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Alexander Copper and James Wort were merchant brewers in Burton-on-Trent before 1835.  But within 10 to 15 years both the partners had passed away. Their descendants formed a public limited liability company in the late 1880's. Copper Wort & Co. Ltd.  The company was later bought out and was amalgamated in 1910 with a larger company.  Our period modelled of the early Edwardian 1900’s is perfect as that was the high point of the brewing industry in Burton on Trent, extremely busy with the bigger breweries establishing their potential with the Midland Railway network with the smaller breweries muscling in between them.
 
To add substance to what is essentially a little known small brewery company and make it work for a round and round layout I have given it a few of its own 0-4-0 locomotives to support the larger Midland Railway locomotives running through the town and includes a track plan based on Worthington’s arrangement to accommodate the numerous Midland Railway and Great Northern open wagons and outside framed Midland Railway vans. The buildings are based on the those of Bass, Ind Coope, Trumans and others, all based in and around Burton on Trent, some of which is still there today even though the railways have long gone.
 
It is being built to 4mm scale OO gauge on a hexagon shaped 6 board arrangement (4 feet length per hex outside edge) and is about 1/3 size of my previous layouts. The track plan is a continuous round and round run with lots of shunting and sidings. 4 of the boards contain the complete brewery process. The 5th board is the High Street crossing with shops and houses with the track running between buildings, and the 6th is a small fiddle yard.  Most of the stock will therefore be out front.
 
Assistance and advice has been gleaned so far from various people including Joe Stamper from Burton and the National Brewing Centre also at Burton. Boards constructed by Col Stark and we are currently under way with construction of the buildings together with the DCC electrics designs.

It was gloomy yesterday so I turned the layout lights on and tried running a few trains in the dark. Daft, but oddly fun.
 
Anyway, a few random pics of variable quality. The station in general, I need to lightproof the roof more next time it is off.
 

 
 

 

 
 

 
This is a lucky pic. I cant really see the from of the station building so its just done by point the camera at the mirror on the end of the layout and hoping. The resultant image is then reversed in preview.
 
 

 
Through a window. Atmospheric, a bit.... 
 

Happy New Year
 
So lets have some content, showing what I've been working on over the last couple of weeks. First is a slight deviation from the goal of a working crane lorry, courtesy of my old Scania crane lorry with the working ramps - which has pretty much been in its box ever since I built it because it never really drove very well without a load on the back. So I thought I'd recycle it, as I had several uses for the components. I used the bed with the working ramps, the flashing orange beacon and the receiver, to create a beavertail lorry on the Mercedes chassis - and the flatbed from the Mercedes plus the rear wheels from the Scania to make a drawbar trailer. Got all that?
 
Here I am testing it with a hastily-put-together loading ramp and my Network Rail Land Rover Defender:
 
 
then I had steering axles and the proper 7mm German motor/gearbox left over, so I used them to finally finish the Scania fire engine I'd had for a while:
 
 
I've also made another Transit van, this time in the instantly recognisable DPD livery, excellently reproduced by Shedring Hobbies: