Build a rural colliery

After finding an interesting model gathering dust in one of Chris Leigh’s sheds, Chris Nevard offered to rejuvenate it – and ended up building an entire layout for it!

Chris Nevard builds a layout around a model that was gathering dust.

Back in the days when we were allowed to visit people, I snuck into Chris Leigh’s ‘hobby graveyard’ shed, while tidying up after a photoshoot for the magazine. Chris has many sheds, even more than Arthur ‘Two Sheds’ Jackson of Monty Python fame. Chris’ hobby graveyard shed is used for the storage of unfinished, broken and used model railway projects and is a real treasure trove.

Hiding away on a shelf, under layers of cobwebs and dust, I discovered a damaged wooden pit head, of a type very similar to the one that can be found at the Black Country Living Museum in Dudley. Regular readers of Model Rail will know that I’m a sucker for small collieries, so I asked Mr Leigh nicely if I could restore it to its former glory. Happily, he said yes – and I had so much fun sprucing it up. In fact, it inspired me to build this small 3ft by 1ft narrow gauge layout on which to display it.

A little research revealed that Chris’ abandoned model was built from a kit in the Craftline Models range. This manufacturer will be familiar to many modellers who have built 4mm scale narrowboat kits. While the pit head kit is not currently in production, a quick Google search suggests that it’s due for imminent re-release.

WHAT’S THE SCENARIO?

Moorewood Colliery was one of the most westerly mines of the Nettlebridge Valley

area of the Mendip Hills. First sunk in 1824, the colliery worked a number of major seams and was closed and reopened a number of times during the 19th Century. By 1909, it had been opened again, this time by the Moorewood Colliery Co. Ltd who built a tramway from the pit to connect with the Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway (S&DJR) near Chilcompton. However, it failed to make a consistent profit and was closed for good in the 1930s.

My model takes the Moorewood name and approximate location, but I’ve upgraded the tramway to a narrow gauge railway running from the colliery to exchange sidings on the S&DJR. For added interest, I’ve also added a canal basin, suggesting that the never-completed Dorset & Somerset Canal had also built its planned Fromenettlebridge extension. Moorewood started as a simple weekend project, which expanded into a full layout – the whole build being just over a month’s worth of weekends. My own projects often start this way with just a few buildings – no rules, just a bit of weekend relaxation. Now, I must order that baseboard to pop it onto – actually, a diorama case with built-in lighting and a curved backscene would be nice…