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Thorney Island (NSE) was started around the same time as kewrail and was inspired, as is often the case, by a photograph found whilst researching something else entirely.
play thing; although we've since had a rethink on that one with something a little more ambitious in mind! I also decided that I needed a little project of my own. Nothing too ambitious, a small shelf layout, little more than a scenified test track, that I could feasibly complete in a reasonable time frame, and as cheaply as possible. This was about as far as the idea went for a number of months until I was looking at images of old RAF stations for a flight simulation project and stumbled upon an image of a small wooden railway station called High Rocks Halt. My modelling skills were rather faded at the time so I decided to find somewhere that could have had a railway rather than an actual location that would need to be recreated accurately and Thorney Island, on the south coast, fit the bill perfectly. Although very much a fictional layout, I subscribe to the ethos of the late, great, Bob Symes who always insisted that a railway, even a fictional one, should have a purpose and so what follows is an attempt to create the rationale behind Thorney Island. History - Fact Thorney Island is located 6.6 miles (10.6 km) west of Chichester, 7.1 miles (11.4 km) east of Portsmouth, and just east of Hayling Island, a well known Southern Railway location. Importantly for me, it was home to a second world war Royal Air Force fighter station built in 1938 with the war looming. This gave me the rationale for the existance of my fictional station serving the needs of the aircrew. The airfield was involved in the Battle of Britain when it was attacked by the Luftwaffe on the same day as other stations such as RAF Ford and RAF Poling radar station. RAF Thorney Island was transferred to RAF Coastal Command for the protection of shipping and other various roles, and had its concrete runways laid in 1942. The station closed as an operational airfield on 31st March 1976; however, the Royal Artillery re-opened the site in 1982, firmly in the period of Network Southeast. For those interested in aviation, the airfield saw many different types of aircraft during the war including Spitfires, Hurricanes, Typhoons, Mosquitos, Walrus, and Flying Fortress. A number of Fleet Air Arm aircraft were also assigned to the station towards the end the war in 1945. History - Fiction Thorney Island was constructed as a small halt in 1938 by the Southern Railway to serve the demands of the Royal Air Force during the construction and operation of the fighter station. Branching from Emsworth, the line terminated north of the airfield above the Great Deep, alongside the Thorney Road, a short distance from the airfield guard house. With minimal services available at Thorney Island, the line, as with many Southern Railway branches of the time, was served by an ex-LBSCR "Terrier" locomotive and Maunsell coach allowing for a push/pull working. With vastly reduced useage of the airfield during the 1960's, the Beeching cuts almost saw the line consigned to history and, were it not for the intervention by the Ministry of Defence that a line should remain, would certainly have been the case. British Railways conceded and a reduced service was maintained with a twice daily service (except Sunday where there was just one) in the form of a new Class 121 railcar, from Emsworth, borrowed from the western region. The line was threatened with closure once again in 1976 when it was announced that the airfield was to close and, with little resistance from the local population, services terminated in the December of that year. The line may well have been removed the following year. However, attention to smaller projects was diverted by the newly appointed chairman of British Rail, Peter Parker, to the reorganisation of the national network. Parker's resistance to the anti-rail lobby of the time, including the Serpell Report, may well have been the saviour of the line as, by 1982, the Ministry of Defence once again intervened. Now under the ownership of the Royal Artillery, Thorney Island was once again a hive of activity and passenger services were reintroduced with a Class 121 "Bubble Car" operated by the newly formed Network Southeast. The Model Thorney Island is a 4mm (OO Gauge) layout measuring just 4' x 1' (1.2m x 0.3m) constructed on a piece of old shelving I had kept from an old bookcase. There is no substructure as would be the normal method, and the track is laid onto Gaugemaster cork sheet glued to the shelf. With a maximum budget set of just £100, the track plan is extremely simple with just 6 pieces of Hornby track including the single set of curved points which had been left over from a previous project. Power is provided by a Hornby "train set" controller, the quality of which is (sorry Hornby) terrible. It would, of course, be