Gauge: 'OO' | Region: Southern | Period: 1980s | Operating team: Andrew Knights and friends
Full summer in the suburbs of south London. Time to take a break and look down into this shallow valley created by a tributary of the River Wandle. A park bench perhaps? Open the bag of cheese sandwiches and the bottle of Tizer. Time to watch the activity on the tracks before you.
Much traffic is suburban units scuttling from terminus to destinations on the mainline, some will divert onto the branchline at Wandleford Junction. The station does not bear this title! Not all trains are local blue units, some faster EMU services will be seen as well as the occasional locomotive hauled train and several freights common to this part of the world.
Apart from life on the main tracks there is some activity at the factory adjacent to the station, one of the larger houses to the south of the station seems to have an open garden, according to the NGS. Train rides may be on offer to some, as well as the usual teas/coffees, cakes, and plants.
The above is fiction, but this 'OO' gauge layout tries to recreate a warm summer’s day in South London. The model follows on from my earlier BR(SR) layout - Cross Ness. Here I wanted a chance to watch trains run through some interesting scenery, and have more variety of train than could be accommodated on a small branchline terminus. The siding at the rear of the layout is used as a holding line for various traffics to and from the branch. The garden railway is based on my own garden line. 7 1/4in gauge with six feet radius corners. Like the real thing it SHOULD be working!
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