THE EXHILL LIGHT RAILWAY by John Besley
A melancholy model from John Besley, visiting the last days of a narrow gauge line.
History
1963 wasn’t a good year for steam in the West Country. Following the regional boundary changes on British Railways in 1958, the Western Region took over all lines west of Salisbury, and old rivalries between the Great Western and the Southern once again came to the fore. By 1962, the rundown of such lines as the Somerset and Dorset was in full swing.
One line that seems to have escaped, was the Exhill Light Railway, which closed in early 1963. With an afternoon spare, we took the Morris Minor out for a trip to see what was still left of the ELR, and much to our surprise we found the crew busy preparing to run a track recovery train as they lifted the line.
The only steamable engine No 10 was simmering in the yard. As the crew started up the BR Landover and Wickham trolley, we grabbed a couple of photos. Hidden in the back of the shed was the tram engine looking very much like a Wisbech and Upwell engine – the crew were only too pleased to oblige and pulled her out into the sunlight (maybe for the last time?)
Despite the lines’ closure, the crew were very much steam men and preferred to use No 10 as the Boxcab diesel had a flat battery and was too much hassle to charge up. A brief spell of shunting took place and they headed off up the line for one more trip.
The Model
The Exhill Light Railway was built primarily to be able to take as realistic photos as possible, to this end, a lot of time was taken to get the details right.
Rolling Stock
The first item I built in 16mm, was a Roundhouse Lady Anne kit. Assembled following the instructions, once I had her
up and running, I soon carried out various modifications. Inside the frames were painted red and the cylinders received a set of cast valve chest covers along with a turned safety valve bonnet.
The smokebox had the cast on door machined off and a replacement fitted that hinged open, along with a numberplate and separate smokebox door handles. The tanks had hinged tank lids fitted. Running from the driver’s side of the cab, I fitted a brass tube that entered the smokebox to represent the vacuum brake ejector pipe. The bufferbeams were both replaced by my own with a cut-out. As in real life, the cylinder could be removed for a piston and valve exam without taking off the bufferbeam. Added to this was the chopper coupling and vacuum brake pipework.
Lamp brackets were added on the bufferbeams and to the top of the smokebox as I needed somewhere to hang a set of SR head code discs. A set of cast brass clack valves were fitted to the boiler cladding sheets. On top of the boiler, behind the fireman’s side bunker, a tool crate was fabricated out of brass and this was somewhere to store spare oil cans and a spare shovel. The dome was centre drilled and a bolt soldered into this to finish it off.
Moving on to the cab, a drawing was located for a Britannia chime whistle and this was turned up and fitted. A set of safety chains were added to both sides to stop the crew from falling out and a dummy washout pipe hung over the cab side. A set of fire dropping irons were stowed on the back of the rear bunker.
All of this was finished off in BR passenger green and lined out, the inside of the cab was painted light cream from the waist up along with the cab room inside. Once this was finished, the whole engine was weathered to represent an engine that had been cared for but not cleaned for a day or two, and finally, real coal was added to the bunkers.
The Number E10 is based on the SR using W for the Isle of Wight as a prefix so I added E as this loco would come under the jurisdiction of Eastleigh – No 10 being a gap in the SR numbering allocation.
The Tram engine was built on a spare Essell engineering chassis I had, based very much on the Wisbech Trams, including having sliding side windows with the on/ off switches hidden inside the tank fillers. The firebox had a light inside and the fire bed was created from a broken rear light
lens from a car, this was cut oversize then gently heated up to blister the plastic and then cut to size. The boiler was fabricated from an off-cut of drain pipe and fitted with a whitemetal 16mm chimney base and smokebox door. The chimney itself was part of the speed controller, and the battery pack was hidden inside the boiler shell.
The Boxcab diesel was from my P&J Models range, built more or less as per production models apart from cab lighting and weathering.
The Wickham Trolley was a P&J Models kit and happily tows a small flatbed wagon.
All the goods wagons were scratch-built (none of your ready-to-run plastic here) and had working brake gear and hinged drop sides all based on the W&L wagons and numbered out of sequence to give the impression of a much larger fleet.
There were also three bogie flat wagons fitted with separate wooden staves that could drop into pockets, the style for these was very much based on a set of drawings I found in a Narrow Gauge & Shortline Gazette for a 2’ mining railway.
The brake van was very much a cross between the W&L brake van and standard SR brake vans.
I was also considering building a small fleet of steel hopper wagons based around
an LGB hopper wagon, but this never came to fruition.
Buildings
The engine shed was constructed out of 4mm pre-scribed plywood, produced on a table saw with slitting saw blades set at a scale 6” spacing and built up on a timber frame. All the doors and windows were whitemetal castings from P&J Models, as was the guttering and door hinges for the main entrance doors. The roof was designed to lift off and clad in Tenmillie corrugated sheet.
Inside, this was fitted out with a raised workshop area along with workbench and tools interior lighting fed from a 9v battery pack hidden inside an outbuilding.
The station building was built in the same manner using a set of plans for Bodiam on the K&ESR, as this was very typical of an SR branch line station building such as at Gunnislake. The model had a fully-fitted interior – including ticket office, waiting room and parcel office. Outside was the
At the end of the platform, we find the Wickham Trolley coupled to a single wagon.
Gents WC, complete with water tank feed from the rainwater gutters. Again, building parts came from P&J Models.
The SR platelayer’s hut was scaled up from a 4mm Ratio kit and built out of plywood. This had whitemetal windows and, to replicate the cast concrete finish, the building was sprayed in a Valspar stone textured paint finish, lightly sanded back once dry, and painted a concrete colour.
The End
Sadly, I had to dismantle my model in 2013 so the Exhill Light Railway is no more. Like many a lesser-known railway line, all that is left are photos reminding us of what has been. My modelling has moved up to 7/8th scale with the production of a range of castings under the Uskin Models name. I’m also rebuilding Mamod and Willesco traction engines. ■