Bawdsey has left the building…

Today Bawdsey left the building, but not in a bad way. The layout had been stored for a couple of years and it’s last exhibition was Larkrail two years ago. With other projects and ‘life’ getting in the way, the layout wasn’t being used.

Fortuitously Tony Gee connected myself with an interested party, one of the layouts original operating team. Another friend had expressed an interest in the layout, but kindly stepped back (thanks Pete), when the original team said they’d definitely take it on.

So yesterday I assembled the layout for the last time, cleaned the track and plugged it in. No problems, it worked as advertised, a testament to the techniques and skills of Chris Matthewman, the original builder.

Today it had its last photoshoot in my custody for one of the magazines, and a few minutes ago I waved it goodbye with its new owners. Initially it’ll be a home layout but the possibility of doing some exhibitions with its new, or rather original team is quite likely. Most importantly though, it’s gone to a good home which was critical to passing it on.

This is likely the final post for this blog, thanks for tagging along over the years.

Paulmp ‘Bawdsey’

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The Future, Bawdsey Ferry? …

I’ve now had a few successful exhibitions with Bawdsey, the most recent at Alexandra Palace, if you were one of the visitors who spent time looking and or chatting about the layout or the Bawdsey area thank you for taking the time to do so. Not least of all thanks are due to the operating team of Al, Ian and Pete who make the task of exhibiting very easy indeed.

One of the things that the weekend threw up was what to do in the future for Bawdsey. We run it to a schedule/sequence and within that there is a branch train that goes to Bawdsey ferry.

The OS map above shows where I think a viable branch could have worked, going west would have taken the railway across marshland with the associated problems of that kind of land for railway infrastructure. Taking the line to the east allows it to run on a more substantial underpinning, as well as taking it close to the RAF Bawdsey site. The actual ferry at Bawdsey was steam driven at one time, with a chain pulley system. I doubt that I’ll make that, but may adapt an Artitec kit if I can find one to a small road vehicle ferry. There are a couple of plans that really appeal, one by Barry Norman of a quayside, and a variation of a design by Iain Rice. My final design is likely to be a mix of the two.

The layout is likely to be a ‘shelf’ style design, possibly exhibitable, but that is yet to be decided. When ‘Bawdsey’ is stored it sits along a wall in the workshop, the idea is for ‘Bawdsey Ferry’ to sit on shelving racks above the stored layout, and to have a display something similar to Chris Nevards ‘OO’ Catcott Burtle, http://nevardmedia.blogspot.com/2011/02/friday-snap.html or ‘Horselunges’, an S4 layout currently on the exhibition circuit.

'Horselunges' S4 layout

The other option that is open to me and I quite like the concept of, is making the ferry branch in N gauge, perhaps changing the era for late 1960’s or early 1970’s using the Graham Farish 03 and 08’s. Whilst that’ll save space it’s unlikely to save time. I learnt that lesson a while ago making ‘Collier Street’ for Peco, a small N gauge layout with a reasonable amount of detail takes as long as a 4mm version to complete. I’ll decide definatively onthe scale once I’ve got a clearer picture of the final layout plan.

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