Currently being built.
Northcott Hamlet is a sleepy little terminus station somewhere just to the north of Launceston on the LSWR line down to Padstow, part of the Withered Arm of the Southern reaching into GWR territory.
The village did not really warrant a station due to its size, but the Moojuice Creamery produced milk and cream products to such a high standard and in such quantity that the LSWR built a line to service the factory.
As time passed by, the LSWR passed over to the SR and finally into the hands of British Railways Western Region.
Why Beeching did not weald his axe here is a mystery - perhaps he was bribed with dairy products from the creamery - but the little terminus lives on with the creamery faithfully producing products for transportation by rail (use of lorries was considered, but the roads could not have coped here).
Normal traffic is milk tankers, box vans and a very occasional cattle wagon. Passenger traffic is normally the little Push-Pull set working back to Launceston, although a 3H unit has been drafted in from the Southern Region to work commuter trains to Okehampton and Exeter - the country commuter clearly has reached even this far flung outpost.
Modelled to 12mm gauge, this is intended to be a truly portable layout - it's physical size is only 2m by 35cm - and it folds away into a carrycase-like box, but past experience suggests that a small and un-complicated layout is still of interest if modelled and exhibited correctly.
Expect to see .....
The basic track-plan appears below. This layout is nothing more complicated than a station with run-round and two sidings for the creamery. The different coloured sections are the details of sectional areas, as this innocent little layout is to operate as a test-bed for electronic projects including track detection, touch-sensor panels and illegal movement error warnings (more about this subject in Computer Interaction ) - I doubt that the PC will ever be plugged into Northcott, but you never can tell .
Progress in January 1999 - a couple of boards made from framed MDF - the completed design folds away into a box.
This is the sector table end board. The sector plate is in the top left
corner.
This is the station board with cork trackbed already laid - no trains
running just yet.
The trackwork to be used is old Triang TT set-track re-railed with Peco Streamline nickel-silver rail - this is barely what could be called a fine-scale layout but this is just to get me operating, and to say that I have BUILT something at long last.
Here we see my faithful track gang who risk late nights and early mornings to make the trains run.
Jonathan is my glue man (he's got the pot), and Thomas is in charge
of public relations (hence the big inviting smile).
Return to: 3MT on the Internet
August 1999