SPIRSBY – a joint venture exhibition style layout BASED ON SPILSBY in Lincolnshire, UK.

Having built many layouts, all very different from each other in most cases, this was to be something I had not attempted before. Some key points were that, the station and its surrounds were to be as close to scale as possible with a little modellers licence of course. It was to be an exhibition style layout with high presentation standards. It was to be of a railway company not of my main interest, in this case the LNER, which created its own challenges. It was to be a joint venture with a fellow modeller, in that he would supply all the running equipment to a certain era (early 1930s), company and area specific, and I build the layout to run and operate it all on. All engines and rollingstock would require the use of Kadee couplers. I have been using Kadees for forty years and will swear by them for hands free operational excellence. This sat well with him as he was slowly converting a lot of his rollingstock as well. Also, I have trained up a dozen or more members to operate with Kadee couplers on many of my previously displayed layouts at exhibitions.

Research begun in earnest and very quickly we realised there were very few branchline termini to choose from, something the LNER did not inherit during the grouping. In the end, Spilsby, a rural market town was to be the candidate. The terminus was at the end of the short branch that left the mainline at Firsby, on the Boston to Louth mainline route. Set in Lincolnshire, the four mile branch line was built and opened in 1868 as the Spilsby & Firsby Railway, was taken over by the Great Northern Railway in 1890, and then swallowed up in grouping with the LNER. During its peak, there were seven trains a day, suppling the town with most of its requirements. There were mixed passenger and goods trains, a goods and coal train every day. Passenger services stopped on September 10^th, 1939 with goods continuing on until the lines closure December 1^st 1958.

It had numerous facilities conducive to operational interest for the operator and those viewing from the front of an exhibition style layout. Spilsby didn’t have a signal box in its day, so, with higher traffic operation in mind, I decided to have signalling and point rodding to add to pump up the importance of this little railway terminus. My friend would build a GNR signal box of an appropriate size, lattice summersault signals to suit the yard demands, a 5-ton yard crane, supply some fine 3D crossing gates, station fences and seats – all specific to the GNR for this project.

My model of SPILSBY station building on the layout. The layout is called SPIRSBY. I named it Spirsby – a convergence of Spilsby and Firsby due to the inaccurate placing of the buildings at the street end of the station yard and the addition of the road crossing, signalling, point rodding and a signal box. 

Looking down the yard from the end of the line.

I will a take some more photos in the near future to add to this topic as most of the shots I took on my phone and are not good enough for publishing here.......so for now, cheers.