Archive 1: Creech Bottom 009…

For all of you who celebrate, Merry Christmas, I hope you have a wonderful day and enjoy this time of family and friends with your loved ones...

I am also aware of how a quick '5 minute' distraction can be such a relief on these occasions, and as such I've put together a week of 'Archive' posts - each of these has been written in advance, allowing me to sit back and enjoy a week off blogging without having to worry about the website - and hopefully providing you all with something worthwhile to read and enjoy. I've certainly enjoyed pulling this series together...

They all follow the same format, and take photos of my previous layouts and re-cast them in low contrast black and white. Each will include some new and old views, links to more on the blog, and a brief story about the pictures themselves. 

Today we kick things off with probably my favourite layout, Creech Bottom in 009...

Creech Bottom was built by my daughter and I over a period of about 6 months in 2014, with the express intent of exhibiting at a future ExpoNG. The layout was popular however, and despite my shyness to exhibit it was invited to the exhibition in Macclesfield (2015), in Rainford (2016) and even Dinas (2016) on the Welsh Highland Railway! It made ExpoNG in 2017, it's last show appearance - and was unceremoniously skipped during construction of it's replacement, the ill-fated 'East Works'.

Built directly upon an IKEA Lack shelf (now the supporter of my favourite muse, the box cameo), it featured a small station and clay mine based on the narrow gauge tramways of Purbeck, mining ball clay. There was a fair bit of artistic licence in the setup, certainly no stations existing on the prototype, certainly not of the type depicted, but the muted tones and consistent palette seemed to really capture the feeling of Ivo Peter's famous words when he first stumbled upon the prototype in the 1950s, quite by accident.

A Bagnall IST, inspired by seeing Tim's example, at the small station inspired by the structures on the Hemyock branch.

A very Talyllyn feel to this one, a scratch built 'Dolgoch-ish' is now owned by my son, as I gave it to him for his birthday. Probably his favourite locomotive, it was certainly one of mine.

This layout ignited a passion for British narrow gauge within me that had lain dormant for many years. It was a celebration of the Minitrains chassis as almost all the stock was scratchbuild around these miniature marvels. The Bagnall IST (now owned by Will King), the Sand Hutton Waril, the Manning Wardle 'Quintus' (now owned by Steve Fulljames) and Rheneas (now owned by my son). These were the back bone of the operating fleet, in fact Minitrains chassis were so prevalent at the time we staged a meeting of them at the Dinas exhibition, completely filling every available track on the layout with examples of British models running on this superb mechanism. I enjoyed it, it was fun to build, fun to operate and served a purpose. I'm glad I got rid of it, without that I would not have moved onto East Works - this arguably was a more accomplished and realistic composition but I always felt that it wasn't as warmly received - and that now lives in Pembrokeshire along with Vowchurch, both given a good home by a regular reader, customer and lovely gentleman named Bailey. I hope these two old photos have kindled some of the excitement this composition had one me. More soon...