Ivatt46403

Thanks everyone! 46444 - thanks for the references! The Rhodes and Sawford books are now on order. have the Bachman Ivatt 2MT and a rake of 3 Hornby Staniers, with a Bachman Midland 3F 0-6-0 on frieght duties. I would dearly like a J15 - and it looks like even the kits are hard to get hold of. Wiggoforgold - I'm looking forward to exploring all of your posts, and would be very grateful for any photos you could let me have! As you can see from https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blogs/entry/11907-%7B?%7D/ I tracked down the Buckden box to it's new home.

As I mentioned in my previous post, nothing of the station at Buckden now remains in place, however some of the station complex does, in fact remain intact. The small signal box originally from Buckden stood at the site long after trains stopped running, and can be seen on the site in photos here: http://www.signalbox.org/gallery/lm/buckden.php and http://www.eastanglianrailwayarchive.co.uk/Railways/Abandoned-Lines-and-Stations/19396851_7VzqsZ/1573576237_mZjbZqr#!i=1573576237&k=mZjbZqr After apparently being used as a greenhouse on site for a time whilst the station house was occupied "Branch Lines around Huntingdon" shows a picture of the box taken at Fleggburgh, near Great Yamouth after the box was presumably rescued from destruction. However the well travelled box went even further and after a clue from wikipedia I tracked it down to it's new home at Tunbridge Wells West station on the Spa Valley Railway (http://www.spavalleyrailway.co.uk/). Thanks to some very kind people at Spa Valley, and a wedding in Kent which took us down that way, we were able to visit the box to take some pics! This is a very happy me stood on the box, which is now much taller than the original platform mounted arrangement at Buckden: Further pictures are in my gallery here: As can be seen, it really was a wee little box, plausibly the smallest standard designed of the Midland boxes. The early build date also means that the front sash windows are not as long (2 rather than 3 panes) than was the case for later constructions. At present the box contains a Westinghouse "A" pattern frame in it (ex-Crabtree Crossing, near Dartford), and is currently just a ground frame controlling one set of points at Tunbridge West. However there are plans afoot to commission it as a full-on box in the future controlling the Tunbridge West yard and station. I'm currently in the process of kit bashing a Ratio 536 plastic kit down to size (http://www.peco-uk.com/product.asp?strParents=3340,3344&CAT_ID=3345&P_ID=17803), although I'm starting to think it might have been easier to start from the Churchward Models CM44 brass kit (http://modelexmodelrailways.co.uk/), more of which later... My thanks go to Ross and Paul from Spa Valley, Ross for finding the right person to confirm their box's herritage and Paul for very kindly taking time out of his Sunday to show me and K around the box!

Buckden station was a small station on the Kettering & Huntingdon branch line, originally built by the Midland Railway in 1866 (as Brampton) it transferred to the London, Midland and Scottish Railway upon grouping, and survived until 1959. It was a small station, with a single line serving the handsome station building, small Midland style signal box, weighing machine, cattle dock and between the goods loop and single long curving siding stood an odd shaped goods shed with a small platform of its own. All this sets the station apart from many others not a jot, apart from it's seeming simplicity and quaintness. However I grew up in Buckden and (as I was born in 1983) was driven down the former trackbed most days from the age of 13 onwards on the way to school, and plenty of times prior to that one the way into Huntingdon on what is now Buckden road - looping round and under the A1 beneath the bridge which on many previous days would have seen an Ivatt 2MT amongst the traction steaming towards Grafham and beyond. Buckden station was therefore long part of the scenery. Although, strangely given me and my friends tendency to roam on our bikes places we weren't supposed to be, we never visited the slowly decaying station building as it sat as part of a skip hire premises. Rotting until it and all remnance of the small station complex was demolished to form part of the expansion of recycling facilities at the adjoining Brampton landfill. The line itself was also somewhat in my blood, my mother growing up in Cranford further up the branch towards Kettering meant visits to my Nan and Grandad's bungalow led us passed the lovely viaduct spanning the Nene and the obviously railway derived buildings at what was Isliip furnaces. I can remember many Saturdays waiting until I was allowed to cross the fence in Nan and Grandad's back garden to scale the embankment and run along the trackbed pretending to be a steam train. So when a combination of my Mum's copy of Middleton Press' "Branch Lines around Huntingdon" with it's evocative image of an Ivatt Mogul on the Buckden Road trackbed I knew so well, an out-of the blue visit to a model railway show somewhere in the New Forest whilst my girlfriend was at a craft fayre, and same girlfriends surprising tolerance of a railway modelling habbit occured the spark of railway modelling I had left behind in my teens was re-enlightened. This blog will chart my attempts to create a fairly-close-to-truth model of Buckden in OO in the spare ("train") room of our house in my spare time. Please be gentle.