Weyford on Sea SR becomes Chesilford

[Wintonian]

The Liphook & District Model Railway Club had an exhibition layout called Weyford, a Southern Railway/ British Railways (SR) branch terminus set in the area beyond Wemouth in Dorset in the 40's and 50's.  It was originally an L shaped terminus to fiddle yard and was exhibited at the Midhurst Modellers Show in this format a couple of times. It featured a fine Southern art-deco station building with brick facade, scratch-built by Eric King, then the club's treasurer.

When the club had to move out of its milking parlour home at relatively short notice, into a member's garage (mine), a proposal was made to change the layout to a U shape, with a fiddle yard and a docks feature. The station became Weyford on Sea and the docks Weyford Docks. Claude Dreyfus reported on this at the time in his RM blog on the L&DMRC.

Although considerable work was done on the layout and it was exhibited in its U format in an incomplete form, it became something of a nightmare to move, as it needed several cars (13 or so sections) and had no travelling frames to aid transport. The club was also changing somewhat.  About 50% membership  interest in N scale diminished the number of members committed to completing Weyford and led to Yamanouchi Oshika (Y.O.) being the favoured club layout.

After 4+ years in the member's garage pressure was on to move out and it was realised that  we would never have enough room to store Weyford and Y.O. Enough to say that the decisions forced on the club by moving on were not popular in all parts of the club and led to resignations from the committee, but happily not from the club.

Part of the proposals for the club to leave the garage and move to our current abode was for me to make an offer for the layout that was acceptable to the membership and that once the layout was modified to fit as a permanent  feature into my garage, club running nights could be arranged.

It has taken a fair time to come up with a plan that makes best use of the layout as built, but allows best use of the garage space as a railway room.

The plan on which I am now proceeding uses every section of the layout as built, except the fiddle yard, where the basboards are re-used but not the track plan. The motto could be "We are re-using all the sections of the original layout but not necessarily assembling them in the same order"

Part of the problem is that Weyford was designed as an outward facing layout with an operating well and in its new life would be inward facing for viewing and operation. From a track layout point of view,no alterations caused by this, but scenically fairly significant alterations are required..

Follow the unfolding story here and at the L&DMRC website www.millandvalleyrailway co.uk over the coming weeks, months and years?

[Wintonian]

Well after 9 months I thought it might be nice to update on what's been happening. Well not a lot. But this week we should see some significant changes.

First the latest copy of the South Western Circle's Gazette dropped through the letterbox Saturday and as usual it was packed with items of interest. What particularly caught my eye was a lengthy article by Ian Hopkins with illustrations and his sketches of what the proposed L&SWR station in South Kensington might have looked like.

It was never built and the architects proposals are lost, but Mr Hopkins made a persuasive case for Queen Anne styling along the lines of Bournemouth Central. He also suggested a track layout based on L&SWR practice in the 1880's, including a turntable and 6 road engine shed.

The location and arrangement has something of the Minories, Cyril Freezers famous plan, about it, with the addition of surface lines of the District and Metropolitan Railways close by.

I wanted to have a London terminus tacked on to Chesilford and this proposal ticked a lot of boxes for me, but not the architectural style. As I like to set my Southern layouts in the immediate post war period, bring on catastrophic bomb damage by the Luftwaffe in WW2. A striving Southern management has plans already in the drawer for a art-deco masterpiece, when the line was electrified in the late 30's, but that was delayed.  The go-ahead is quickly given for a slightly down scaled project that can be completed before nationalisation.

So hopefully that's the model I can build.

All the existing layout sections will be put into place this week, most having been modified to the minimum required to change the viewing point from "outside" the layout to "inside" the operating area. The existing fiddle yard has been stripped of track work and the baseboards will be used to form the new London station. 

A plan and sketches to follow shortly.