Mastering the Mendips
Watching trains running through the countryside has become something of a passion for Steve Jones – and what could be better than an authentic slice of the famous Somerset & Dorset?
Watching trains running through the countryside has become something of a passion for Steve Jones.
Amove to the Wiltshire town of Trowbridge would have an unexpected repercussion for Steve Jones. Steve’s a keen cyclist, so the best way to explore his new locality was on two wheels – and that’s when he discovered he lived rather close to the mortal remains of one of the Britain’s best-loved cross-country railways, the Somerset & Dorset Joint. The S&D needs little introduction. Originally designed to link the south coast with the Bristol Channel, its fortunes changed in 1874 when the branch from Evercreech Junction to Bath – and a link to the Midland Railway – opened. Now the S&D became a through-route linking north and south, and its Evercreech-burnham-on-sea main line became the rural branch. It may have closed in 1966, but it’s still possible to form a good picture of what it was like. This is thanks, in part, to the Two Tunnels Project that successfully re-opened the Bath-midford section as a cycleway. But it’s the huge archive of photography that survives that is the most valuable source for historians and modellers alike.
Of those photographers who recorded the line in its heyday, Ivo Peters’ legacy is the most significant. Ivo’s numerous volumes of black and white stills photography and his colour cine films, when combined with his first-hand experience of the trackbed and remains, was all the inspiration Steve needed to build an S&D layout. Its branches to Highbridge, Burnham and Wells have inspired some wonderful layouts. But Steve didn’t want Ivatt ‘2MTS’ and Collett ‘2251s’ pottering about with a few coaches. No, he wanted ‘9Fs’ thundering along with ten-coach ‘Summer Saturday’ excursions, or ‘7Fs’ on lengthy goods trains being banked by ‘Jinties’. He wanted to capture the excitement and atmosphere of this steeply graded double-track main line, viewed from the lineside where the trains could run through a scaled-down version of a real location – an ambitious project in 4mm:1ft scale.
REAL FEEL
During his explorations, he got a real feel for Chilcompton Tunnel and the area around it. The twin-bore tunnel is just 60 yards long and one of the line’s many recognisable structures. Steve marvelled at what this location must have been like in BR days, as it’s on a 1-in-53 gradient, part of the long slog from Radstock to the line’s summit at Masbury. What must Ivo Peters have felt standing here, camera in hand, waiting to capture yet another long train pounding its way up the bank? Steve’s layouts have frequently been featured in Model Rail over the years. The most recent to star on these pages was a ‘OO’ gauge take on Sydney Gardens, where Brunel beautifully blended the Great Western main line into Bath’s Georgian surroundings. ‘Sydney Gardens’ was a collaborative effort, but Steve had access to its fiddleyards. So, last summer, Steve spent six months building a scenic layout some 15ft long and 2ft wide that would enable him to use the ‘Sydney Gardens’ fiddleyards. The bonus was that these were designed to hold lengthy main line trains. All Steve had to do was replace the ‘Kings’ and ‘Castles’ with ‘7Fs’ and Bulleid ‘Pacifics’. To capture the undulating Somerset landscape, Steve built open-frame baseboards. The trackbed is plywood and the boards are linked together with pattern-maker’s dowelling. “It was all quite straightforward,” Steve explains. “The biggest challenge was getting the curves just right – especially where the track curves round towards the fiddleyard. It had to be fettled to get the tolerance absolutely right to enable a ‘9F’ and ten coaches to negotiate it successfully.”
Steve was very impressed with SMP Scaleway Code 75 track, so bought several boxes’ worth. There was no issue with combining it with proprietary pointwork because there are no points on the scenic side of the layout. Mind you, there are 42 points on the fiddleyard round the back! As with all aspects of ‘Chilcompton Tunnel’, Steve wanted to get the look just right. However, some compromise was inevitable to get it to fit in a 15ft by 2ft space. The tunnel portal was made from Slater’s embossed Plastikard, with attention paid to the different materials to match where repair work has been carried out on the prototype. Tunnel Lane crosses over the tunnel and has been modelled complete with its wartime pillbox, while another pillbox is situated near the road bridge along to the right as you view the layout. Other remnants of the wartime measures are the concrete tank traps close to where the scenic section disappears into the countryside on the right of the layout.
