EYARTH STATION

 

Introduction

 

Eyarth is an attempt to model the station of that name on the Denbigh, Ruthin & Corwen Railway (DR&C) in North Wales, as if it might have been had it survived into the British Railways Corporate Blue era.

 

The DR&C ran through the southern part of the Vale of Clwyd and as its name suggests, it ran from Denbigh, (where it formed junctions with lines to Rhyl on the North Wales coastline and to Chester via Mold), through Ruthin to Corwen (where it formed a junction with the line from Ruabon to Barmouth, via Llangollen). It was single line throughout, with a number of passing loops at “token exchange points” along the line. Eyarth station served the nearby village of Llanfair Dyffryn Clwyd. This part of the line opened on 6 October 1864. Eyarth station closed to passenger traffic on 2 February 1953 and regular goods traffic ended on 30 April 1962, with the line formally closing on 1 March 1965. The station building, although much altered, is still in existence as a lovely Bed & Breakfast house.

 

This part of the UK seems to be largely neglected by railway modellers, with few layouts from the area appearing in the model press. This has always surprised me because not only is it a beautiful part of the world but there is a huge variety of modelling subjects. The Holyhead route has many large stations of course but there were rural lines too, run by both the GWR and the LNWR/LMS, that offer stations of varying sizes and complexity, right down to the simple unmanned halt. There was even a joint GWR/LNWR junction at Corwen.

 

I first found out about Eyarth in 1989 when I moved to North Wales and I fell in love with the station, the surrounding area and the image of what it must have been like when the line operated. Since then, I have always wanted to make a model of the station and this has now come to fruition. But I am too young to remember main line steam in the UK and diesel locomotives are my real passion in terms of motive power. So I came up with the idea of modelling the station as it might have been when diesels reigned supreme in the UK. My timeframe is reasonably fluid but is somewhere around late 70’s to early 80’s.

 

Huge amounts of modeller’s licence have been employed in constructing this layout. In particular, although Eyarth had a passing loop for most of its life, it was never a token exchange point and so trains would rarely, if ever, have passed there. To make for more operational interest, I have assumed that somehow it acquired this status. Modeller’s licence however, goes much further than this. Whilst I lived in North Wales I did quite a lot of research on the station and have a quite large library of photographs and plans. But it is only when you begin to model a real station that you realise how much you DON’T know about it. Considerable educated guesswork has therefore been employed to fill in the gaps. Some other assumptions have been made just to cover up my limited modelling skills, while others allow me to stretch the boundaries of what can run on the layout to fit the locos and rolling stock that I like.

 

Outline of the Layout

 

Eyarth is an end-to-end (or “fiddle yard to fiddle yard”) layout. There are moveable storage cassettes at each end and the single line runs from them to a passing loop in the centre of the layout. There is also one siding that allows limited shunting activity. The idea is that trains are driven from each fiddle yard into the loop, where they pass and are then driven off scene to the other fiddle yard. Each cassette generally holds three trains and once all trains on a cassette have been driven to the opposite end of the layout, cassettes are turned around and trains are driven back to their original location.

 

To be operated properly, the layout requires a minimum of three operators, one at each end to drive trains and one in the centre to change the points and signals.

 

The layout is built as a quarter circle with a radius of approximately 4.5 metres. There were two main reasons for adopting this configuration:

 

1)    The layout is being built in my 5m x 5m garage. A straight layout would have given a maximum length of 5m but a quarter circle gives about 7.5m run length in the same space.

2)    The real Eyarth was laid on a gentle curve and I wanted to replicate that. A quarter circle gives a much gentler curve than a full or half circle.

 

It has been pointed out to me that an added benefit of this design is that it tends to “draw you in” to the layout as you view it but that is far too deep a concept for me to have thought of it!

 

Due to space constraints, cassette lengths are limited to 1 metre. Although this limits train length to locomotive and between 4 and 7 wagons depending on their wheelbase, it also limits the length of the required passing loop and results in the scenic section having good proportions, relative to the loop and the single track approaches at each end. So whilst I do admit that a Class 56 pulling only 5 oil tankers does look rather odd, I am happy overall with the outcome.

 

The scenic breaks at each end of the layout are based on structures that actually existed. At the northern (Ruthin) end, the line enters the scenic section under the bridge that carried the road to Ffynogion Farm. At the Southern (Nant Clwyd) end, it enters through Eyarth Cutting. In both cases however (and particularly in the case of Eyarth Cutting) these features were much further away from the station than I have depicted.

 

I am aware that the layout has less movement of trains than a circular layout. I have therefore also built information boards with photographs of the real line, history and background details to try and maintain some interest for viewers between the passing of trains.

 

In order to make the layout portable, it is constructed from 7 separate boards of approximately 1 metre in length. The boards are not rectangular but are parallelograms, with the join between each board creating an angle of 15 degrees (the layout plan explains it better). Of the 7 boards, two are for the fiddle yards and 5 are scenic.

 

If you include the initial concept and preliminary planning, the layout has existed in my head for many years. But the first timber was actually cut on 26^th January 2009 and the layout was effectively completed in August 2013 when I took it to the Australian Model Railway Association’s annual exhibition in Melbourne. I was lucky enough to win two awards at the exhibition: The Exhibitor’s Choice for Best Layout and the Judges Choice for Best Privately Owned Layout.

 

Since the layout was first exhibited, I have added two extra boards that depict part of the line between Eyarth and Nant Clwyd, where the line passes over the River Clwyd. As with the original layout, this was based a closely as possible to the real thing, using some plans obtained from the Clwyd Record Office and a number of photographs, including some taken when the line was in operation and some during recent field visits.

 

A further recent addition is the inclusion of a backscene. I was a bit sceptical at first about the need for a backscene but once it was made, I was very pleased with the look of it. It is based on a commercially available backscene from ID Backscenes that looks remarkably like the Vale of Clwyd.  

 

Exhibition Experience

 

Since its original showing at AMRA Melbourne in 2013, the layout has been exhibited 7 times. We went back to AMRA in 2015 (with the extension and backscene) and have also been to Stawell (in Country Vic) in 2014, Philip Island in 2015, Hobart and Launceston in 2016 and Canberra and Adelaide in 2017. It has generally been well received and has won a number of awards.

 

We have found however, that the most rewarding aspect of exhibitions is not the winning of awards but getting youngsters involved in running the layout. So few people seem to allow the kids to have a go at these shows. Perhaps they are frightened that their layout will get damaged but we have found that with a little bit of training and supervision, they are actually very careful and conscientious. We often find that by the end of the weekend, the kids are running most or all of the layout, with the grownups just keeping an eye on things. We get a real buzz from seeing that and hope that it leads eventually to a life long interest in the hobby for one or two of them.