Down Home

Flaxborough, in Colin Watson's "Flaxborough Chronicles", is a thinly disguised Boston. An interesting basis for a layout, on the original Great Northern line (and, indeed, the site of the GNR's loco works before Doncaster) with lines to Grimsby and Sleaford as well as a docks branch. You would need quite a bit of space to do it justice. N gauge perhaps? At the other end of the scale, John Hadfield's "Love on a Branch Line" features the line from Flaxfield to Arcady, which hints very strongly of the Mid Suffolk Light Railway. Flaxfield (surely the similarity to Laxfield is no coincidence) is the junction with the main line and the branch was, we are told, closed "four years ago"; the book was published in 1959. Lord Flamborough of Arcady Hall has bought the railway and operates a private service with an E4.

This is coming on very nicely Irishmail; thank you for posting. You mentioned that the points were Marcway. Are they 48" radius?

Were any of the buildings on the LNER's light railways painted in post 1937 green and cream? Those on the Tollesbury and Mid Suffolk do not appear to have been, but the photos of the Thaxted line are a bit ambiguous.Mill Road Halt seems to have been green and cream, as do some of the carriage bodies, although Thaxted itself seems to have retained pre 1937 brown. On the subject of carriage bodies as station buildings, my recollection (which only goes back to the 60s) is that they were white (or very pale grey). Brundall Gardens Halt and Thorpeness Halt come to mind. Was there a fixed policy for this? Finally (and I apologise for running three questions together), does anybody know why the Eastern Region only painted a handful of buildings in dark blue? I appreciate that for most stations the post 1937 green had been applied relatively recently, but the North Eastern Region managed to repaint most of their stations. I assume that in Scotland there was a wish to integrate the LNER and LMS lines.