very easy to purchase a better controller but when construction was started the budget was very finite! I may at some point look at conversion to DCC as a trial project. The platform was created entirely from matchsticks. The larger kitchen matches for the main substructure and the smaller type for the platform surface. Platform Construction Gallery : Click to Enlarge Images Once glued together with wood glue, the completed structure was left to fully harden before applying brown Humbrol enamel paints. The fencing is by Ratio and, again, was raided from the spares box and painted. Plasticard was purchased for the construction of the station building and was based on the lightweight varieties that I remembered from my childhood. Whether it is an accurate portrayal is rather debatable but I don't feel it looks too out of place, if perhaps a little large. Station Building Construction Gallery : Click to Enlarge Images Glazing was added using a laminated plastic (the type used to cover documents) with thin strips of self adhesive paper label coloured red to match the plasticard frames. A search of google revealed some period British Rail signs and Network Southeast posters and maps; these were printed onto the aforementioned labels and stuck to the sides of the building. The downpipe was formed from a piece of plastic sprue and the fire bucket holder from the spares box. The same box also contained a vending machine, seats, and a few people. The terrain on the layout is very much old-school. Formers were created from cardboard boxes acquired from the local supermarket and scrunched pieces of old newspaper (the free local rag, of course) pushed into the gaps. Terrain Construction Gallery : Click to Enlarge Images 8 Rolls of plaster bandage were purchased from a vendor on ebay, for the princely sum of £8.31, to create the top layer of the terrain which was then painted with brown acrylic paint. The paint was from a local pound shop (well, £1.20.... typical Isle of Man!) which also provided the green colour too. Once dry this was covered in a variety of different scatter and clump materials that had been accumulated over the years. An extra bag of Woodlands Scenics clump was purchased from a local model shop for the thicker brush areas at a cost of around £8.00. For the taller grass, a paint brush was dunked into some green paint, left to dry, then the bristles cut and glued to the baseboard. In hindsight it's a little too long and too green, perhaps a method more suited for a riverside effect. At the time I didn't have a static grass applicator, and the budget definitely wouldn't have stretched to one! A piece of Plasticard was again purchased from the local model shop and used to create the scenic break in the form of an overbridge wall. Based on photographs of those in the southern region area found online, construction is extremely simple. Scenic Break Construction Gallery : Click to Enlarge Images With the various parts cut, scored, and glued together the entire assembly was painted with Humbrol enamel paint that I already had available. Different shades of grey, with odd "bricks" picked out in darker colours, were applied and then given an overall "dirty" wash using thinned enamels. I shall add at this point that I am now an absolute convert in the use of acrylics. They are far easier and quicker to work with. Of course i've kept the enamels... well, you never know when they might come in handy for something! A further raid of the spares box provided additional layout details including fences, platelayers hut, bus shelter, and crates. The road surface(s) were created with a mixture of scatter material and real ash. This isn't a method i'm going to advocate... firstly it gets rather messy and, secondly, i'm trying to quit smoking! The last few details probably account for the majority of the build budget. Inspired by the TV series "Time Team", a Preiser TV Crew was purchased at a visit to the Warley model railway show for around £15 and placed next to some uncovered ancient stones (cat litter); and model Land Rover which came from a set of 3 costing around £10 on ebay. A Hornby Skaledale pill box was purchased at the local model shop for £5.50 and added to the hillside. Layout Gallery : Click to Enlarge Images And so to the farewell. Although I'm not scrapping Thorney Island, as I previously mentioned it may become a forey into the world of DCC, it will be going into storage in the near future. I have numerous other projects which require my attention around the house which has included the appropriate planning permission from the boss to use one of the spare rooms as a home for a much larger (portable) layout. Quite what layout this will become is still very much under discussion but will be based on southern coast British Rail, in terms of appearance at least. All images, illustrations, or video © Kewrail Transport Media unless otherwise indicated
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