A Good Goods Shed

Here we see two trains crossing at High Bridge, on the branch line from Gunnmere Junction to Anch Wood.

A Class 25 waits to depart for Gunnmere, having brought in a train from Anch Wood, while a Class 31 has just arrived from Gunnmere and is ready to continue its journey to the end of the line.

Below these two trains can be seen the main line between Gunnmere Junction and Davemoor.

We now switch our attention to Gunnmere Junction itself where we see, in the photos above, quite a bit of activity centred around the goods shed. 

This is a model of the Shillingstone Goods Shed by Bachmann Branchline, Catalogue Nº 44-170, and it is a particularly fine building with some great detail. 

It is ideal for this station since it, almost, matches the look of the rest of the buildings here - these being a mix of Hornby and Bachmann.

In the four scenes above we see a rake of wagons being shunted into the shed by a Class 03 while a Class 15 stands in one of the adjacent sidings. 

Meanwhile the Class 25, previously seen at High Bridge, is now standing at Platform 4, having just arrived with its train.

Top Drawers

Despite the fact that our layout is quite large, we have no fiddle yard in which to store our ever-growing amount of rolling stock.

Initially, we stored everything in custom-made boxes but these began to fill an increasing amount of shelf space and it took too long to unbox a rake of coaches or wagons and, then, put them away again at the end of a running session. This would also mean that we would end up with a mountain of empty boxes cluttering up the place!

So, while the locos are all, still, kept in individual boxes, the coaches and wagons are now stored in sets of drawers that we purchased from Lidl - yes, Lidl would you believe, for around £11.00 each.

Each set contains five drawers and we have eight sets of drawers for our coaches and the eight for the goods wagons. 

Each drawer has its own label, identifying what it contains, and we have colour-coded these labels, LMS maroon for the coaches and Southern Railway green for the goods wagons.

Some of the sets of drawers that contain the coaches

And two that contain wagons

Currently the coaches lay on their side on soft tissue, with each drawer able to hold four coaches in this way. 

However, the goods wagons are different in that they tend to roll about in the drawers, even on tissue. So, to prevent this, we decided to fit each drawer with customized foamboard dividers, as per the photographs below:

Two drawers of Hornby Seacow Hopper Wagons
with the ballast loads kept separate to one side.

Two drawers of various coal-filled mineral wagons.

A drawer of Yeoman hoppers and a drawer with empty mineral wagons

Finally, two drawers containing bogie bolsters with assorted loads.

All of this does make life so much easier because, when we wish to run a train of, say, mineral wagons, all we need to do is take out the relevant drawer and, then, it is simply a matter of removing the required number of wagons. 

Similarly, putting them away again at the end of the session is equally straightforward.

Nice!

Cow Catcher

Here we see our Class 22 (D6319) standing at Sueston station with a short rake of cattle wagons. This rake will grow as the baby warship journeys around the layout towards Davemoor, collecting more and more wagons as she goes.

 Her first port of call is Petersfield where ...

 ... she picks up some wagons standing at Platform 1.

 

Thence to Gunnmere Junction where she has to collect more wagons from the sidings.

Here we see the train crossing over to the up slow line in order to gain access to those sidings ...

... before reversing on to the wagons ...

... that a Class 15 had previously brought out from the cattle dock.

 

The Class 22, with her ever-lengthening train, is now ready to depart with the aforementioned cattle dock in the foreground.

And here we see the train crossing over to the down slow line as she proceeds to Carswater, her penultimate destination.

Now at Carswater, we see her reversing her train into the small siding to collect the final batch of wagons ...

... before eventually arriving at her final destination, Davemoor, where she pulls into Platfrom 4.

Finally, we see the little loco at the buffer stops at Davemoor, her journey complete!