Modelling the Southern Region E-Book

Chris C Ford

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Comprehensive in its coverage, Modelling the Southern Region - 1948 to the Present presents an historical overview of the post-war Southern Region of British Railways before guiding the reader through a series of detailed modelling projects, illustrating all of the techniques and equipment required, from building freight, locomotives and architecture, to modernization, electrification and the third rail. These projects make use of the best available commercial model-making products and provide an introduction to scratch-building your own lineside items. Each project is supported by a short historical background section and suggestions as to how each project could be further developed. The result will be a set of models that sets the modeller on track for a first-class model of the Southern Region. Contents include: full listings of all tools and materials; an explanation of the techniques used and possible alternative methods; step by step instructions from simple to more advanced projects; a detailed but easily digestible approach to building both ready-to-run and kit-built items; techniques and ideas on how to construct those items not yet available from the model trade. This is an essential reference for all those who wish to build a model railway based on the post-war Southern Region of British Railways and is fully illustrated with 237 colour photographs detailing modelling techniques.

Leseprobe

MODELLING

The Southern Region

1948 TO THE PRESENT

CHRIS FORD

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 2017 by

The Crowood Press Ltd

Ramsbury, Marlborough

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2017

© Chris Ford 2017

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78500 301 1

Dedication

For Karen.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to extend his grateful thanks to the following for their kind assistance: Simon Hargraves, Nigel Hill, John Wright, the Bluebell Railway, the East Kent Railway, the Lavender Line and the Swanage Railway.

CONTENTS

  1    INTRODUCTION

  2    WHAT TO MODEL

  3    SOUTHERN REGION FREIGHT

  4    SOUTHERN REGION LOCOMOTIVES

  5    SOUTHERN REGION ARCHITECTURE

  6    ANCILLARY ITEMS

  7    NON-REVENUE-EARNING VEHICLES

  8    SOUTHERN REGION STEAM-HAULED COACHES

  9    INTO MODERNIZATION – A SIMPLE LOCOMOTIVE KIT-BUILD

10    ELECTRIFICATION AND THE THIRD RAIL LAYOUT

11    ELECTRIC UNITS AND A ‘TRACK PARALLELING’ (TP) HUT

12    DIESEL UNITS

13    CONCLUSIONS

INDEX

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS THE SOUTHERN REGION?

The Southern Region: what is it, and what did it do? More to the point, and because this is a book primarily about modelling, what precisely does the Southern Region have to offer as a subject for the railway modeller? It is very unlikely that these questions will be answered in anything near a complete way, but what is hoped is that a thought process will be opened up, which might get the reader a little closer to these answers.

The classic Southern Region scene at Plumpton in 2015, with a spread of history: nineteenth-century LBSCR signal box, BR(S) hand-operated gates and late 1990s ‘Southern’ 377-class electric unit.

A book is usually written with a particular reader in mind. In this case it is assumed that the imagined reader is probably not a modelling expert, maybe not even yet a modeller, but possibly someone who is in that first flush of enthusiasm, or maybe an existing railway modeller who has tried a few generic pieces of model work and is looking to find a more specialized beginning point, and needs to be led gently through the door to a particular modelling subject. And it is likely that in some ways this probably covers 99 per cent of all railway modellers at least once in their lifetimes.

The way it was for the Southern modeller: Wrenn R1, Hornby E2 and Hornby Dublo West Country 4-6-0.

We will all take a casual look over the fence from time to time at an unknown area of railway prototype, and wonder how that area works and how to approach it by the most logical route. In that way the Southern Region is like any other: it has its fans, its haters, its experts, and people who look over that fence and think to themselves, ‘I wonder what’s going on over there, and could I do that?’

This book hopes to give a few answers to the first part of the question, and gives a resounding ‘Yes, you can’ to the second part. Modelling the Southern Region is no more difficult than anything else, and in recent years has become much more straightforward to do (at least in 4mm scale), due in part to commercial manufacturers waking up to the idea that it’s not too specialist and is actually very popular. There are still gaps in the availability of some prototypes, particularly mid-sized ‘ready-to-run’ (RTR) locomotives and coaching stock, but these are gradually being resolved, and if you are that modeller looking over the fence, then there is enough to get you started, and plenty to keep you going for quite a while before you need to worry about those gaps.