A couple of weeks ago we visited the Great Central Railway at Rothley station in Leicestershire.

The station is run as it was in 1912 with gas lights and coal fires.

The station staff made us very welcome and were happy to answer all our (mainly Jenn's) questions.

As I've mentioned before, Jenn is hot on social history and how people actually lived and do things.

We were very impressed with the set-up there and spent much of the day just exploring a relatively small station.

At some point we'd like to go back and might even take a train to the other stations!

Back home and work on Jenswell continues.

We have the track fixed down, wired and working nicely.

I made a start on placing some of the proposed buildings.

We have some already built, like the waiting shelter and scalescenes coal office.

This is an Alphagraphics card kit of a NER waiting shelter.

This is the Scalescenes coal office/ weighbridge.

I bought a ready to plant coal staithe at Doncaster as I was not happy with the card one I built earlier.

This has real coal, useful as it's front and centre on the layout.

I have a GT Andrews crossing keepers cottage from Alphagraphics.

It's made up as a very nice model, except it's too big for the space available and stone where I could really do with a similar design in brick.

I also have a Scalescenes arch bridge made up as a scenic break.

There are a few little Hornby line side huts from the train set that may yet find a place on the layout too when they've been painted.

Trying to fit these all in around the track layout got rather crowded.

When I start figuring in the embankment for the bridge it gets even tighter.

I started to wonder why I was building the fiddle yard into the layout ?

As I planned on using loco lift / fiddle sticks operating outside the carcase via mousehole doors, it suddenly made sense to take out the fiddle yard altogether and use all the space for the scenic layout...

With the extra space we could add a small station house and a signal box too, (free with the Railway modeller at Christmas).

The station house here is a Super Quick kit and just a place holder until I find something more suitable.

I have a Builder Plus kit for a small GWR station that could be adapted to our area.

Replace the tiles with slates and paint the woodwork green...

Only problem is, it looks best from the back where it won't be seen!