Tweedale - Frog Fen Lane
My old copy of Tweedale Byways (1908 edition) includes a sketch of Frog Fen Lane, which I've reproduced below...
It looks a pleasant enough spot. I imagine the artist sitting happily beside the dusty road on a lovely sunny day, the only sounds being the gentle tinkling of sheep bells and the chuckling of contented chickens, with maybe the odd skylark thrown in for good measure. If you were to have wandered along and informed him that the area was to be designated as a 'green field site', he would probably have complimented the authorities on their forethought in safeguarding this slice of rural idyll. At that point you would no doubt have wished him a good day and walked on, not wanting to disillusion the poor fellow.
The photo below was taken from more or less the same spot, but some half a century later in the 50s/60s...
The frogs, sheep and skylarks have all gone of course, but strangely enough the chickens are still there. The industry moved in so fast that there was no time to round them all up, and a feral population have infested the site ever since.
Actually I've quite surprised myself at how quickly the industry has come together. It's amazing what a looming exhibition deadline can do for motivation. There are still small details that can be added, road signs and so on, but as with the other scenes those can wait until later if I have time left over.
The buildings were constructed using my preferred medium of cardboard, but most have been faced with Slater's corrugated Plasticard. I never quite know what is the best way of gluing these dissimilar materials together. UHU glue seems to work quite well in the short term, but I've found it goes brittle over time and the surfaces can come apart. The method used here, though it was more of a bother, was to add a paper backing to the plastic, bonding it by soaking solvent (Mekpak) through the paper to the plastic. I then used PVA to glue the paper-backed plastic to the card sub-structure. I have a feeling it may be more stable than the UHU, but that has yet to be proven.
The chimneys and pipes are based on paper tubes. They are rather fragile, but at least having the layout contained in a box reduces their vulnerability somewhat. However the large chimney has already gained a dent at the top, where it was struck by a meteorite. Bends in the pipework consist of sections cut from wooden or plastic curtain rings. Paper collars were added to one end of each straight and curved piece, then a great time was had plugging them together. The pipework could really do with more supports, but the space was too tight fit any more in.
As you might guess, track cleaning is tricky, but then the whole layout is a rabbit warren so that's nothing new. It involves the use of a stick with piece of paper towel wrapped around the end which is then carefully manipulated betwixt and between the obstacles. No abrasives or solvents are used but it does a satisfactory job.
It's still not clear exactly what goes on at the Frog Fen Lane works. An industrial spy once noted that wagon loads of innocuous materials arrived and drums of noxious substances departed, mostly to Castleport where they were loaded onto a barge and dumped in the Twee estuary. The railway is unconcerned. Traffic is traffic and it pays the bills, with the added bonus that the leaky drums work wonders at keeping the track free from weeds.
Cheers, Alan.
Edited by awoodford
Restored lost images
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