Good day all; another rumination on railways. Finally, I should say; for some time unfortunately the uncertainties of what politically is happening in Britain emotionally got the better of me and I uncoupled (purely used as a railway term) from what was going on in London and Brussels through on one side a lot of reading (Paul Theroux’s “Deep South” and “The Ghost Train to the Eastern Star” were particularly entertaining) as well as on the other side by sitting down with some Slater’s 1:160 cardboard model building kits for my N-gauge railway under (slow) construction. I do, however, offer my sincere apologies for the extended radio silence.
As yet I am working on a piece of Dutch heritage industrial cityscape, consisting of warehouses that, or so the story goes, lost their original function. On one side those warehouses were in the way of building a housing estate that the little Kingdom of the Netherlands so desperately needs and for which suitable space is running out. On the other side they were actually rather nice buildings, quite evocative of industry in fairly recent history. That defined the choice: either demolish the lot and build a rather desirable canal-side housing estate, something that was done with the majestic industrial river frontage along the river Zaan at Zaandam, North of Amsterdam, which turned out deeply rued. Or alternatively keep them and do something worth while with them. The latter was decided upon (in an N-gauge city-hall meeting room, of course) and the characteristic cluster is now being rebuild into an art and theatre-academy with exhibition space and a theatre, a theatre-museum, two restaurants, a pub, some non-manufacturing commercial space and a few dwellings in loft style. The latter with the added function that residents, with a vested interest in keeping the place safe and in good order, are around to keep an eye on the goings-on as crime, violence and vandalism are a serious problem in The Netherlands too. The name of this area is Pakhuisplein; in English Warehouse Plaza. The function on the layout is to hide the trains that go into a rather sharp curve behind it, for which in fact more buildings are required to be successful. A fifth Slater’s warehouse kit with water Tower and a few other bits of industrial buildings like a boiler house with chimney and sheds are available. Added to which will be a brick-built tower of an old city windmill minus its revolving top and wings, not a kit but built from a photograph in a book I just found in my mother’s bookcase when I was in The Netherlands recently; she graciously allowed me to take it home to Somerset.
What can be seen on the photo above are four kits of cardboard warehouses of which two have been combined into one building, the edifice with the short tower. At the opposite end of that building something really interesting will be done: a heavy gable-hoist, once used for 20-tonne machine parts, will be used to suspend a sizeable balcony at first floor level from. Customers eating at the Italian restaurant planned there can sit outside in case of nice weather and watch inland waterway shipping dock at the local container facility, or sail into the nearby lock that brings the canal up to a higher level. The two buildings in the foreground are in the course of being connected by the entrance hall and reception area for the school and the exhibition hall. These bits are made out of a kit for a typical English bus garage, the sheds of which and bits of the office all will be used for this section. On top of this entrance hall will be a pub, incidentally, up to the fourth floor with a roof-garden. This will protrude in a circle above the 45 degree wall area seen here, large vertically orientated windows illuminating the main floor at third floor level and a mezzanine floor at fourth floor level. I am in the course of cladding the wall of the restaurant now; things have progressed since this picture was taken.
Across the above mentioned lock, incidentally there is going to be a three-track railway drawbridge as discussed much earlier in these ruminations (photos Wormerveer, Brug Wormerveer 2 and 500px-klein-ophaalbrug), the one at Wormerveer station across the Nauernasche Vaart. My hope is to have the diorama with the container port, drawbridge and warehouses set up in the next year so that I can put up some of my very Dutch trains from the 1960’s to the 1990’s: a Baldwin-Westinghouse class 1200 with express trains from the two periods or even an ore/coal train of 30 boxy German self-discharging vehicles hauled by no less than 4 (have them already!) class 22/2300 Bo’Bo’ diesel electric locomotives, equally of Baldwin parentage.
This model drawbridge will not actually be movable for the simple reason that I have neither the technical skill nor the nearby-eyesight and motor-control of my increasingly arthritic hands to do that sort of intricate work any longer. It is a really interesting bridge, though, due to the way the lifting movement of the original works with three so-called Panama wheels, those contraptions between the uprights and the balance-beams. The real bridge no longer exists after it was replaced at this location with a larger modern drawbridge, but the single track section was reused across a waterway in a freight spur somewhere up North until traffic there was stopped. If you go through the bits on my blog website you will find other pictures of these originally typical North of Amsterdam drawbridges, of which to the best of my knowledge only one single-track example still exists in the museum railway line between Hoorn and Medemblik. The Dutch, unlike the English, unfortunately can be really active when taking out old kit.
Picture Wormerveer shows a 2-car plan V EMU leaving from Wormerveer station toward the bridge. Here it is clear that the single-track section no longer has track on it. Unbelievable that these once so common trains, built from the 1960’s right through to the 1980’s, no longer can be seen. The set in the railway collection at Utrecht is used in summertime to connect Utrecht Central Station directly to the museum, incidentally. This is the negative I could not find for some time and then spotted it under a cupboard. That maltreatment shows up in the scratches, for which my apologies. Interesting, incidentally, are the two signals to be seen ahead. They are seen on the rear, applying to train traffic on either line coming toward us; the signalling is reversible. The signal for the line on which the train shown is departing away from us is moreover fitted with a speed indicator under the main aspect. Ahead of this train the crossovers with which it could be put over to the left line running “wrong line”. The signals for that are (or perhaps nowadays were) behind me.
What I was doing in Wormerveer? That had to do with my evening job in Amsterdam, being tourist guide on the local canal boats. These excursion boats were maintained and refitted in wintertime, outside tourist season, on a small boatyard in Wormerveer. I had accompanied one of the skippers with the first boat to be dealt with that year, and therefore there was as yet no boat to be taken back to Amsterdam. I used my nationwide “public transport year ticket” to catch a train back; whilst waiting I could take this rather atmospheric winter-evening picture. Don’t be fooled, though; snow was and still is very rare in those parts.
Peter
Another bit of Ruminating on Railways 