# Western Valley Railway – Gwent Steel



## Gwent Rail (Jan 24, 2018)

Just as a background preamble, many UK modellers will be aware of a series of layouts I built (under the heading of The Western Valley Railway) with my good mate Tony Thorn.
1) The first Western Valley railway was a two level roundy-roundy, built in my second bedroom, measuring 10ft x 8ft and was largely completed.
2) The second WVR was a more ambitious affair, again a roundy-roundy, but with one side being given over to a fiddle yard.
3) This layout, was eventually abandoned when nearly complete in order to build a 12ft x 12ft exhibition layout for a large 3-day show in Cornwall (The layout to be called WVR - Pontymister Docks).
4) Pontymister Docks was half finished when Tony was diagnosed with cancer and it became obvious that we would be unable to complete and show such a layout with his state of health.
5) Western Valley Railway IV was therefore born, using some of the boards and buildings of Pontymister Docks, as a stay at home project that could be worked on bit by bit, as and when Tony was well enough, or when I wanted to do some modelling alone. 

Together we spend many happy and treasured days “messing around” with WVR IV, but it was never completed fully as Tony’s health got worse and he eventually was beaten by his illness and died in February 2013.
I could no longer face working on the layout, more or less suspending my modelling activities for nearly three years.
I took the decision to dismantle everything and spent the next three springs & summers working on my neglected garden and the winter time converting the room back to being a bedroom, along with other DIY household jobs.
I moved most of my equipment and boards to the third, small bedroom of the house and did the bench work for a smaller, more manageable layout to eventually be built there.

To give some idea of the set up here’s a rough plan of that room and the boards it contains:








When wondering what to build in this space, I wanted something that would be a satisfying project with plenty of modelling and good operating potential.
My mind kept returning to a project that Tony and I had often discussed as a small space, big detail layout, not often modelled in the UK. 
This was a cut down version of a steel works (a full scale version needing far more space than the average UK house affords).
Even after over 45 years of modelling, it took me some time to convince myself that I was capable of cracking this completely different project. However, after buying some trial rolling stock, spending a fortune on a few good books and some Walthers kits to modify as a starting base, the project became “a goer” and continuing with my Western Valley theme,
*The Western Valley Railway - Gwent Steel* was launched.
It’s going to take some time (partly because I’m in no hurry), I’m sure that there will be some hair-raising moments, but I’m also sure that I’ll get plenty of advice and encouragement from other modellers.


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## Mark VerMurlen (Aug 15, 2015)

Looking forward to watching this develop. Sounds like a cool plan.

Mark


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## flyboy2610 (Jan 20, 2010)

Sounds like a great project!
My condolences on the loss of your friend. It's always hard to lose those you care about. I lost my dad to cancer in June of 2006.
My best friend from childhood passed away in 1995. He was 32.
I still miss them both terribly.
After Oliver Hardy died, Stan Laurel never performed again. He said he just couldn't do it without Ollie.


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## Gwent Rail (Jan 24, 2018)

Over the last 18 months, I have collected together a lot of information, photos and a few books on modelling a Steel Works layout (mainly from Kalmbach), by far the best buy being the £72 I shelled out for the one and only Dean Freytag's book "The History, Making and Modelling of Steel".

I’ve been doing some research on where to locate my Steel Works, taking into account the historical concentration of such plants and my preferred company liveries.
Printing out a map of Steel Works locations, confirms that the vast majority of sites are situated in the Eastern third of the USA and that there are more sites in the North than the South of the country.
Whilst thinking about these facts, I happened to see two boxes of BNSF gondolas that I bought at a railway show and that led me to do some research into the history of the company.
The following table is a brief synopsis of the history, along with a few other lines to be found serving the borders of the New York / Pennsylvania states:







This gave me plenty of scope for a feasible roster of rolling stock and so my location was decided as somewhere in this area.
A case for the appearance of any of the above companies (except the BNSF) can be made at around 1970 – 1975, so I guess my time and location is going to be “Early 1970s, somewhere on the New York / Pennsylvania border”.

The BNSF gondola hoppers I bought were sold on and I decided to major on the Great Northern, Canadian National, Pennsylvania, New York Central and Burlington Northern lines.

Maybe some American based modellers could point out that not all of my eventual rolling stock roster would ever have been seen together, but – Hey, I’m in the UK so nobody seeing the layout “in the flesh” will know the difference.

The same goes for my steelworks, where it is a combination of UK steelworks details (I worked in the steel industry as an industrial chemist for some time) plus USA practice that I’m modelling.


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## Gwent Rail (Jan 24, 2018)

Finally, after my research, I got onto some sort of start with the layout itself.
Firstly I built the benchwork for the room plan shown above. My frames, as usual for me, are built using L girders constructed in pine, covered with 5 ply, then Peco Sundeala board and then cork tiles. 
I've also installed back-scene boards and painted them a base colour of sky blue.
A photo to show some of the completed bench-work, the RH side of the room, a 2ft x 8ft section, which includes a temporary work stand in the fiddle yard area:








I drew and tried out a number of track plans, for which the more computer talented amongst us use a scale track drawing program.
I find this a bit of a black art, so use a process of covering the baseboards with lining paper (as used in wallpapering) and use the actual turnouts and a straight edge to draw the track out full size and in situ. 
It seems to me that this process helps me to change things in a small way but with great improvements to the feel and operational interest of the final plan.

The small surface area I was working with made me think a little differently about things and I made quite some use of curved turnouts and relatively short sidings. 
Actually, this has worked quite well and the tracks are more curved and flowing than I would normally build, with very few long straight sections. That must be typical of the congested centre of a steelworks?

Finally after much trial and error, I arrived at a track plan I was happy with, even if the process meant increasing the 8ft wall “main board” to 4ft wide. This gave me the ability to have a continuous run for testing and therapeutic use.
Almost a year after the first, here’s the final plan:







So this now gives me a layout area when stood in the doorway to the room of 8ft x 4ft, with an L return which is 4ft x 2ft (the diagram above does not show the fiddle yard section to scale).

The “operating space” in front of the layout is 6ft wide x 4ft deep. Just enough space for my Swivelling chair and small (collapsible) work table. 
In the UK, where houses are traditionally much smaller than in the US, we would call this “a small space layout”. 
Goodness only knows what you American guys would call it!!


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