From left to right, Pete Thomas of Polly Models, Nigel Thompson, locomotive designer (not for Polly) and Dick Grainger, Polly locomotive owner.
A view of the station, signal box and footbridge at the Erewash track. The clubhouse can just be seen at the left of the photo.
The left hand side of the site showing the level track to the left and the gradient to the right. There is an over bridge just around the top of the loop while the tunnel proper is a bit further on.
Nigel Thompson invited me to visit the club while at one of the Myford spring open days. The only time I could manage to visit was on Saturday afternoon after the Myford show was over.
A chat with Pete Thomas of Polly and all was arranged. Saturday afternoon, I visited Pete’s house and after a welcome cup of tea, Nigel Thompson arrived to take us to the club.
First impressions were that the site was of a reasonable size with a large amount of track. The site is at the end of a short lane and appears reasonably secure with the only way in guarded by an old folk’s home. No matter what time of the day or night, wave at the windows of the old folk’s home, the curtains will move and someone will wave back. Any out-of-hours trouble at the track and the old dears will be straight on the phone to the police. This is better than a pair of Rottweilers.
Pete and Nigel explained that the club actually owned the land, which I am sure must give peace of mind to the club considering the number of clubs I hear about being turned off their club site because of development.
The ground level track is comprised off 3 1/2in., 5in. and 7 1/4in gauges including several multi-gauge points. There is also a raised track inside the ground level ovals together with several steaming bays. The steaming bays can accommodate a lot of people as has been discovered on the odd wet open day.
There is vehicle access into the grassy area inside the tracks, which is ideal for open days etc. Future building plans include a carriage shed.
The ground level track is basically two ovals, one oval inside the other with one track going through a tunnel and the other track going over the top of the lower one. This means the outer track is on the level halfway round then becomes the inner oval back to the start but on the inside track and then goes up a steep gradient, over the level track and back down a steep gradient as the outer track to the start point.
The long tunnel was dug by hand by the members and must have involved a lot of hard work.
To the right of the track layout, as you face it from the end of the loop, there are some points and a turntable which appears of fairly recent construction.
In the right hand corner is an outbuilding and lean-to that houses the generator (there is no mains power to the site) and the large brazing hearth where members can build their boilers.
There is a nice cosy club house just inside the loop, sufficient to hold quite a few members in comfort. The hospitality was good and although I turned down the offer of a cup of tea, I accepted, and enjoyed a rock cake.
There is a signal box on site and the entire track is correctly signalled. A large footbridge crosses the track to allow visitors access to the centre of the site without walking across the tracks.
The clubhouse has a small tower to take a clock (normally a 1.5volt battery driven clock) and a railway related weathervane. Although the site is much smaller than Ruddington (the main Nottingham track) the entire site is well laid out and it was a joy to visit.
A view of the level track with the tunnel exit at left and the down gradient on the right. The position of the turntable can just be seen on the right.
The turntable. The tracks have to be very carefully aligned so they are correct whichever way the turntable is rotated.
The large brazing hearth. Storage sheds and lean-to are behind and to the right.
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About the Author
Hi There I have spent most of my working life in engineering machine shops.
I started in engineering at age 15. I became a power press setter setting up manual and roll feed power presses up to 150 tons. One of the main components made was the top ring of shock absorbers for the Armstrong Patents Company in Hull. Another large customer was Vauxhall motors. We produced components for Rickman motor cycles, British Sagull outboard motors and many others.
l moved on to a company called Willcox and Gibbs. They were an American company who had a factory in High Wycombe and another factory in Poole. I went there as a drilling machine operator. This was at the time of the 3 day week. We ran out of work and all the men asked to be made redundant. I was asked to stay on and became factory foreman at age 17. I taught myself to machine industrial sewing machine components to very tight limits, often less than 1 thou. This included milling, drilling, turning and surface grinding. I also kept cutters sharp on a Clarkson grinder.
When they shut the factory down after several years, the manager bougt the machines and took over he premisies an we started looking for sub contract work. We produced some items for a lock company in Bournemouth. These made up into a lock controlled cartrdge insertion machine to bolt onto the top of safes. This was mainly sold to garages so staff could put money into the safe without having access to it.
l also also managed to get British Seagull to give us a chance. They gave us a drawing and a pair of sand castings to machine a crankcase for the new 170 outboard. We were a standby as the Seagull buyer had given 5 sets of castings to Villiers. Villiers installed a new CNC machining centre to produce these crank cases and we used a knife and fork. We produce a perfect crankcase and Villiers produced 5 crankcases covered with 4 jaw chuck marks. We received the contract for the new crankcase and went on to get the casing tube line, the gearbox line, the cylinder hads,the casing tube (drive shaft tube) and many other components. The casing tube line included producton silver soldering so I have problay done more silver soldering than most of the people reading this. We probably used about 50 sticks of silver solder a day. When Seagull went bust, the boss closed the factory down due to ill health.
i found a job as a self employed miller on a bridgeport turret mill. This helped me to mill very fast and very accurately. I remember scrapping two components in 3 years. I remember because it cost me money.
I moved to Aylesbury about 3 years later and found a job as a CNC miller. I had not done CNC milling before but had always been interested in computers. I taught myself to CNC mill using the manual. I was supposed to have been taught but the chap eaching me was off sick for six weeks.
I have had many jobs programing and operating CNC mills over the remainng years producing such varied item as military and aircraft components. The only aircraft I would have liked to have produced bits for was Concorde but apart from special purpose jacks for the wings, I never got to do any bits. So basically I started of producing very small sewing machine components and every size up to 4 metre long beams for the Airbus super guppy wing fixture and also many weird ad wonderfull parts of machines.
I am now sort of retired due to ill health and now do next to nothing.
