POP UP Forge Mill Model Railway Exhibition

It is imagined that Buckshee was intended to be the first station on a projected line from Oban to Campbeltown promoted by the Caledonian Railway after the opening of the Callender and Oban Railway in 1880 (a line was at one time proposed from Campbeltown to Dalmally). The line to Buckshee comes off the Callender and Oban Railway from a Junction at Connel Ferry. Unfortunately it was soon realised that the line would be too costly to build with little if any profit and was thus terminated at Buckshee. Buckshee is situated just slightly north of Kilinver on the shore of Loch Feochan (a sea loch) with a short branch of about 2 miles heading north east to serve a distillery in the village of Feochan. The village of Buckshee has a small harbour with the fish being taken out by train. Also there is a small distillery which again has its product taken out by rail. Other goods traffic is generated by the distillery at Feochan. Also of course there is coal and other general goods. The layout has been in the making for a number of years and is the work of a small group of Redditch Model Railway Club Members. The layout has very much been a product of cramming as much in to a small area to both give operational interest and allow the finished product to be easily transported to exhibitions in a small hatchback car. The layout was first shown at the Redditch Model Railway Club Exhibition in 2004 in a very much unfinished state. Much time has been spent since to bring the layout up to a far more complete state.  

With the Club concentrating on the construction of exhibition layouts it was decided that we needed to construct a test track that could be set up quickly in the Club Room for members to test their locomotives and rolling stock. Whilst it is not designed as an exhibition layout it could be taken to model railway exhibitions. It is designed to operate on conventional 12 volts DC there is provision for it to be operated using a DCC system if required. The layout has been christen "Barrie Island" by a number of our Club members after one of our members Barrie Summers who regularly brings his prized locomotives to test on the layout and sometimes they don't work as he had hoped. During June and July 2016 the layout was rebuilt to allow more trains to be operated. The test track layout now features three circuits and can be operated in either analogue or DCC mode or a mixture of the two at the same time. The layout gives a number of our members hours of fun on club nights.