Wychvale
By Fred Medhurst
Wychvale was built by the late Fred Medhurst back in the late eighties. It has been sympathetically restored to its former glory by his son David Medhurst, with help from David Bickerton who gained much of his early layout building inspiration from both Fred and the layout. Fred was a founder member of Tonbridge Model Railway Club so it was fitting for the layout to be restored and exhibited at the Club’s 25th Anniversary show in February 2006.
The layout, which measures 8ft x 1ft 5in, represents a typical Great Western Railway branch line terminus in the inland area of Cornwall. With its overall roof and the two-colour scheme widely used on the Great Western Railway, it endeavours to show how a station would have looked during the period 1935/39. The buildings are a composite of several copied from photographs of stations in a Branch Line railway book, but the parcels and goods office in the front corner is purely modellers licence to give some extra interest. The signal cabin, which is on loan from David Bickerton, has been scratchbuilt and is based on Watlington - coincidentally this is the same prototype as the Prototype Models kit that Fred had originally used which had found to be beyond repair. For exhibition purposes the running sequence gives continual movement, making it more interesting for the viewers, but not necessarily adhering to correct railway practise.
The stock is mostly proprietary, but some items have been modified to improve their appearance. The trackwork, with the exception of the 3-way point, is made entirely from bits and pieces from a layout which was being scrapped. Even the baseboard was an old 2ft 10in x 4ft board which was cut in half to make a layout the size that would fit in a garden shed.