Layouts inspired by literature

[Martync]

I've always wondered why there aren't more layouts inspired by places in books, etc.  I've often thought this to be a rich source of inspiration.  I believe Iain Rice's North Cornwall Minerals was based on an idea from a book originally, and who knows if Frank Dyer's masterpiece was only a typo away from being a tribute to the works of Anthony Trollope!!

 

A favourite book of mine is "Lark Rise to Candleford" by Flora Thompson, and I believe there was an exhibition layout based on this in years past.  I think it was based on MR/LMS - given the location, I would have thought GWR was most likely, followed by LNWR (off the Banbury Branch) and possibly GCR.  My favourite here would have been a "North Oxfordshire Light Railway" - or maybe Tramway.

 

I'm currently starting a small OO shunting plank loosely linked with the North London Railway/LNWR.  This will, of course, be "Scrooge's Sidings", serving the premises of Robert Cratchit and Sons Ltd (formerly Scrooge and Marley) and I suppose should be set on Christmas Eve!!

 

Other ideas:

 

Fenchurch St Paul (or St Peter) - a fenland tramway (Model Rail J70!) from "The Nine Tailors" , a Lord Peter Wimsey mystery by Dorothy L Sayers

 

Thrush Green, Fairacre or Beech Green from Miss Read's country stories - loads of potential for GWR/Light Railways, etc.

 

Crutched Friars - a minories type city terminus, address taken from a client of Sherlock Holmes (I know it's practically next to Fenchurch Street, but this is fiction after all)

 

There must be many more...............

[Claude_Dreyfus]

Am I right in recalling there was a layout on the circuit called Barchester? EM or P4?

[Nearholmer]

Not sure whether Sherlock Holmes stories count as literature, but (the unfinished) one of my two stations is called Birlstone, which shorlockians will recognise.

 

If ever I build a small country station, that will be Lamberley, which Mr Dreyfus possibly knows is the setting of The Sussex Vampire, 'just south of Horsham'.

Edited March 20, 2018 by Nearholmer

[Del]

I must admit, I often read a novel and think 'That's a good name for a layout...'.

I'm currently reading 'I Capture The Castle' by Dodie Smith, and that has set cogs whirring about a 1930s Suffolk branchline.

The Mortmains live at Godsend, but the nearest station is Scoatney, which is on the branch to King's Crypt.

[Pacific231G]

I've always wondered why there aren't more layouts inspired by places in books, etc.  I've often thought this to be a rich source of inspiration.  I believe Iain Rice's North Cornwall Minerals was based on an idea from a book originally, and who knows if Frank Dyer's masterpiece was only a typo away from being a tribute to the works of Anthony Trollope!!

 

I wonder if Frank Dyer took the name Borchester from The Archers? .I've always assumed that the BBC adapted the name from Anthony Trollope's Barchester but there have been a couple of other 4mm/ft Borchesters as well. I  don't think any of them did more than use the name.

 

I tend to think that if you base a layout on a literary source it ought to reflect the place in the book. Barsetshire and Barchester should provide rich pickings for this. Trollope admitted that he based Barsetshire on Dorset though he placed it in a different geographic location and Barchester was apparently based on or inspired by Winchester. 

 

I've found a couple of maps of Barsetshire both apparently based on a sketch map by Trollope.

 

Trollope wrote the Barsetshire Chronicles between 1855 and 1867 so I think we can assume that in later years there would have been more than the two railways shown in the county and that the railway marked as Barchester Branch would have become a secondary main line (the GWR's line to Oxford was originally described as a branch) I don't know whether Trollope actually indicated that the line to London was the GWR but that would place it somewhat north of Dorset.Of course it would be perfectly possible to model Barchester as a Victorian station  with several of Trollope's characters and other locations included.

 

I did once toy with Royale les Eaux taken from Ian Fleming's Casino Royale. If you read the book the location is somewhere around where the real Cayeux-sur-Mer is or possibly a bit further along that coast towards Le Treport. That put it firmly in the Nord railway's territory which  was  the wrong region for me but it did suggest a slightly smaller version of Deauville-Trouville.  There have of course been a couple of Clochemerles built by British modellers and others by our French counterparts. .

