If you have been following my inane ramblings thus far, you may have been curious as to where this diorama (I confess a disliking of the term 'layout'.) is set, but before I launch into all that, I'd just like to recap how I 'accidentally' got to this juncture - after not having been a railway modeller for over forty years.....

It started with a simple desire to put a few items on the mantle to represent a railway in my area. Having then collected far too much for my mantle, this developed into a plan to build a 4mm replica of a local station in P4. So far so - ahem.....

At this point I realised that I'd soon get bored with only an end-to end with more fiddle-yard than layout, just as I did forty-plus years ago. Added to that, I could only envisage ever managing to get together a very limited stable of P4 locos - and all smaller branch locos at that.

At that point....I decided to model a local junction where my P4 branch joined, but to do it, still in 4mm scale, and in OO gauge. There were some very hard-headed and practical reasons for this. OO locos are available in infinite variety - and cheaply too. This would enable me to run mainline 'heavies' and rapidly get together a stable of locos and stock to catch-up after that forty year absence. Yet another reason was that you can get away with OO in the garden, but P4 outside is simply not practical. The garden allows one to run anything at all, in my case, so long as it's pre-BR buggeration.

Mixing P4 and OO is a bit unusual to say the least, but if you will bear with me, you will see that in this instance, it will work pretty well. Of course they will be really two 'layouts' within one diorama. However, the junction end of the P4 branch would only have been wasted as a fiddle-yard in any case. See - it makes sense really....

The room will basically have the P4 down one side, and the OO down the other with a centre-space for access, and viewing etc. All operations will be based in an integral Signal-Cabin with a view inside for the diorama - and outside for the garden line. The OO is a racetrack (Roundy-Roundy), but about half of it will be hidden under the P4 branch. All of the visible track, P4 & OO will follow the original curves and lengths. Only where the lines dive into the scenery will they diverge.

To add a bit of atmosphere, trains arriving at the foot of the garden incline back-up to the shed will activate the bells in some old block-apparatus I have, each line having it's own ring. This may be useful in case they are struggling. This will also be triggered by trains leaving the lower gyrus to climb up to the scenic level. There will be no attempt to actually link these old lumps of junk to actually reflect any prototypical block-working etc. It's just for fun.

The branch itself will represent the original section of the Tenbury Branch, that is the Joint section. Tenbury eastwards will be into a fiddle. Westwards it'll dive into the scenery and reappear at Easton Court, a tiny station with only a small SB, one platform and a single point and siding. It then dives back into the scenery to arrive at Woofferton Junction, where it crosses the OO mainline into it's own separate west bay on the north-south Shrewsbury & Hereford mainline. Each element - all three stations - will be undistorted and uncompressed, however, naturally, the longer lengths between the branch stations are compressed within the scenic-breaks - well, you have to draw a line somewhere......

Thankfully, the buildings are few - and of a relatively simple, undecorated design.

There is a plethora of information available about the real location and the history of the line easily available online. Suffice it to say that the main North-South line was the Shrewsbury & Hereford Railway, later to become a Joint LNWR/LMS - GWR line.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrewsbury_and_Hereford_Railway

The architecture and signalling on this line was very much originally LNWR, but later, the signalling was updated to GWR practices and equipment, much of which remains today. Although the scenery was superb, the stations were not really the usual chocolate-box pretty of many GWR lines. The real interest is that this set-up offers running of a great variety of trains, in several liveries. The remaining refuge siding is still in use today. In the old days, they would often have been occupied by heavy mineral trains. Added to that, overall changes were minimal, so that by a change of wagons for car and the period dress of the human figures, one can run trains representing a remarkably wide window of time, although the infrastructure will be pinned at just before Grouping to facilitate maximum flexibility.
The Branch was originally operated by the LNWR in it's very early days, then, with the branch being extended to Kidderminster, as an end-on junction betwixt the LNWR & GWR at Tenbury, the GWR took-over the operational running of the whole Branch. The LNWR/LMS always retained Running-Rights into Tenbury, but I have found no evidence of them exercising this after the GWR took-over the running of the whole branch. Any evidence /photos of such usage would be gratefully received....as would any photos or drawings of the small loco turntable at Tenbury that interestingly, originated from Bewdley of all places.

Like the mainline - the branch as far as Tenbury was strongly along LNWR practices. The quite large signal cabin at Woofferton was of LNWR design, as were the slightly oddball SC at Tenbury, where there were originally two, the smaller eventually being demolished in the 1940's. Between Wooferton and Tenbury was the aforementioned small station/halt at Easton Court.
Although my starting-point in the adventure was Tenbury - and it's still the core of this project - it's easier to present, starting with Woofferton Junction. I'll move-on to Easton Court and Tenbury in my next missive.

Woofferton Junction was on the main line, and if the Shrewsbury & Hereford Railway had not existed, then the branch into Tenbury would have been a non-starter. Below are a number of basic maps attached to this Blog. For ease of presentation, I have tipped them onto their side, so the north-south mainline runs L-R. North is, of course on the LHS.

Map A; 1913 OS.
Map B; Current SatPic.
Map C; Blend of A&B.

There is a caveat with regard to the Woofferton 1913 OS map, as I am pretty sure that some minor details had already changed by 1913 which are not reflected in the map (Not unusual.) - however, these really only relate to the sidings for the sawmill and the wagon-turntable in front of the goods shed. Changes were also made to the loops/refuges just north of the station. In the 1913 OS version, the lines into the gravel-pits remain, but the refuges is single. later, there were refuges both northbound and southbound, which lasted until the late 1980's. Today, only the northbound refuge loop remains. The Ballast Pit Sidings were removed between the wars.

Today, as well as the main line, three of the four bridges remain (One, the most northerly on the A49, is a recent replacement though.) and as well as the SC, the GS and SC remain. The loop, it's signalling, as well as a pair of crossovers between the SC & GS still remain, along with manual semaphore signals, controlled from the old LNWR SC. Todays semaphores are basically tubular metal GWR, with some of the usual added 'Elf& Safety' excrescences. The poor old LNWR SC has been re-windowed in ghastly UPVC and the wooden stairs replaced by galvanised steel. Sadly, unless it's protected, it's go when the semaphores go - and that can't be too far off. (If we get any decent MSE's [Mass Solar Ejections.] then the preserved lines may be the only ones left usable...!). The GS remains, in commercial use as part of a builders-merchants, and the SB is a private dwelling. Gone are the platforms, northbound buildings, FB, and the nearby Engine Shed, built in about 1862 and closed in about 1900. It remained in use as the west-end of the branches only water-supply. The next water, eastbound was at Cleobury Mortimer.

On the branch, all of the buildings and most of the bridges remain, apart from, ironically, at Tenbury itself, where all that remains in the original road-bridge on the Clee Hill Road.

I've set-out to make as few compromises as possible in the planning of this diorama. Whether I can follow-through in the detail delivery of the project only time will tell, but I feel happy with the basic plan now. Next time I will describe a little about the branch line, and show some scale sketches of the upper scenic 1,000mm level. At the hidden 500mm level will be the main gyrus that allows trains to be stored and routed. All the fiddles, such as they are, will be there too, with the P4 branch of course having it's own separate fiddle with a TT. Long gentle inclines will link the two levels, and the access to the garden lines will be from this lower level too, via a closable, weatherproof hatch.