[kevsmith]

So the great unfinished project from my past was the attempt to model my local station, Askam in Furness, in gauge 3. This was intended both to go out to shows and also be a semi permanent display at Barrow Hill roundhouse in the water tower building. It was going to be immense, 30 foot long and with two rows of parallel baseboards five feet wide. The practicality of actually moving it around hadn't been fully worked out of course!

Representing the Furness railway at the turn of the century the rolling stock would all be scratchbuilt including the beautiful Sharp Stewart locos in the distinctive Furness Indian red colour scheme

I'd started with the station building. This grade 2 listed building was designed by the renowned Lancaster architects Paley and Austin in 1887 for the Furness Railway and survives today in quite good condition.

I had copies of the original drawings from the local County archive. Construction was MDF for the basic structure with the red sandstone stonework hand tooled in Red DAS modelling clay hand scribed to represent the blockwork. Pack after pack of it! as the model was six feet long. The roof closely followed the drawings with the roof joists and rafters in stripwood. The model was meant to look as if it was being reroofed so the interior details could be seen. The areas that wer in situ had the roof slates represented by what seemed to be miles of scribed plasticard

More soon

Kev

 

[kevsmith]

The tilefloor was scribed and handpainted and all the furniture was measured of the surviving items still in the building to this day. I made a pattern for the fireplaces and the canopy supports and cast them in resin. The windows were also cast in resin

Before the layout itself was started the station building was taken to shows and garden railway events where it created a real buzz about the project.

Lots of work got it to the stage where I could begin to show the more developed station area. By now I had built the Signalbox and Askam Co-op store both still in existence and the Goods shed which was flattened many years ago. The front row of boards were also now semi developed and the two running lines were in with hand laid track and hand cut sleepers (Ties)

More soon

 

[kevsmith]

Askam Co-op

The goods shed was based on measurements taken of the surviving example at Drigg

The signalbox, crossing gates and Co-op

Kev

 

[kevsmith]

On display at Barrow Hill

The first loco was the Sharpie 2-2-2WT which took a while to finish but once painted really looked the part. Getting the springing balanced right was a bit tricky.

Intended for batch building I made a whole set of patterns for the chassis and details for a gauge 3 Lancashire & Yorkshire railway 'Pug' 0-4-0ST with the chassis and valve gear being cut out on the pantograph engraver and the sandbox and toolboxes cast in resin

Kev

 

[kevsmith]

as there was nothing commercially available I made patterns for the most common Wagon parts and had them cast in White metal by CCW

The then Duke of Devonshire was out patron at Barrow Hill and he offered me some help from the Chatsworth House archives when he found out I was modelling his ancestors private saloon

Painted, but still waiting lining out with a Furness 4 wheel coach

And this was as far as I got. I'd started Furness No. 20 the 0-4-0 which remarkably is still with us. Rebuilt back into tender engine form after decades as a saddle tank by the Furness loco trust

Kev

 

[kevsmith]

When we moved up to the Lake District I lost both my access to the Barrow Hill site as it was just too far away and also to the Sheffield 0 gauge group's clubrooms where the two gauge 1 layouts were kept so they had to go

The buildings and the 0-4-0 went to the Midlands and the 2-2-2T and Pug to a dealer down south

Shame really but the upside is that it meant I could really get stuck into my z gauge layouts which now pretty fill up all of my modelling time

Kev