Spalding club did us proud by placing us directly opposite the entrance to the smaller hall, so we were the first thing people saw as they came in. Crowds were good both days: I didn't have the chance to ask anyone about numbers but the show seemed busy throughout the weekend.
Being a long distance member of the club, I haven't spent very much time with the layout, so I am still looking for photographic spots and angles and experimenting to see what works. With apologies to the other members, I was very focused on my own stock, so hopefully someone else from the club will be along in due course with a different perspective. Anyway, for your viewing pleasure, here are my pictures from the weekend. We had a number of enquiries about the layout, so hopefully it will visit a show near you in the near-ish future.
I started with a few pictures of scenery while the layout was being erected and the fiddle yard filled up.
This is the inside view of the station building which was made by the late Malcolm Hine. The rear view, facing the public, is going to be one of the most commonly photographed points on the layout, being front and almost centre as you view.
The stationmaster is clearly a keen gardener. This is a lovely bit of modelling.
The layout is broadly laid out like Thurston, with the station to the left as you view, then a goods yard. The goods yard here is on the public side of the line, though and much more to the right hand end of the layout. The 'extra' on WM is the junction to the Framlingham branch, sited towards the rear left. Branch service working was a whole area of research in itself and one of the attractions of the location were the quirky manouvres the branch train undertook and the regular mixed trains up the branch.
These are the crossing keeper's cottage and signal box at the junction, again photographed from the inside of the layout. To the left the crossover which enables up trains to attain the correct line, to the right the very heel of the junction point.
This is the view from the public side with the light local traffic queued at the crossing.
Moving around the front of the layout, on the far side of the line is the rear of a large granary building. There are also end docks here. We haven't developed a means of shunting this part of the layout yet, that will evolve in due course.
Moving past the station building there is a large cattle dock - apparently cattle traffic was relatively significant - and the main signal box. Unbelievably, while exhibiting Thurston in Glasgow on the weekend we decided to adopt WM as the next project, we met a gentleman who had worked Wickham Market box.
I seem to have ignored the goods shed, but you can see the staggered nature of the platforms behind it from the pictures above: the island platform which serves the Up traffic and also the bay for the branch train extends more or less all the way to the start of the curve which takes the lines back to the fiddle yard. The yard itself is very open and consists of a loop, goods shed line, mileage siding and a short coal spur which runs into the left hand corner of the boards.
The coal yard is squeezed in between some rather fancy Victorian villas and a pair of what would have been almost brand new Airey houses, built just after the war from prefabricated components. I'd never heard of these until we started this layout. They have been relocated slightly to allow them to feature on the model.
It must be Monday as the washing's out. There are also a number of allotments round the layout as the country is still coming out of wartime austerity and people were trying to supplement what could be bought in the shops.
Now for some trains. As I mentioned, I don't see the layout very often and some of the stock lives with the club, so it was a chance to see some old friends again as well as running things I've been working on in the long interval since Thurston. The pictures are also taken over the course of the weekend and we had a shuffle round on the Saturday evening, so some trains can be seen heading in two different directions. So, in no particular order:
65388 (Alan Gibson kit) on the weedkilling train awaiting the Up road.
Chipman company spray van. This was converted from a GE 10T brake van and Danny Pinnock very kindly supplied me with a kit with suitable components substituted.
Brake van with Chipman staff riding along with the guard. At this time there was no staff accommodation in the train itself. After about 1955 a pair of ex-SR BYs were acquired and one of those was used as a staff van.
I spent a lot of time shunting the yard, so i looked at a lot of wagons.
ex-LNER twin bolster: a wartime conversion of idle mineral wagons.
View across the yard; Airfix 16 tonner, another wartime mineral conversion to a general merchandise open (top two planks sawn through and an extra plank added to the door) and a GW open.
ex-ROD brake van acquired by the GE after the First War. This is a Smallbrook studios kit. I'm not sure whether the kit is still available since the van is now available RTR.
Bachmann Wickham trolley (with ModelU crew) pauses in the yard.
67230 (Alan Gibson) and the branch train in the bay platform. The kids haven't even bothered to look at the engine.
The rest of the branch set. This was composed of two adapted 50' GE carriages, the adaptation being the fitting of pneumatically operated steps on the BT so passengers could board at Hacheston Halt which had no platform. Trains using standard stock had to carry a stepladder in the brake compartment. Danny Pinnock kindly supplied these kits as well.
On Sunday the weedkilling train ran Down so it could be recessed into the rear siding behind the bay.
Having built most of the train I had not been able to identify the tool van which travelled with it until I bought one of the Southern Wagons volumes and found an excellent side on shot of it just as Cambrian released their kit. It's an ex LSWR diagram. The tanks were adapted from Bachmann models and were always marshalled so that the lettering alternated along the train.
Once it got quiet on Sunday afternoon I closed the yard and went looking for trains to photograph. 62597 is a renumbered and weathered Hornby model.
The ex-GE luggage/lavatory composite appears in photographs all over the Area, they were very common well into the 1950s.
61655 is a former Barnsley suitably renumbered and weathered. It had a set of GE 50' stock for the weekend which I didn't photograph. The platform at this end of the layout is at ground level and behind buildings and hedges, quite the opposite of Thurston which was up on an embankment. Hopefully that will make for some nice pictures in the future.
The other end where we find 61602 Walsingham is much more open and relatively featureless. This was a fairly early Hornby release with the Westinghouse gear added.
61535 is a Hornby B12 renumbered and weathered. This was the first time it has been used in anger and it handled one of the longest Down trains, the Hunt special, very easily. I'm very pleased with it.
