creswellmodeller

Some progress.... I cleared the area in the room where the layout will go. As you can see it's a loft bedroom I converted in 2010 and the eaves storage wall was cleverly made at a height ideal for operating a railway. The wife doesn't believe a word of it and says I had planned this all along. Would I? The layout will be a traditional oval with the station and goods area across the wall beneath the window, end to end with curves returning towards the camera and looping across a traverser board in line with the door opening. The board will be removable and stored away when no in use. Leaving Creswell to the North (left) you pass the signal box and can choose between heading behind houses, over a bridge and into the tunnel cutting for Whitwell or taking the route towards Clowne, winding through the scenery at Markland Grips until you enter the cutting at Hollin Hill. Both these lead into the traverser board. Leaving Creswell to the right you cross over a road bridge and the Station Hotel to pass houses on the left and the sidings at Creswell Colliery on the right. You can choose to enter the colliery or continue through towards Norwood Sidings, Langwith and Shirebrook - again into the traverser. The idea is trains can leave for 3 destinations - all served by the traverser board. The trick will be making the transitions believable and scaleworthy. I'll make a board drawing and rough plan later so you can laugh at the idea :-) In other news I called in on a model shop (Sherwood Models in Nottingham) on my way back from dropping a kid in town. It's a long time since I went into a model shop so a few things like track and buildings had improved but the banter and advice was still the same. A chat with the owner left me with some Peco turnout plans. I picked up a few pots of Humbrol paint and spotted a bargain OO vehicle model - a KeilKraft GWR Thornycroft van (as below) which had been assembled but needed the front axle gluing back on. I'll need to change the colour and pretty it up a little but it's a nice period addition to my layout. Here is an original: I also picked up a John Day models Humber which is now part constructed and getting ready for paint.

Thanks for the comment Ian. I have gathered a selection of OO vehicles over the last few years. Some were 'hand me downs' from my fathers huge collection and others 'off the cuff purchases'. I have managed to obtain some photographs of life in the village which offer a snapshot of the condition of buildings and the vehicles that travelled through the village. I intend to mimic those snapshots where possible, with the correct vehicles and capture the essence of Creswell. Here are a few examples: Shelvoke Drewery Freighter refuse truck passing Midland Garage on Sheffield Road. Fowler steam traction engine with threshing machine on Mansfield Road. A Leyland Tiger TS8 omnibus passing through flooding. Possibly East Midlands Motor Services. The bus above has thankfully been the subject of a recreation by EFE so I will be ordering one soon.

With some help from other RMWeb members in the UK Prototype Questions forum I was pointed to the NLS Maps website (http://maps.nls.uk/) and got busy looking at my area of interest. Some screen grabs, cropping and stitching later and I had a decent view of the branchlines I was interested in. This map shows the MR and LD&ECR railways and their links with Creswell and Clowne Then I zoomed into the area I propose to work on in this first part of the build. I wanted to follow the track from the colliery past the station and goods yard through to the junction where the lines split for Clowne and Whitwell. Thankfully this section of track is fairly straight offering me a chance to build the scenery around it giving a sense of the surrounding area. It was important to me to keep certain elements within the boundaries of the layout. To the far right on the Whitwell line are some beautiful houses before the road bridge. These houses still exist and I used to walk by them on my way to and from school not much further towards Clowne near Markland Grips. Incorporating them adds a little sentiment. At the far left the line will end at a stone footbridge that crosses the colliery lines. As a child I would cross this, then a steel (wooden in the 30's) bridge that would scare many a child. These are both obvious places to end the line as they offer opportunities to add sections either end. The fork towards Clowne is also an opportunity but it makes more sense to tie the LD&ECR in at the colliery end with another layout. Certain details like gardens backing onto the line at Welbeck Street, the Station Hotel on the main road and maybe one of the churches may be added to give some 'off-rail' interest. Layout scope proposal My next task is to measure the build area ad come up with a layout plan to work with it.

Creating this blog really got my thoughts going again. It's been a while since I did any modelling (I was a regular OO, 1/35th modeller right into my 20's but women, cars and work got in the way somehow!) but a recent trip with my father to a toyfair had me buying a few OO diecast and whitemetal vehicles. In modelling an early period vehicle choice is a little limited. There are lots of post war vehicles to be had in this scale but quality prewar stuff isn't as accessible. For

OK here goes. This is my little blog about my first real layout. I'm going to attempt to capture an area I lived in back when I was a kid. The Inspiration Creswell is a small village in North East Derbyshire. Originally a mining village, Creswell had two stations - namely Welbeck & Creswell (LD&ECR 1897-1939) and Elmton & Creswell (MR 1875-present). This wonderful map shows the LD&ECR to the left and the MR to the right with linking across the colliery. I'm focusing on the MR as there is little information on the LD&ECR railway which was closed shortly after the troops left for WW2. However I would like to revisit this later when more research has been done. I'll try to bear it in mind when designing the layout so it can possibly be linked in at a later point. For now I am quite happy to start with the MR/LMS line I grew up around. "Elmton & Creswell" or "Creswell" as it now known was part of the Midland Railway Clowne branch which was created by The Mansfield Lines Act of 8 July 1865 which authorised the construction of the branch along with others in the area which was undergoing rapid industrialisation, especially in the coal and iron industries. Elmton & Creswell station c1875 The station opened in 1875 and did until the 1980's. It is now a part of the Robin Hood line and sees regular passenger service, albeit without the use of the original station. Having grown up there in the 80's I fell in love with the station building and the wonderful design of Midland Railway architecture. Sadly the station was in disrepair - even then and has been used as storage in Arnold Smith & Sons car parts/scrapyard since. The Station Master's house still exists there, but other buildings such as the goods shed, weighbridge office and smaller platform waiting room have been removed. I remember vaguely the weighbridge office being there in a yard that was inaccessible to children. The two original MR signal boxes (one at the station and another down the line) were replaced with a later wooden box in 1946 which has been refurbished a few times and still exists. The 1946 box - in need of repair c1977 Today both the station and station masters house also remain. Both in need of love, but structurally viable, It's terrible that such beauty is left in this state and building this layout is my way of trying to preserve a little of this before (I hope not) nothing is left of it. Traffic on the line is sparse with Robin Hood line traffic. I am unsure if any freight passes through these days. The one time I got to travel on the line in it's original guise was being pulled behind a Black Five as part of a commemorative display. 4498 Sir Nigel Gresley was also in service that weekend. A service was run from Worksop to Shirebrook Depot. Sir Nigel Gresley A4 in service leaving Elmton & Creswell junction towards Worksop c1987 Since then I have had a fondness for the line and became an avid researcher of its history. My father is a long time OO modeller and since school I have built and collected with him. Now I have my own home and space so it's time to 'live the dream' and build my childhood memories - but with a twist. Creswell was run down in the 80's and I don't want to recreate that. Instead I want people to see it as it was c1936, before WW2 and with some life in it. By then the line was run by LMSR and the MR had been amalgamated in the grouping of 1921, but I intend to run some MR locos purely for colour as 'commemorative runs' like the one I had as a kid :-)