Childhood models: Stapley...

I helped my father build a few layouts, we had a British outline one in the train room, basically a single garage with a door and window, and a Canadian one in the double garage. Oh how lucky I was to have such a childhood - I appreciate that now. Today's post is a brief look back at my first personal layout project...

This was a 4'x1' board, built with a sundeala (pin board) top and 4mm ply bracing. My Dad helped with the board, it was an experiment in making a light stiff structure - which we then used on the extension on the Canadian layout, but this small test piece I decided to use to build a small layout. I had developed a fascination for the Culm Valley and I bought a Dapol 0-4-2 14xx in 1994 for my birthday from the Dapol factory in Llangollen. I still have the model (featured here). This was an exceptionally quiet and smooth runner, and I wanted to build a small layout for it. I realised I didn't have the space for a real model of Hemyock, and I didn't have a book that showed the track plans or details for intermediate stations so I decided to build a 'what if' extension of the line to the village of Stapley.

The track was laid in Code 100 and Setrack as I needed sharp radius points to get it all in - there was a short curved platform, an engine shed (based upon a timber frame one but I can't for the life of me remember the prototype, perhaps on the Golden Valley?) and a small loading dock. The height of the ground was raising up to the platform from the left, and then stayed at that height so the headshunt on the platform line was in a shallow cutting. All the structures were scratch built in card, overlaid with styrene. The station building and water tower survive, the former found re-use on Creech Bottom and the latter on Vowchuch.

To this day I still would like to build a model of the Culm Valley - it also shows that models of a consistent standard can be re-used beyond their initial purpose - don't every throw a structure you've built away... I hope this small recollection of a long forgotten layout was interesting - there will be another childhood post next week. More soon...