1. Getting Started
I always wanted to have a layout that featured the Leamington General Station because I have many personal associations with the station: my parents used the station when I was very young to take the family to Birmingham for Saturday shopping expeditions; as I grew older I took up the hobby of train spotting and Leamington was a frequent place where I could watch the superb GWR locomotives.
The space required to model a mainline station is considerable in any scale, and the only available spare room for my layout was one half of our double garage. That constraint led to the rapid conclusion that I had to adopt N gauge as the most appropriate scale choice.
I then went about a feasibility study to understand what was available in the N gauge market and whether it would be adequate for building a model that featured locomotives built for the Great Western Railways – but covering the period of 1960-1965 when British Rail were responsible for the services.
The Internet revealed there was indeed a good coverage of locomotives and rolling stock in N gauge, and so I went about assessing how much of the Leamington General Station I could fit onto a baseboard measuring 12 feet by 3.5 feet. As the objective of the layout was to have a continuous circuit for running mainline express trains, a major worry was the tight curves at each end that needed to be negotiated by the trains. I didn’t want the curves to be so tight as to look totally unrealistic.
I calculated there would be around 7 feet available space for the General station which would enable express trains with 8-9 carriages to be accommodated, and I thought that would produce a realistic effect. Hence, I decided to take the concept to the next stage.
2. Designing The Trackwork
I made an early decision to use Peco code 55 track. This was recommended as the most realistic track available at that time. It was available with timber sleepers that matched the track through Leamington Station.
The Internet is a fantastic source for advice on modelling railways, and I took on one very useful idea which suggested drawing the proposed layout full size on the reverse side of wallpaper. In January 2018 I bought a single roll of the cheapest wallpaper offered by B&Q (other outlets are available) and I used two 12 foot lengths of paper: one for the front viewing side of the layout (which would feature the General Station); the other for the rear fiddle yard.
I downloaded and printed off track templates from the Peco website, cut them out and arranged them on the two lengths of wallpaper. I used masking tape to attach the templates to the wallpaper as this allowed the templates to be easily repositioned. The wallpaper pieces could be easily rolled up when not being worked on, and this enabled harmony to reign within the household.
At this time I was researching on the Internet to understand the optimum distance between the dual track around the bends at both end. The advice was not consistent and so I purchased a single piece of metre-length Peco code 55 track and a single BR carriage. These were used to assess the overhang of carriages around the curves I was designing, and these two items proved to be well worth the very small investment.
The GWR station platforms were the prime consideration of the design. I wanted them to be as long as possible in order to run lengthy passenger trains, but had to accept compromises when adding pointwork at both ends of the station. My early design considered only the mainline services for through and stopping express trains; it was a little later that I extended the scope to include the Leamington to Stratford local services – these forced the need for the bay ‘Down’ platform. I also added the track that travelled around the back of the island platform – to provide options for the stopping services from Birmingham to Banbury, etc.
My track planning work was greatly assisted by reference to the Warwickshire Railways website (www.warwickshirerailways.com). This site has been a fantastic source of maps and photographs of the Leamington railway stations, the trains that ran around the period I am modelling, as well as views of the surrounding areas. Another marvellous reference source has been the superb O gauge layout of Leamington owned by Pete Waterman. The publicly available videos and photographs of his layout have encouraged me to keep going, although I realise my layout will never reach the fantastic accuracy of his model.
The design of the fiddle yard at the rear of the layout initially had four lanes: two ‘Up’ lanes for passenger and goods; and two ‘Down’ lanes for passenger and goods. The later decision to include the local services to Stratford required a re-think of the fiddle yard. I introduced a fifth middle lane which would allow diesel trains to depart northwards from the Leamington bay platform on the ‘Down’ track and then eventually return around that same bend on the ‘Up’ track and back into the bay platform. (Subsequently, I found enough space to squeeze in two more lanes in the fiddle yard to store goods trains – one in each direction).
I very quickly realised I did not have enough wriggle room at each end of the Leamington station area to include the goods loop that enabled goods trains to by-pass the lines going through the station: it would be impossible to incorporate the extra pointwork. And so I had to compromise what could be achieved – but I still wanted to make the layout look representative. The diagram below shows an early design which incorporated an engine shed and turntable: these were later removed from the design as they did not appear in these locations in the 1960s. The proposed location of a backdrop is also shown; it was intended to hide the fiddle yard.
3. Construction
The garage was cleared and the concrete floor was sealed to avoid concrete dust from causing problems. Wood and plywood was obtained and the two trestles were built. One of them is shown below.
Both trestles were joined together end-to-end to form the 12’x3.5′ base for the model. The plywood top was painted with grey emulsion to seal the surface and hopefully preserve it against rotting. The top surface was then covered with 1/16″ cork sheeting which was supposed to reduce the running noise of the trains – but I don’t believe it has made any difference.
