RobJC

Good choice Andy. Should have put money on it being clay when I saw your post on Burngullow Raod earlier in the year! Looking forward to watching this develop...

Thanks for that very comprehensive reply Colin. Can't remember where I got the idea that ticket boxes were post war but if I come across the source again I'll ignore it....

Hi Colin, I think I read somewhere that used ticket boxes only appeared after WW2, by which time all the plough carriers were body mounted. Is that correct or have I misread it?

That was magic. I've still got that same combine too!

Hadley Hobbies. Spent many a lunch hour in there, and few pounds, back in the late seventies.

Lovely model. There's a picture of B.E.L 1 (1550) in the Observers Book of Railway Locomotives from 1962. Not a great photo but it looks like at some stage the body sides were plated over. There was a B.E.L. 2 as well. The book has them based at Poplar and Oakamoor respectively.

Yes please.

My retail therapy approach is similar. However, the wifes reaction tends not to help the therapy. Her Retail Therapy on the other hand is indisuptable!

Andy, your front end close ups are so evocative of my shed bunking days, normally on Sundays when the locos were lined up nose to tail and you could only see the noses of the ones at the ends! Good luck with the move and fingers crossed you won't be too long away from modelling.

I'm loving this thread. Reading about layouts of this type hold as much if not more interest for me than the current, highly detailed and accomplished layouts. It's probably down to nostalgia in it's simplest form. "I had one of those (enter locomotive, coach, wagon, building here)!" In my case though it was just me as my Dad, although he did try, just wasn't into railways, preferring playing and watching sport with my younger brothers. He still thinks my Triang EE Type 3 (latterly Class 37), bought as a present in 1967 and still going, is a Deltic!

What a magic looking layout. Really captures the appearance of the original, although Mr A B McLeod would have kittens at the sight of such "big" engines on his railway. I visited the site many times and tramped over the hump that is all that remains of the platform. I put together a pastiche of the station many many years ago on a 6 x 4 board(!) using peco and Hornby setrack with Ventnor West over the "fiddle yard" at the back. I ran a couple of O2s and a Terrier with Ratio midland coaches painted green and a handful of mainline (palitoy) goods wagons but the poor little terrier couldn't get up the bank and the O2s kept falling off.

Actually a bit misty at the moment, in Sennen Cove,.....but it is only April.

"Blunt's was our local model shop when I was growing up" Was that in Mill Hill? If so I remember it well. Not exactly "local" to me, before I learned to drive about 15 minutes on the A1 from St Albans if my father was willing to drive, otherwise a bit longer on the train but it was the nearest "proper" model railway shop......Gone now though, like so many others.

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Made a note to look at this bridge when I went under it today. Never noticed it before, but I'm usually getting ready to get off or settling down for the journey ahead at this point! Looks like you've got it nailed already. Just need a bit more mess around it......