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The Wandle Valley Railway layout was an S scale layout based on the LB&SCR station at Mitcham, Surrey in the 1880s era, a time of colourful Stroudley locomotives and trains.
The layout was started in 1994 and first exhibited here in southern Ontario in 1996. During its 8 years it had been taken to more than 20 exhibitions. Some of the baseboards were beginning to show signs of wear and tear, so, rather than try to replace parts of the layout, it was decided to 'retire' it, with the intention of building a new and replacement layout.
During the 8 years many photos were taken of the layout by me and others, so here are a few scenes over the years. A list of photographers appears at the end of these pages.
The Wandle Valley Railway layout was intended to be a simple continuous run layout primarily to show a variety of trains authentic to the line in the 1880s. In theory the trains travelled between Wimbledon, on the left, and Croydon, on the right, all stopping at Mitcham. In reality, at shows, I tended to let many of the the trains run continuously around and around at times to keep the public interested and to give an operational break. However, slow running was always the order on the WVR.
For the first few years, only three locomotives were available, the passenger tanks 'Tooting', an A class 'Terrier' and 'Mitcham', a D1, together with an E1 goods tank 'Bordeaux'. By 2000 they were joined by my Craven/Stroudley 0-4-2T no. 373, with its set of Craven coaches. Then in 2002, my friend Terry introduced an interloper, LSWR K10 4-4-0 no. 142 in the Drummond of the early 1900s! It had a special LSWR train of the period of 2 coaches in the colourful LSWR livery of salmon and brown.
As well as the later Craven coaches and the final LSWR coaches, from the beginning there had been a set of 5 LB&SCR 4 wheelers dating from the 1870s. To make up variety there were 18 goods vehicles, all relevant to the era, available for goods trains.
Because this was an S scale layout, all the locos, coaches and goods vehicles were scratchbuilt by me, except for Terry's LSWR K10. Many of these locos, trains and goods vehicles can be seen in the various photos.
The station at Mitcham was dominated by the early 19th century 'Archway House', the model of which can be seen in the background. It included most of the station office facilities, but was always separate from the platform buildings.
Each of the platform buildings was a mirror image of the other and included waiting rooms, porters rooms and toilets. Originally there was a separate ticket office on the down side, closer to the road. The footbridge was a relatively late addition, being provided in 1892. The signal box dated from the late 1860s. Prior to electrification of the line in 1929, the bridge carrying the road to Sutton was a twin arched bridge, as modelled.
There had been a brewery just south of the station site since years before the coming of
the railway. This brewery model, although based on an actual brewery, is actually far smaller
proportionately than the original brewery. The last of the actual brewery buildings at Mitcham disappeared in the 1960s.
During the 18th century and the early part of the 19th century, the valley of River Wandle was one of the most important centres of industry in the south of England. Much of this industry relied on the power provided by many of the mills on the river. The river became highly polluted, full of toxic substances. As these local industries declined during the 19th century, many of the mills closed and the river began to regain some cleanliness. Today, all these old mills have either gone or are no longer working mills. One or two are preserved as relics of the past, in use as heritage centres.
One mill which did not survive was Deeds Mill. There had been mills on the site of Deeds Mill right back to the Middle Ages, although it had been known through the ages by other names. This model is based on photographs of the mill in the 1930s. The actual mill was not in use as a working mill by that time, and, unfortunately, Deeds Mill fell into disrepair and was taken down in the 1960s.
The bright side to this is that the river has now been restored to its natural cleanliness, with many tree-lined walks in parkland on its banks. Part of the section of the River Wandle just south of the site of Mitcham station, is now a secluded National Trust site, off-limits to the general public.
Of course, the actual river is much wider, proportionately, than shown on the model, but I have tried to depict some of the natural side of the river, within the limits of the size of a layout baseboard.
As this layout is built to S scale standards, all locomotives had to be scratchbuilt. The building techniques were fairly conventional, using brass sheet of 20 thou thickness for the body and usually 30 thou for the mainframes. Wheels are mostly Sharman wheels to P4 standards, with all locos powered by Portescap units with wiper pick-ups. As the locos were meant to be in their 1870s as-built condition I avoided making Westinghouse pumps. However, I have a program to upgrade each of them with Westinghouse pumps and proper (model) brake gear. The first three locos, nos. 65, 33 and 99, were built prior to first exhibiting the layout in 1996. The Craven 0-4-2T was a later addition, in 2000 and the LSWR K10, no.142, made its first appearance in 2003.
The three passenger tank locos, the A, D and Craven tanks, were painted in Stroudley's yellow livery ('Improved Engine Green'), fully lined. The only goods loco on the line, the E class 0-6-0T, is in Stroudley's dark green livery. All carry scale etched number plates, done for me by Bill Bedford.
Generally speaking their performance over the years has been quite good, with the A class 'Terrier', no.65 'Tooting' being consistently good. It must have completed the full circuit of the layout hundreds of times. At some shows, when things weren't busy or the operator needed a rest, we let the loco trundle around the layout continuously for up to 45 minutes, with minimal attention.
The D1 no. 33 'Mitcham', has been a little less reliable, suffering from a slightly damaged front wheel a few years ago. The loco should have been re-wheeled at that point, but I let it struggle on. It will be re-wheeled in the near future.
The E1 goods loco, no. 99 'Bordeaux', has always suffered from a balance problem as a result of too much weight being added to the interior of the bunker at construction time. As it performs very well going bunker first, I have left the problem unfixed and let it run slowly with its goods trains going backwards most of the time.
