The garden presented the perfect place for STEVE BOON to develop an ‘O’ gauge railway on which he could run his collection of Western Region hydraulics. Here he reveals the story behind the line and how it was built. Photography, Trevor Jones.
Gauge: 'O', 32mm Scale: 7mm:1ft Size: 52ft x 32ft Region: Western Period: Early 1970s Control: DCC, NCE Powercab
Above: Class 25 25215 emerges from Summit Tunnel with a short rake of ventilated vans.
Steve Boon's garden railway, Much Withering, is based upon the Western Region of BR in the early 1970s, a period when BR rolling stock was going through significant change. Liveries were changing from green and maroon to corporate blue, the locomotive fleet was beginning to be renumbered into TOPS format and withdrawal of the non-standard dieselhydraulic fleet was gathering pace.
The garden railway reflects Steve’s lifelong interest in the Western Region’s dieselhydraulic locomotives. After spotting the hydraulics at the end of their service days, he went on to work as a volunteer on several of the early preserved examples. A move to Reading in 1994, with a new job and young family, meant that his time for railway hobbies, real or model, became limited.
The rekindling of his model railway int…
