After about fifty years of doodling layout plans I finally took the plunge a few weeks ago and bought a job lot of Fleishmann Profi-track from another British guy who I 'met' on a Facebook group based here in Spain. Although it's HO scale and fairly obviously 'continental' i.e. no chairs I am more intereted in modelling British outline in OO and I don't this will matter - especially at my level! -and the fact that it's already ballasted is a huge advance.
Although I only lived there in my teenage years the idea is to get a sort of vicaruous nostalga hit from modelling based on the Welsh Marches, specifically South Shropshire and Montgomeryshire (as it used to be!), which I explored by bicycle, including volunteering on the Welshpool and Llanfair Light Railway, mostly cleaning locomotives and sometimes being ticket collector - a good day! - of packing ballast - a bad day!
Back to modelling, I have 3 metres by 60 centimetres to play with so a branch line terminus it is - and that's just fine with me - I like tank engines and small tender locos and have bought a Small Prairie tank engine and an Ivatt mogul, both Bachman, from Hattons and as I write I am seeing if these, along with a rake of suburban coaches and an auto-trailer and controller, will get through the Brexit barrier on their second attempt ... Once these arrive and I get the baseboards built, track laid and tested, etc. I'll order buikding kits - Metcalf are the current favourite candidates, some wagon kits, etc. and once the layout is complete I'll spend my hard earned spare time and money adding to the rolling stock era by era, staring with early Bitish rait and going forwards and back in time. I'm very much a 'steam man' but I do have a soft spot for the early diesels so a green Type 2 and DMU will no doubt find thier way into the sheds over time ..
It woud be nice to dream but there's no way that I'm going to get involved with modelling an actual prototype but I have become fascinated by the Bishop's Castle Railway (BCR), which I first encountered in the bar of the Tree Tunns inn - the bicycle had evolved into a motorbike by then, with predictably painful, thanksfully nit catastrpophic, consequences! - and have been reading up its history and joined the very friendly Bishop's Castle railway Society. The railway's aim was to go through from Craven Arms on the Shrewsbury - Hereford line (LNWR/GWR joint) to join the Cambrian main line at the existing Montgomery station just south-west of Welshpool. But that never happened, and nor would the line have reached the town of Montgomery itself although there would have been a horse drawn wagon-way there. So my little fantasy would be to pretend that the line did in fact get built, including a 'proper' branch to Montgomery and, just to add more interest, the promoted extension by the LNWR/GWR of thier Minsterly Branch from their Shrewsbury - Welshpool line not only got built - in fact the BCR project got parliamentary approval but that line didn't get built either! - but went to Monty instread of Bishops' Castle. Well that's all part of the funs isn't it!
. BB
