"Keeping the branch alive"

Bromyard is a small market town in Herefordshire, unfortunately now without a market or a railway. The only remnant of the Worcester to Leominster branch line in the town, is a weighbridge office. The rest is developed for industry and commerce.

However, just a little further down the old line in the Leominster direction is the wonderfully restored 'Rowden Mill ' station looking as it must have done in the operating days of the branch. The current owners have received awards for their marvellous efforts and open to the public on a few occasions for charity fundraising.

(It should be said that the next station down the line - 'Fencote' - is also fully restored, with working signal box, but unfortunately our back bedroom was not big enough to include it!)

Inspired by this it was decided to feature 'Rowden Mill' on the layout as well as the centrepiece 'Bromyard' Station and surrounding area.

Since building all this a small extension at the other end has provided an 'off layout' area to re-configure trains to return them down the branch.

The layout has lighting and working signals at Bromyard. There is further refinement to be done to the landscaping and still more 'scratch-building' of architecture that is still there to be seen. Thank goodness for Chris who is so good at this.

As a first attempt we are quite pleased to show off our result to family and friends but would be wary of the lifelong modeller who would surely notice  that the ballast is too big a grade for the track (and may have to be re done sometime) among many other things.

What go down as the most difficult tasks?      No problem answering that one - post and wire fencing. Looks so easy when you buy the pack but some evenings later with post, glue and wire all over the place it is the stuff of mental instability. In the end the posts were drilled and the wire painstakingly threaded through with fine tweezers - uugh!!

Chris will probably say that cutting the corner stones for the scratch built William Clarke station buildings rates along with this. However, it was worth it as this lovely railway architecture cries out to be accurately depicted.

Motive Power and Stock.....