the goods shed, so some modellers’ license is applied. Note the new concrete beam and brickwork above the white doors, as per the prototype.

Favourite Layouts

I have been inspired by the Gravetts’ ‘Pempoul’ layout, given its exceptional modelling of buildings and landscape. I am still trying to replicate those trees! A visit to the ‘EM Gauge 70s’ website for their monthly update is a must: ‘Hornsey Broadway’ and ‘Shenston Road’ are outstanding, but my current favourite is Pete Johnson’s ‘Canada Street’ given its depiction of 60s/70s railways in decline, the wonderful weathering of locomotives and stock, and sheer quality of buildings.

Cravens 2-car unit waits to depart for St Margarets, to connect with services to Liverpool Street. Branch DMUs typically ran with tail lights at both ends to save the effort of changing one from end-to-end for each return journey! A coal wagon with a damaged bufferbeam held on by a chain awaits repair in the headshunt.

The Buntingford story

One image in Peter Paye’s book, The Buntingford Branch, inspired my final decision to model Buntingford – a Class 15 trundling along the branch hauling one 12t van and a brake van. This location met all of my requirements for a first attempt at a ‘proper’ layout: a terminus station (constrained by the nature of the space available); varied traffic that survived into the BR green diesel era; the use of ‘unusual’ motive power in the form of Stratford Class 15s and Class 16s; an environment of terminal decay and decline, and it was just 15 minutes’ drive from where I live, with some original buildings still standing. Modelling started some 8 years ago, and the layout has developed in fits and starts up to the present time.

The real Buntingford branch closed to passengers in November, 1964 and finally to freight in September, 1965. My modelling conceit is that closure was delayed beyond this time and so it is modelled in 1966-1968, on the premise that commuter traffic was showing signs of a resurgence and that a (then) new Sainsbury’s distribution centre at Buntingford would stimulate freight traffic! Bridges along the route have been strengthened to allow the use of locomotives other that the notoriously unreliable Type 1s.

Construction started after renovation of a dilapidated roof space as a modelling room. Investing here proved worthwhile, creating an accessible, largely dust-free space with little temperature variation. My carpentry skills are rudimentary, so baseboards were purchased to provide a U-shape around three sides of the room – these have again been a sound initial investment having proved robust and with no tendency to warp. I designed the layout to model the track plan as closely as possible to the original and the platform and sidings are therefore to full scale length. My only regret is that this resulted in a curve at the entrance to the scenic section that is sharper than I would like and can cause issues when shunting. The only major change to the original layout is the ‘back siding’ that serves the maltings – the siding is more parallel to other tracks than the original; the maltings was added as an additional source of goods traffic to sustain the branch, inspired by visits in my youth to relatives who lived close to the grain terminal at Kennett station in Cambridgeshire, and next to the mid-Norfolk line at Hoe where rusty grain wagons trundled daily to North Elmham and Great Ryburgh.

Initial track-laying and wiring for DCC was a steep learning curve, given very limited knowledge of electronics and no experience whatsoever of soldering! I made sure that I researched each element thoroughly – magazines and the internet were both invaluable – before practising techniques in small-scale pilots. I learned how to solder each track length to the copper tape used as a ‘power bus’ (all new terminology!) and how to convert Tillig electrofrog points for DCC operation with Tortoise point motors. When trials were successful layout construction began – and nobody was more surprised than me when eventually after many long evenings of installation it all worked with relatively few problems. It just shows that modellers can learn new tricks even when coming to the hobby late – if I can, anyone can!

Class 24 D5047, the Sutton model, rests between duties at 'Buntingford'. Note the ex-GER ground signals, although in reality at least some of these were replaced by BR examples.

Ballasting of the track also proved challenging. I wanted to model the ash ballast that was used on the prototype, and resorted to Carr’s ‘ash ballast’. This is so fine that it has a tendency to float on any application of diluted PVA, however much washing-up liquid was added to reduce surface tension! ‘Flooding’ the ballast proved eventually to be a crude but effective technique, and I am pleased with the overall outcome when finished with a range of weathering powders for ‘rust’ and ‘oil’ effects. The fine dimensions of the Tillig track combined with ballasting and weathering, I hope, disguises to an extent that the layout is constructed to OO and not finescale.

