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Mr. Brett's Retirement Project

Barwicker No. 107 September 2012


Wilfred Harold Brett was born in 1895 in the Stanningley area of Leeds. He was the son of a painter & decorator and in due course joined his father in the business, eventually running it. In 1954 in anticipation of retirement he bought No. 2 The Boyle, a property to which he also added some extensive grounds. These included at least part of what has since become The Maypole Mews development.

In 1961 he finally retired and then busied himself with various hobbies and interests. He had a large aviary and kept about 250 budgerigars and 40 canaries. These were looked after jointly with his son. He also kept poultry and had two large greenhouses. He bought, restored and repainted a 1933 Austin 7 and was also involved with the triennial repainting of the village maypole. But his largest retirement project took the form of building and operating a 5" gauge, approximately 250 yards long Garden Railway. This required first the building of a considerable number of substantial pillars around the grounds each five bricks high and painted white. These supported old wooden railway sleepers, on which in turn the track was laid. In this work he was assisted by a Mr K Birch of Aberford and a Mr W Lovett of Barwick.

Around the track areas had been given local place names, Tadcaster, Scholes, Cross Gates and Garforth and alongside the track there was an overhead water tank and coal bunker for refuelling purposes. Mr Brett had plans to build a short tunnel and also a steel overbridge to be called Potterton Bridge to allow safe access to the centre of the railway. He had added a third rail to the layout to facilitate the operation of smaller 3½″ gauge trains as well.

He bought two sorts of rolling stock, passenger "carriages" on which passengers sat astride the track with their feet on running boards a few inches above the ground and a variety of model goods vehicles, built by a Mr Cryer of Pool in Wharfedale but naturally painted by Mr Brett himself.

For locomotive power in 1966 he bought at a cost of £450 a scale model weighing some two hundredweights of an Ivatt Atlantic, No. 3279, the original of which was built in 1907 for the Great Northern Railway at Doncaster. It was painted in the colours of its subsequent owners, the London & North Eastern Railway, of which the G. N. R became part at the Railway Grouping of 1923.

This model locomotive (about one twelfth scale) had been built in 1952 by a Mr Wilfred Lynch of Bradford. He ran an engineering business, Linden Engineering Co. in Eccleshill, which would supply either ready built models or the detailed blueprints from which those with good engineering skills could build the model themselves. The locomotive as bought was called "Fire Queen" but Mr Brett intended to change that to "Queen of Scots". The full scale original did not carry a name. The locomotive and rolling stock was housed when not in use in an engine shed named Barwick in Elmet Central.

The railway had attracted a few visitors in its unfinished state and all was ready for opening and a visit in September 1967 from The Leeds Society of Model &Experimental Engineers, who then ran a similar railway in the grounds of Temple Newsam House, when Mr Brett unfortunately died. This was just two weeks after a very complimentary article about Mr Brett and his railway had appeared in "The Express" of 11 August 1967.

He had hoped to give some pleasure to local children and no doubt quite a few fathers by offering rides on his railway. Sadly this was not to be.

I am attempting to discover if the locomotive is still in existence. To this end I have enlisted help from Mr Geoff Shackleton, the secretary of the Leeds S.M.E.E and from Mr David Clark, Editor of "Model Engineer" magazine and his readers, as yet with no success except that ― I am now the owner of a set of Mr Lynch's blueprints for 3279. All I lack is the skill to build it. I intend to talk on this subject at a General Topics meeting in our Autumn session and will bring along more photographs and the blueprints for inspection.

PETER STYLES


Notes: £450 in 1966 is equivalent to £6,540 in 2010 when measured in line with the Retail Prices Index but £13,200 when compared to Average Earnings.
2 Hundredweight equals just over 101 Kilograms
Ivatt Atlantic refers to a locomotive of wheel layout 4-4-2 designed by Mr H A Ivatt. Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Great Northern Railway 1896-1911.

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