playmofire
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The last weekend in July saw the 4th Kirkbean Playmobil Exhibition which raised just short of £900 for the village hall. I took along the Great Woodville-Sea's End branchline. It was the first chance to try out the mylocosound steam sound card. It attracted a lot of favourable comment and ran faultlessly, as did the Playmobil locos.
Here's some background on the layout, followed by a link to a rather shaky and "swoopy" video at times. The loud whining noise sometimes heard on the video comes from another display.
This year's railway[/h1] Last year's railway was the busy and prosperous Seaport and Beachtown Coastal Railway, built in the mid-19th century to link the bustling fishing port of Seaport with what was to become, and still is, the popular family holiday resort of Beachtown. This year's display is the Great Woodville & Sea's End branchline, a quite different story.
The railway came to what was then the small market town of Woodville late in the 19th century railway boom when the Amalgamated Central and Northern Railway Company was persuaded to run a branchline to the town. It was a good move as the line opened up the industrial and business region inland to the produce of the area and, in the opposite direction, brought a wide range of goods into the town, leading to a boom for its shopkeepers and small businesses. This was added to when the owners of the businesses now supplying goods and services to Woodville and the surrounding area realised that it offered a peaceful and attractive place to live just over an hour's travel from their work. At first, the owners of the factories and other businesses built houses in and around Woodville purely to live in during the summer, their families living there throughout the summer months, while they travelled in to live in their town home from Monday to Friday, coming to Woodville just for the weekends. The Amalgamated Central and Northern Railway Company saw the potential here, putting on a summer service leaving at 08:15 on Monday from Woodville to get into the city by 09:30, with a Friday service leaving the city for Woodville at 15:30. This proved so popular that it eventually became a daily weekday service with the result that Woodville became, in effect, a commuter town with wealthy businessmen and factory owners and their families living there all year round. As a result, the previously small market town grew and, in the 1870s changed its name to Great Woodville.
The businesses in and around what was now Great Woodville had prospered because of the railway coming to it, and local businessmen and councillors decided that linking Great Woodville to the small estuary fishing village of Sea's End would bring still greater prosperity for the town. The intention was that Sea's End would develop as a holiday resort (a genteel one, of course), while the rail link to Great Woodville and beyond would be a benefit for the fishermen there and local farms. They approached the Amalgamated Central and Northern Railway Company with their idea, but it was not interested having realised that the railway boom had ended, so they set out to raise the money themselves. The intention was to complete the new branchline to mark the 50th anniversary of Queen Victoria's accession to the throne and call it the Victoria Jubilee Line, but it was only completed some eight years after that event and so was simply named the Great Woodville to Sea's End branchline.
From the outset the line was doomed. The cost of building the line more than doubled and the only way the consortium of local businessmen could get any trains running was to hand the finished line over lock, stock and barrel to the Amalgamated Central and Northern Railway Company who operated a basic service. The investment needed to turn the harbour at Sea's End into one to support a growing fishing fleet never took place and changes to the coast line north of Sea's End led to the estuary starting to silt up. Then, a mainline coastal extension led to a viaduct being built across the mouth of the estuary and this further speeded up the process of silting, leading to the end of any plans for a fishing fleet and holiday resort.
The line survived the closures following the 1964 Beeching Plan as the result of a typographical error, a typist omitting the line referring to the extension to Sea's End.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XytMRBpDwQY
Here's some background on the layout, followed by a link to a rather shaky and "swoopy" video at times. The loud whining noise sometimes heard on the video comes from another display.
This year's railway[/h1] Last year's railway was the busy and prosperous Seaport and Beachtown Coastal Railway, built in the mid-19th century to link the bustling fishing port of Seaport with what was to become, and still is, the popular family holiday resort of Beachtown. This year's display is the Great Woodville & Sea's End branchline, a quite different story.
The railway came to what was then the small market town of Woodville late in the 19th century railway boom when the Amalgamated Central and Northern Railway Company was persuaded to run a branchline to the town. It was a good move as the line opened up the industrial and business region inland to the produce of the area and, in the opposite direction, brought a wide range of goods into the town, leading to a boom for its shopkeepers and small businesses. This was added to when the owners of the businesses now supplying goods and services to Woodville and the surrounding area realised that it offered a peaceful and attractive place to live just over an hour's travel from their work. At first, the owners of the factories and other businesses built houses in and around Woodville purely to live in during the summer, their families living there throughout the summer months, while they travelled in to live in their town home from Monday to Friday, coming to Woodville just for the weekends. The Amalgamated Central and Northern Railway Company saw the potential here, putting on a summer service leaving at 08:15 on Monday from Woodville to get into the city by 09:30, with a Friday service leaving the city for Woodville at 15:30. This proved so popular that it eventually became a daily weekday service with the result that Woodville became, in effect, a commuter town with wealthy businessmen and factory owners and their families living there all year round. As a result, the previously small market town grew and, in the 1870s changed its name to Great Woodville.
The businesses in and around what was now Great Woodville had prospered because of the railway coming to it, and local businessmen and councillors decided that linking Great Woodville to the small estuary fishing village of Sea's End would bring still greater prosperity for the town. The intention was that Sea's End would develop as a holiday resort (a genteel one, of course), while the rail link to Great Woodville and beyond would be a benefit for the fishermen there and local farms. They approached the Amalgamated Central and Northern Railway Company with their idea, but it was not interested having realised that the railway boom had ended, so they set out to raise the money themselves. The intention was to complete the new branchline to mark the 50th anniversary of Queen Victoria's accession to the throne and call it the Victoria Jubilee Line, but it was only completed some eight years after that event and so was simply named the Great Woodville to Sea's End branchline.
From the outset the line was doomed. The cost of building the line more than doubled and the only way the consortium of local businessmen could get any trains running was to hand the finished line over lock, stock and barrel to the Amalgamated Central and Northern Railway Company who operated a basic service. The investment needed to turn the harbour at Sea's End into one to support a growing fishing fleet never took place and changes to the coast line north of Sea's End led to the estuary starting to silt up. Then, a mainline coastal extension led to a viaduct being built across the mouth of the estuary and this further speeded up the process of silting, leading to the end of any plans for a fishing fleet and holiday resort.
The line survived the closures following the 1964 Beeching Plan as the result of a typographical error, a typist omitting the line referring to the extension to Sea's End.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XytMRBpDwQY
