After thinking twice about a West Cornwall set layout, Ted Schofield opted to base his slice of the 1950s and 1960s in the Bristol area, where Great Western and LMS locomotives ran side by side. Photography, Trevor Jones.
Gauge: 'OO', 16.5mm Scale: 4mm:1ft Size: 12ft x 2ft Region: Western/Midland Period: 1954-1964 Control: Analogue
Above: County’ 1011 makes its departure from Birch Hill and passes a ‘Small Prairie’ 2-6-2T.
I WAS ONE of the legions of young boys who stood on the ends of platforms in the late 1950s and early 1960s, notebook in hand taking down numbers before going home and getting my Ian Allan combined volume out and with ruler and pen underlining the day’s numbers. My inspiration for Birch Hill is to try and recreate those wonderful boyhood memories of long ago
I spent my early life growing up in Rochdale, but after serving 10 years in the Royal Navy I finally settled in Falmouth in Cornwall. So the decision initially was to build a British Railways Western Region layout in the far West for which I had already made the engine shed and the station building whilst in the Royal Navy. However, the pull of my early days in the North West convinced me to locate the layout in the north Bristol area so I could run both …
