midland road

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Midland Road is at one end of the short Southill Light Railway, the 15" minimum gauge railway set up by the wealthy landlord of Southill Park in North Nottinghamshire between the wars.It is the terminus outside the estate walls in the village of Southill. The line runs through the estate, and the yard with engine sheds and workshop, onto the village of Tuther End, around two miles away. Traffic is mostly light goods between both villages and the estate, with a regular passenger service and occasional runs just for pleasure around the estate.

It is a Friday morning in October, Mr Manning has just parked his car outside his workshop (Mannings Gas Collectors and Carrot Pickers), when Harry arrives on 'Sooty', a yellow diesel locomotive built just this year. He is bringing the SLR passenger coach in from the estate yard, ready for the morning run to Tuther End. Meanwhile Eric has been busy coupling the two small ballast wagons up to 'Omi', the Italian diesel. Mister Manning opens up the workshop doors and pulls back the tarpaulin on the old steam locomotive he is restoring for the SLR and decides to start with a cup of tea..

The SLR was inspired by two websites.. Carl Arendt's Micro Layouts and the Gn15.info site. As a newcomer to model railways, with limited space and a budget restricted to second hand and scratchbuilding stock, I loved the idea of minimum space layouts.. the look of Gn15 appealed to the cartoonist in me and the SLR was soon born. I started with one end of the line, one day I'll build similar sized layouts for the Estate yard and Tuther End and connect them all up.. or run a line around the garden between the layouts!

Latest..

03/03/04. Major changes! Midland Road has been scrapped! Seems a little drastic, but basically the running was awful and I didn't want to waste too much more time 'prettifying' the layout and then never using it. Work has started on Tuther End.