There have been, I believe, three Clecklewykes. The first was the fictional setting for J.B. (Jack) Priestley’s play “When we are married”. The second was an OO gauge model railway, a U-shaped branch terminus to fiddle yard in classic Cyril Freezer style, which I built in the box room of our first flat in Edinburgh in the early 1970s. This was fairly primitive but at least had the merit of some smoke-blackened West Yorkshire millstone grit architecture and civil engineering, courtesy of a short-lived cottage industry called Ossett Mouldings. This layout gave me and my mate, Steve Griffiths, a lot of fun but the arrival of children and a move to Fife put model railways on the back burner for many years. Unfortunately, no photos were taken of this layout.
The third Clecklewyke was intended to test whether I could move up to the more accurate and demanding P4 scale. I reckoned that if I could succeed on a small canvas I might, given more space and time, be able to build the layout I had always dreamed of in P4. The current Clecklwyke has a scenic area of just 4ft by 1ft 6ins. Its design follows closely the precepts of Iain Rice in his Wild Swan book “Model Railway Layout Design – Finescale in Small Spaces” and is in the form of a diorama with a proscenium arch, wings, backscene and built-in lighting, presented at eye-level. It employs a fiddle yard at each end, using Chris Pendlenton-style cassettes, a very simple and efficient system, which requires little space. I thought that these ideas, revolutionary in the early 1990s, were now mainstream, but at its latest exhibition it was awarded a fine cup for “Most unusual layout”. My ego was deflated when I discovered that a previous winner had been a Lego train set…
It was always conceived as the first phase of a bigger project, a model of what a branch to Bradford built by the London and North Western Railway might have looked like in the late 1950s. This will have the scope of my hero Peter Denny’s Buckingham Branch and having now retired and moved to a converted chapel in Wensleydale, this final project is about to begin. More details of the chapel are in Betsy’s blog www.bottomchapel.wordpress.com and of the Bradford North Western Branch on another page of this blog.
This latest Clecklewyke is my most successful layout date, and seems to have been well received, having been invited to many exhibitions, including the various Scaleforums around the country, and has featured in several articles in the model railway press, including “Scalefour News”.
Me with that cup
Stephen Paulin shows that operating a block instrument can be fun
Hi.
As a member of the Windlesham Drama Group we’ll be performing “When we are married” in May this year.
I was wondering if you have “Lane End Chapel” on your layout and if so could you send me a photograph. It’s such an integral part of the play it would be good to have a picture.
At last an opportunity to combine my hobbies of Drama and model railways!!
Sorry Geezer!
We still exist. Sadly models failed to pay the rent, but what we now do does – most times.
Still, it was good stuff – I believe?
My very best regards,
John
Wow – great stuff! I never thought to search for your web site. But it’s a shame you have stopped doing your models – they were really good. They really captured the feel of the West Riding vernacular.
You might be pleased to know that I propose to restore some heavily squashed Ossett Mouldings cottages and place them as mill workers’ cottages on the next phase of the BNW model, which will be a viaduct extension of Clecklewyke.
Now what I really need you to do is a viaduct to the same standard as your cottages! I can give you dimensions if you are interested.
Glad you are still in business, even if, from my point of view, it’s the wrong one!