'Cheriton Bishop' OO Gauge Model Railway

Filmed at the Royston & District Model Railway Club exhibition in Bassingbourn on 1 April 2023.

Cheriton Bishop is a 00 gauge layout depicting a Western region branch line terminus and is set in the 1950s/60s British Rail era. It is exhibited by the East Beds Model Railway Society (EBMRS).

Taken from the club website;

The village of Cheriton Bishop is situated 9 miles west of Exeter and, although it never had a railway, with a delightful name like that it jolly well should have done.

It seemed to us that the Great Western, probably more than any other railway could find traffic potential in any town within its reach that had more than six inhabitants. Grasping on this unlikely premise, we imagined that it constructed a branch from Longdown on its Exeter to Newton Abbot via Heathfield line, to Tedburn St Mary and Cheriton Bishop.

The buildings on the layout have been chosen to fit with its chosen location; the train shed is based on that at Moreton Hampstead, whilst all the other principal structures whilst not being based upon any specific prototypes, are characteristically Great Western. In order to introduce a bit of operational and visual interest, we have assumed that, at some point in the past, the LSWR were granted running powers over the branch. This gives us an excuse to run BR(SR) locos and stock as well as BR(WR) and this provides greater variety than many ex GWR branch line layouts. The model is set in the late 1950’s to early 1960’s.

Trackwork is built to finescale OO standards. All pointwork is hand built using code 75 bullhead rail soldered to copper clad sleepers and operated by some really old H&M motors that have been surprisingly reliable over the years. All the signals are controlled by relays; the level crossing gates also work, train control is by the excellent Pentroller hand held units and, in order to try to run a ‘hands off’ railway, uncoupling is by Sprat and Winkle line couplings and magnets.