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It was a secret plan. The Allied bombardment started at 4.20am on August 8 in the fog. The ensuing infantry advance happened so quickly that a party of German officers was captured while they were eating breakfast. Over seven miles were gained in the first day, one of the greatest advances of the ‘Great War’. The Battle of Amiens was part of the opening phase of the Allies’ Hundred Days Offensive, that ultimately led to the end of the conflict three months later. Amiens was an important railway junction and Allied plans to free the town (and, most crucially, keep German artillery out of range of the railway) were formed in July 1918. A century later, Callum Willcox has commemorated this momentous occasion and the end of the First World War with his 4ft by 2ft ‘OO9’ layout, titled ‘Amiens 1918’. “I had decided last year that I wanted to build a war-themed layout for exhibition, and when I was doing my research Amiens seemed the perfect example. Not only was this huge offensive a turning point of the war, but it also signified the end of trench warfare, as tanks and the newly formed RAF began to play a greater role. This allowed me to depict men and machines together with a large amount of rolling stock.”
BUILT TO TRAVEL
The layout was designed for exhibition from the outset, which forced Callum’s hand with regards to its size. The largest it could be was 4ft by 2ft so it would fit in his car. Naturally, this made it impossible to accurately model the complex narrow gauge junction at Amiens. Instead, he opted for a typical, quickly laid narrow gauge line that brought men and materiel to the front. “I’ve used a sheet of MDF with plywood strips for the batons,” Callum explains. “It’s a simple layout electrically as I don’t use point motors, instead opting for the same dowel and rod method used by Chris Nevard.” The current locomotive fleet comprises models from the Minitrains stable. These are all analogue models, but the arrival of the Bachmann Narrow Gauge Baldwin 4-6-0PT, with its Next18 decoder socket, has led Callum to convert the layout for both analogue and DCC control, using Gaugemaster W and Gaugemaster Tech 6 units. ‘Amiens 1918’ lets Callum satisfy his interest in model railways and the military. He’s used it to address some common misconceptions about the First World War. “Whenever war footage is shown it is always of trench warfare in mud baths, in places such as the Somme,” he says. “Amiens happened so quickly that the area didn’t have time to turn into a mud bath, and there were fields and trees on the landscape. The photographic backscene from Gaugemaster was the closest I could get to this. “The other aspect I wanted to highlight was the importance of the narrow gauge railways in the war effort for moving troops and supplies along the Western front. Ironically, the Battle of Amiens resulted in the end of the use of the light railway, as the rate of advance was so fast from that point
onwards that the railways couldn’t keep up and lorries took over instead.” There’s one building on the layout – an Airfix kit called ‘European ruined workshop’ – that Callum has modified and painted. Although it came with a hole in the roof, it was far too neat to suit a war-torn area. “The kit came undetailed and unpainted. I added the rafters into the roof and some paddocks to give the impression that it was used as a stable before the war. I then used brick sheets (a war gaming product), smashed up and moulded over polystyrene to add height to the rubble on the ground next to it. Soldiers in the war would not have walked around this pile but simply over it, so I flattened it down a little where they would have trodden a path.” Recycling is a major element of Callum’s creation and many of the items on the layout are everyday objects. The trench walls are coffee stirrers and cereal boxes, while the corrugated iron was made out of an old Chinese takeaway container. “The spent artillery shells are used drinking straws. I had to buy certain bespoke items, such as the barbed wire, which is modelled in two forms on the layout. It’s made by Javis and you can see new wire being
delivered on the back of one of the wagons, but I’ve painted and weathered the wire in place around the trench.
MUD AND GLORY
The ‘mud’ ground cover is a solution of PVA and brown wood filler, applied by hand to give it a rough effect. It gave Callum the biggest headache. “I laid the track, ballasting it with fine sand and then laying the ‘mud’ over the top,” he recalls. “The problem was the PVA and wood filler solution would then dilute the already-glued ballast and it would peel up, meaning that it would have to all come up and be laid all over again, as the ballast showed through.” The figures are kits from WD Models and they need to be assembled by the modeller. This allowed Callum to assemble and glue them into the positions he wanted and make them unique. They are all hand-painted and all the soldiers are doing something. The artillery crew are undergoing a training exercise in the bottom left corner, while in the centre of the layout the Howitzer is being prepared for the next attack. Behind that a tank is being serviced by soldiers holding oily rags. Callum’s layout provides us with a very focused glimpse of a global conflict. It is not only an excellent piece of modelling but also a fitting tribute to the 15 million people who lost their lives in the First World War. It gives us an insight into what it might have been like in a corner of a foreign field as 2018’s Remembrance Sunday pays tribute to those who made the greatest sacrifice.