Tunnel and Water Tower on Ridgmont layout

Some of you may know the 16mm Bedfordshire Group Layout Ridgmont. I used to be heavily involved with this group back in the 80's and 90's. Back then when we took the layout to shows it used to be sceniced as a Garden. I even had a few Turfs that were added to the layout at shows to enhance the image. Flower pots were put in the cutting by the tunnel mouth, a bag of peat was spread around the layout and I built some planters that sat along the front with rockery plants which again lived in my garden between shows as scenery for my layout. Once a large earthworm was making a bid for freedom from the Turfs which caused a very loud scream from a lady visiting the show. Great fun.

Sadly I do not have too many pictures of the layout thus set up, no doubt some will have but all before the serious introduction of Digital Cameras at a cost that mere mortals could afford.

Anyhow on looking for something else today these two pics came to light. Black and white but they show the Tunnel Mouth and Water Tower that I built for the Ridgmont Layout. They were made out of Ply with broken rocks glued on to make up the stonework. The tunnel was hinged so that it could be easily stored in our modest storeroom at the hall in Ridgmont.

Sadly people had other ideas about the layout, it was double tracked and there was a view that the Garden Scenicing of the layout was just "Too Much trouble". So whilst there has been a nice viaduct built (not always exhibited) I feel that the layout with its Astro Turf is now little different from all the other layouts on the circuit.

Hope you find these pics of interest.



JonD

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Nice historic pictures. Is that a Phoenix white metal driver I see in the second picture. I have a number of them, they were some of the best around.

Casey Jones Snr

If it looks right, it is right.

I like the station in the seond picture; for some reason it makes me think of an old photo of South Snowdon on the NWNGR. (The other thing it reminds me of is the Engineman's Hut at Craig on P.D. Hancock's 00 layout the Craig & Mertonford Railway in the 1950/60 era.)  Was the structure based on a prototype?

Many thanks for the nice comments.
 
Ok will try to anwer where I can, this was a club layout so many of the things were what people had made and brought along on the day.
 
The driver is most definately a Phoenix one as Casey suggests. I have 2 of them, one had his arm amputated (ouch) refitted with wire and made to move up and down by being connected to the regulator on my RC Roundhouse Fowler. He was secured by the leg with a small BA nut and bolt. The effect when the regulator was opened and closed made some rather nice animation. Sadly I decided that the Fowler must move on, but I kept the driver and have not got around to fitting him to any of my other Live steam Locs as yet. It was only just over 10 years ago.
 
C&S, I am not at all sure about the building. I am pretty certain that it is not a NWNGR Prototype, but the effect is I think fair to that belief. I have to say that my concept for scenery was to try to emulate the NWNGR as in Stephens days and am flatered that you could see it in the picture. I did in fact when they were talking about double tracking the station try to get them to look at converting it to Tryfan Jcn, in this picture we were obviously pretty close. But then they had other ideas so a possible winning combination was lost.
 
JonD