Edited March 20, 2018 by Pacific231G

[Joseph_Pestell]

I wonder if Frank Dyer took the name Borchester from The Archers? .I've always assumed that the BBC adapted the name from Anthony Trollope's Barchester but there have been a couple of other 4mm/ft Borchesters as well. I  don't think any of them did more than use the name.

 

I tend to think that if you base a layout on a literary source it ought to reflect the place in the book. Barsetshire and Barchester should provide rich pickings for this. Trollope admitted that he based Barsetshire on Dorset though he placed it in a different geographic location and Barchester was apparently based on or inspired by Winchester. 

 

I've found a couple of maps of Barsetshire both apparently based on a sketch map by Trollope.

barsetshirere drawnfrom Trollope's sketch.jpg

BarsetshireMap-Trollope ACommentary.jpg

 

Trollope wrote the Barsetshire Chronicles between 1855 and 1867 so I think we can assume that in later years there would have been more than the two railways shown in the county and that the railway marked as Barchester Branch would have become a secondary main line (the GWR's line to Oxford was originally described as a branch) I don't know whether Trollope actually indicated that the line to London was the GWR but that would place it somewhat north of Dorset.Of course it would be perfectly possible to model Barchester as a Victorian station  with several of Trollope's characters and other locations included.

 

I did once toy with Royale les Eaux taken from Ian Fleming's Casino Royale. If you read the book the location is somewhere around where the real Cayeux-sur-Mer is or possibly a bit further along that coast towards Le Treport. That put it firmly in the Nord railway's territory which  was  the wrong region for me but it did suggest a slightly smaller version of Deauville-Trouville.  There have of course been a couple of Clochemerles built by Britidh modellers and others by our French counterparts. .

 

I had always believed that Barchester was Salisbury. But those maps certainly look more like Winchester apart from the fact that it is GWR rather than LSWR.

 

Royale-les-Eaux sounds more like an inland spa town than a coastal location.

[Nearholmer]

Thomas Hardy, a good author for faux-geography.

[Marly51]

A favourite childhood book was ‘The Family from One End Street’ by Eve Garnett. Eve lived in Lewes and I understand she used the town and surrounding countryside as her inspiration for the book. Written in the 1930s, The Ruggles family like many families in the first half of the 20th century travelled by train for day trips. The landscape and railway lines through Lewes would certainly be a interesting subject for a layout.

 

The Lewes History Group has some background information about the history of Lewes Station on their website.

 

https://leweshistory.org.uk/2011/02/12/lewes-history-group-bulletin-7-11-february-2011/

 

 

Edit - Should have checked online - a model of the station already exists in the Science Museum!

 

http://collection.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects/co67907/model-of-lewes-railway-station-1850s-models-railway-stations

Edited March 20, 2018 by Marly51

[Nearholmer]

Someone on RMWeb is building a Victorian iteration of Lewes station in, I think, 2mm/ft.

Edited March 20, 2018 by Nearholmer

[Joseph_Pestell]

Thomas Hardy, a good author for faux-geography.

 

If you can get through the rest of the book.

 

Joseph (writing from just south of Shaston).

Edited March 20, 2018 by Joseph_Pestell

[Joseph_Pestell]

Someone on RMWeb is building a Victorian iteration of Lewes station in, I think, 2mm/ft.

Epsom & Ewell MRC, I think. That neck of the woods anyway.

[Nearholmer]

If you don't like the plots, just use the maps on the endpapers.

 

My experience is that his books have uneven pace, being really slow and descriptive until half way through, then vast amounts of action, as if his publisher put the 'hurry up' on him at some point.

[Marly51]

Epsom & Ewell MRC, I think. That neck of the woods anyway.

Thanks Joseph & Nearholmer - found the link to the Epsom & Ewell MRCs layouts page...

 

http://www.trainweb.org/eemrc/layouts.htm

 

And progress posted here on RMWeb

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/121823-lewes-lbscr-1886/page-2

Edited March 20, 2018 by Marly51

[Nick Holliday]

The late Richard Chown's Castle Rackrent was inspired, I believe, by the works of Maria Edgeworth and other Irish novelists.

[Marly51]

David Rowe’s ‘Under Milk Wood’ inspired by the work of the same name by Dylan Thomas.

 

http://www.carendt.com/small-layout-scrapbook/page-89a-september-2009/

 

[Joseph_Pestell]

Thomas Hardy, a good author for faux-geography.

