Well, the 4th annual Kirkbean Playmobil was another success (I'll leave Elaine to tell you the final results) and here are some photos of the railway layout this year, the Great Woodville-Sea's End branchline. But we'll start with some history first.
The railway came to what was then the small market town of Woodville late in the 19th century railway boom when the Amalgamated Central and Northern Railway Company was persuaded to run a branchline to the town. It was a good move as the line opened up the industrial and business region inland to the produce of the area and, in the opposite direction, brought a wide range of goods into the town, leading to a boom for its shopkeepers and small businesses. This was added to when the owners of the businesses now supplying goods and services to Woodville and the surrounding area realised that it offered a peaceful and attractive place to live just over an hour's travel from their work. At first, the owners of the factories and other businesses built houses in and around Woodville purely to live in during the summer, their families living there throughout the summer months, while they travelled in to live in their town home from Monday to Friday, coming to Woodville just for the weekends. The Amalgamated Central and Northern Railway Company saw the potential here, putting on a summer service leaving at 08:15 on Monday from Woodville to get into the city by 09:30, with a Friday service leaving the city for Woodville at 15:30. This proved so popular that it eventually became a daily weekday service with the result that Woodville became, in effect, a commuter town with wealthy businessmen and factory owners and their families living there all year round. As a result, the previously small market town grew and, in the 1870s changed its name to Great Woodville.
The businesses in and around what was now Great Woodville had prospered because of the railway coming to it, and local businessmen and councillors decided that linking Great Woodville to the small estuary fishing village of Sea's End would bring still greater prosperity for the town. The intention was that Sea's End would develop as a holiday resort (a genteel one, of course), while the rail link to Great Woodville and beyond would be a benefit for the fishermen there and local farms. They approached the Amalgamated Central and Northern Railway Company with their idea, but it was not interested having realised that the railway boom had ended, so they set out to raise the money themselves. The intention was to complete the new branchline to mark the 50th anniversary of Queen Victoria's accession to the throne and call it the Victoria Jubilee Line, but it was only completed some eight years after that event and so was simply named the Great Woodville-Sea's End branchline.
From the outset the line was doomed. The cost of building the line more than doubled and the only way the consortium of local businessmen could get any trains running was to hand the finished line over lock, stock and barrel to the Amalgamated Central and Northern Railway Company who operated a basic service. The investment needed to turn the harbour at Sea's End into one to support a growing fishing fleet never took place and changes to the coast line north of Sea's End led to the estuary starting to silt up. Then, a mainline coastal extension led to a viaduct being built across the mouth of the estuary and this further speeded up the process of silting, leading to the end of any plans for a fishing fleet and holiday resort.
The line survived the closures following the 1964 Beeching Plan as the result of a typographical error, a typist omitting the line referring it's closure and so it now survives as a heritage steam line and is more successful than it ever was before.
So to start with, some photos of the layout in its bare bones, as it were, beginning with the site of Great Woodville Station.
A close-up of the run-around at Great Woodville. The asymetrical loop on the right is taken from one of the Malta railway stations.
Now the exit from the Great Woodville, showing the estuary bridge.
A view of the estuary and remains of the harbour with the bridge linking the Great Woodville side to the Sea's End viaduct:
The viaduct itself, with the site of Sea's End station with its passing loop on the left:
Lastly, a detail of the viaduct:
The idea behind the layout was that it was the prototype for a similar layout but with the track and stations raised about 6 inches above the baseboard.
More pictures will follow tomorrow.
