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use of ordinary sleepers, as per North Eastern Railway practice.”

What makes ‘Staindrop’ work visually is that Chris has carefully blended NER buildings from around the system together. He’s chosen them for their size or looks and, because they’ve been scratchbuilt to the same high standard, you’d never know that they came from different locations. The goods shed is a standard design for rural stations, the coal office comes from Alston, the water tower came from Middleton-in-teesdale, whereas the station building is based on a drawing of Battersby, on the line to Whitby. The signal box is pure early-style NER Central Division, complete with etched ornamental bargeboards.

TIMBER TRESTLE

One of ‘Staindrop’s’ most striking features is the wooden trestle bridge. This was inspired by an article in the May 1976 edition of Model Railways about the timber viaducts built by the Deerness Valley Railway in 1856. They lasted until the branch to Waterhouses, southwest of Durham, closed in 1964.

“I liked these bridges because they crossed low, fairly flat valleys, so they have a low centre of gravity in model form,” says Chris. “The prototype has 16 piers but I’ve halved that to make it fit onto the baseboard. Its been made entirely from sections of timber and supports the weight of all the locomotives and stock without complaint.”

The layout’s other bridge is smaller but still worthy

of note. This is the overbridge, inspired by a drawing of timber overbridge No. 120 in Peter Walton’s book The Stainmore and Eden Valley Railway (OPC 1992).

Says Chris, “I found the bridge still there in the 1990s and took detail photographs.

“I built the bridge as a one-off project well before ‘Staindrop’ but was able to incorporate it into the layout. It divides the layout and provides the classic visual break in the scenery. It is made from correct sections of timber strip wood and colour washed to represent unpainted wood. The hay cart and figures provide an agricultural cameo, but the poor horse must be getting awfully sooty by now!”

RAISING THE STANDARD

It would be easy with such impressive structures at ‘Staindrop’ for the surrounding scenery to be somewhat neglected, but there’s no such word in Chris’ vocabulary – even the fencing and gates have been built in accordance with the 1908 NER Standards Drawings.

“The Standard Drawings are invaluable to anybody modelling the NER,” he explains. “There are about 130

drawings covering a wide variety of small-scale infrastructure details – including one for standard rivet heads! Never mind rivet counting, at ‘Staindrop’ I can measure them!”

Given all that North Eastern Railway detail, why are ‘Staindrop’s’ trains all in LNER livery?

“All my locomotives and rolling stock are kits, meaning I could devote all my scratchbuilding energy to the layout,” Chris explains.

“This is also why I chose the period of 1928-1930. I’d already built a pre-grouping NER layout, and ran locomotives and carriage liveries which included all the variation, but I thought black and brown would be easier to achieve this time!”

There is no doubt that layouts still look fabulous with ready-to-run models and ready-to-plant buildings on them, but the attention to detail that Chris has included on ‘Staindrop’ really puts it in a league of its own and makes the scene believable. You can imagine yourself waiting on the platform for your connection to the rest of the network… even though, in real life, nobody ever did.

“Even the fencing and gates have been built in accordance with the 1908 NER Standards Drawings”

The Gresley and Stanier figures on the platform are Stadden Figures.

The water tower is constructed from plastic food boxes.

The control levers, which work in the same way as a real signal box.

The first fiddleyard comprised cassettes made from aluminium. As ‘O’ gauge trains are very heavy, they were not easy to lift and turn, so Chris has built a rotating sector plate that can turn them without the need for them to be handled.

The Central Division of the NER was different from the rest of the system and used conventional posts without the slots. The starters and home signals are all to this design. To ring the changes, two replacements have used a slotted design and an early LNER upper quadrant.

All of the locomotives represent the typical engines which would have been working the branches in the region. There’s a mixture of tank engines and 0‑6‑0s, and nothing larger than a 4‑4‑0.

Opposite the station Chris has planted four silver birch trees. They complement the setting, and require the viewer to move around the layout slightly to spot the trains.