THE VANISHING VILLAGE AND IT’S TINY RAILWAY
THE lock-down has had me sorting my transport files again, and I’ve found another item which had been ‘misfiled’ – a rather nicely produced leaflet for the former Himley Model Village from 1993.
This Model Village, in a walled garden in the grounds of Himley Park in South Staffordshire on the Western edge of the Black Country, was a short-lived railway-themed attraction.
It opened in 1986 and was created by Fred Blakemore, who had seen other model villages and set it up hoping it would make a great family day out.
It had around 70 model buildings, made of plywood, including the old Station Hotel in Dudley, Russells Hall Farm, Dudley Market and Himley Hall, plus the village of Ambridge from The Archers, and buildings from Bridgnorth, along with a cliff railway.
The operating railways there included a ground level 7¼ inch line and a (two foot) gauge line running around the edge of the site on which at least three different prototype flywheel-operated Parry railcars operated during the final two seasons from July 1992 and 1993.
The line was laid by John Parry & Associates and served as a demonstration track for their Parry People Mover lightweight stored energy railcar, of which six were actually built to the 610mm gauge.
Closed
Visitor numbers were not as high as had been expected and the village closed its doors at the end of the 1993 summer season, just seven years after it opened, and the site fell into disrepair. In 2006, the buildings were salvaged and taken to Bekonscott Model Village, in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire.
The Parry railcar was a precursor of the two larger standard gauge vehicles that have been operating all shuttle services on the Stourbridge Town to Stourbridge Junction line since June 2009, when they replaced traditional diesel units.
These current Parry People Mover Class 139 PPM 60s are numbered 139001 and 139002, and are operated by Parry Subsidiary Pre Metro Operations Ltd on behalf of West Midlands Trains. They are based in a shed next to the dedicated branch platform.
Designed and built by the company at their works in Cradley Heath, they are powered by a hybrid gas/flywheel powertrain which enables a small propane gas fuelled automotive engine to provide all the energy required for operation.
The ‘kinergetic’ flywheel system stores energy in the horizontally mounted rotating steel flywheel until it is needed, when it is transmitted to the driven axle, and braking energy is also transmitted back to the flywheel and stored for later use.
Since 2009, operating seven days a week, they have carried some six million passengers and run some 530,000 miles.