4 - The 16mm Years

My wife and I moved across the country to Cardiff in the summer of 1996, and I began a sustained period of research and writing on genealogy and railways, but did no modelling for several years. However, the interest hadn't gone, and after a while I decided to have a bash at 16mm.

At first I looked at locos and decided that, as a toe-dipping exercise, I would get some of the Saltford Models kits made by Brian Clarke in Bath. This seemed a cheap and easy way of getting to grips with the size of things in 16mm. The loco kits Brian sold were more in the way of 'scratch-aids', and usually comprised a set of instructions and some materials for construction of the more tricky bits. He also sold motors, wheels and the electronics to get controllable battery power. I bought the Simplex first - I still have it partly built in a drawer somewhere. The idea of battery-power appealed, so I then bought the Alan Keef K12 diesel, which I didn't get round to making until I retired!

I did get some rolling stock, however - a couple of the Colin Binnie skips, and two bolster wagons which I bashed into a flat and a fuel tank wagon. Brian also had a very neat system of making track - pressed-brass sleepers with track fixings incorporated, so that it was easy to get the gauge right. I made track into prototypical Jubilee track panel lengths, straight and curved. There were also parts for turnouts, which could be made left- or right-hand. There was a cast white-metal frog and check-rail and longer sleeper strip. I thought that the radius was not tight enough, and bodged the casting into something tighter , but it didn't work well when I tried to run something through it.

My efforts in 16mm up to 2004 really didn't get much further. Once I had retired and we moved to Oxfordshire I had the idea of making a micro-layout, having discovered Carl Arendt's web site. I decided that it would fit onto a shelf in a Billy bookcase from Ikea, so that gave a length of 30 inches and a width of just over 10-and-a-half inches.

This view of the track just after I laid it gives the overall track-plan. As ever, there would be a fiddle-yard at the right-hand end - the layout would have to be taken out of the book-case for operations, as I wasn't about to start bodging holes through the sides. The lower turnout is made the way Brian intended, with the frog casting, while the Y-turnout is my first attempt at scratch-building a turnout, though I used Brian's sleepers. The point levers are Brian's castings, too.

A view of the whole layout at a later stage of completion. The only loco and all the rolling stock are shown here.

The track is stuck down onto a piece of board that just fits into the bookcase. The board is stuck onto a bit of hardboard to give the (slightly) lower level at the front. The brickwork is brick paper from a dolls-house shop, reduced in size on a photo-copier, and the corrugated iron is from corrugated card bought in a craft shop.

Two photos of Brian Clarke's Keef K12 loco. It's battery powered, and the two red levers visible here control speed and isolate the

batteries. A 'brake lever' on the rear cab sheet controls direction.

The two Binnie Hudson skips, built as the maker intended. Brian Clarke's pressed-brass sleepers show up well - the fish-plates are 0 gauge.

The tank wagon. The skip chassis is one of Colin Binnie's bolster kits modified to suit.

The flat wagon is another Binnie bolster, with a wooden deck. The cement mixer is a Preiser product.

For the convenience of the workforce a porta-loo has been set up at one end of the yard. It's a minimum-dimension version that the manufacturer has named the 'Pee-Wee' in his catalogue. I made it from foam board and plasticard, and the roof is a section of a plastic drink bottle.

I stuck with the theme of Baigen's Basin - the back-story is that, after years went by and the canal fell into disuse and decay, a society was formed to resurrect it. The work has now reached Baigent's Basin and a special task-force has been set up for the project to renovate it. It was decided that a 2' gauge railway would help with the work of shifting muck and debris out and bricks, cement, etc in. A secure storage yard for the equipment has been set up behind one of the old Baigent's buildings. The full title of the layout is, therefore, 'The Bowcester & Vayne Canal Preservation Society Baigent's Basin Renovation Project Light Railway Works Yard' - the B&VCPSBBRPLRWY. As the name is longer than the layout it's known as 'Baigent's Yard' - another bit of recycling.

The layout was included in the March 2007 edition of Carl Arendt's Scrapbook - http://www.carendt.us/scrapbook/page59a/index.html - and was also mentioned in the September 2007 edition.

I kept this little layout preserved behind a perspex sheet in the bookcase. However, after a couple of years work in 16mm I thought that I'd really like something that was large scale, but got more into a small space. I sold the layout in 2019.

Page created 2 June 2011 Last edited 11 Dec 2020