A am very fortunate through this hobby of ours to have met and made a good number of like minded friends. many of whom I would consider as being ranked as being talented and exquisite modellers that can achieve things far in excess of my humble efforts. Yesterday I was fortunate and privileged, to have been able to arrange for a small gang of fellow members of the High Wycombe and District MRS, to visit and play trains on Little Bytham the layout , of one such friend , the well known, talented and respected Tony Wright. Little Bytham is in fact being built as a collaborative effort via horse trading with other talented modellers whom have carried work in return for Tony’s talents in the building of locomotives etc.
Tony, who actually lives in Little Bytham, is modelling the East Coast Mainline Station and surrounds as it was in the mid 1950’s before both the station itself and the Midland and Great Northern that crossed the ECML at Little Bytham closed. The four track mainline through the station and its interesting track plan from an operation perspective is a perfect recreation of that period,and that, along with his superb stock completes the scene perfectly.
In addition to being operate his layout for the day, we were also able to run some summer excursion specials from our own collection, so I took great delight in adding a splash of malachite to the East Coast Mainline.
Firstly a few pictures in the shape a couple of my original Merchant Navy Pacifics 21C6 and 35023 ahead of a rake of Phoenix (ex BSL) Bulleid coaching stock, seen running alone the embankment and through the station as some of my fellow High Wycombe and District MRS members look on.
It is pretty certain that the Bulleid Leader never reached the ECML but I couldn’t resist. Also my Drummond T14 ran through Little Bytham with the SR Cinema coach no. 1308s and Bulleid ‘Inspection saloon’ no. 100s, both paired with their respective generator vans.
All in all it was an excellent, fun and enjoyable day just as the hobby should be. It was a real tonic of a day being full of laughter, enjoyment and great company.
I must express my own personal sincere thanks, and those of all of us at the high Wycombe and District MRS to Tony for allowing us and trusting us to play on his train set!
ps. also thanks to Tony for taking and providing me with the last two photographs, that remain his copyright.