New Southern Region and Somerset & Dorset models gave BOB PETCH the inspiration to shift the time period of his home-based 'OO' layout forward by 30 years and change the location from Great Western to Southern Region. As he explains, the changes were simple but have made a big difference. Photography, Trevor Jones.
WITH THE advent of so many Southern Railway models in 4mm scale over the last few years it’s hardly surprising that some of us have moved in that direction. In my case, having built Pennard Road, a Somerset colliery layout based loosely on Camerton on the wonderful Limpley Stoke branch line, I had already introduced the idea of Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway (S&D) trains on the layout. I had kept my original Prussian Blue '2P' 4-4-0s, '4F' 0-6-0 and rakes of Ratio coaches from 25 years ago and it was good to see them running again and in appropriate scenery.
Above: A Fowler ‘4F’ 0-6-0 waits patiently for the arrival of a BR ‘Standard Four’ at Shillinghurst – an event which goes unnoticed by the inhabitants hanging our their washing.
With no effort required to change the colliery setup, it was easy to change the time period of Shillinghurst from the 1920s/30s to the late 1950s and replace the
