Victoria Road
00, British Rail, East London, 12 @ 1 foot
Still under construction
David B and I designed Victoria Road or as it was originally called Victoria
Street to break away from the normal industry in a
rural setting and to avoid the problems with another layout
by automating the passenger service & adding a goods service. We also took into
account the normal constrains of cost, size, transport, storage, handling and
technical factors like a decision to use pattern
makers dowels to give smoother running over joints.
After considering French, West German, East German,
Czech, and America
it was decided to go British 00 as the most popular outline.
The availability of
British 00 stock meant Victoria Road had to be set
in the late 1980’s as the Class 121 diesel multiple unit in rail blue dwindled
after 1986 as they were repainted into Network SouthEast livery, Class 09 in
rail blue dwindled under post 1982 sectorisation as they were repainted in
Railfreight gray and wagons are in Railfreight gray livery (1982-97) that wasn't
wide spread till the late 80's. The next decision was where to locate the
layout. Given the stock
Victoria Road had to be in the London area so the next stage was to develop a
background story - Victoria Road was a station on a line down to the London
Docks that in the 1960's closed south of Victoria Road but a passenger service
was maintained using Diesel Multiple Units and in the 1970's the track was
rationalised into two reversible track as happened, at one point, to Blackpool
South. Given we were in East London I had thoughts
about Something Walford but sternly repressed them as it's an overused name. As
the layout was set in London it was decided to go for a 24” high back scene
allowing the a upper level 'mainline', a low level goods yard, and a 17” roof
lines so plenty of tall buildings. The 24" high back scene meant the layout
would be operated from the front. It was decided to operate from the fiddle yard
end so goods stock had to be fitted with KD couplings and a magnet placed under
the track for automatic operation. The upper level line was to be on a viaduct
coming from behind buildings and ending at the station with the viaduct split by
were the low level line passes underneath. The viaduct arches are used by small
industries and one or two rail served industry such as a wine importer. The
viaduct height was determined by clearance needed to handle stock in the fiddle
yard. Track passing under the viaduct was made accessible by flaps in back scene
and to ease maintenance no track crosses baseboard joints under the viaduct. The
back scene was, initially, to be a combination of very low relief buildings and
a Peco photo back scene possibly SK-20 Port/dock scene with ships at berths. I
built the baseboards, installed the track and wired the layout. David's built
the buildings etc. Nigel Ca. offered to paint the back scene. At that point for
a variety of reasons development stopped.
Panoramas
Station
Victoria Road
Industries
Wine importers
Warehouse
Wire Works
Low Level
Photos of Victoria Road under construction
Fiddle yard - rarely photographed but in many ways the heart of a layout