Wakefield West in OO scale – A slice of the West Riding, in Australia - reproduced from TCH 154

 

I have always been interested in the railways of the UK since I started getting serious about model railways in my late teens.  The trouble was that as a poor student at University, UK outline models in Australia were both expensive and poor runners and I was tempted away to model the Union Pacific in HO for around 20 years.  I had also been very keen on railway sound recordings, and this led to a friendship with David Bailey, who runs a website called steamsounds.org.uk.  After buying several of his CDs my love for UK steam was rekindled, and through my work, I was fortunate to travel to the UK several times, including in 2010, when my two lads and I, at David’s behest, travelled on the morning circle of the Scarborough Spa Express behind ex LMS Royal Scot 46115 Scots Guardsman.  This was the first year of the new route through Church Fenton, Castleford and on to Wakefield Kirkgate before heading up the curve through Ings Rd Junction and into Wakefield Westgate then back to York.  The departure from Westgate was spectacular, and while it wasn’t an Eastern Region engine, the Royal Scot certainly put on a show.  I thought to myself at the time, I have to model this, not really thinking about Wakefield Westgate, but more to have some models of UK steam again.  Well after reading about Westgate, I became more and more intrigued.  Here was a station that featured an ornate main building, 97ft clock tower, sawtooth canopies and had A1s, A3s and A4s, plus in later years the mighty Deltic visiting on a daily basis.  One of my first models when I was a small boy was D9003 Meld, so you could say, I was hooked.

 

After a bit of reading, collecting photos on the internet and starting to build a collection of OO scale models, I stumbled across the webpage of the Wakefield Railway Modelling Society. An inquiry on the page led to a very nice reply which said I should contact a gentleman by the name of John Farline who knew a fair bit about the railways of the area.  John has been ever so kind and generous to help me gather together a huge range of photos and information of Westgate and surrounds, and his book on the area, co-authored with Peter Cookson has been a bit of a modelling bible for me ever since.

 

Figure 1    A C14 at Platform 1 – Wakefield Westgate in the early 50s (J Farline collection)

When considering a layout, I looked at a number of track planning books to see what might fit in the room I had available.  With some careful domestic negotiation I managed to secure half of a two car garage.  I did have plans of taking the whole lot over, but my cunning plan was thwarted by having to provide a guest bedroom for the occasional visiting mother-in-law (amongst others), but even still, having a nice lined and floored room with multiple electrical outlets and great fluorescent lighting was a large step up from my previous layout which had been housed in a rather dilapidated shed.

 

The track plan I finally adopted was initially based on a US folded dogbone style in that excellent book by John Armstrong on Track Planning for Realistic Operation.  Into that, I incorporated a condensed and slightly modified version of the main track layout of Westgate, mostly to fit in the space but also to provide the key operating elements of the dock platforms, crossovers to allow trains from Platform 1 to depart north and carriage sidings to hold Bradford portions and the like.  As it was not a true representation of Westgate, I decided to call it Wakefield West.

 

Figure 2  The trackplan

 

The plan was developed in Anyrail which I found easy to use and surprisingly accurate.  I used this to plan the benchwork which is L-girder style with risers to allow the track to rise so as to accommodate stacked storage roads in the balloon loops of the dogbone ends but also continuous running.  There is a small goods yard and loco depot in what I have called Arnthorpe, a joining of the names of Ardsley and Wrenthorpe, the two major yards and engine shed near Westgate.  The benchwork is built in a modular fashion, theoretically so it could be cut into portions if we ever moved, but I had that intention with the last layout when we moved to the new house 8 years ago and in the end I scrapped it. 

 

Figure 3  The first bit of benchwork

The layout construction proceeded over 20 months or so with the first trains running around the completed main line in September of 2013.

Figure 4  First trains around the completed main line

Since then I have been slowly working on the scenery, with the goods yard, engine shed and a small coal merchant completed at Arnthorpe.  This was my first real attempt at scenery, with only a very small portion of my previous layout ever being attempted.  This time I focussed on using some of the newer techniques such as static grass, poly fibre trees and a great plaster product called Agnews Water Putty which I believe is a lot like the Hydrocal that they use in the US.  I am very happy with the way it all turned out, and with a coal stage scratchbuilt like the one at South Blyth in County Durham, a Scalescenes north light engine shed and a few other embellishments, I have a very nice operational yard and depot, plus some scenicked main line which allows me to indulge in a bit of layout photography.

Figure 5  The yard at Arnthorpe

 

Figure 6  A proper West Riding engine

Figure 7    An Ardsley based J6 64271 on a Doncaster to Leeds Local crosses another local passing Arnthorpe

Figure 8  The coal merchant

My current project is scratchbuilding the main station building at Wakefield Westgate, though with a new job my modelling progress is a bit slower than I would like.  Even so, having the layout within our house itself means I can always duck away for 30 minutes at a time to get some modelling done or even run some trains.  In 2014, I was very lucky to purchase some of Dave Shakespeare’s Tetleys Mills rollingstock including a J50 and a WD 2-8-0 with coal train when his collection was being sold.  This was quite an emotional connection as I have been a member of a few model railway forums, but it was Dave on RMWeb who sent me some very nice messages when I first was starting off and his modelling was always inspirational.  I came to know that he was also born in Wakefield and had a very soft spot for the area, so with the connection to Dave, and with John Farline’s incredible help, I feel I am very fortunate to be creating a small slice of Yorkshire out here in Australia which I hope will capture the flavour of the railways of the area around Wakefield.

Figure 9    A slightly photoshopped image of Arnthorpe with the Tetleys Mills Dub D