EM gauge, by Graeme Vickery. At our 70th anniversary exhibition on 17 and 18 October.
17 and 18 OctoberCorfe Hills School, Broadstone
Trewithick is an imaginary Great Western branch terminus, deep in the china clay district of Cornwall.
The idea came from family holidays in the early 1980s, spent exploring the Newquay branch and the freight-only lines that carried china clay to the main line at Par and on to the port at Fowey. In those days hooded clay wagons still ruled, hauled by class 37s and Peaks.
The layout goes further back in time, to the final years of the GWR, when 45xx and pannier tanks ruled the scene. Now and then the clock jumps forward about 15 years, for Graeme's love of diesel hydraulics.
A regular passenger service runs, usually an auto-coach or a B set with the odd through coach, and a pick-up goods serves the yard. Just outside the station is one of the line's china clay sidings. Clay trains use the run-round at the station before heading back to Fowey.
The locos are converted ready-to-run, and most of the rolling stock is built from kits. The china clay wagons won the Pick Up trophy in the EM Gauge Society competition, and before you ask, the main ingredient in their weathering is Brut talc. The track is SMP flexitrack with scratch-built points, and the bouncing semaphore signals use a mechanism by Embedded Controls. Most buildings are kits, but the china clay dries are scratch-built.
Trewithick appeared in British Railway Modelling in October 2013.
