Hellingly Hospital Tramcar

If there was a list of model rail vehicles I never expected to see, the Hellingly Hospital Railway tramcar is very high on the list, but there, in a cabinet at the Tramway museum, is a stunning 5/8th inch to the foot miniature, built by David Getgood. It shares space with a number of other models he built, all lovely, but this is the one for me. 

The scale works out at 1:19, basically 16mm scale, and slightly larger than the G3 loco from the same site that I own. I think they would still look great together. Maybe one day I'll make that happen. 

Apparently, David  started building in 1950, completing the models over the next 50 years. They are operational with 24v motors, and performed on layouts until 2015. How I would have liked to see that, and speak to the builder!

It certainly puts my OO gauge model in the shade. 

 (Photo: Chris Nevard)

 

Saturday Film Club: The Hospital with its own Private Railway - Hellingly Hospital Railway

A really nicely put together film about Hellingly. There's even a photo I don't think I've seen before. 

Hellingly Hospital Loco

 

Merry Christmas to me!

My main present is very much a one-off - a Gauge 3 model of the Hellingly Hospital Railway locomotive.  

Readers of Garden Rail, will know from the January issue, that it was scratch built by Jamie Page, a real craftsman. There's nothing 3D printed about this model, it's been cut in brass in the traditional way. OK, the traditional way includes a pantograph cutter, but that's traditional enough for me. 

This was not a model I ever expected to own, but I bagged it from eBay, where I have a watch for all things Hellingly Hospital, for less then a price of a sound-fitted OO diesel. 

While I wasn't complaining, when I drove down to pick the model up, it wasn't going to be entrusted to a courier, I took along some photos of the line. My hope was to prove I was a worthy owner of such an amazing model. There's a lot of work in here, and I know I like things I've made to find a good home. 

Sadly, I didn't get to meet Jamie, but I still insisted on showing his wife the photo albums, and expressing my enthusiasm for the prototype.

Back home, my parents decided that this would make a perfect Christmas present, so we did a deal. OK, so I couldn't unwrap it, but who cares? This is a work of art, and I'm proud to be its owner. I'm sure some of you will understand.    

Now, where can I buy a pantograph milling machine, and where would I put it?  

Hellingly Hosptial on the NHS website

 

Spotted via Facebook, a rather nice piece on the East Sussex Healthcare website on Hellingly Hospital.

Tower wagon

Since Hellingly represents a line under construction, and the important feature is the tramway overhead, I assumed that the contractors would have a tower wagon. The books show a very flimsy contraption, but I decided that something more substantial would be in order - and easier to build.

Inspiration came from the Isle of Man. On the Manx Electric Railway, there is a nice, chunky wagon and so all I did was built a standard gauge version of this from plastic. Pre-cut strips make a big difference to this sort of project - both making the build easier and the results a lot neater.

The chassis might look simple, but it is compensated as I was concerned that a tall wagon might be prone to derailment. As I recall, it isn't, but then that might be because I fitted that wobbly axle. 

The loco is a Centre Models whitemetal kit that I built over a weekend at the Sutton Coldfield model railway exhibition. Glued construction, it even runs on the original whitemetal chassis - well, I didn't have many options to replace it at the show, and it works pretty well. The 'Green Arrow' nameplate is due to it's speed of construction, and that I'd painted it (by brush looking at the marks) green.

Scratchbuilt van

This photo contains both one of the first, and (if I remember correctly) one of the last items of rolling stock I built for Hellingly. 

Furthest from the camera is a whitemetal kit from 51L. Lovely crisp moulding that show metal kits aren't all lumpen things. Pedants may wonder how a Hull & Barnsley wagon has found it's way so far south of course. 

The LSWR van is scratchbuilt from plastic sheet and strip sometime in the 1990s - one of the few complete scatchbuilt vehicles I've made. The prototype was picked for east of construction rather than it being useful for the layout. I think this came along afterwards. 

Running gears is probably Kenline, because I built up stocks of the stuff at bargain prices, and still have them. Well, bits like that might come in useful one day. 

Power comes from a High Level Models Black Hawthorn - the first of their kits I'd built and one that impressed me. There's a lot of components, and you do need to pay attention, but the result with its 108:1 gearbox, is a slow running model, perfect for a short layout.

Fun with wagon names

While Hellingly is out for some video work, I can't resist taking a few photos on the layout. It's been a busy week anyway, so progress on other projects has been non-existent, so they give me something to post. 

