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St. Holdens
St
Holdens is very much an EM layout in progress, though
dreamed of for 30 years and started 7 years ago; modelling
skills and sight issues mean progress is very slow !
Although
exiled in Hampshire for the past 30+ years, happy memories
of Messrs Holdens’ ancient locos and rusting infrastructure
remain strong from my teenage years living, schooling,
engine spotting and eventually working in the North Essex/
Cambridge area.
The
Malden, Braintree and Saffron Walden Railway was proposed
and passed by Parliament in the 1840s. In the event only the
Malden
East to Braintree via Witham section were built.
St Holdens is a
fictitious town in the Sampfords area of the Essex/
Suffolk border, typical of the area for its traffic of
coal and grain in, and malt and agricultural produce out.
St Holdens assumes
that the railway was extended from Witham via Braintree to
Cambridge, joining up with the Colchester to Cambridge
‘Stour Valley’ line near Haverhill, and via a push pull
served branch to Saffron Walden. It was also the junction
for the now closed line from Thaxted (which my 1912
Harmsworth atlas genuinely shows as extended to Castle
Hedingham !). The old Thaxted J68 still hovers around in
the yard.
It is now late Summer
1955.The line is currently truncated with no service South
to Braintree, as a result of an unfortunate nuclear
incident at the nearby Wethersfield USAF base (a.k.a. lack
of space in the railway room).As a result St Holdens has
become a temporary terminus, supporting a sub-shed of 31A
Cambridge busy with servicing the visiting locos. In
view of the USAF incident, a short branch spur from the
Saffron Walden line has been quickly laid into RAF Debden,
in order to assist the carrying out of all sorts of secret
MOD goings on. A J70 tram loco, which has somehow been
rescued from the Stratford scrap line, runs a mixed
traffic service to handle RAF personnel and stores passing
through.
Rolling stock is a
mixture of converted RTR and kit built. Infrastructure is
a mix of scratch built and laser cut.
Some items, such as the goods shed, are awaiting
completion.
Fixing the small
matters of lack of ballasting, point rodding, catch
points, signalling, etc will hopefully happen as time
appears over the horizon.
Gallery
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