Roa Island for Piel As our Brooklyn ( age 10) grows up it is time for him to have his first 00 scale model railroad layout. He is already adept with Z gauge helping me operate my two current Zed exhibition layouts, Hakuho and Republic Steel and after this weekend's show at Kendal, Hakuho just needs photographing for one of the U.K magazines and can then go away for a bit. He is a well known and popular lad with the North West of England model railroaders who keep giving him 00 locos and rolling stock surplus to their requirements plus he has access to my niche collection of 00 locos and rolling stock focused on Nuclear rail Transport (My profession before I retired) Now a continuous loop in 00 is as bad in space terms as one in H0 and frankly we don't have enough room at mine (Granddad's house) or his Mom's for an 8ft by 4ft baseboard. He has however shown real talent operating other peoples minimum space 00 layouts(basically switching layouts) at shows. So. We need to find a concept for a layout that is a minimum space railroad, with enough operating interest, that can run modern image DMUs, Class 1 Nukes and has the potential to be expanded into something bigger if required . So.... Imagine. in 1534 a shot rings out. King Henry the Eighth slumps the floor mortally wounded by a papal assassin sent from Rome and the course of British History is changed forever The dissolution of the monasteries never happens and scenes like this would be inconceivable as the Abbots, Priors and Monks continue to dominate the landscape and Furness Abbey would still be the centre of local power The Furness line runs right besides the Abbey ruins but the chances are that the Monks would never have allowed it to run that close and the Furness railway had to find another route closer to Morecambe bay This Pre-grouping map shows the maze of lines in the Furness area and the position of the line past the Abbey as built and still exists today Lines in red are still open, Black are lines that have gone we speculate that they extended the Bardsea branch through Conishead and down to the end of the causeway at Roa island and accessed Barrow by reversing and terminating at Strand station I've added our proposed ine in green and deleted both the Furness line and also Barrow Central station. So, why Roa Island for Piel? Built very early on in real life as a port for the ferries that crossed Morecambe bay to Fleetwood the island was connected to the mainland by a long straight causeway to carry the rail line And the original trackplan looks to have enough operating potential More very soon Kev
You can see the curved line to the peir is still there The station was well protected from the weather by the overall roof and there was a small signal box on the platform The hotel still stands but no trace of the station remains Although I'm not aware of any drawings for the station building I can scale it off the groundplan and get the elevations by using the 6 wheel coach in the platform as a reference The building and chimney on the right are the former gas works The 1847 built watch tower and customs house still stands as a private house Form follows function More soon Kev
So what is Piel Island? Accesible at low tide on foot or by car for the brave, or by small ferry when the tide is in it has a fort built by the monks Circa 1327 a.d. a pub whose landlord is the official 'King of Piel' and some houses the 1913 O.S map of the Walney Channel And today Kev
I love alternate histories. My day dream imagination is always coming up with scenarios as unusual as this.
So what we would we expect to be running should this scenario come about? First freight trains dominated by the needs of the nuclear industry All the Nukes would have to run 'Top and tailed' to avoid running round to get to the BMT The aggregate trains taking stone from the virtual Quarry at the docks to Drigg LLWR would be involved, This is rare picture as this working is normally two EMD class 66s but due to one failing its A exam a 68 was put in its place We would expect to see the Network rail PLPR (plain line recognition train) test traIn make it's monthly appearance top and tailed by Class 37s And the trains we don't really talk about too much in detail And retro 'Secret Squirrel' stuff Pasneger traffic next
lets look at what is running today, before we go back only three or four years when it was Really interesting in terms of passenger tratfic The line is dominated currently by two classes of DMUs. The venerable class 156s have been around since 1987 and were introduced to sweep away all of the original, First generation, diesel railcars. The Lima 00 scale model has now mutated into the Hornby one. Needs some work to get it looking right Left in the brake fluid paint stripping bath for a week, repainted in the latest Northern Rail livery. Fitted with Kadee #5s and Mini plows, finished with Railtec Decals One of the local ones departing Kirkby in Furness station Celebrity 156. 156 480 was decorated to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Royal Air Force and features illustrations of RAF planes over the years both inside and out Around here we regard this very much as ours! I was looking on a well known internet auction site when I saw somebody was selling RAF 100 bodyshells for not much money. Bingo. I had some donor chassis to get it running The other celebrity 156 we have is 156 484 which was vyniled to promote the famous Settle to Carlisle railway, Sadly the real one has reverted to the standard colour scheme Coming next.. Class 142s A,.K.A Vomit Comets, Nodding Donkeys or more prosaically 'Pacers'. One of the , Err, more challenging repaints I have had to do meanwhile. Now we have a clear window, of a few weeks, before we take one of the Z layouts out to show, We'll start sketching out a trackplan full size to see what is feasible Kev