With the layout set in 1900ish, I get to run private owner wagons with pretty liveries. I'm sure the purists will object, but it's my layout, so the wagons are partly chosen for colour and the name on the side. I think this makes the layout more interesting (there is a local wagon, and it's black) and since it's my trainset - my rules. 

At the top, you see a wagon that was a definite for me, because it's nearly got my name on it! We'll assume that Cedric Edward was a distant relative, which makes it all right. 

Loco nerds will be interested to know, that 'Angus' is a K's Taff Vale 0-4-0 kit, although all the chassis parts have been replaced with a scratchbuilt version that isn't made out of armour plate thickness metal. 

Now we have a really terrible joke - the wagon containing wood, is named 'wood'. Well, it's my model and this makes me chuckle. As a bonus, it's the only yellow wagon on the layout. 

Motive power is a High-Level Models kit which runs very sweetly. I wrote about building this on the blog in 2010.

Return to Hellingly

For some video work, I need a working model railway, and so decided to pull The Hellingly Hospital Railway out of storage. 

All my layouts live in an insulated, but unheated storage container, and I've always concerned how well they will fare in there. I don't have the option to put them up in a nice, warm house as efforts to win the lottery have so far proved unsuccessful. 

Anyway, the layout has been in the container, wrapped in an insulated bag, for at least 5 years since I last looked at it. First impressions were goo. The leaves are still on the trees, and apart from a little bit of fluffy mould (I think) on one branch, it survived well.

Except that when I unloaded the model from the car, I dropped one end of it two feet onto a gravel drive. 

Much scrabbling around later, I dug up what I hope is all the little details that came lose. 

The challenge is to match the detail to the blank spots on the ground. 

Some PVA, a few weights and a few minutes work, and hopefully the model is as good as it ever was.

Saturday Film Club: Exploring Hellingly Station

 

An interesting tour of Hellingly Station, now a private house, junction between the "Cuckoo line" and The Hellingly Hospital Railway. 

With my long term interest in the line, I have been to the station, but it was many years ago and I could do nothing but peer at it. Certainly not bang on the door as ask to look around with a camera.

Social history

While my model of The Hellingly Hospital Railway might be retired from the exhibition circuit due to my lack of time to be a "proper" exhibitor, I'm still interested in the history of the line. There keep being little surprises along the way and it is a fascinating subject.

The latest "news" is that the hospital had a football team. I find this from the November 1955 issue of Lewes FC News - bought via eBay for a couple of quid.

Unsurprisingly, the hospital didn't have many people to chose from when picking a team. I'm assuming the list was limited to staff, inmates being ineligible to play.

Despite this, playing in Red and White, they beat both Burwash and Hastings Civil Service. Well done lads!

Saturday Film Club: Hellingly on film

Hat tip to Jonathan Clay for this one via Unseen Steam. 

A very short clip showing the Hellingly Hospital Railway loco working a railtour in the 1950s. Only the second bit of film I've ever seen and the other is on a DVD full of buses. If I could find my copy, I'd point you at that one too but no luck. Never mind, just watch this a few times.

What's that on the cover of Model Rail?

 

A picture of my Hellingly Hospital Railway model on the front of a rival magazine's cover? 

No-one was more surprised than me when this popped up, but I'll admit to being a bit chuffed. Looking inside, there are a series of short articles providing inspiration for more unusual prototypes that would make interesting model railways. Once of these is hospitals, and as illustration, they have used a photo from the article I wrote years ago for the magazine, pictures taken by Chris Nevard. 

 

(This isn't Hellingly, he did 3 layouts in one session at our club and every one had to be dusted)

While I don't get paid, it's nice that the model is remembered. It's also a very interesting issue which I will be pinching ideas from maybe...

View from the Hospital engine shed

Taking a few photos on The Hellingly Hospital Railway and spotted this view when looking through the engine shed doors. Virtually no railway in view, but quite a lot of construction equipment.

I'll admit that I've added the scenery on the left of the tree as normally that's where you see the happy faces of exhibition visitors but apart from that, it's all real.

Everything in the picture is kit or scratch built. although apart from the traction engine (W&T models) and foreground roller (scratchbuilt from plastic bits) I can't remember the sources I'm afraid. It's over a decade since I built this lot!

Hellingly in a partwork

When you buy the first issue of a partwork for the gift strapped to the cover, do you ever look at the magazine contained in the package?

If you do, and you have signed up for "Your Model Railway Village" and stuck with it to issue 36, you'll find 4 pages on my model of the Hellingly Hospital Railway.

