KING'S COMPTON.
Now that Baynards (below) is largely complete, we're in
the process of building a new, much more adventurous
layout - also in N gauge. It is a BR(S)-based line set
somewhere in Dorset, allowing some crossover between
Southern and Western region stock. The track plan and
surroundings are loosely based on that at Corfe on the
Swanage Railway, although we've expanded it into a
double track main line and taken various other
liberties in order to give us the excuse to run large
expresses from time to time. We're also planning to
include a castle, thus satisfying another of our
obsessions ;-)
The layout is 6'6" x 2'6" and is being built using a
hollow-core door as the baseboard. Unlike our previous
layout, this one has a decent sized fiddle yard and a
continuous circuit, allowing us to run in our
locomotives, and also pleasing one of our cats, who
loves to watch the trains go 'round endlessly ;-)
Visit the layout page for
details of progress.
BAYNARDS
Baynards is a small country station that was originally
served by the Guildford to Horsham LBSCR line. The line
succumbed to the Beeching axe back in 1965, having been
a steam-only branch right through until its closure. A
preservation society was formed back in the seventies,
but unfortunately failed to restore the line, which is
now a cycle path. Several of the stations, however,
survived - the best preserved of these being Baynards,
which is situated literally out in the middle of
nowhere, having been built as part of a deal with the
then owner of the Baynards Park estate, who granted the
L.B. & S.C.R. permission for the line to cross his
land provided they also built him a station.
Baynards station is now a private home, only visible
from the car park of a nearby pub, but the owners have
preserved all the station buildings - including the
platforms, goods shed and station signage - as they
would have been when it was still open. It's not hard
to imagine trains still steaming through.
When we decided to get back into modelling, Baynards
was an obvious first choice to model as the location is
very picturesque. Unfortunately, however, we had very
limited space available and even in N scale, it proved
to be impossible to build an exact scale model as we
simply did not have room for both sides of a through
station, therefore liberties were taken in order to
compress it into a minimum of space - notably, we've
compressed the long siding that originally served the
nearby quarry/brickworks, and we've modelled Baynards
as one end of a 'preserved' line, thereby giving us an
excuse to turn it into a terminus.
The layout is in N gauge (1:148) and fits on a single
6' x 1' board (including the fiddle yard). It was built
over a 9 month period during 2005/early 2006 and was
very much a learning experience. One of these days -
probably sooner rather than later - we'll return to
Baynards and do it properly.
Click here to see the layout