Watergate Halt

I have spent the best part of two weeks up the East Midlands recently, hence my lack of blogging and complete lack of progress with many of my modelling projects. I do like the East Midlands, mainly due to some research I conducted on the Trent some years ago now. Being stuck away from home has been frustrating at times, not allowing me to progress with projects I want to get on with. The work I am managing in the East Midlands is a borehole survey and as a result there is a lot of downtime. This has led to me thinking about my next layout project and sketching designs in my work notepad. The other outcome has been spending money on the internet in the evenings buying some new rolling stock.


Three coach passenger service pulls into Amberleigh Halt

The picture posted above shows a 3 coach train on Amberleigh. It comes to a shade just over 4ft I think. One of my key objectives with Watergate is to run 'scale' length west country branchline trains. These will be normally around 3/4 coaches on the tarka trail plus an engine. In the mid eighties some of the trains during summer were around 5/6 coaches, and this on a branchline!!

Bearing in mind the wheel base of my van (in case I ever take a layout to exhibition) I am going to construct a running length of 8ft, with a 2ft depth. This will allow two single lines to run through a halt (shades of Crediton here) with a freight line and a passenger line. A siding will be put in for a timber yard and a level crossing to test my modelling skills!! The scenic section will be one 6ft board and one 2ft board leading to a fiddle yard. There will be a fiddle yard on the other end of the halt as well, to allow through running of trains. Amberleigh has been a great learning experience, but I am feeling the bug bite again to construct the next layout.