Blyth
2mm/N scale,
Owner – Ed Orwin
Contact Details – ed.orwin@hotmail.co.uk
Dimensions – 3m x 0.76m (10′ x 2’6″) excluding fiddle yards at each end
Control Method – DCC
Blyth railway station was closed to passengers from 30 October 1964 under the infamous ‘Beeching Axe’, goods facilities having been withdrawn the previous year. Supplies by rail to Blyth shipyard continued until its closure in 1966, as did coal traffic to the South staiths. The six-road steam shed lingered on until 1967 when diesel locos being stabled there for the last few months of its life. Final closure to all traffic was effective from January 1968, the final obvious remnant of the existence of the railway – the station building itself – being demolished in 1972 to make way for a supermarket (now Morrison’s). The site of the engine shed is now a hospital. In 2010 the only building remaining in the town with any link to the railway is a detached house on Delaval Terrace adjacent to the hospital entrance, which was built in 1894 for the Station Master. My model is to scale, framed to the West by the level crossing that crossed Renwick Road, and to the East by Soulsby’s menswear shop and Railway Hotel on Turner Street (now Regent Street). The layout front runs parallel to
Delaval Terrace. See the layout plan for further detail.
DCC control is Gaugemaster Prodigy Advance2, all points and plain track are soldered to wire droppers which in turn are soldered to busbars running beneath the layout. Track is Peco Code 55, points are Electrofrog with SEEP and Peco point motors, controlled by Peco stud and probe system.
Rolling stock is a mix of ‘off the shelf’ by Dapol and Bachmann-Farish, and kits from the N Gauge Society, Chivers and Parkside. A small number of Gresley and Thompson suburban coaches are under construction using Etched Pixels kits.
All buildings are scratchbuilt in styrene sheet, using copies of original architects plans where available or based on my own drwaings scaled up from counting bricks on photos of the prototype.