Hessle Model Railway Group Open Day

This Saturday, 5 October marks the above group’s second event of its type at the Hessle Town Hall (easily found for locals or visitors).  This sort of small event is assuming a higher profile in the hobby of late, offering an enjoyable few hours without the major effort involved in the traditional larger show,  and the Hessle event, organised by local modeller Sean Hutchinson (known around the ‘Net as ‘The Penguin of Doom’) promises a selection of local history and transport-themed layouts and displays.

My own involvment will be two-fold, one being as co-operator with Ken Gibbons and Brian Sunman on Brian’s Edinburgh-based Peffermill Road layout which is featured elsewhere on the blog, and I have also put together a small presentation  which I’ve somewhat  pretentiously sold to Sean as a ‘layout concept display’ …  like most modellers, I have various layout schemes rattling around my head and this particular figment is the Stoneferry Tramway, a pure fiction but based on the notion that a light railway, along the lines of the Clydeside Tramway in Glasgow, could have grown to serve the various industries along the east and possibly also the west sides of the River Hull.  Other inspirations include Ipswich and Swansea docks and the Trafford Park system in Manchester, and the display will feature images of some of the locations and buildings that would give the projected layout its workaday waterside feel.

The precise location hasn’t been set, nor has the track layout or configuration. It had originally been conceived as a micro-layout to have been built earlier this year but although once again real life has gone and got in the way of my plans (as it does), the ultimate outcome will be a tad bigger and more satisfying.  The period chosen would be the 1960s, which would allow a variety of traffics (though obviously not fish…), to be worked by diesel shunters and possibly the odd bit of steam also.

The 1930s aerial image above shows what had become something of a ‘holy grail’ for myself and my good friend Kevin Tong; it’s visible at bottom left and is the LNER’s  Stoneferry Goods station, served by a short branch which left the Hornsea line at Chamberlain Road and curved round to eventually cross Stoneferry Road in the vicinity of what’s now B&Q.  If you look just the other side of the main road in the picture, there are some wagons visible on the site of what’s now one of two filling stations that flank the dual carriageway here.  Looking to the top right, the then-new Clough Road can be seen stretching out towards Beverley Road.

The image shown is here by kind permission of ‘Britain from Above’ and can be found at http://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/image/epw036521.   The site is well worth joining if this sort of thing fascinates you and coverage is steadily expanding.