Well a few times I’ve mentioned on here that it’s game over. Today, it is.
Developments here mean that Albion Yard has ‘left the building’. All the neat stuff has been saved, and wiring, motors and some track too. But the core layout? Nup, gone.
It was a bit of a tough choice I’ll admit, even once recyclable stuff had been removed, however the trigger had been pulled, and the past is a foreign land.
The layout taught me a huge amount, presentation, reliability, serviceability, how to exhibit too. It helped develop some brilliant friendships, introduced some of my friends to exhibiting too, and has been a photo and film set in its lifetime.
A vote of thanks to those guys, and to the exhibition managers who accepted it, and the magazine teams who featured it.
Thank you to you readers. Some of you have followed this from the early fotopic and Yahoo group days, that makes the layout about fifteen years old. Makes you think that one, doesn’t it!
It’s been emotional geezers…..
Albion Yard 
So sad.
It’s done a lot, and earned its Viking send off! There’ll be more to come 🙂
It’s hard to see, even when it’s driven by a completely voluntary decision to start something new. All the time, effort, care, attention, thought…. But onwards and on to something new and engrossing and amazing I hope.
An irrelevant aside: I’m coincidentally slowly working on a small layout based on a prototype also called “Albion Yard”, only mine was situated in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada on the Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway. It was a beautiful (to a model railroader) compact goods yard reached by a short stretch of street running. I came across your blog doing research on my prototype and I’ve enjoyed following it ever since.
It’s been a joy to follow your fantastic modelling of your Albion Yard!
Karl
Thanks Karl. The first minute seemed odd I’ll admit, but then it was the ‘forward’ opportunity that came to mind. Buildings and trees are kept and they’ll re-appear on something.
A mid 70’s Great Lakes grain elevator project is in mind here with equipment already acquired, it’ll be a different project for me by quite a margin, and I’m looking forward to starting it in the next year or so ( I think!). Part of it may feature street running too, please feel free to forward a link to your project, and thanks for your thoughts
I’ve enjoyed it.
Thank you very much.
Martin Owen
Florida
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Oh man, I also love Great Lakes grain elevators. You may be really well aware of this already but in Canada, pre-St Lawrence Seaway transport requirements and government subsidies created and kept running a number of small-to-medium grain elevators scattered along the eastern shore of Lake Huron in southern Ontario as part of a “bucket brigade”-like system for moving grain to Atlantic ports.
My understanding is that grain was collected from the prairies by rail, transferred to lake boats (I assume at western Lake Superior ports like Thunder Bay) that then unloaded at various points on the eastern Great Lakes for transshipment back into rail cars for movement to Atlantic shipping ports like Montreal and Moncton. Some of the ports involved in that last boat-to-rail unloading step were of a quite manageable size and at the end of somewhat isolated branches. I think that the opening of the Seaway took a big bite out of this traffic by allowing boats to load on the Lakes and go straight to Montreal, but it took a surprisingly long time to die off.
Large examples of these unloading grain ports include Collingwood, Port McNicoll, and Owen Sound, but my favorite of these is in Goderich, ON on both the CNR and CPR. The CPR’s Goderich terminal is particularly compact and modelgenic: the line descends to lake level along a cliff side, enters the compact terminal yard (with a pretty “witches hat” passenger station!) under a road bridge (it may as well be coming from a fiddle yard), and then there is a tight 180-degree loop to reach the grain elevators. There are some great photos here: http://www.trainweb.org/oldtimetrains/CPR_London/history_G_and_G.htm
If you’re interested, great information on these ports (focused on the steam era but still useful) can be found at:
For the CPR, http://www.trainweb.org/oldtimetrains/articles.html (go to the links in “Canadian Pacific Railway Ontario District”; it’s not organized helpfully but once you figure out how to navigate it there is great information and many photos there)
For the CNR, the books of Ian Wilson are laser-focused on the steam era but have station-by-station photos and maps and an amazing level of information, and are the closest thing that I’ve found in North America to the amazing books in the UK that cover every inch of a given branchline. I think I recall that “Steam at Allandale” would be a great starting point for the Lakes traffic.
This may all be old news to you, but as you may be able to tell I really like these ports and have long thought they’d be a great modeling subject. Let me know if you’d be interested in learning more; I don’t have a tonne more information but I could point you to some useful books and other resources.
All the best,
Karl
Karl certainly not old news, best news of the day so far!
Reblogged this on sed30.com.
Shorter post this time (!): I forgot to link to the page where I was outlining my (slow) model build, on the forums section of the US online model magazine Model Railroad Hobbyist
https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/30619