Layout: Bere Alston
When Bruce Hunt decided to recreate the West Devon station of Bere Alston for his layout, detailing was key. Chris Trevedra found out more.
Bruce Hunt has included every detail in his miniature version of Bere Alston station.
It is often the case that recreating a real-life area or scene is more taxing for the modeller because, in order to reproduce the prototype well, research is vital. When Bruce Hunt decided to model Bere Alston, he wasn’t going to cut any corners.
Bere Alston is a picturesque station on the Tamar Valley Line, dating from 1890. Before Beeching, however, it was a busy junction on the former LSWR main line from Plymouth to Waterloo.
“It’s a good location,” explains Bruce, “and, as it’s still there, you can measure what’s needed. The station buildings still exist, as do the signal box, waiting shelter and goods shed, which always helps.”
So why that location?
“In the period I’m covering – 1950-65 – everything from the ‘Atlantic Coast Express’ to local stopping trains would have passed through it, including lots of branch line traffic, so there’s a nice variety of stock you can use. There’s also lots of operating flexibility.”
Bere Alston’s platforms are fairly short, capable only of accommodating five coaches, making them easy to model at full scale length. The Callington branch line, which ran from the island platform, was truncated in 1966, but trains still reverse here and head as far as Gunnislake.
Having picked his subject, Bruce visited the
“In the period I’m covering – 1950-65 – everything from the ‘Atlantic Coast Express’ to local stopping trains would have passed through it”
station multiple times accompanied by a friend and armed with a tape measure, and carefully took all the necessary measurements required to reproduce the station in miniature.
PURE INDULGENCE
From the start, ‘Bere Alston’ – Bruce’s version – was never designed to be a portable exhibition layout, he describes it as “pure indulgence”, and it was built in his garage. Beginning in 2015, planning developed it into a 14ft by 8ft loop with a lifting flap at the end. The station and accompanying Tuckermarsh Sidings are at one side, with a fiddleyard on the other side.
It has main Up and Down lines and a branch line which, in reality, descended 200ft at a 1-in-36 gradient to Calstock.
The layout’s strong initial construction means it’s built like a tank, to use Bruce’s words, using solid wooden framework and bracing with 12mm plywood over the top. All the timber was sealed, because the layout would be housed in a dehumidifier-equipped garage. Bruce runs the layout mainly in the summer, spending the winter months building and detailing rolling stock and cameo scenes.
Once the basics were finalised, the hard part began, and the painstaking research began to pay off.
“The station platforms are on a curve, and I made them the same length in scale. At the actual station I measured them in situ and worked out the curve angle, which I duplicated on the layout.
“The platforms are cut from MDF and were placed precisely where I wanted them. I’ve laid the track exactly as it was at Bere Alston during the period I’m modelling, and I’ve used Peco Code 75 track on a cork underlay.”
When it came to the buildings, the urge for detailing came to the fore once again.
“I initially create a shell from plastic card,” explains Bruce, “although the station itself was built from local stone that’s not available in miniature. The nearest I could get was an embossed card made in Spain, which was built up in layers over the rigid shell.”
All but two of the buildings are scratchbuilt, each being painstakingly modelled on real prototypes. Scenery was mainly created using expanded foam with plaster bandages over the top, and plaster over that. Bruce points out that the quarry and stone walls are actually local stone, which was chipped
and broken down into manageable pieces. “Static grass is a brilliant invention; I initially used a lot of sea moss trees, but they tend to grow brittle over time, so they’re all being gradually replaced. Luckily, the layout is set in Spring, which can hide a lot of things. As my modelling skills improve, I look at parts built a couple of years ago and think ‘I can do that better now’, so I often replace bits.”
For his backscene, Bruce went the extra mile and took a series of 40 photographs along the horizon from Bere Alston. By using ICE (Image Composite Editor) – a Microsoft image program that’s free to download (https://bit.ly/35efvhk) he stitched the images together. Then, with the aid of a helpful local printer, he created a 1ft by 15ft image on self-adhesive vinyl, which is exactly the view you get from the station.
LOCAL TRACTION
For his rolling stock, Bruce uses a variety of locomotives from all the main manufacturers, many modified to represent particular prototypes that would have operated through Bere Alston in real life. This includes a number of Western Region locomotives that were frequently seen on the daily driver familiarisation workings that both the Western and Southern Regions ran. It was also common for the Western Division to divert some workings over the Southern route in bad weather, avoiding the high waves around Dawlish.
Bruce’s wagon fleet is made up of numerous kit-built examples, featuring the names of local companies where possible. Often he will use either Parkside or Ratio underframes and add on a rebuilt top. The coaches used on the layout are all off the shelf, and Bruce has a good range of Southern Region stock. He is keen to point out that the branch also used an odd mixture of cascaded stock, including former London suburban coaches, although for many years the line was home to the distinctive ‘Gate Stock’.
The rakes of coaches are permanently coupled, with Kadee couplings on each end. Like much of his other stock, they have been modified with pipework and other details, then treated to a weathered finish.
When selecting crews, Bruce prefers 3D-printed figures from the Modelu range, which are being painted and added all the time.
Currently, the main Up and Down lines have been converted from analogue to DCC, controlled by a Gaugemaster Prodigy system. So far, 20 locomotives have been fitted with sound. Meanwhile, the branch line is still analogue control and runs independently, using a trusted H&M Clipper. But that’s due to change in the next month or so, as more locomotives are being upgraded with digital decoders.
For his points, Bruce uses Dccconcepts’ Cobalt slow action point motors on the scenic sections, with surface-mounted solenoids on the fiddleyard. They’re controlled by a homemade diode matrix network, where any one of 14 storage sidings can be selected at the touch of a button.
ALL ABOUT PATIENCE
Surprisingly, a layout as complex as ‘Bere Alston’ provided few major construction challenges.
“I’ve always worked with electronics and I’ve always been very hands-on,” he explains, “I was a Royal Navy weapons engineer. Ironically enough, my first tree was made when my then-ship was in pack ice off the Arctic. I still have it on the layout.”
If Bruce had to pick any one thing that he finds a bugbear, it’s weathering.
“I just don’t really have the patience or the knack,” he exclaims, “I use a mixture of hand-painting and airbrush, with mostly Lifecolor acrylics.”
Building and running ‘Bere Alston’ has had many high points for Bruce, but two stand out for him.
“That feeling of being able to put the first train on the track, then sitting back to watch it go round. And there’s also the ‘wow’ factor, when visitors see it for the first time”.