Engine Wood:4mm scale UK Model Railway Layouts,Tim Maddocks,Somerset and Dorset Railways, Bleakhouse Road

Welcome to the 'Engine Wood' layout page. This is all about the layout that has given it's name to the whole website.

Pencil drawing of Engine Wood by the railway artist Peter Barnfield

My layout 'Engine Wood' is significant for me because it represented the first major model railway project after several years of modelling inactivity. The main part of the layout was initially completed to a deadline, which was the Bath model railway show in December 1994. The impetus to do the project came in no small part from the friendly cajoling of a friend - Simon Castens - who runs the Titfield Thunderbolt book business. He needed a new layout to exhibit alongside his bookstall at the show, due to the fact that his own layout 'Camerton' had suffered a major electrical fault the year before. Simon being Simon (yes, we've known each other a very long time) decided that I was the man for the job!

Engine Wood - the history of the line

Before going into the detail about how I built the layout, I thought it might be interesting to dwell on the historical background to the prototype. 'Engine Wood' is not a made up name - far from it. The name has it's origins in the building and operation of the Somersetshire Coal Canal, which ran from Paulton Basin, south of Bristol to the Dundas Aqueduct on the Kennet & Avon Canal near Bath. The prime reason for the construction of the canal was to transport coal from the pits of the Cam valley south of Bath to the markets of Bath, Bristol and further afield.

Those of you who are familiar with the Bath area will know that this part of north Somerset is quite hilly and actually very scenic. It is an area where the southern fringes of the Cotswold Hills meets the northern fringes of the Mendips. Building a canal in this environment proved to be very challenging, particularly in the area near

the village of Combe Hay, where the canal company initially built a rather novel boat lift known as the caisson lock. This ingenious bit of engineering was evidently ahead of it's time, as it proved unreliable and costly, so was replaced in fairly short order by an inclined plane. This also didn't last long so in the end the canal company built a flight of conventional locks, climbing steeply round sinuous curves in the hillside above the Cam Valley. Situated at the upper end of these locks near the village of Southstoke was a pumping house, which was installed in 1804. The area around this edifice became known as 'Engine Wood'. The canal eventually closed and the pumping station became derelict and was demolished. The name of 'Engine Wood' persisted, however.

Following the opening of the GWR's branch from Hallatrow to Camerton in 1882, the S&DJR also looked at the burgeoning mining activity in the Cam Valley and the possibility of lucrative coal traffic. There had been various proposals to build railways to serve the collieries of this valley, but the scheme which eventually gained sufficient momentum to turn it's proposals into reality was the independent 'North Somerset Light Railway' of 1902. This specified a south facing junction with the S&D at Midford and a single line of railway running along a course similar to the old coal canal, until it reached an end-on junction with the GWR at Camerton.
Go to top of page

Copy of signal box diagram as redrawn by British Railways following nationalisation

The construction of the NSLR began in 1903, but the scheme quickly ran into financial difficulties. The contractor A. Cuthbertson & Sons ordered a cessation of construction work in the June of that year due to non-payment of accounts. The NSLR had no choice but to look for other backers and opened negotiations with the S&DJR, who with the backing of it's own joint owners agreed to take over the ailing company.

With the S&DJR in control, the new railway was quickly completed and opened for freight traffic in October 1904. Passenger services commenced the following January when the station at Dunkerton and halts at Engine Wood, Combe Hay and Dunkerton Colliery were completed. A passing loop was provided at Dunkerton only. A daily service of seven passenger trains each way was introduced between Camerton and Radstock, of which two ran through to Hallatrow on the GWR. The S&DJR did not build it's own station at Camerton, but used the GWR's facilities. Coal traffic from the Cam Valley collieries quickly grew and in 1908 the Somerset Collieries Co. sank a new pit at Engine Wood. The coal from this colliery was initially taken by road to nearby Dunkerton for transhipment onto rail.

By 1908 traffic was such that the S&DJR's Camerton branch was already working to capacity. A joint agreement was reached with the GWR in November that year which resulted in a north-facing junction being constructed at Hallatrow with the Bristol & North Somerset line. Additional capacity was provided on the S&D section in the form of a new passenger loop at Engine Wood. The new works included a new down platform and brick built station building. Two down sidings were also provided, together with a lock-up goods shed. The new layout was controlled from a new 19 lever signal box on the up side of the line and was commissioned on 17th May 1909. At the same time running powers for S&D trains were extended through to Bristol Temple Meads, the whole arrangement effectively constituting an alternative through route for traffic off the Somerset & Dorset to the North.

Finally, in 1910 a narrow gauge tramway was built to connect Engine Wood colliery with the S&DJR goods yard at Engine Wood. The railway infrastructure of North Somerset was now complete.

