Layout: ‘Lime Street’
Inspired by his childhood visits, John Holden’s re-creation of Liverpool Lime Street draws big crowds at exhibitions, and now it’s attracted a team of specialist modellers to bring it to life.
John Holden’s ‘EM’ layout ‘Liverpool Lime Street’ is a wonder to behold.
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One of the criticisms we get is ‘why haven’t you ballasted in the platforms? “Well, we’re working our way through them but we’ve got 11 to do!” You can always tell when John Holden’s ‘Liverpool Lime Street’ is at an exhibition. It always draws the crowds and, very often, you can only see the immaculate pelmet, beautifully painted in Crimson Lake and proudly displaying the LMS crest above the sea of heads.
Some model railways spring to mind for the sheer ambition of what they’re aiming to recreate. Others are notable for the innovations used in their construction. Then there are those layouts that just present a spectacle, a seemingly endless procession of impressive and lengthy trains.
‘Liverpool Lime Street’ ticks all three boxes. You can’t fail to be impressed by that huge overall roof, delicate in model form and yet able to invoke the spirit of the heavy Victorian engineering of the real thing. Arriving and departing from under the roof are short suburban sets, semi-fasts and premier expresses, all hauled by classic classes from the pens of Fowler, Stanier and Ivatt.
HIDDEN QUALITIES
Arguably, some of the most interesting bits of ‘Lime Street’ are those you’ll never see, such as the onboard laser-levelling system to ensure that the legs can be adjusted to suit the floor that’s accurate down to 1mm.
Yet some people still feel the need to criticise. Rob Harrison, one of John’s small yet dedicated team of modelling friends, says that they don’t let criticism bring them down. Rather, it spurs them on to up their game.
“When I first came here, every platform was painted grey,” he recalls. “It didn’t look right, so I said that we need more colour, more texture and that’s what we’re doing. What we’ve done is to begin at Platform 1 and we’ve started to put the scenics in.
We’re working our way down to Platform 11. I think we’ve got as far as Platform 4!”
You’d think that an undertaking such as ‘Lime Street’ would require an army of modellers beavering away. Not so, says Rob.
“Basically there are four modellers,” he explains. “There’s John, of course. Les Green, he’s the 3D printing man and then we have Steve Hewitt, who is known for his signal making.”
Rob is the self-described “scenics man” who is also, as his unflattering and sadly unprintable nickname suggests, in charge of the weathering.
Noel Coates, Treasurer of the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Society, joins the team for exhibitions and is the historical consultant, while John Rocca, from Blackburn & East Lancashire Model Rail Club, also joins the team for exhibitions.
“The background boys consist of Geoff Peters, who is the electronics man and, along with John,
designed the computers that we run,” says Rob. “Geoff doesn’t come to exhibitions but he’s under the layout when we need him.”
The final member of the team is John’s long-time friend Brian Pickersgill, who has been involved since the very beginning. He’s contributed many of the mechanical bits and pieces and, more importantly, helped John move baseboards in and out of the layout’s previous home in a cellar. Now, it’s housed in a purpose-built railway room.
“For running sessions, both here and at exhibitions,” Rob adds, “there are six of us, but for modelling it’s either all four, three of the four or whatever. When we’re getting close to exhibitions, we have meetings virtually every week. When we’re not showing we probably come down once or twice a month simply to work.
“Of course, John’s in here fiddling with it, week in, week out. It is his baby.”
That’s an understatement to the drive and desire John has to recreate the station that made such an impression on him in his youth.
CHILDHOOD AMBITION
“It all started in the 1950s,” John says. “I was born and brought up in Southport and we had a boarding house there. I had to give up my room at night for the visitors over Christmas, so my mum took me to London for New Year. We used to get the electric train into Liverpool Exchange, get a taxi to Lime Street and get the train down to London.
“I went on the ‘Merseyside Express’ hauled by the prototype Deltic in 1955. I can remember coming down the platform at Euston and looking up into the cab of it.”
It’s memories like that that has driven John to recreate Liverpool Lime Street ever since he received his first train set as a child. This is his third serious attempt at it and has already been 25 years in the making.
It’s been over seven years since John kindly invited Model Rail to see behind the scenes of his incredible creation. It’s a cliché that a model railway is never complete but in the case of ‘Lime Street’ that was actually true. There were some obvious gaps, such as the blank box that represented the station hotel and the administrative block, but it looked pretty ‘complete’ apart from the lack of ballast and the spartan platforms.
But that’s now changing – and changing apace. The station hotel dominates one end of the layout and looks truly superb. Now the team is focusing on one thing – bringing ‘Liverpool Lime Street’ to life…
“One of the most recognisable features of ‘Lime Street’ is the cutting and tunnels, with the townscape above”