No. 168 GWR - the Great Way Round – the concept.
The past couple of years have seen a number of exciting modifications to the railway that have so far passed unrecorded.
I was first alerted to the misuse of the initials GWR by George Behrend (Ref 1)1 in his 1966 book Gone With Regret. In his recollections of the Great Western Railway he extols the virtues of God’s Wonderful Railway and notes that opponents of GW methods would dismiss the company as the Great Way Round. (Something about Brunel’s original route to Bath and Bristol via Didcot and Swindon not being convenient for reaching Plymouth or Penzance.)
In the 1950s the Reverend Awdry’s railway books were almost compulsory reading for children, well probably just boys. However there was another model railway cleric, the Scottish Presbyterian Minister the Reverend Edward Beal (Ref 2). He wrote and published a series of modelling guides later to be bound as a compendium and published as ‘West Midland, a Railway in Miniature / aka the ‘00’ Gauge Layout of a Lifetime.’ Over a period of 20 or more years Edward Beal constructed a number of model railways culminating in a massive model railway that escaped through the walls of its original room into an adjacent garage.
West Midland Layout Plan
The concepts behind Edward Beal’s layout design have stayed with me all these years and have encouraged me now to test the boundaries of my own layout. I have a long branch line with passing loops (probably ex GWR) culminating at a ‘high level’ terminus. The terminus finished up against a plasterboard enclosure housing the twin wall flue from an oil fired Aga. Fifteen years later the Aga has been converted to electricity and the flue is in effect redundant. I would tunnel through the enclosure and create a loop line back to the start - my own Great Way Round. I do like watching trains go by.
Exiting the tunnel the line would have to be carried over the existing storage sidings. Conveniently these had been arranged in pairs with a larger gap between the separate pairs. Conveniently because there was space to insert supports for the new track above. The line could then be looped down on the inside of the existing return loop. The original loop was nominally six feet diameter. Reducing the inner loop below six feet was a compromise that I thought worth accepting. I have titled the plan above ‘as Projected’ because during construction as the track climber up I was able to move the track bed over the old loop below giving a small increase in radius. Initially I connected the new and old trackwork with a single point. This required a degree of ‘wrong line’ working and it was not long before I arranged the slightly more complicated arrangement shown above with three points giving access from both up and down lines.
Construction of my Great Way Round took place in early 2022. A lot else has since happened. However to give some idea of the potential of the new track layout there is a video made back in 2022 immediately after construction. The video was made using a Camtruck pushed by a Bachmann sound fitted Earl running on analogue.
As a reminder I have included some historical pictures from before the works.
The Buffer Stop back in 2008
The Buffer Stops in 2011
The Buffer Stop 2022 immediately prior to the works
The Plaster Board enclosure
I plan to detail construction in further posts. For the present here is a short up to the minute video clip of the Great Way Round in use.
References:
1 Gone With Regret,(George Behrend) Second Edition 1966, Distributed by Neville Spearman for Jersey Artists
2 West Midland, a Railway in Miniature’ (Edward Beal) 1952, Percival Marshall
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