It seems that while many ignore the printed part of the package, in truth it's worth a look. I was approached to write this piece so there is some effort being put in to provide quality content. It was, I admit, something that hadn't crossed my mind but nice to know.

I don't know for certain what people who received Issue 36 find attached to it, although the instructions contained within the pages would suggest some cobblestone sheet to be used around the station.

As well as this and my piece (which looks very nice) a couple of pages delve in to the price of travel in the age of steam. Third class and workman's fares are covered and I suspect that for the market this publication is aimed at, this will be interesting information. Hard-core enthusiasts might scoff, but we were all beginners once .

Nice to see an honest assessment of the photo accompanying the third class information. The happy travellers are described, "However the people in this scene look happy to be in third class, perhaps because the photograph was taken for publicity purposes by the GWR!"

Who says marketing is a new thing?

Book Review: The Hellingly Hospital Railway by Peter A Harding

If you know my model making output, you'll be surprised to see this book being reviewed on the blog - after all, it's the one that inspired me to build a model of The Hellingly Hospital Railway years ago.

This review is simply to point readers interested in unusual railway lines at the recently revised edition. Peter got in touch with me and borrowed a big box of photographs and research notes put together when I was building and exhibiting the model. This has allowed him to update the text a bit. There are also several more photos added since the 1989 version was published.

One of the big revelations appears on page 20, where the photo of tramcar and electric loco is printed in full - it was cropped to length in the older book - and now shows the front of the weigh bridge hut. I spent years looking for details of this building for my model! I'm now relieved to see I didn't do such a bad job after all.

For the price, even if you have an older copy, it's worth getting the latest version. Judging by the interest my model generated and amazing number of people who knew the line personally, I hope it sells well.

The Hellingly Hospital Railway is available direct from the author:
Peter A Harding, "Mossgiel", Bagshot Road, Knaphill, Woking, Surrey, GU21 2SG
Price: £4.00 plus 50p post & packing

P Class at Hellingly Asylum

Late in 1962, P Class tank engine 31325 drops off a couple of loaded coal wagons on the weighbridge at Hellingly Asylum. It is the usual practise for each wagon to be weighed both in and out of the hospital as the governing board are concerned that suppliers might take advantage of the health service to under supply.

Of course this never happened, but had the hospital railway survived past 1959, it could well have done. At the time BR were concerned about the state of the trackwork that their wagons would be travelling over and had forced some to be upgraded to make a point.

Assuming the electric locomotive wasn't available, the only alternative that could have been hired from the main line was an ex-SECR P class tank engine. The class with a 10 ton axle load was passed for the line even though none ever ventured up there.

The scene is shot on my model of the Hellingly line and is the first time I've ever been able to put it together as the layout normally lives stored away and hasn't been out since I've owned a suitable locomotive - built from a Wills Kit. The wagons are Parkside kits.

A lesson in cable drums

On the Hellingly Hospital Railway, I've modelled a couple of cable drums. The line is in the process of being electrified so ti seemed a pretty reasonable assumption that there would be drums of overhead wire knocking around.

One drum is on its side, the other standing up.

This caused one visitor to a show to explain that I'd made a mistake. Full cable drums are never allowed on their side.

Apparently once they are, it's nearly impossible to get them upright again thanks to the weight of the wire on the spool.

I'd never thought of that but it makes sense. While I've no idea what a full drum would weight, it's going to be seriously heavy.

Anyway, finding myself with a nice Skytrex spool, I've glued it in the proper orientation on Clayhanger Yard.

Sometimes I do pay attention.

Hellingly Hospital Railway in Great British Model Railways

An unexpected appearance for The Hellingly Hospital Railway in a new publication arriving at a WH Smith near you - Great British Model Railways Volume 1.

This is a spin-off from Model Rail magazine. The opportunity has been taken to re-publish some images alongside new one from layouts previously showcased on the magazine. What you get for the bargain price is 30 layouts worth of excellent Chris Nevard photos.

For most readers, this is exactly what they are looking for. Reproduction is excellent, this is a keeper for the magazine pile, and you'll find loads of inspiration in the models featured.

There's not much in the way of modelling information but if you want that, pointers to both websites and back issues of the magazine are included.

The Hellingly pages include a double page spread and 4 other pictures. The layout looks brilliant, I'm not convinced I built it now...

Needless to say, there are a couple of errors. Firstly, don't believe the contents page, Hellingly is OO rather than P4. Also, I am not "one of the country's most imaginative modellers", the correct phrase is "persistent bodgers"!

If you can't find a copy locally, buy it on-line. Well worth the money.