Southurst
‘00’ SR – NORTH DEVON MRC
Set in the British Railways Southern Region era, Southurst represents a fictional branch line terminus serving a market town on the Berkshire/Hampshire borders. The town was of sufficient importance for the Great Western to build its own branch line and terminus station, which has now closed. All traffic from the Western Region is now handled via the old goods link between the SR and WR and now terminates in the bay platforms of the Southern station.
The baseboards are built on conventional principles, 3 x 1 timber and chipboard, old-fashioned these days but very robust. Plain trackwork is built using soldered copperclad, using SMP sleepers and rail. Pointwork is again hand-built using SMP templates. The double slip, thanks, be, was left over from a previous layout.
Working signals feature on the model and these are powered by the old H & M point motors, as are all the turnouts. Each signal is built from copper, nickel silver and brass, fusewire and many curses, the only items bought in being the finials, lamps and ladders.
Buildings are a mixture of scratchbuilt and modified kits. The station building and small goods shed are based on those formerly at Wool, Dorset and the engine shed loosely follows the design at Lyme Regis. The water tower and parcels bay are adapted from Wills and Hornby originals.
In the era modelled, Southern branch line rolling stock was a mixture of old and new and we have tried to reflect this. The stock is mainly kitbuilt, from Ian Kirk, Parkside, Wills, K’s etc and there are also a couple of MTK items