Clearing the Borcester canal...

You may remember the old waterworks railway at Borcester, that has featured in the blog before... well after the narrow gauge was abandoned the line just slept, disappearing under a blanket of green luscious foliage, disguising and taking back the track, protecting it from being ripped up, dismembered and forgotten entirely...

As with other canals over the period the Borcester water way fell into disuse and disrepair, however with the council redeveloping the harbour side wharves into bourgeois apartments and wine bars they fancied the old industrial transport route could be rehabilitated and form part of an attractive waterfront marina for pleasure boats... the stretch along near the old waterworks wasn’t in too bad shape however the wharf at Canal Street proved to be a good base for the co tractor who hired a narrow gauge locomotive and stock, along with some temporary jubilee track from the well known Alan Keef. When the track and locomotives were delivered the remains of the waterworks railway were found to be in relatively sound condition, certainly good enough for the light weight locomotive, and they formed part of the temporary system utilising skip wagons to bring dredged material to dump inland.

Of course, this is in fact my 006.5 micro layout ‘Canal Street Wharf’ pictured with the Narrow Planet Alan Keef in 006.5 form, with a pair of Busch H0f skip wagons, showing how this diminutive ‘train set’ can be easily anglicised and repurposed in a minimum space providing a real model railway that you can take anywhere...