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Wincoleton Introduction

Layout Details 

Wincoleton the fictitious station on the Somerset and Dorset Junction Railway line was midway between Evercreech Junction to the South and Masbury in the North. The small mining town of Mangaford, to the east of Wincoleton is also served. Both the mine and town are reached by a five mile branch line which joins the main line at Wincoleton. Wincoleton station has staggered platforms the one on the north east side, has all the main buildings on it. Trains to Mangaford leave from this platform and run out of the station over the "wrong" line of what is normally a double track section of the main line. This is to gain access to the branch line, which is actually within the fiddle yard. Most of the main line trains call at the station on route to Bath, Bournemouth, and Evercreech Junction and beyond. There is a centre road within the station, similar to that at Evercreech Junction. This is used to hold the branch train and pilot or banking locomotives. These locomotives are needed to assist some of the heavy trains on their climb up the 1 in 66 gradient towards the line summit at Masbury. The summit is 811 feet above sea level. Many of the freight services are still in the hands of the Fowler 7F’s, which were built for the line. It will be another five years before the line will benefit from the Standard 9F 2-10-0’s. Passenger trains are in the hands of a mixture of Midland, LMS and Southern locomotives with streamlined West Country Pacific’s being used on a frequent basis following their successful trial in the early years after nationalisation. The Fowler class 2P’s are still used on front line duties to pilot the heavy passenger trains

Magazine Features : The layout was featured in the July 1996 edition of British Railway Modelling and the December 2000 edition of Railway Modeller

What has happened to the layout

Between May 1993 and May 2001 Wincoleton attended a total of 22 exhibitions. The first being the 14th Redditch Model Railway Exhibition and the last was the 22nd Redditch Model Railway Exhibition. Following a period of storage th elayout was put up for sale in April 2006 and sold in June 2006 to the proprietor of Castle Trains in Warwick. The layout is now on display in their shop.