Layout: Mallingford

Combining a real world location with a fictional movie locale is no mean feat, but Kevin Mitchell’s homage to a movie classic has been crafted with skill and finesse.

Kevin Mitchell has merged a location and a film to create ‘Mallingford Colliery Halt’.

Words: Chris Gadsby Photography: Chris Nevard

Building layouts with television and film themes is nothing new. Just ask Chris Leigh who has Outlander and The Railway Children-inspired layouts or dioramas in his house (including more we have probably forgotten)! It’s important to decide early on whether you’re building a scene of a movie or a layout with movie cameos, otherwise you run the risk of it being neither one nor the other.

Long-term readers of Model Rail may recognise ‘Mallingford’ from issue 180, in 2013. Like many layouts, after a while it was in need of an overhaul, and this gave Kevin Mitchell the perfect opportunity to make some desired alterations, inspired by one of his favourite railway movies.

Set in the 1950s/60s on the Limpley Stoke to Camerton branch line in North Somerset, ‘Mallingford Colliery Halt’ is a combination of the real world and one of Kevin’s favourite places on the big screen.

“I really like the Ealing Studios comedy film

The Titfield Thunderbolt, which was filmed on the closed Limpley Stoke to Camerton branch in the summer of 1952. The story is about how a branch railway is closed by British Railways then taken over and run by the villagers of Titfield, but with opposition from the local bus company. This led to research into the history of the line, and the Somersetshire Coal Canal that preceded it. Mallingford is the name of the terminus of the Titfield branch line in the film. Dunkerton Colliery Halt was a real station on the Camerton branch serving a large colliery, hence the name of the layout.

“My modelling skills have increased greatly since

“I really like the Ealing Studios comedy film The Titfield Thunderbolt, which was filmed on the closed Limpley Stoke to Camerton branch”

I started the original ‘Mallingford’ in 2011, so a couple of years ago I decided to start afresh. There were several reasons for this, varying from just wanting a change to being dissatisfied with some of the areas I’d built first time around. I spent ages trying to come up with a new layout and eventually came to the conclusion that the layout did everything I wanted it to do, I just wasn’t happy with the way it looked.”

With this fresh perspective, Kevin stripped all of the old scenery from ‘Mallingford’ and left only the baseboards and track, saving him a lot of time and potential headaches.

“By leaving the track in place I knew that the wiring was all sound and I wouldn’t have to bother with new holes in the baseboard for dropper wires. Since I prefer planning and making scenery to operating layouts, it allowed me to get straight on with my favourite parts. I wanted to recreate the atmosphere of a neglected GWR branch line set amid attractive scenery, and also include the coal industry, the reason the line was built in the first place.”

SCALE AND SCOPE

Arguably the main advantage of ‘N’ over ‘OO’ gauge is being able to portray a larger area in the same space. In an area of the country such as North Somerset, where the landscape dominates the surrounding area and the railway was added later,

“I wanted to recreate the atmosphere of a neglected GWR branch line set amid attractive scenery”

Real twigs with 3 Woodland Scenic foliage glued to them have been used to make the trees.

5 One of the aspects Kevin found most challenging was the plastic lineside fencing, which was tricky to bend to shape to follow the changing contours of the scenery. The foliage has hidden the worst bits.