The line enjoyed an uneventful existence through the turbulent years of the two world wars, although it is said that during the Second World War a number of residents of Bath had to be removed from Engine Wood Tunnel one night shortly after the Baedecker raids, having taken shelter in the mistaken belief that the railway was closed at night. Nationalisation followed in 1948 and with it came a proposal to double the line between North Somerset Junction, Hallatrow and Midford South Junction, with a view to re-routing all through traffic away from the inconvenient bottleneck of Bath Green Park. The scheme came to nothing and the operating authorities were never able to make use of the full potential of the route due to the short passing loops, which restricted the maximum permitted length of trains.

Dunkerton Colliery had closed in 1927, although the sidings were left in situ for many years. Engine Wood colliery, which had never enjoyed the high production levels of Dunkerton and other pits, finally closed in 1949 and it's tramway was was removed soon after. The old south-facing spur at Hallatrow had been removed by the GWR as early as 1935, the passing loop at Dunkerton having been removed at the same time.

Camerton Colliery alone maintained healthy coal reserves and was extensively modernised by the NCB in 1955. Production looked to be guaranteed for many years to come, the coal going mainly to Portishead Power Station and to the various municipal gas works on the south coast.

Under British Railways passenger services had settled down into a comfortable pattern of stopping trains between Bristol TM and Templecombe. Engine Wood station was repainted in Western Region colours in 1956 when the W.R. gained commercial control of the line. Earlier in 1952 the portion of line between Camerton and Midford Junction, which was usually closed on Sundays, was used for the filming of the Ealing Studios comedy 'The Titfield Thunderbolt'. Engine Wood station did not used in the film, although Dunkerton station was spruced up and masqueraded as 'Titfield'.

The Midford Jct to Camerton and Bristol section was closed to passenger traffic together with the rest of the S&D system on 7th March 1966. The line was retained for coal traffic, however, from the surviving pits at Writhlington and Kilmersdon to Portishead. When these collieries closed in 1973, the line was closed completely, the single track mouldering on until it was finally lifted in 1976.

I could have sworn that I heard a diesel locomotive one evening when I was walking back home but there was no evidence of a train the next time I visited the line a few days later and I have since been unable to trace any record of movements of the line during the period that the track lay disused. The station buildings at Engine Wood survived in an increasingly derelict condition for a few more years but the site was eventually cleared during the 1980s and is now occupied by housing.
Go to top of page

The baseboards are a bit of a mixture in terms of age, design and materials used. The original baseboard were built in 1977 for a GWR layout that was never to be completed. They consist of a Sundeala top firmly fixed to 1"x1" pine frames. This forms a stable and good surface to work on but is rather limiting if you need to built an underbridge or embankment. In the end I kept the Sundeala surface on the main station baseboard and just re-used the frames of the others with a more 'modern' open frame design.

The need to make Engine Wood fully portable has resulted in one or two other features, such as hinged 'doors' on the underside of the baseboards to protect the wiring. Subsequent layouts like Bleakhouse Road also feature hinged legs, as this gives you one less separate item to worry about when transporting the layout.

Two of the three scenic boards are 4' long, which makes them quite portable, but the main station board is 6' long and rather heavy. All this means that Engine Wood is a relatively difficult layout to move around, a point not lost on me when I designed Bleakhouse Road and subsequent projects.

The track work on Engine Wood reflects it's mixed heritage, being a combination of 'old' SMP, 'new' SMP and C&L. I prefer the latter due to the excellent quality of the chair mouldings and the fact that the inside of the chair is scale size. I have tried to use C&L track on all running lines and the SMP in the sidings. All track is laid on 1/16" cork underlay with edges chamfered where a ballast shoulder is required.

I generally find electrical things difficult. In fact, it's a wonder that anything electrical designed by me works at all. The only way I can manage it, is to keep things simple and deal with one wire at a time. I shudder to think what would happen if I tried my hand at DCC, although I have been assured by many that it's easy!

The layout is divided up into a number of isolating sections, which ensure that I can make all the shunting movements demanded by the 'timetable'. The control panel is removable from the main baseboard for transport purposes. Individual switches control the isolating sections. Points are controlled by push buttons, which operated by Seep point motors which also change the electrical polarity. Power is fed to one of two locations on the layout, depending which movement is being made. A DPDT switch enables the operator to choose the desired feed. The four signals are also operated by Seep point motors, mounted at 90 degrees to the normal on aluminium angle iron under the baseboards.

A basic Gaugemaster controller supplies 16v AC for the points and signals and 12v DC for the trains. I also have an AMR hand-held controller, which for several locomotives provides a better degree of control. Another DPDT switch enables the operator to choose which control unit to use.

There is very little that is original in my scenic techniques. Most of what I have done was picked up over the years from a variety of sources, but one of the very best books on model landscape construction is 'Landscape Modelling' by Barry Norman (Wild Swan). I can thoroughly recommend this book for anyone who wants to go beyond the 'dyed sawdust' stage of scenery construction.