The Craven 0-4-2T is modelled on a Craven/Stroudley hybrid. Upon Stroudley taking over loco matters on the LB&SCR, he found two tank locos, nos 18 & 21, under construction. He modified the design considerably and no.18 emerged as in this model. It carries the number 373 as renumberd in the late 1870s. Strangely although this loco performed extremely well from the time of its appearance in 2000, it is the only one to have had a motor failure, in 2003, necessitating a replacement Portescap being fitted.
The 'interloper', the LSWR Drummond K10, no.142, is in early 1900s livery, a little out-of-period for the layout. It was built for me by my friend, Terry Nowell. Its running performance is exemplary!
On the left can be see a train with 3 Stroudley 4-wheel coaches. There were 5 coaches like this available,
normally run as a set with a brake third at each end. The colour is really rather too red but is meant to
represent the mahogany colour of Stroudley's original coaches in the early 1870s.
Also in various photos can be seen some early LBSCR 4-wheeled coaches of the Craven era. There were also five of these, including a full passenger brake mostly in brown livery, but with one in a non-descript green livery from the early 1850s and the full brake in an umber/yellow livery.
There was a selection of 18 goods wagons all typical of the period. The PO wagons have dumb buffers, but the railway wagons have regular buffers. Most liveries are correct for the area, except for a couple of fictitious PO wagon liveries, as authentic PO wagon liveries of the 1870s are hard to come by.
Footbridge. In a few of the images can be seen the platform footbridge. This a scale model based on dimensions taken from the prototype footbridge, now at Wandsworth Road, together with some historical photos. In addition I made use of drawings of a standard Midland Railway footbridge with components of identical dimensions. The actual model was made, piece by piece, of sections of styrene strip, bar, T-section and L-sections. The colours are hypothesised as actual colours used in the 1890s are really unknown. I suspect the 'red' colour I have used is a bit too bright.
Archway House. This is the main station building seen in the background of some images. The original, a listed building, still exists. It dates back to the very early 1800s, possibly late 1790s, and was taken over by the LB&SCR as its station office. It is of card construction with hand-painted brickwork.
Road Bridge. Before electrification of the line in 1930, the main road bridge was a two arch bridge, but I have been unable to find photos of it, except for a postcard showing it being demolished in 1929. Consequently, the upper parts of the bridge model are conjectural, but it dated back to the mid 19th century, probably when the LBSCR opened the line from Wimbledon.
Cottages. At the end of the roadbridge, at the edge of the layout, is a pair in the London yellow brick, based on designs of similar cottages in Mitcham dating from the late 1800s. The frontage is based on an actual pair of cottages in London Road for that period. As usual, it is of card construction with hand-painted bricks.
Manor House. Hidden behind the many trees is a half-relief model based on Manor House in lower Mitcham.
Trees. It had always been the intention to provide many trees on the layout. In the end over 50 were made up for the layout. The usual method was to use 3 or 4 dead and dried clumps of spirea bush, fashioned to form a tree, with aerosol paint and aerosol glue used to fix mixtures of green flock.
The layout was first shown at our local club show, the Great British Train Show, Brampton, Ontario, in April 1996. The showing was far from a success. The primary problem was difficulty in baseboard alignments, cause by not fully appreciating the problems associated with setting up a large oval layout, together with the usual temperature and humidity changes we are faced with here. By the time of my next show, GBTS1998 (see picture below), I had overcome many of those problems and improved the running capabilities considerably.
From that time onwards the layout was taken to Railfair in Ottawa twice and the Toronto Model Railway Show (our major all-Canada show here, held every March) a few times. It had also been taken to a couple of local shows, but further showings locally had been turned down by me primarily because a fine-scale British layout basically is unappreciated in small local shows in southern Ontario.
The layout won the 'Best in Show' award at GBTS2000, attended by David Brown, the Managing Editor of British Railway Modelling, who was the show's judge. As a result of this, the layout was featured in the BRM September 2000 edition. By the time of GBTS, April 2002, showing of the layout had become fairly routine and the quality of running at some shows was excellent.
After 2002, consideration was given to the future of the layout. A problem with over-winter storing of the layout had resulted in warping in two baseboards. Although this problem was largely overcome I felt that the layout really needed some major re-construction work. I decided that the forthcoming NMRA Convention, due to be held in Toronto in July 2003, would be the layout's retiring showing! Organisation of the show was a fiasco, blamed on the SARS outbreak in Toronto, but in reality due to a lack of understanding of the non-USA marketplace by the NMRA. The primary show was cancelled 1 month before its show date, but then revived on a smaller scale by a local organiser. The layout performed well at the show, but I felt that a final showing at our bi-annual GBTS would be more appropriate.
So GBTS2004, at Brampton, Ontario, was its last exhibition showing.
Many friends and exhibition visitors have taken photographs of the layout over the years and some have made copies of their photographs freely available to me for my use. On this web site you may see photos taken by Terry Nowell, Mike Gale Snr., John Prior (of the S Scale Society) and Walter Gray, as well as a few taken by me personally.
I would like also to give special thanks to my two very good friends who have helped me over the years in setting up and running the layout at many shows: Andy Larcombe, who has travelled over from England several times, and Terry Nowell, who has travelled up to Toronto from Nova Scotia. Mike Gale Snr. of Ottawa and Tony Ross of Oakville also helped me out at several shows. A helping hand has also been given at various times by many others. Many thanks to you all.
Version 2.1 September 2004