George Woodcock

Hello Layout is safely home and put away for a couple of weeks. We had a wonderful weekend. Thanks to John (who?), and Paul Wade for their sterling work helping me when I made mistakes which was often. Thanks to every-one who stopped to look and to talk and for all the nice comments about the layout which behaved impeccably unlike the crew. Thanks to Warners for inviting us and to the Bryford Gang for two great nights out. Off to Malta now for a bit of R n' R. Cheers George

Hello Fenchurch St Peter will be venturing out to Peterborough next weekend to appear at the National Festival of Railway Modelling. This will probably the closest it will be exhibited to the long closed station of Middle Drove which inspired the layout so it will be a bit of a sentimental journey for us. As usual we will have a celebrity guest operator with us. Cheers George

Hello Fenchuch St Peter will be making it's second public appearance at the Mid Essex MRC show in Shenfield on September 17th. We will have a surprise guest operator helping to replace one of our regular brethren who has something better to do that day. See you there I hope. Cheers George

Hello Towcester is now safely installed in Towcester Museum. The SMJ exhibition opened to the public yesterday and is open till the end of February 2017. As well as our layout there is a fine selection of SMJ and other railway memorabilia from the area. At only £1 to get in seems like a bargain to me but then I didn't have to pay. Towcester's next operational appearance will be at Preston on 4/5 March 2017. Cheers George

Hello The exhibition at Towcester museum starts on August 20th and will run for approximately 6 months. If any-one wants to see it running as opposed to a static exhibit it will be at the Silverfox DCC exhibition at Milton Keynes next Saturday August 13th. This is the last time it will shown in it's home area for several years Next year it will be off on it's travels across the country again. Cheers George

Hello Thank-you John. Cheers George

Hello I obviously should have had an even longer holiday Paul. Oddly enough that was the gist of a message I received in The Virgin Islands, 'don't hurry back, in fact don't come back we can manage without you' . Good to be back though, off to Stowmarket on Sunday with Georgemas Jct and the A Team. Perhaps John could put the picture on the right thread. Oh almost forgot many thanks to you Paul and Adrian for doing such a great job at Trainwest. Cheers George

Hello Unless you count the Condemned/scrap wagons now on the did-used line at the back that used to be the SMJ line to Woodford Halse. These were weathered and detailed for us by our esteemed colleague Mr Richard Coleman. Cheers George

Hello The new improved, and lengthened version of Towcester will be at the Nottingham exhibition this coming weekend for your delight and delectation. Cheers George

Hello Answers to two questions. Coal is not delivered to the grain store but fuel oil for to power the dryers is occasionally delivered in 35T tanks. Sadly Ian the layout will not be in the NW till 2020 at Preston. It will be at the NEC this year as well as shows over the Midlands, South and of course East Anglia over the next few years. To Lee in Bedford it will be at Peterborough in October. Thanks as ever for the interest and kind words. Cheers George

Hello Tell me where you live roughly and I will tell you when it is going to be near to you. Thanks for the kind comments, also thanks to every-one else as well for their kind words. Makes it all worthwhile. Cheers George

Hello It is an EFE model. Price didn't matter as I got it for free. just realized when I looked at it that I weathered it a little and also put a zig-zag marker board on the back. Cheers George

Hello The truck is a Bedford TK which was originally in Tennants Brewery livery with a load of beer kegs. Can't remember who produced it, probably Oxford or Corgibut it was a while ago as I was given it a couple of years ago. I removed all the Tennants decals, repainted the bed of the body, fitted some wing mirrors and rear mudflaps. Ideal vehicle that would be used in the 1960s for delivering fertilizer and feedstuffs to local farms. Yes we do have a Cravens unit on Fenchurch as well as a Metro Cam and two Derby Lightweights, one in green and one in blue, which we split sometimes to have a green and blue version just as they were on the Wisbech branch at this time. Cheers George

Hello Nice pictures John, thank-you for your care and devotion to me over the weekend. Cheers George

Hello Fenchurch St Peter is now safely back from it's trip to Glasgow. Thank-you to Ian Portious and the crew of AMRSS for inviting us. The layout behaved itself well and was very well received with a lot of kind comments from visitors. It makes it all worthwhile and that the hard work was not in vain. Time for a long rest now. Cheers George

Hello Now, now.......... See you Thursday afternoon my little Cherry Pie. Cheers George

Hello Simple answer Mick is yes, and not just two. Mind you this was the DC bit of the layout. Cheers George

Hello The mail train was a daily working though not always routed via Wisbech, seemed to depend on the signalman. After last minute fine tuning by Kevin Dickerson of Coastal DCC Fenchurch is now all ready for it's long journey to Glasgow on Thursday. Fingers crossed it will be OK there. Cheers George

Hello There is just the one mail train featured on Fenchurch which is a Kings Lynn to Peterborough working. This is shown on the TVP video that the layout is so heavily based on. The train has two bogie full brakes one of which is a Thompson one. Between them is a CCT type van which is not very clear. Originally it was going to be a SR van but I changed my mind and built a Parkside ex LNER CCT in a dirty blue livery. Dirt seemed to be the standard livery on much parcels stock at that time and indeed for many years afterwards. Cheers George

Hello There are some ex LNER and LMS vans on the layout but they weren't built until after the RM photo shoot. After Glasgow the layout is due to appear at Shenfield (Essex) in September, Peterborough in October, High Wycombe and the Warley NEC in November this year. Next year it will be at Stafford in February, Bury St Edmunds in September, and Spalding in November next year and on into the future. Thanks for your interest. Cheers George

Hello Glad you like it. Towcester also has fertilizer delivered in 12T vans. A line from a favourite old song is coming back to haunt me, 'you're in a rut, you gotta get out of , out of it, out of it' Cheers George

Hello It went fine yesterday, huge amount of interest in the layout. This has to be one of the busiest one day shows in the country. My pleasure was marred slightly by spraining my ankle quite badly while we wew unloading in the morning but Simon and Richard worked like Trojans to help the useless old man out in his hour of pain. It is a lot better this morning. The new board makes the layout much more believable, a greater sense of space. Everything seemed to work well except for a couple of minor glitches which were soon sorted. The layout has obviously been compressed to a certain extent with most of the sidings not being there but we explain that away as a process of rationalization, after all the layout is set in 1977 and the real Towcester closed in 1966. However we like to think that we have made a fairly accurate job of re-creating this long gone railway centre. If you want to see it later this year it will be back in Milton Keynes in August at the other show held there. It will also be at a show in Lutterworth in May. Both of these are near to you. Hope to see you sometime. Cheers George

Hello The layout is featured as Railway of the Month in the new Railway Modeller due out tomorrow. Cheers George

Hello Today I finished wiring up the fiddle yards after laying the track work. Due to the DMU's not having rear lights and being fitted with an oil lamp at one end we have to turn them each time so I am resurrecting my small cassettes to make this task easier; this means that one of the tracks in each fiddle yard is just a short stub. Should get the wiring on the rest of the layout completed this weekend and then it will be time to put it all together and make sure it works. After all only three weeks to Glasgow! Cheers George

Hello My solicitors will be in touch Mick......... Cheers George