Most of the landscaping is done by creating a card or fine chicken wire shape and applying two or three layers of dampened strips of newspaper soaked in a mixture of Polyfilla and white PVA glue, with a brown powder paint added to give an overall 'earth' colour. When that has dried off I usually apply a further coat or two of the Polyfilla and glue mix. This provides the basic 'shell' for the landscape.

I then paint the landscape with a wash of umber or similar water colour, depending on the base colour of the soil and rocks in the area. When this has all thoroughly dried out, I am ready to add grass, foliage and other scenic features. Information on creating grass effects and foliage can be found on the Construction page.

Most of the buildings on Engine Wood had to be scratchbuilt, such as the main station building, the platform shelter and the signalbox. I was able to use a Wills kit for the lock-up goods shed and a Ratio kit for the concrete PW hut. The signalbox was actually scratchbuilt by Simon Castens for his Camerton layout but as it is a standard S&D pattern box, it fitted my needs for Engine Wood and he was kind enough to loan it to me. Eight years on and I still haven't built a replacement!....

All the scratchbuilt buldings are made from styrene sheet. The station building has individual slate strips made of thin paper. The bridges are also scratchbuilt from styrene sheet, whereas the tunnel mouth was constructed and put in position much earlier. It is made from balsa with a plaster covering, onto which stonework has been scribed and then painted with water colours.

Since the original Railway Modeller articles and the photos were taken, I have installed working signals. These are mostly built from M.S.E. components, although the Up Home signal has a scratchbuilt S.R. type rail-built post.

A number of the operational practices from the 1959 - 1964 era are reproduced on the layout, such as the running of the 6.05 pm Bristol TM to Engine Wood local. This was latterly formed of a single coach, usually hauled by a BR Standard Class 3 tank, which ran round in Engine Wood station before returning, usually empty to Bristol TM. It was mainly provided for commuters returning to Camerton and Dunkerton and could not proceed beyond Engine Wood due to pathing problems on the S&D main line at Midford Junction.

Engine Wood at the Edington Show in December 1995 Something is clearly fascinating everyone! Exeter 1998

Another operation unique to that part of North Somerset was the use of the NCBs shunting engine to bring loaded coal wagons out from Camerton Colliery to the Exchange Siding at Engine Wood, the Sectional Appendix officially permitting the NCB loco to run over BR metals as far as Engine Wood's 'station limits'. This peculiar move dated from the days when the collieries were privately owned and it was a necessary maneover for north-bound coal trains from the colliery towards Bristol, as the connection to the main line at Camerton faced east and was over 600 yards outside the protection of the home signal. It was controlled by a ground frame released by the electric token but had no run-round facilities. Propelling out of the Colliery Siding was not allowed either due to the gradients, so all north-bound coal trains had to continue on to engine Wood to run-round. Due to limited space and tight clearances in the colliery yard it was not always practicable to diagram a main line loco to take loaded trains away when it suited the coal owners, so it was agreed that the colliery loco could take traffic as far as Engine Wood as and when required. This agreement was perpetuated by British Railways and the National Coal Board until the closure of Camerton Colliery in 1965.

In 1958 B.R. decided to re-route the 3.45 pm Bournemouth Mails via Engine Wood. This train had priority over every other service on the S&D due to it's need to make a connection with a north-bound service at Mangotsfield. By running it via Engine Wood the authorities found that a more reliable connection could actually be made at Bristol Temple Meads, thus effecting a modest staffing economy at Mangotsfield in the process.

I try to replicate all of the above operations in model form when exhibiting the layout. Most stopping passenger trains are composed of two or three coaches plus a parcels van. Pick-up goods trains serve the modest goods yard, mainly in the down direction as this made life easier for the train crews. The coal trains from Camerton Colliery are depicted with rakes of weather-beaten mineral wagons.

I use three and screw link couplings on both Engine Wood and Bleakhouse Road. Maybe one day I'll convert these to some kind of automatic coupling, but for the time being I am happy that they look better and I do like the ability to 'slacken off' the couplings on a long loose-coupled goods train and then slowly re-start the train in a prototype manner, with the driver being careful not to give the guard a sudden jerk when he gets going!

I try to stick to scale speeds when operating the layout, especially when shunting. It is interesting to remember that drivers of shunting locos did not always crawl along at a scale walking pace, they frequently opened their machines up and gave the stock a clout, especially if they were in a hurry to get back to the depot and book off!

Much of the text of this page has been reproduced from the articles in Railway Modeller in November and December 1996. My thanks to Peco for their support and agreement for this.

Please note that all written and photographic material on this website is the intellectual property of and copyright Tim Maddocks 2005, unless otherwise credited.


Scenery under construction in the 1980s	*The layout under construction in the garage in 1994*