Garden Railway Forum

Shame to see the line go, I've enjoyed watch it develop. It had a great character! The Yorkshire group is great and very active! I sadly don't get to as many steam ups as I wished I did. I'm based in the Bradford area and if you ever want to have a run on our rather little line you'd be more than welcome too!

Cheers Jack - may well take you up in that offer!

Hi everyone – you’ll have noticed I dropped off the radar for many months – sadly my house move has dragged on (we are still have our house in Kent – our sale isn’t moving despite a sizeable price drop - blooming Brexit ) but I was lucky enough to get a new job in Manchester starting in November.

This has left my 16mm activity in total limbo – I sort of lost interest for a while but over the last couple of weeks I’ve started to regain my mojo – whilst I can’t do any actual model, I can develop a backstory and develop a new track plan that I’ll hope to be able to implement when we sell up and move north.

I’m also hoping to establish a temp line around my relatives garden where I’m staying to at least run some trains on some of the soon arriving spring and summer evenings

So its good to be back and watch this space. The Castle Hill Light Railway will rise from the ashes as the CHLRv2 will be built in the shadow of the real Castle Hill in Huddersfield.

In the coming days I’ll start with a map and the back story – good to be back

Mark

Glad you are back Mark.

While you are in Kent you can always have a run on my little line or check out the 16mm NGM Kent roster for meetings.

Cheers Tom - we should compare diaries for a Kent meeting at some point this summer - based on the latest vote in Parliament tonight concerning the B issue, I don't see the housing market picking up anytime soon

Ok – as promised, here’s the backstory for the soon to be built (fingers crossed Brexit releases its grip on the housing market soon) Castle Hill Light Railway v2, the Yorkshire sequel! For the record this is a story that mixes real places with fictional people - any similarities you might spot to real people are purely co-incidental

Part 1
Put on thi flat cap, grab a pint of ale with a proper creamy head on it and oppun yer lug’oles for a good old northern story.

Back in the early 1900s, the hills surrounding Huddersfield echoed to not only the sound of sheep but also industry in the shape of its woollen mills, well those that survived the actions of the Luddites anyway. However, industry was also present in the shape of quarries dotted around the hills that surround this northern town.

Many towns and cities around the UK have pavements that use Yorkshire sandstone. The challenge for the quarry owners was getting this heavy material from t’hills down to the various goods yards in and around Huddersfield that were connected the myriad of standard gauge railway lines that ran through the various valleys in this industrialised area. They had seen the North Wales slate quarry owners get their own lines and were wanting their own! Local quarry owner Lord Alastair Yardley Up decided he wanted a rail connection from his quarry near Farnley Tyas onto the national network.

But Lord A.Y. Up wasn’t the only driving force for a more accessible way of getting connections from the valley bottoms onto the top of the hills. The areas surrounding Huddersfield include some of the most rugged and attractive scenery in the UK as well as some unusual buildings – one of these is the monument that dominates the skyline, Victoria Tower on Castle Hill.
By Richard Harvey - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1005896

Castle Hill has long been a visitor attraction for people visiting the tower and enjoying the countryside surrounding it. However aside from walking the 5 miles from Huddersfield Town centre or catching a slow horse & trap, the location made visiting a challenge unless you lived fairly local. The owner of the attraction and local MP, Viscount Ian Terence Now, saw that if a small train could link his attraction to the standard gauge network, he could boost visitor numbers and at the same time improve Huddersfield’s image around the country (and of course make more profit!).

It wasn’t until the two stakeholders happened to meet at the bar of the Golden Cock in Farnley Tyas that they realised that they both shared similar visions – Lord AY Up and Vis.IT Now shook hands and Huddersfield’s Castle Hill Light Railway company was born.

All they needed now was a railway engineer to design them a line to link their respective attractions to the network

To be continued………..

Sorry to hear of your issues, but I am glad plans are afoot for a new line. I wonder if His Lordship had ever come across the Hon. Titus A. Duxsarrse of PMR fame?