The cork sheeting was then painted the same grey colour (because most railway areas were covered in ashes) and the layout design was then copied from the (wall)paper rolls onto the cork sheeting. Then began the lengthy task of adding the track.
The photograph above shows an advanced stage of the track laying. The fiddle yard is shown on the left hand side with four complete lanes and the other three nearing completion. The platform bases for the Leamington General station can be seen in the upper right hand side. All the points in the fiddle yard have had their point motors attached immediately below the track (the easier option) and you can see the square holes that were cut into the baseboard to accommodate those motors. The white patch in the foreground indicates the position where a point motor was originally planned to go until a change was introduced. The point motors around the station area have been mounted below the baseboard to avoid them being seen.
The photograph above illustrates the modelling compromise needed when constrained by the space available in a garage. In reality, the track in the foreground went straight out from the platforms and the platforms would have been longer. However, I feel it is a reasonable representation of the track that existed at the time – with the notable exception of the up and down goods loop that by-passed the station to the left of the station in the photograph above.
It was at this stage that I thought more about the setting of the GWR General Station in relation to the town and the need to produce a representative model. Behind the General station was the LMS Avenue Station which provided services to Coventry to the north and Rugby to the south. In my early life my family would take the train from Kenilworth into Leamington Avenue, and then transfer via the subway to the GWR General Station to catch trains to Birmingham Snow Hill. I wanted to recreate this capability in my model layout, and that led to more design work to incorporate an LMS line.
This photograph shows the early work performed on the LMS side – which runs across the middle of the layout – with the paved ‘Up’ platform for Rugby on the left and with just the base of ‘Down’ platform on the right. The footbridge is made from two Metcalfe kits (the closest to match the actual footbridge).
My LMS track was designed to be independent of the GWR mainline, i.e. it was to have no connectivity to the GWR. I would be able to run trains from the Coventry direction into the Avenue Station ‘Up’ platform, transfer them to the ‘Down’ track and then return them to Coventry. The same would apply for services from Rugby. This was quite representative of the services that ran in the 1960s.
After much work on this section of the layout and research on the position of the tracks, I realised that there was in reality a line that did join the LMS and GWR lines (you can see my early attempt at laying the track in the above photograph – to the right of the footbridge. This made me consider including the goods exchange sidings in the middle of the layout, and that is my current task. The cost of the layout is now much more expensive than envisaged – but it will be much more fun when it is all working!
To conclude this section about the history of the layout I would simply like to say that the design has evolved through experience and time. I did not envisage the scope becoming so extensive but I suppose this is a factor in how this hobby grabs your attention and make you want to improve and improve. If you are thinking of starting an N gauge layout for the first time (like I was) and want any advice then please give me a shout. Meanwhile I have many years of more construction work (and pleasure) ahead of me.
And below is a photograph of the current state of the layout.
A goods shed has been added on the extreme right hand side with a through line running into one of the bay platforms of the GWR General Station. The positioning of the goods shed is too close to the station, but the rail configuration in this part of the model forced this compromise.
The goods exchange yard and carriage sidings in the middle of the photograph have filled the inner part of the curved mainline track at this end of the layout.
4. Operation
The website http://www.warwickshirerailways.com has been an extremely useful source of reference material for the construction of my layout. One acknowledgement on that website for the GWR Leamington Spa General Station was to the No. 58 Spring 2006 edition of the Great Western Railway Journal which contains an extensive feature on the station. As well as some excellent photographs of the station and locomotives, it also contains a timetable for the passenger services for the Summer of 1949. That timetable is the closest in time I possess to the period of my layout (1958-59), and I have used it to produce my own timetable for operating my GWR passenger trains.
In addition, I did buy a publication containing the complete set of GWR time tables for the Summer of 1938 which contains the times of connecting train services – including those operating from the Leamington Avenue Station. That has allowed me to put together my own working schedule for the passenger services for both Leamington stations.
I now need to supplement the passenger services with a few goods services – starting with the GWR side. At the moment the fiddle yard has capacity for just one GWR goods train. That operates on the Up main line. It would be great to provide a similar Down goods service, and that thought is occupying my mind right now – but it will require some re-planning of the fiddle yard space, and it may not be a worthwhile venture.
I’ve only just started to validate my version of the operational timetable. Looking at the timetable it reminds you of the long intervals between services. As a trainspotter back in those days, you waited around on draughty, wet, cold platforms for the next opportunity to see a train. And then when one came into sight you started to guess what the locomotive would be – hoping it would a new addition to your spotted list. Many times you ended up disappointed because it was one of the regular locomotives committed to those daily services. There were days when you could sit in the waiting room – with the warmth of an open coal fire to cheer you up. Those days gave me plenty of memories and were key to my desire to rekindle them in my model layout.
Model of 1960s Leamington Stations 