Shawbury

This page will show the progress of the latest "00" gauge model that is soon to be started by the group. It is to replace "Blackford Bridge" which has now been sold to Paul Hartley who is the current Secretary of the Heywood Model Railway Group. Pictures of Blackford Bridge can still be seen under the Members Models on the home page.

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The following criteria will form the basis of this new model :-

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Drawing created from the original sketch by the layout co-ordinator Jon Riley

1. It is to be based on a fictitious medium sized town in South Lancashire Within the LMS Region, with commuter links to Manchester and Liverpool. There will also be a link to the west Coast main line and excursion traffic to North Wales and the Lancashire Coast. 2. It will be approx. 17ft x 2 ft (12ft scenic) built on the open plan principle with track raised above the surrounding area. 3. The setting will be within a very urbanized location during the 1950's, with station and goods facilities set among the mills and factories that were prevalent in this area. There will be at least one mill / factory with a rail feed. 4. There will be a reasonable sized goods yard to cater for the immense freight traffic of the period, such as coal, incoming and outgoing goods for factories and the local population. 5. It is hoped to utilize remote uncouplers with delayed action to give a more realistic operation of the layout. 6. Electrically the layout will have a separate control panes with a satellite control for the fiddle and goods yards. Points will be operates by Peco motors and it is hoped to eventually have working signals. Track will be Peco fine scale with "electro frog" points of large radius on all running lines. 7. Ultimately all buildings will be scratch built but they may initially need to be "kit bashed" to save time. 8. Stock needed to run will based on Ex LMS (BR) types and owned by individual club members

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At last it has a name and the baseboards have been constructed for this layout so some progress may be seen soon.

Construction has now started and the track plan is being transferred to the newly built baseboards.

Many hands make wiring faster!! Having now laid and tested the track the task of wiring has now started. Here Paul Chris and John can be seen getting stuck in with this task. Thanks to Howard Moutray for the use of his camera for this shot.

Wiring completed and tested, the balast is now almost finished. The next sage is to continue with the scenics.

Progress on the scenics now with the station platform and goods shed begining to appear.

After what seems to have been a long time with no visible progress on this model it now seems to be at the stage where it only needs scenery on the viewing area to be comleted and the construction of the "Fiddle yard" / Storage area. Hopefully it will be got ready for our next exhibition in March 2008

Page updated 24th April 2007