Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2007-05-27 10:21:48 - Graham Ellis
Do you recognise the location? Or perhaps the part of the country? Can you tell when this picture was taken - is it recent, or from many years ago?
The picture was taken yesterday - 26th May 2007. In Wiltshire too. Melksham. To be precise, at the Christie Miller sports centre on Bowerhill. It's a model - but a very realistic one - at a scale of 1:76.
In my youth, I used to enjoy railway modelling - and put a huge amount of time into it. Not that I was (or am) particularly good with my hands - I certainly don't have the ability, not the patience, to produce something of exhibition quality. But I fondly remember hours working on what might have been at Swanage and Lulworth, and what might have been at Ullapool. Studied down to the history of the proposals that were made for lines but that were never built.
Living now in "Great Western Territory" and having a fondness for Melksham, there's a temptation to get sucked in to doing *something* on Melksham. The substantial station of the mid 1900s shrank to closure in 1966, re-opening with a "halt" type platform in 1985 and a spluttering service since. So there's scope for anything from a substantial setup to a single track. But information is lacking and (at least for modern times) appropriate stock hard to find. I *am* going to say "watch this space". Not for anything huge, not for anything that's so realistic that you would have to do a double-take if you saw a picture. But I am tempted to set up a few yards of track, a model of the current station, and be able to run one or two representation trains - old and new, through it.
Do you recognise the location? Or perhaps the part of the country? Can you tell when this picture was taken - is it recent, or from many years ago?