Take it TO The bridge
The other main railway structure is the bridge over Fry’s Well, a small lane in the village of Chilcompton which was a modified LCUT kit (lcut.co.uk). There’s no station or signal box on this layout – the only railway building is a platelayer’s hut, made from a Wills kit. A lack of a major focal point, such as a station, didn’t mean that the layout was any easier to complete. It forced Steve to pay considerable attention to key scenic factors to achieve the realism he wanted – including the lineside fencing. The posts came from Ten Commandments, and Steve had to drill holes in
each post and then thread fishing wire through them. “No wonder my eyesight is deteriorating!” jokes Steve. Each fence post was painted with grey primer and then misted over with brown, then yellow and then, finally, black and white to recreate that lichen-encrusted concrete effect that we’re all familiar with. It was a time-consuming job, but the fencing – especially along the front of the layout – is a prominent visual part of the layout so the effort was worthwhile. To create true S&D atmosphere, Steve has spent considerable time studying the local flora and fauna. He’s done his best to replicate the right wild flowers and plants and has tried to mimic Somerset’s local pheasants and wood pigeon populations. Being a rural spot, only a few miniature people are required. One final detail to get right was the S&D trespass warning signs, sourced from Tiny Signs.
Details aside, how did Steve create this slice of Somerset? The cuttings were made using a light but rigid foundation of cardboard strips, tape and plaster bandage with Woodland Scenics powders and Green Scene fibres. Trees were either made using sea moss, or ready-to-plant items shaped to fit the locations. Steve was not interested in using a generic backscene but took photographs on location to provide another link with the real thing, Where possible he stood, for example, in the lane, to enable him to take photographs so he could model the actual location. “I find it easier to model a real location,” Steve explains. “If you’re making up a location for a layout there’s a temptation to fill every inch with something. I’ve tried to make everything as authentic as possible with the genuine flow of the countryside for the trains to run through.”
TRAIN AND TERRAIN
The scenery is partly responsible for the S&D’S allure, but it’s the blend of trains that really attracts the enthusiasts’ attention. Most of the motive power required for an S&D layout is either available ready-to-run from Bachmann and Hornby so that’s what Steve uses. But all have been weathered. “I’ve learnt a lot from articles in Model Rail,” says Steve. “Nothing is too dirty. I like using the weathering techniques of [‘Sydney Gardens’ colleague] Nick Richardson to achieve different effects; no two locomotives are quite the same.” The rolling stock is also weathered with a mix of ready-to-run vehicles and wagon kits from the likes of Parkside Dundas. While Steve assembled the stock, some of the ‘Sydney Gardens’ Western Region models have appeared on the layout. Steve extends his thanks to the ‘Sydney Gardens’ team and to Nick Richardson and David Reed in particular. It’s all very well having the right locomotives and coaches, but they have to go together in realistic formations. And Steve hasn’t skimped on this area either, He’s enjoyed researching the train headcodes and Midland-style reporting numbers (sourced from
Sankey Scenics) and all locomotives go out with the correct headlamps for the train they are working – and with a crew on the footplate. Like the real S&D, you’ll find double-headed trains operating in both directions (sometimes this was done to save a path of a light engine balancing turn), a ‘9F’ with ten coaches, and a ‘Jinty’ banking a ‘7F’-hauled freight. Trains are not run to a timetable and usually feature a procession of passenger trains and a few freights, representing weekday trains rather than a busy ‘Summer Saturday’, when freight traffic didn’t appear and all available motive power was turned out to move passenger trains. The plan is for ‘Chilcompton Tunnel’ to go out a couple of times a year to exhibitions, alternating with ‘Sydney Gardens’ (obviously they can’t both go out together as they use the same fiddleyard!) – and it’s making its debut at Wimborne show (see left). This is great news for fans of the S&D in the BR era – and good news for lineside model trainspotters!