This multi-station, multilevel layout is ‘locked up’ in the former Police Station adjoining GRAHAM TAYLOR’S home. Discover how this enticing and busy ‘OO’ gauge steam era layout was built. Photography, Mike Wild.
Above: A Stanier ‘Jubilee’ 4-6-0 sweeps through the fast lines at Newpool-on-Trent. The station and surroundings are illuminated with platform and street lamps.
NEWPOOL ON TRENT (change for Gravalli and Capel Road) is a fictitious location somewhere in the Midlands where the London Midland & Scottish Railway and Great Western Railway met. It is set in the 1960s, the final decade of steam.
Gravalli and Capel Road are the GWR stations on the layout, while Newpool-on-Trent is mainly LMS with a connection to the GWR lines. Gravalli is made up from my name GRAham and my wife’s name VALerie and a LI on the end to give a Welsh name, Gravalli. I built the layout, which is housed in a room on the ground level in a former police station which adjoins our house. The layout is a permanent feature and cannot be broken down for exhibition purposes.
I have always had an interest in model railways and can remember going to the Manchester Model Railway show at the Corn Exchange in the city at an ea…
