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Rivendell

Description based on material supplied by the layout owner

Rivendell  
Brandon Evans O-16.5 gauge 7mm scale

Rivendell was originally one end of the Twickenham and District club's narrow gauge layout but ended up stored in my loft for 10 years, until I was talked into rebuilding it.

Time and an attentive squirrel partially destroyed it and one of the boards had to be scrapped. The baseboards were modified, track work re-laid, re-wired, buildings rebuilt and the scenery completely replaced. (It may have been easier to build a new layout).

The neglected feeling attempts to depict narrow gauge railways in the 1930s, as bankruptcy loomed, but represents nowhere in particular.

The rocks are plaster castings from rubber moulds, the wooden buildings were all scratch built, the fences made from Chinese calendars from our take-away and the trees constructed from Scalelink etchings.

Note the stub points in the goods yard although they were unlikely to have been used on the prototype depicted by Rivendell.

We use Kadee HO couplers, operated by electromagnets, for hands-off operation and a turntable was added to turn the Baldwin tank locomotives which in reality ran very roughly in reverse. (The Glyn Valley Tramway installed one to appease their drivers)

A full history and a large number of photographs have been published in Narrow Gauge World number 48 and the British Railway Modeller Annual 2007.

 




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