I seem to recall at least one Casterbridge layout.

[Martync]

How could I have forgotten Under Milkwood!!

 

I think some of Martin Brent's layouts took names out of the Mapp and Lucia books by E F Benson (Tilling??)

 

Quite a few of M R James ghost stories have railway journeys in them - A View from a Hill, The Uncommon Prayer Book, Mr Humphreys and his Inheritance - and all are packed with excellent names and locations.

[Ravenser]

I wonder if Frank Dyer took the name Borchester from The Archers? .I've always assumed that the BBC adapted the name from Anthony Trollope's Barchester but there have been a couple of other 4mm/ft Borchesters as well. I  don't think any of them did more than use the name.

 

I tend to think that if you base a layout on a literary source it ought to reflect the place in the book. Barsetshire and Barchester should provide rich pickings for this. Trollope admitted that he based Barsetshire on Dorset though he placed it in a different geographic location and Barchester was apparently based on or inspired by Winchester. 

 

I've found a couple of maps of Barsetshire both apparently based on a sketch map by Trollope.

barsetshirere drawnfrom Trollope's sketch.jpg

BarsetshireMap-Trollope ACommentary.jpg

 

Trollope wrote the Barsetshire Chronicles between 1855 and 1867 so I think we can assume that in later years there would have been more than the two railways shown in the county and that the railway marked as Barchester Branch would have become a secondary main line (the GWR's line to Oxford was originally described as a branch) I don't know whether Trollope actually indicated that the line to London was the GWR but that would place it somewhat north of Dorset.Of course it would be perfectly possible to model Barchester as a Victorian station  with several of Trollope's characters and other locations included.

 

 

 

Barchester is definitely on the GWR - in The Warden , Mr Harding travels up to London by the morning mail train and arrives at Paddington. As a senior Post Office official who had been based in the South West Trollope would have had a keen appreciation of where the lines actually went

 

The implication is that Barchester is somewhere vaguely between the GWR main line and the LSWR West of England route . Barchester as a town seems to be a conflation of Winchester and Salisbury, , and the county an alternate world version of Wiltshire

 

The simplest solution for modelling is to "tweak" Trollope slightly , and assume that the "mainline" shown is our GW main line - ie the Berks & Hants - rather than the London -Bath-Bristol route he will have assumed (I suspect Trollope was actually envisaging something like a Chippenham/Salisbury branch for the GW, and therefore in Barsetshire the LSWR does not have a West of England main line) . The "old coach road" marked may well be meant for the modern A303

 

With this "tweak", the logical scenario is that the line from Barchester Jnc through Barchester continues towards Dorchester and Weymouth - effectively it replaces the GWR's actual line from Castle Cary to Weymouth with a shorter route branching off the Berks & Hants further east and serving a large county town en route. It would certainly still be open

 

I suspect the LSWR would have got in on the act with a branch to Barchester from somewhere like Andover  in the later 19th century

 

Fenchurch St Peter has been used by Bedlam George of this parish for his most recent layout

Edited March 20, 2018 by Ravenser

[Pacific231G]

Barchester is definitely on the GWR - in The Warden , Mr Harding travels up to London by the morning mail train and arrives at Paddington. As a senior Post Office official who had been based in the South West Trollope would have had a keen appreciation of where the lines actually went

 

The implication is that Barchester is somewhere vaguely between the GWR main line and the LSWR West of England route . Barchester as a town seems to be a conflation of Winchester and Salisbury, , and the county an alternate world version of Wiltshire

 

The simplest solution for modelling is to "tweak" Trollope slightly , and assume that the "mainline" shown is our GW main line - ie the Berks & Hants - rather than the London -Bath-Bristol route he will have assumed (I suspect Trollope was actually envisaging something like a Chippenham/Salisbury branch for the GW, and therefore in Barsetshire the LSWR does not have a West of England main line) . The "old coach road" marked may well be meant for the modern A303

 

With this "tweak", the logical scenario is that the line from Barchester Jnc through Barchester continues towards Dorchester and Weymouth - effectively it replaces the GWR's actual line from Castle Cary to Weymouth with a shorter route branching off the Berks & Hants further east and serving a large county town en route. It would certainly still be open

 

I suspect the LSWR would have got in on the act with a branch to Barchester from somewhere like Andover  in the later 19th century

 

Fenchurch St Peter has been used by Bedlam George of this parish for his most recent layout

Thanks Ravenser

Courtesy of project Guttenberg, I'm now well into Barchester Towers on my Kindle app. The Warden will come next. 

