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ullypug

Entry posted by ullypug

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Funny how I always seem to spend Christmas and the New Year period playing with Templot and track plans.

It's 2 years almost to the day since I first posted a plan of Cheddar on my other blog here, which I've been thinking about doing for some time now.

 

Whilst I've been building Clevedon, I've been tinkering with the ideas on and off and have been playing with various incarnations of the layout plan. I decided that if I was going to build Cheddar, it would have to be pretty much a dead scale representation, since I've always enjoyed replicating real places (Weston, Clevedon) rather than making things up. Maybe I just don't have the imagination! I never saw Barry Norman's Petherick but the Wild Swan book was an inspiration and I've always liked the idea of deep baseboards and the railway running through the landscape (as Tim Venton's so successfully achieved with Clutton, another favourite and a North Somerset prototype too).

 

Now I've pretty much settled on the layout, it will be big (well for me anyway) at 8m long and 1.2m deep (28ft x 4ft) in old money. I want to capture everything from the loading bank north of Lower New Road Bridge to the home signal south of Station Road. It'll probably have a traverser at either end so add another 12ft to that. Like I said, it's going to be a biggie. Mind you the main building scales out at 2ft long.

Anyway, here's the plan.

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I don't think it's going to be a quick layout to build (by my usual standards ahem) so it'll probably occupy me for a few years. It'll need to be end to end and the size is going to cause a few issues, but that's for another day. Plans are afoot. With the realisation that I'm not getting any younger and likely to be approaching 50 before it's finished, I'd like to think I've got at least one big layout in me!

 

The trouble with Cheddar is it's such a good prototype to model with both fruit and quarry traffic from Batts Coombe and Callow Hill. I know that it's a popular prototype and The Fatadder has plans to build it too here. Hopefully, there's room in the modelling world for two layouts of the same protototype. I'd like to think so anyway.

 

I have thought about maybe doing another station on the line, but for one reason or another decided against it. I know of a new P4 layout of Sandford and Banwell that's just started out on the exhibition circuit. Wells isn't feasible unless I went 2mm FS which I contemplated for about 30 seconds. I did look at Congresbury in 4mm a few years ago, but decided against it. A layout of Wookey is also under construction in EM (isn't it Malcolm!!), so whichever station you choose chances are someone else will be building it too. I do like the fact that the Cheddar Valley line is local to me; Cheddar's only 10 miles from where I live which I kind of feel connected somehow (or maybe that's just the Thatchers 2011 Vintage at 7.4% talking, hic)

 

I'd like to make a start this year once Clevedon's finished, and I'm hoping to build the baseboards in the summer. In the meantime, I'll start with the track as it can be built on the workbench. First up will be the single compound on the down side. If I can make that work, the rest should be a doddle... Plus there's no point wasting time building everything else first!

 

As to period and stock - anything and anything. I've been acquiring panniers, prairies, Collett and Dean Goods, railcars plus the odd Type 2 hydraulic. Some of it runs on Wheal Elizabeth at the moment, though china clay trains and Beattie Well Tanks in the Cheddar Valley is probably stretching it a bit too far!

 

I spent a very enjoyable day crawling all over the station courtesy of the present building occupants (Wells Cathedral Stone Masons) back in October. When I get time, I'll draw up the survey I did. In the meantime, here are a few pictures:

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The station building

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The main station building entrance

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Lower New Road Bridge

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Building Interior

The goods shed's been heavily modified and only the east end remains as a converted dwelling. My initial thoughts are that the Axbridge shed is of the same pattern and size, albeit with a different configuration for the goods office.

More of that later.

Anyway, comments would be very welcome. Hopefully I'll have something else to post before January 2015!

 

edited for typos

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DavidLong
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Sounds good, Andrew, and will be good if it is to the same standard as your other offerings which are superb.

I did wonder though, with a number of models of the Cheddar Valley line in progress or planned whether you may have considered a couple of others from that vicinity which I have never seen modelled. One would be a station on the Taunton to Chard line which was covered in, I think, a short series in the Modeller some years ago. The other would be Devizes which I remember from an 'Editor visits' article in the Constructor back in the 1960s. It always struck me as having great potential as a model especially as it was used on occasion as a diversionary route from the main line. Oh and it had a tunnel at one end!

Good luck anyway with whatever you decide on and I look forward to following progress.

 

David

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ullypug
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Hi David

Thanks for the kind words.

I wanted the next layout to be Somerset based and did look at Hatch and Thornfalcon on the Taunton-Yeovil line, also considered Chard,  Dulverton, Yatton and Yeovil Town. The last 3 have certainly been done. 

Then there was Weston GWR terminus pre 1892 in broad gauge. So many choices! 

Andrew

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Tim V

Thanks for the kind words Andrew.

 

That is a large project you've committed yourself to. Have you looked at how many trains you will need to correctly represent the workings? In other words, the pretty bit is the easy bit (just got to build it), but how big do the two fiddle yards have to be?

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ullypug
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Hi Tim

glad to hear you did well at St Albans.

Having had a look through the WTT and Carriage workings you very kindly leant me last year, I think I came to the conclusion that 6 roads would do it and about 5ft in length. 

The longest train I've seen is a B set, 2 siphons and a Fruit C, which probably just shades a 4 coach diagram (3.17pm ex Frome I think it was?).

I'm not averse to making it roundy-roundy if needs be. If this is going to be my white elephant magnum opus then I will do what needs to be done. It's not going to fit in the garage anyway! 

I do know I don't really want to use cassettes as they are the main source of derailments on Wheal Elizabeth.

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The Fatadder
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Really looking forward to seeing this progress.  Given the current space constraints resulting in my current Draycott inspired project putting my Cheddar on the back burner, it will be great to see Cheddar in model form!

 

I didn't realise that there was a model of Sandford and Banwell on the circuit, will have to look that one up!

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ullypug
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Sandford & Banwell's by the chaps who did Dartley I think. It's going to be at Epsom & Ewell in April.

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