Sovereign Colliery Junction
2mm Finescale/British Rail 1970's
Another Manchester Sheffield & Wath model? Yes and why not!? The Woodhead system holds an enduring fascination for many of us. This direct descendant of the builder’s ‘Mini-MSW’ once again focusses on the Wath arm of the system, the freight route which ran from the junction at Penistone to the huge coal concentration yard at Wath. And once again, the period is the 1970s, with the whole route into its final few years of operation before closure in 1981.
As with Mini-MSW, a circular format has been chosen to allow the longest possible trains in the smallest possible footprint. But this time, a colliery branch line and associated siding have been added to introduce a few diesels. Down the years the real route had around half a dozen of these short lines, opened and closed as the collieries they served sprang up and were worked out, with the final one disappearing in 1978. There were both Old and New Sovereign Collieries, but there never was a Sovereign Colliery Junction.
But, although fictional, an attempt has been made to capture the feel of the real railway. The track layout was taken from Worsborough Dale, about three miles down the line and used because of its compact nature. But the scenery takes its inspiration from further up the line, where the real climbing began on the way to Penistone and the main line across the Pennines. The tunnel exit echoes the real line at Silkstone No 1 Tunnel. The signal cabin and hut are replicas of those at Wentworth Junction. The twin bridges are a figment of the imagination!
The layout is built to 2mm Finescale standards using 2mm Scale Association components including Easitrac for the plain line. Points and signals are servo controlled from a DCC handset, eliminating the need for a control panel.
The Class 76 electric locomotives are all kit built, running on heavily modified Brawa chassis. The diesel locos are all off-the-shelf, but rewheeled with the 2mm Scale Association’s ‘drop-in’ wheelsets. Stock is a mixture of rewheeled RTR and kitbuilt, again all running on 2FS wheelsets.
The layout does not run to a timetable but aims instead to present a selection of typical trains taken from the working timetables of the period. MGR trains predominate, but all the others have been assembled with the aid of photographs and other information. The exception is the colliery branch train. To be accurate it really should be another set of MGR wagons. A bit of variety won the day!
