HIGHCLERE (julia adams)

The Prototype

Opened in 1882 the Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway (DN&S) ran from Didcot to Winchester. In 1923 the GWR ended up operating the line from Didcot to Winchester, with trains being forwarded from there to Southampton by the LSWR (and later the SR). The GWR part of the line was divided into two sections, the Northern section stretching from Didcot to Newbury, and the Southern section from Newbury to Winchester. The railway operated through nationalisation and services continued up until 1962 when unfortunately the line was closed and the track was removed.

During the war the DN&S had been used for block oil trains, although after 1945 things went back to normal. In about 1960 Fawley refinery was opened near Southampton and when oil services to the Midlands were being planned, someone in the trains office at Southampton remembered the role the DN&S had played during the war with the result that many Fawley (and docks) services were run via Didcot.

Highclere station is situated about 6 Miles SouthEast of Newbury on the Southern section of the line. It consisted of an Unusual 2 story station building, with a goods shed situated in a small goods yard. Traffic in the 1960’s when the model is portrayed consists mainly of small passenger services consisting of mostly 3 coach trains. Freight to the station was usually local goods with livestock playing an important role at the station too.

Today, remains of the station can still be seen having survived the construction of the A34. The platforms, station building, goods shed, and signal box can still be seen and have really helped me get a feel of this long gone railway.

The Station Building still survives	The Signal Box	The Goods Shed

The Model

The model I am building portrays what the station on the line was like in the 1960’s just before closure, although have turned back the clock somewhat and the track plan is based on much earlier in the stations life. This was done because towards the end of Highcleres life the station was converted into a single line passing through the station. Not much operational interest there! Setting the railway in the 1960’s though will give me the opportunity to run trains ranging from small passenger, to large freight hauled by 9F locomotives.

The baseboards are built with Styrofoam and plywood edging. This hopefully will give a lightweight, yet strong framework for the layout. The lights and legs for the layout will be built into these boards that will give a complete setup and I wont have to worry about forgetting anything at exhibitions.

The trackwork in built to 2mm finescale standards using the tried and tested method of soldering the rail directly to PCB sleepers. The plan was drawn out using Templot, which proved to be very useful as it could be used to build the pointwork directly from the printouts.

Electrics will be non DCC. The track has been wired using copper tape which I have found to be very useful, especially for joining together the various sections of track. It will be simply wired for 2 controllers simply by using pole, double throw switches but there wont be much need for the second controller as there will rarely be more than one train in operation at any time on the layout. At the moment the points are planned to be operated by memory wire using the remains of a ball pint pen to provide the latching mechanism, something I picked up from the 2mm Association virtual area group.

In the future, as the layout progresses I will be adding more to this page so please keep on checking back to see how my layout in progressing