Dursley LMS rating plan

Alex,

I built a model of Dursley in the 80s in S scale, but I gave away all of my photos, the LMS plan and other material to someone else who wanted to build a model in 4mm scale.

Sources of information were a small paperback book on the branch whose title I've now forgotten, and Peter Smith's "An Historical Survey of the Midland in Gloucestershire" (OPC 1985 ISBN 0-86093-301-6) This book has the original and the MR/LMS track diagrams and quite good plans of the station building.

At the time I was building the layout, I lived not too far away from Dursley and I did a survey of the site, but the station had completely disappeared under development of the Lister factory and you could just recognise small bits of it if you knew where to look.

At that time, I also got a lot of help from Lister and they supplied me with some excellent full plate photos of the station. There is also a book on the history of the Lister factory and this book contains the only details I ever found of the weighbridge and the back of the goods shed in two photos - one publicity shot of a small Lister tractor with the buildings in the background, and another photo of the yard area full of factory workers holding a strike meeting around about WW1 time.

I also got some more modern 1960s shots from a member of the 3mm Society in Gloucester which were valuable since the station hardly changed since the Midland altered the track plan around about 1890. I think the only thing that changed was the pointwork at the throat, where the original Midland three way turnout was replaced with two standard turnouts around about WW2. I had a photo dated in the mid

30s which showed the three way and other photos in the mid 1940s which showed the altered layout.

The local paper was absolutely no help at all in providing any information, but I did get a fair bit of help from a teacher in the Dursley secondary school who was also the local historian.

It was a very interesting layout to operate and this was remarked on by everyone who operated it while it did the rounds of the exhibition circuit in the mid to late 80s.

It's been nearly twenty years since I did all this and the memory is fading a bit :-). But it was an interesting time and I do remember getting quite involved in researching the history of the station - almost to the detriment of modelling it ;-)

Jim.

South hants MRC are producing an 'O' Gauge layout, I am doing the buildings ie engine shed station and goods shed, speaking to one of there members today at St Albans they Should have it up at there show on the 6th March at the Lord Nelson School in Portsmouth.

Ian Gearing

There was a rather large article with photographs in the preview issue (now out of print) of Midland Record:

There's a small Oakwood Press book on "The Dursley branch" by Peter Smith (also out of print I should imagine).

There is also one of those local picture books published by Suttons called "Uley, Dursley and Cam in old photographs" which has some old photos of the station.

Ashley.