A fresh start after 30+ years
Entry posted by MullionPeter
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At last, after over 30 years’ absence from model railways I have begun to model the Helston Branch line. In my late teens I chose to model the Helston Branch Line because I grew up in Mullion and attended Helston Comprehensive School. Every day for many years I would pass the former site of the station to and from school, in a “routemaster” bus just like the one in some of the archived photos of the station. It is probable that it was the very same bus. In addition, when I endured the agony of cross county runs during our PE lessons, it was often along the abandoned railway lines. So although I never had a chance to see the line in operation, I feel a close affinity to it.
As a teen in the early 1980s, I spent many hours going through material at both the Helston and Truro Museums, browsing the local book shops looking for information and more importantly pictures; I roamed the site, camera in hand, taking shots of anything that remained (mostly just the goods shed). I struggled but made a good start in N-gauge until I had to move away. Now with retirement on the horizon, it is time to get back to where I left off. But technology has vastly changed modelling. Now when Helston Railway Station is entered into the Google search bar it returns far more images than I was ever able to find before and there are links to a forum with fascinating details from those who have gone before such as Tony Mulgabill in "A Cartoon of Helstonish". My thanks to Tony for sharing the articles from the 1960s that give detailed scale drawings of the buildings, almost making it too easy! Visits to the OS maps app and Google Street enable me to peruse the sites almost as well as walking along them. I can do my research before I once again walk the sites with camera in hand when I am back in the area in 2020.
How did I come to choose the title for this opening blog? I agonized over the decision of what scale to build. I determined that this time I would work in 00 and not N‑gauge, based on available locos and the space available to me. Initially I decided that I would start with a layout of Helston Station in 00 and that with a little licence I could fit it on a 3 m run. When I announced my grand plans to my lovely wife, she instantly wanted to know what I was going to do with the old N‑gauge rolling stock that I had. She wanted them displayed as well. No model railroader could refuse such a challenge, so I needed a very simple station that could fit on a board about 1 m long and accommodate a 2-6-0 loco and tender along with three coaches plus a few wagons. Looking along the branch line it was evident that Praze was the ideal location, with a simple platform and a small additional goods siding. It is also on the section of the line where 2-6-0 locos were allowed to run. Also, as it is only a couple of miles from where my brother currently lives, one could say it is his local station.
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