Project Briefing

I first dabbled in 009 in 2007 when a friend convinced me to go halves on a low budget small railway. The result was the HBLR (It'll pop up every now and again, so please keep up!). We spent a few days with some track, a piece of wood and a few odds and ends to create a 3' by 1' terminus station set somewhere in East Anglia (Beccles, Suffolk fits nicely) before it ended up in my hands. Well this proved to be a great test bed for rolling stock construction and nothing lasted more than a year before being improved!

My appetite grew and I started drawing up plans for something bigger to tackle. I drew up plans for a (very) long term project to use Cyprus Government Railway stock. Beautiful locos available in kit form from Roxey Mouldings but with a catch, they were 2ft 6in and sizeable. I decided, since I'm unlikely to travel to Cyprus for research, to model a modern day preserved railway on a former standard gauge route, preferably in the West Country since I have plenty of GWR material. I found the Wrington Vale Light Rly; 7 miles long with steep hills and in a tourist area! Well chuck in a fake history to make the adjoining Cheddar Valley Railway a preserved line and the trackbed being kept clear and I can get on with design work, get away with big locos and use some of my OO collection too!

Based on available kits I settled on a small tank engine as a pilot and then one each of the available Naysmith Wilson classes from Cyprus (and later I threw a diesel in to the mix). Coaching stock would of course, have to be up to modern standards so I drew on my experiences from the HBLR, chucked in some online research and decided to go with my own design. I'm glossing over these bits as they have better coverage and photos elsewhere.

I have split the project based on predictions of space.

1. Congresbury to Brinsea Road (I can make a temporary station very compact)
2. Congresbury to Wrington (I need 12ft for Congresbury so will have to wait!)
3. The rest... (I did say very long term, after all...)

I hope to start Brinsea Road in 2015 but in the mean time have been working on some rolling stock.