Railways of Telford

At Christmas I received the quite excellent book 'Railways of Telford' from my future in-laws. It was a book I'd looked at several times and, having moved Telford way, is an area of the railways I've become very interested in, meaning it was a very much well-received present. Included within it's pages is a chapter on the Lilleshall Company. This is of huge interest to me, as it is very much the area that I'm looking at basing my layout on.

The back cover of the book states that the author, David Clarke, is building a model of Trench Sidings and then, by chance, I discovered a thread on the Lilleshall Company and Mr Clarke's own blog to do with his layout build on RMweb.

After some initial conversations we swapped email addresses and since then Mr Clarke has - very kindly - sent me lots of pictures of the Lilleshall system and it's locos alongside more information about it.

One picture - included below - has solved a problem I was facing. Having weather the Cory Brothers wagon, I was wondering how on earth I could include a South Wales wagon on a Shropshire-based layout. Well, look at the wagon poking out from behind Lilleshall No. 4 (on the left).

Inspiration truly is everywhere!

End of the Line.

Two days ago I posted about my idea for the MRL 2017 box challenge.

I've changed my mind. Several reasons.

1) I get married this year. Any modelling funds - which aren't high, unlike the wedding funds - are very small.

2) Therefore, I want any funds possible to go towards my main layout idea - the 'for keeps' layout - rather than losing them on something with little potential.

3) If I do anything it will be very much the diorama approach and I want to have tried something new out, like building my own track.

Therefore, staying in Shropshire, Jackfield Sidings, a curious place, seems a good potential idea.

What do you think?

Thinking Inside the Box

Firstly, Happy New Year to you all. I hope the Christmas period was good to you and that 2017 is a happy and productive one.

Now 2017 is here I can now reveal that the 2017 MRL Forum Challenge is 'In a Box.' As always with me, I'm thinking micro. Therefore, after a shopping trip to Ikea I am now the proud owner of a Knagglig box. 

Made of pine, the Knagglig has dimensions of 23 cm deep, 31 cm wide and 15 cm high. I'm yet to build it up - it's from Ikea, of course it's a flat pack - but when I do so I need to leave one side open, as well as cutting an exit hole on one side.  I might hinge the side, meaning I can then close it to aid dust avoidance, but I'm unsure as yet.

But that's the box. What about inside it? Well, since I've moved to Shropshire I've taken quite an interest in the railways of the area. Although you don't perhaps think of Shropshire as a major railway player, the county has lots of railway history. Therefore, I've decided to use a bit of it as the basis for my challenge entry. Coalbrookdale and it's surrounding area, to be precise.

My entry is going to be a pointless fork based around the tile industry found in the Jackfield area. The plan is a low relief factory (I've got a Dapol shed that will be just the ticket) down the back of the layout, with a door leading to a loading area (un-modelled) on one line, with the other just being a siding. As much as I hate working with Wills sheet, I'm thinking that the back siding (along the factory) will be inset in the cobbles. 

That's the plan, anyway. I best go and put this box together! 

A day out at Ironbridge

Last Saturday Amy and myself went to Ironbridge for a stroll, a look in the Museum on the Quay (we've got the Ironbridge Museum annual pass) and a bit of a mooch around the shops that are there. Earlier this year I bought a fantastic book called 'Shropshire Railways' by Geoff Cryer and in it were a few pictures of the old Ironbridge station. Therefore, I decided that this visit would be the perfect chance to have a peak at the site and we decided that we'd take a walk down the pathway that was the line, back in the day.

What was surely once a station in the most stunning of locations is now a (quite cheap, now you mention it!) car park. The pub in the first picture is called 'The Station' - I bet a lot of late nights went in to naming that one!

If you look closely at the picture above you can see the lines crossing the road. This was a crossing when the station existed and it was a picture from this angle - with the bridge and the toll building in the background - that piqued my interest in looking at what was there now.

As mentioned above, the lines go across the road still, although it's Mazdas, rather than Manors, which cross the rails now.

The path above, once the line, heads off towards the cooling towers now. We set off and walked a pleasant - and leafy - mile or so, before heading back.

Just before we got back to the car park and the former station site we passed under an old rail bridge before emerging into the platform area.

Then it was off to the nearest coffee shop to warm up!