An early decision was taken to set the layout in Autumn - my favourite season but one that seems to be modelled relatively rarely. This would also helpfully  provide a rationale for increased flows of coal and fertilizer inwards to Buntingford and grain and other agricultural produce outwards. I have really enjoyed modelling the scenery on this basis, and was lucky that a suitable photographic backscene was published at the appropriate time. I have attempted to blend the modelled scenery with the backscene as carefully as possible, with mistakes hidden by autumnal trees using the Gravitt approach to tree-making for larger specimens. Particular features are weed and grass infestation of lightly-used sidings, grass growing in uncleaned guttering, and little cameos such as the beekeeper in the stationmaster’s garden putting his bees away for winter (my Dad keeps bees!).

Grain wagons, including an ancient ex-LNER example in the foreground, await loading at the Maltings. All were weathered with reference to photographs of real examples. The Maltings buildings are loosely based on examples at North Elmham and Great Ryburgh in Norfolk.

Peter Paye’s book and the website The Bunt offers extensive but not complete coverage of the original buildings around the station site. Buildings were therefore mostly scratch-built to represent the originals, with dimensions estimated from relevant maps or counting brick courses from photographs as appropriate! The signal box was the first to be completed – I kit-bashed the Wills kit so much to produce the brick base that I might as well have built it from scratch. Next up was my favourite structure – the goods shed at the front of the layout. This utilised Wills materials although it was a challenge to disguise the joins between the sheets. The gates protecting the railway entrances to the shed were a labour of love! Buildings further back, such as the station building and the granary, were constructed from foamboard finished with Scalescenes sheets sealed with varnish. All buildings have experienced extensive weathering, based on close observation of current buildings. Note the extensive spillage of whitewash down the platform face – an obvious contemporary feature, caused by enthusiastic and repeated applications of the platform edge stripe, which I really wanted to capture. The construction of some more recent buildings has been described and illustrated on RMWeb.

Operation of the layout features a greater range of motive power than found on the original branch, although all were found in East Anglia. Passenger traffic is currently dominated by Cravens and Derby Lightweight units, assuming that responsibility has been transferred from Stratford to Cambridge depots! A W&M railbus stored at Cambridge even puts in an occasional appearance to take the Cambridge University Railway Society out on a jaunt! A more prototypical 3-car Derby unit has now been purchased but awaits DCC conversion. Freight trains are hauled by Class 15, Class 16, Class 24 (some, as modelled, did spend time in East Anglia) and Class 31 locomotives. All locomotives and DMUs are fitted with DCC sound. A particular favourite is a new Sutton’s Class 24 converted from D5098 to D5047 – the running characteristics and quality of DCC sound of this model are stunning.

Class 16 D8404 waits to depart with a short engineers’ train having previously been engaged with track repairs further down the branch. I wanted to model this train to practise weathering techniques on some real rust buckets.

Wagons are a mixture of ready-to-run and kits (mostly Parkside) and are mostly converted to run with 3-link or equivalent couplings, which can make shunting time-consuming! All stock is weathered, using a range of techniques developed practised over the years. I really enjoy this aspect of the hobby. The coal wagons were weathered by hand using brushes and enamel paints which has the advantage of drying slowly and the facility to replicate ‘runs’ of rust and dirt very effectively. The grain wagons are more recent, using Lifecolour weathering paints which have also proved well-suited to weathering by brush. I use an airbrush more for larger items of stock such as locomotives and coaches, but developing this skill is still work in progress. I have always used photographs of original locomotives or wagons to inform weathering, so all weathered stock does reflect an original from somewhere!

'Buntingford' is ‘finished’ in that I can happily spend hours operating it, and indeed one planned development is to establish a more formal way of doing this. However, there remain lots of small areas that need to be finished, both scenically and in relation to rolling stock. I certainly have no plans yet to rip it up and start again. It has been a pleasure to develop the layout slowly over a number of years, dipping in and out as family and work commitments dictate, and indeed this has facilitated careful research of both the prototype and the most appropriate techniques to apply. I have learned a huge amount in terms of modelling skills, and would urge any readers to ‘have a go’ using the ‘research, practice, apply’ cycle that has certainly worked well for me.

Bachmann Class 24 D5038 runs around its train of vans while Class 15 D8233 collects grain wagons from the Maltings. Both locomotives were weathered with detailed reference to photographs of the real thing.

‘Skinhead’ Hornby Class 31 collects the loaded grain wagons. Yes, I know that the number needs to be changed!

The layout in detail

Follow Buntingford on RMweb

 

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