Some More Callington Branch Colour Photos

 

Callington Branch Colour Photos

 

Callington Branch Layout Plans

 

The latest edition of Model Rail has not one but two track plans for a Callington Branch layout, one modelling the whole line from Bere Alston and the other a section from Callington to Chilsworthy Halt. I don't have space or time to build either but a smaller shunting layout based on the Hingston Down  part of the plan or a through and through based on the Chilsworthy Halt section would be workable. It's a short article but well worth a look.

Ivatt 2MT on the Callington Branch

 

I've just bought a second-hand Bachmann OO gauge Ivatt 2-6-2T in British Railways livery, having been inspired by pictures of the Callington Branch in the early 1960's. The standard class 2MT's were introduced in the line in 1952 and ran through to its closure in 1966, so they are an ideal source of motive power if I ever decide to model one of the stations or halts, Gunnislake or Luckett being the ideal locations. I'm now looking for some suitable coaches to go with it.

Flipping It

I've been playing around with my layout designs and thought I'd have a go at flipping some of them around to develop new possibilities. The idea is to use the same track components and baseboard area, but to open up some alternative themes for the track plan, either by rotating them or by inverting them in MS Paint.

This is one of the results, which uses my yard track template flipped in mirror image. It's part inspired by Chris Nevard's compact iron stone quarry layout but primarily by the quarry sidings at my local granite quarry in Cornwall. This featured a concrete 1940's gravel and stone silo, with sidings leading off from the Callington Branch at Hingston Down. 

The layout of the buildings isn't thought through at the moment but there would be a similar silo over one of the sidings, probably the single siding at the front, with a possible second loading area under the main screening plant at the back, although that is more likely as a simple storage siding. The backscene would be modelled as quarry walls, with the quarry itself behind.

I might also add a small loco shed for the quarry 0-4-0 and a dummy spur of track leading off into the quarry from the first point on the right. This could also be used as a fiddle yard if I extended the head shunt at the right hand end, instead of having a fiddle yard on the left hand end of the layout. I'd need to widen the baseboard to 2' and extend it's length to 6' to do this but it would be feasible.

I've always wanted to model a quarry, so this might be a good plan, although the wharf layout would work equally well, even without flipping it round? The theme would be 1950's early British Railways steam but with scope to push it back in time to the 1940s with late GWR locomotives and rolling stock. There would obviously be mineral wagons or hoppers but also gunpowder vans, flat wagons and so on. Why not?

Callington Branch: Gunnislake Station

This is the other potential prototypical layout that I've always wanted to re-create in N gauge, although it's a bit more involved than Luckett on the same branch line. I used to catch the train from Gunnislake into Plymouth when I was a kid and remember the old station buildings before they were demolished, along with the rest of the station eventually, now replaced by a housing estate and a new station across the road.

The track layout of the original station offers lots of shunting opportunities as well as having potential for some interesting passenger trains, hauled by a range of locomotives. I would love to have the original PD&SWJR engines operating on the layout but they're not available in N gauge (you can get them as kits in OO though). Instead, I'd run post war era Southern O2's alongside Ivatt 2MT's, with an occasional appearance of a Class 22 diesel or two car DMU to make things interesting.

I reckon a you'd would need at least six feet of layout space by about eighteen inches of width to avoid overcrowding, even if the layout was condensed to feasible proportions and not taking the fiddle yards into consideration. There's a convenient scenic break at the up end of the station but you'd need to do some clever scenic transition at the down end, probably by masking the exit with trees or houses. I don't think this would be too difficult with a little imagination?

Who know, I may even build it one day?