Create a scenic break

Chris Leigh builds an ‘N’ gauge scenic break that ticks all the boxes.

Chris Leigh builds an ‘N’ gauge scenic break that ticks all the boxes.

Isuppose the ideal scenic break is a matter of personal taste, but it seems that for a long time my ideal scenic break has eluded me. If you’re fortunate enough to have a large continuous-run layout, you probably won’t need any scenic breaks. However, in 50 years I have built a number of layouts based on, or inspired by, actual places and that usually means a ‘fiddleyard-toterminus’ track layout. With one of those, you usually need to disguise the point where the trains go off-stage and into the fiddleyard.

Probably the worst was ‘Black Dog Halt’, a small through station layout, which required a fiddleyard at each end. Neither end offered a natural scenic break although I did extend the layout at the Chippenham end to include one of the distinctive over-line bridges as a scenic break. Nothing could be done at the other end beyond contriving an arch of trees over the line to disguise the hole in the backscene.

My ‘N’ gauge Staines branch layout posed a similar problem. I have modelled the southern end of the branch, from the terminus out onto Staines Moor and with the various bridges on that section. However, two of them are underline bridges and the only overline bridge is too close to the terminus to give the length of run that I wanted. My track plan meant that the branch would reach the fiddleyard in open countryside at Yeoveney halt with absolutely no way of making an effective scenic break. Even the contrived ‘trees over the line’ would not work in an area that was open watermeadow and pasture.

So I worked on the terminus and completed that area just before the spring 2020 lockdown and a marooned Cornish harbour layout prevented access to the ‘N’ gauge. With ‘Polwyddelan’ now out of the way and a third lockdown offering time to do the work, I turned my attention to the other end of the layout.

I decided to abandon Yeoveney halt. I had seen the place only once, shortly before it closed in May 1962, and immediately afterwards its wooden platform had been burned.

A much better scenic break was possible if

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I turned my attention to Poyle Halt for Stanwell Moor, a little further up the line. This area was once the western edge of Hounslow Heath, a remote area of rural activities and highwaymen. Today most of it is Heathrow Airport. Poyle Halt was built and opened in 1927, during the Great Western’s massive halt-building programme between 1905 and the start of the Second World War. The GWR had recognized the competition that was coming from motor omnibuses and set about providing numerous ‘bus stops’ for local rail services, operated by steam railmotors or push-pull trains.

These halts, with just a basic platform and waiting shelter, were unstaffed and provided at places where a village road approached or

Poyle Halt for Stanwell Moor and Lintell’s Bridge seen from the front of an Up DMU in 1962. This is the perfect, orderly look of a branch line in its twilight years that I am trying to replicate in ‘N’ gauge.

1 On this side of the room, the shelf is a single plank 5in wide, surfaced with 5mm thick foamboard. I used 5mm foamboard for the backscene where trains pass into the fiddleyard on the left.

2 At every stage of this project I had to check clearances as they are, of course, much tighter in ‘N’ gauge, and I am accustomed to working in ‘OO’. Among the issues revealed, that shelf bracket strip will have to be moved.

5 I built outwards from the photograph using 2mm mount board assembled with Deluxe Materials Speedbond to create the road and the supports for it. It can now be seen how the photograph forms the rear parapet wall.

3 During the long demise of the Staines branch I took lots of photographs, including a good square-on view of Lintell’s bridge shortly before it was demolished. Reduced to scale size, this made a perfect backscene.

I cut the front face of the bridge from 2mm mount board and faced it with Scalescenes TX07 ‘N’ gauge brown brick, allowing a wrap-round under the bridge to avoid the risk of exposed corners.

4 To create my scenic break I planned to use the bridge photograph as a guide to size and to retain the picture of the sky and the bridge parapet. The eagle-eyed may spot an out-ofperiod Concorde in the sky behind the trees!

The bridge was double-track width, though only one was ever laid. Using the scaled photograph as a guide, I detailed the bridge with buttresses and string courses all papered with the Scalescenes brick before assembly.

6 I recall the lane as being quite narrow, so I used a suitable Oxford Foden as a guide. Gravelraising was a major industry in this part of the Thames Valley and big Fodens were commonplace, especially those of Drinkwater.