As the Great Southern Railway is set in a real location (near Guildford in Surrey, the meeting point of the LBSCR, SECR and LSWR), I felt it would be necessary to have some representative rolling stock from various pre-grouping companies, especially the "local" ones.

As the layout is to be set either pre- or post-war (c.1910 or c.1920), but pre-grouping, I appear to have placed myself in a position where the vast majority of RTR private owner wagons are unsuitable, being based on the RCH 1923 design. I've caved in a little to accept an Oxford Rail North British open wagon (as a nod to the layout's actual location in Edinburgh) and have found one or two of Hornby's 3- and 4-plank wagons which use an older-style underframe. The major visual difference I can see between 1907 and 1923 RCH chassis is that the earlier ones have brake levers attached to V hangers which are two straight lines, while on later wagons these V hangers bend to become vertical over the solebar, as shown here:

There has also been some kit building, mainly plastic from Cambrian and a few Ratio wagons (mainly LNWR and GWR prototypes). A variety of Private Owner wagons is being built up, with owners' names being friends with appropriate industries. I'm also cheating a little by having differing names on each side of the wagons - as the layout is an end-to-end, only one side will ever be seen at once, so I can get away with this sort of trickery!

I've been working hard and have built up a fair collection of rolling stock so far, with at least a dozen more wagon kits to complete, so I suspect that there will be more than enough goods stock to keep any operator occupied for quite a while! Here is a representative sample, though more wagons have been built since this photograph was taken, and there is plenty of lettering to be done.

By joining a local Hacklab, I have gained access to a laser cutter, with which I have been experimenting with producing bodies for fictional wagons. So far I have produced a milk van and a sheep wagon for the North Western Railway, from illustrations in the Thomas the Tank Engine books! A rather finer project appeared in the form of a North British Railway 6-wheel 3rd coach body for use as a grounded coach on the club's layout, so my next blog post will show some of these.

Finally, have a shot of a GSR passenger train running on the ELMRC's Newcastleton layout (in the Scottish borders - one can only presume there are three in the cab!)