We're probably overrthinking Trollope a bit as in 1855 when The Warden was published railways were still very new and thin on the ground but in Barchester Towers (1857) he does refer to the Sabbatarians' objection to trains running on Sundays.  I doubt though whether he got as far as placing Barsetshire geographically beyond it being "somewhere in Wessex" with a GWR rail connection to London.

Edited March 20, 2018 by Pacific231G

[Nobby (John)]

 

Fenchurch St Peter has been used by Bedlam George of this parish for his most recent layout

 

 

OUR most recent layout.......................

[Joseph_Pestell]

If you don't like the plots, just use the maps on the endpapers.

 

My experience is that his books have uneven pace, being really slow and descriptive until half way through, then vast amounts of action, as if his publisher put the 'hurry up' on him at some point.

 

I have never managed to get past the slow and descriptive bit.

[Peter Kazmierczak]

Then, of course, there's a certain Island of Sodor.....

[Pacific231G]

I had always believed that Barchester was Salisbury. But those maps certainly look more like Winchester apart from the fact that it is GWR rather than LSWR.

 

Royale-les-Eaux sounds more like an inland spa town than a coastal location.

Hi Joseph

 

You may be more right about Salisbury. Trollope was educated at Winchester College though, according to his autobiography, it was looking at Salisbury Cathedral one summer evening that led him to invent Barchester. The story of the Warden was though inspired by the scandal around the very large revenues received by Francis North the Rector of the Hospital of St Cross and Almshouse of Noble Poverty in Winchester. Barchester and its cathedral seems to have been a mixture of Salisbury, Winchester and probably Exeter. The Cathedral Close and the town does feel more like Salisbury than Winchester but the place it most reminds me of is Ely.

 

As to Royale les Eaux I think we may have had this same conversation a few years ago

 

In Casino Royale Ian Fleming described Royale-les-Eaux as a fashionable Second Empire seaside resort called Royale that failed to compete with Le Touquet until the discovery of a mineral water spring in the hills behind the town around the turn of the century (La Belle Epoque) gave it a new lease of life as a coastal spa and a new name. He described it as "lying near the mouth of the Somme before the flat coast line soars up from the beaches of Southern Picardy to the Brittany cliffs which run on to Le Havre" which rather suggests either that he couldn't distinguish Normandy from Brittany or that wrote it very quickly without checking. There is also a telegraph addressed to BOND SPLENDIDE ROYALE-LES-EAUX SEINE INFERIEURE In fact his described location would be in the Somme Departement, a little to the south-west of the very run down resort of Cayeux, rather than Seine Maritime (renamed along with a number of other Departements that objected to being "inferieure")

Edited March 20, 2018 by Pacific231G

[Bob Reid]

The fictional novel The Necropolis Railway by Andrew Martin is certain to inspire someone to build a layout based on the real line in London. I would have thought....

[Andy Kirkham]

The opening of Aldous Huxley's Crome Yellow provides a ready-made branch line.

 

Along this particular stretch of line no express had ever passed. All the trains - the few that there were - stopped at all the stations. Denis knew the names of those stations by heart. Bole, Tritton, Spavin Delawarr, Knipswich for Timpany, West Bowlby, and, finally, Camlet-on-the-Water. Camlet was where he always got out, leaving the train to creep indolently onward, goodness only knew whither, into the green heart of England.

 

I bought the book on the strength of that opening, but I regret to say, I've yet to read any further.

 

 

Any railway enthusiast who reads Brideshead Revisited can't help but speculate where Brideshead is. The journey begins at Paddington and passes through Swindon to a junction where one changes onto a branch line train. The branch journey must have been quite short because, by the 1930's the residents of Brideshead no longer used the branch train but drove directly to the junction. I've no idea if Waugh had a real place in mind, but if he did, the branch could only have been the Calne branch (or perhaps possibly the Malmsbury branch), and the station perhaps Black Dog Halt, which served the Bowood estate.

Edited March 20, 2018 by Andy Kirkham