I suppose you could say that I have a bit of 'form' when it comes to telling tall tails to support the supposed 'histories' of my first two layouts, 'Engine Wood' and 'Bleakhouse Road'. Certainly the first article in the Railway Modeller didn't give any sign that 'Engine Wood' was fictitious, and my former website enginewood.co.uk (currently temporarily off line) didn't give much away, either. At shows, both layouts have information boards describing the 'history' of each location, together with photographs purporting to have been taken at those very places (it's amazing how a farm track on the Somerset Levels can look like a disused railway, especially with a blurred cow shed masquerading as a distant PW hut!). A deliberately fuzzy photo of Shillingstone station, taken before the current preservation era, was used to portray 'Engine Wood' prior to final demolition and conversion of said site to a housing estate.

I've had people turn up at shows asking exactly 'where the station was', some swore blind that they'd caught a train from there in their youth, and even the Clerk to the Parish Council of Burrowbridge asked for more information on the South Polden Light Railway, prior to updating the history of their village (to him I did admit the truth... ).

All in all, virtually everyone has 'got' the joke and enjoyed the whimsy (although the Clerk to the Parish Council didn't e-mail me back afterwards...!). I must confess that I've found it interesting to watch supposedly knowledgeable enthusiasts read the 'historical accounts', see their brows furrow as they realise that this is something they didn't know about before, and then see the penny drop! I've never knowingly let anyone leave the layout at a show without admitting that it's all a pack of lies (something that I usually admit to in the exhibition guide anyway - so I wonder how many really read the full text of those right through?).

So, when it came to concocting some unlikely co*k and bull story to support the premise for 'Callow Lane', the fevered imagination was once again fired up and set in motion. The idea is that this was a double track freight only line from the Midland's yards at Westerleigh to Callow Lane, then reverting to single line at Callow Lane as far as the Great Western main line, just west of Coalpit Heath. A connection to the still viable North Bristol pits near Coalpit Heath would, of course, be included for my flexible period of 1959 - 1971 (in reality these closed a few years after the second world war). Finally, a chocolate factory, like Carsons at Mangotsfield, would provide some additional traffic and a further excuse to run industrial locos on the BR line.

An entry was duly made up and posted on the Enginewood website and work continued (far too slowly!!) on the layout itself.

Imagine my amazement, then, when a friend very kindly gave me a copy of 'The Midland in Gloucestershire' (OPC) one day, which has track plans of virtually all MR locations in that county. I was perusing the pages for Westerleigh Yard (as you do), when I noticed that there was, in reality, a double track freight-only branch running off towards the north-west (in the direction of Coalpit Heath - not actually that far away). This real line led to a place called New Engine Yard, where it actually terminated, but not before it also made a connection with colliery lines to two of the local pits - Frog Lane and Mayshill.

This was a real eye-opener, perhaps my invented justification for the layout wasn't so far fetched at all? Admittedly there was no single line running on beyond New Engine Yard towards the GW main line (the gradients would probably have been quite severe), nor was there a chocolate factory, but most of the other elements of 'Callow Lane' were already present.

Sadly it proved virtually impossible to find any photos of the real New Engine Yard, and in any case, development on the layout was sufficiently advanced that there was no turning back. The model was to be fairly suburban/urban in nature, but when I finally got round to visiting the area a year or so later, I found no track of the old line from Westerleigh Yard (I think it now forms part of the access road), and the whole area is really very rural!

No matter, I was really rather pleased that things had turned out that way. More recently, I've had another pleasant little surprise. Motive power for the colliery trips from the revitalised Frog Lane pit to Callow Lane would be mostly in the hands of 'Lord Salisbury' (Mercian kit), which I argued would have been kept on up there had the colliery survived, and not sent to Norton Hill on the S&D. A diesel was also called for, however, to supplement the steam loco, so at the most recent RailEx in Aylesbury this May, I treated myself to a Judith Edge Ruston 88DS kit, a prototype I'd always wanted to have a model of. The plan was (and still is) to make this up in a suitable NCB livery, and run it into Callow Lane with 16t minerals etc. I didn't really worry that the chances of there having been such a loco working in the collieries of that area were really quite small (or so I thought)...

Then, a week later I was helping Simon Castens of The Titfield Thunderbolt bookshop set his stand up on the Friday night, as usual. Whilst Simon was sorting out which books to put where, I noticed a slim little paperback volume entitled 'The Ruston' by David Hall (published by The Moseley Railway Trust). Whilst leafing casually through that, I found, guess what - a photo of Ruston 88DS (works number 242869 of 1946) working at the real colliery (caption calls it 'Coalpit Heath Colliery) in 1947! Unbelievable! So, no further justification for the diesel needed (well, just some convincing 'Sectional Appendix instructions' to let it onto BR metals and a convincing reason not to send a 'Jinty' or 350hp diesel shunter into the colliery... )