The assorted Dais are currently unemployed due to the PMR's moth balled status. Let me know if you want me to send them up north in the parish charabanc. I am sure they will be willing for a trip away and there are still plenty of sheep up there to keep them interested.

Cheers Jim - its nice to be back, albeit in design phase (and building a shopping list for Peterborough)

Your offer of the Dais is very kind - once we start cutting sods I'll give you a shout to send them up... and if we need any fields clearing of sheep!

Nice to hear you are back Mark, has I am.

Going about a rebuild is very rewarding and with the knowledge you have with your old line you will inspire to an even better one that I am sure of. That is of course your house move all goes well soon.

Well - thought I'd share the trackplan - still no house sale so still planning, not doing - (grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr )

Always hard to plan something without any reality to place it onto BUT it gives me a vision to aim for - the line runs end to end from one side of the garage ( towards the bottom of the plan) to the other side of the garage via the garden - on the garden loop there will be two more through stations and a quarry at the top

Key goals

1) Allow some end to end running to enjoy running a timetable
2) Allow continuous running when I'm busy doing something else/sitting with a beer watching trains chug past
3) Let me play trains when its raining/snowing by send trains from one station in the garage to the other via a short trip outside or a longer via the whole loop
4) Allow me to bring all stock in at the end of the day into a secure location still on the tracks
5) Link the network to my work bench - which will look out through a window over the garden element of the layout
6) Includes one terminus station (LH side of garage) at the tourist attraction of Castle Hill and one that connects to the main standard gauge network (blue line) on the RH side of the garage

Obviously the 'Y' points just outside the garage play a crucial part in this design
I will write an explanation of the different stations and what happens where soon - I also will share some pics of how the line sits on a real map!

Wow Mark that's going to be one mighty impressive line. Jealous already...

That's going to be fun!

The option for indoor running seems like a good one, and I love the siding that runs into "the works", ie the workbench. It will be so satisfying to trundle a finish project off the bench and onto the rest of the line for a test run... That idea's not possible with my current line, but I've added it to my "one day" list...

All the best,

Andrew.

A brilliant plan. Gives you all sorts of possibilities. If you made a triangle on one of those junctions emerging from the garage (eg RHS), you could also do out-and-back.

Rik

Brill Rik - I thought i’d covered all the angles with my design but that’s a great addition -
Thanks

Andrew wrote: ↑Fri May 24, 2019 1:30 pm That's going to be fun!

The option for indoor running seems like a good one, and I love the siding that runs into "the works", ie the workbench. It will be so satisfying to trundle a finish project off the bench and onto the rest of the line for a test run... That idea's not possible with my current line, but I've added it to my "one day" list...

All the best,

Andrew.

Yes - it reminds me of the line out of Doncaster works where locos had their official ex works photos before entering the main line by the station

markoteal wrote: ↑Sat May 25, 2019 7:38 pm Brill Rik - I thought i’d covered all the angles with my design but that’s a great addition -
Thanks

I think you have now! There's some real operatimng potential there/

Andrew

Hi everyone- just a quick update - now renting a house in Yorkshire- no garden but after going to the 16mm Yorkshire Show I have rediscovered my mojo - so I have a few kits to wok on and i’ve Unpacked my track and i’m In the process of laying out a loop and sidings in the loft space - no live steam but I can run my electric mice!

That's looking very good - could that wall on the right be a quarry face?! Like the slate wagons too - Lineside Hut?

My dad had a layout in the loft when I was young, with old doors as baseboards, resting on tea chests, all pretty rickety I think. We didn't use it very often, but I still remember the excitement of turning off the lights so that we could see the working headlamps on his Trix Flying Scotsman...

All the best,

Andrew.

Glad to hear from you Mark!

You can have fun with Battery power but if you can open a window I would have the odd quick run with a steamer especially if you can get a dehumidifier to collect the moisture.

Don