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Newbie research question

Hi All

Typical story i guess, kids almost grown up, more disposable income, frivolous gifts from wife cos there's not actually much i need etc etc.

Anyway i was bought a hornby scotsman set so i thought i'd do something i always wanted to do as a kid, but didn't have the opportunity, and have a go at building my own layout with landscape and scenery etc. A few months on and i've been bitten by the bug, the hornby layout is coming on nicely and i'm starting to think about what to do next.

I have lived in Haverhill, Suffolk all my life and have some vague memories of both Haverhill south and Haverhill north stations on the Colne valley and Stour valley lines and thought it would be great to attempt to model both and the links between which would give me a real project to get my teeth into.

I haven't decided on 00 or N Guage yet probably the latter due to space, i'll most likely need to make it modular, but i do want to go with DCC / Computer control. I haven't made a final decision on era yet either but it will be post war, some time between 1900 and 1935.

Now to my questions.

Where do i start to gather all the information i'll need ? an internet search has turned up very little.

Has anybody already modelled this area ? if so i'd like to get in touch with them and perhaps start sharing info.

I probably need to join a reasonably local club for tips and advice from their experienced experts, any reccomendations ?

I'm sure there'll be many more as i go along but all advice gratefully recieved.

Thanks very much.

Mark

Reply to
Mark
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Reply to
mark

Easy in either scale (don't let people tell you DCC is impossible in N, its trivial with the right bits).

N will present problems with locos; I doubt most of what you need will be available in ready to run form. Can't answer for OO.

Various railway historical societies. Books. Libraries.

Lots of people I guess.

There is a nice model of Haverhill South in 2mm finescale which goes to shows now and again. One photo of it part way down

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Try various ones until you find one you like. Clubs vary in their approach and interests.

- Nigel

Reply to
Nigel Cliffe

Mark,

First thing to do these days is to type the name of your station into Google UK and restrict the search to UK only and see what you get,

The first one you'll get on your list could be this web page

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and within that webpage, there are numerous links one of which is

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- the Colne Valley and Halstead preservation Society. This site has a lot of information about the railway company and its rolling stock and more links to other sites. You could spend a fair chunk of your life tracing this :-)

The other think to look for are books on tehy railway company. I'm pretty sure that someone must have published at least one book over the past few decades and you could pick them up second hand.

Go to AbeBooks and type Colne Valley Railway into their search engine and it comes up with this list

Watch out - that URL might wrap in your reader.

Other than that, walk the line or what's left of the trackbase and dig around in local museums and newspaper archives

Jim.

Reply to
Jim Guthrie

Try

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HTH

Simon.

Reply to
Simon Harding

Thanks Nigel

OK that might force my decision on scale, not sure that i want to get into kit or scratch building locos at least certainly not yet. It's a shame though, i was definately leaning toward N.

Looks good in the photo, any idea where i might be able to see it in the flesh ?

Reply to
mark

Which locos do you need ? You may find you can't get them in OO either.

Its a good model. Sorry, don't have any news of when it may next appear.

- Nigel

Reply to
Nigel Cliffe

That's a good point, perhaps i'd better start to research that first !

Reply to
mark

Thanks for the advice Jim

Your right about the first web page, >On Sat, 01 Jul 2006 09:37:16 +0100, snipped-for-privacy@winchesterhome.net wrote: >

Reply to
mark

Email me offline - I am doing same. Have heaps of stuff on Haverhill North.

Reply to
drac

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