Woodfleet Tramway 4mm, 00 gauge
UPDATE: 24th September 2016
ABOVE: This will be the exhibition section of Woodfleet Tramway, representing the Lytham St Annes section and will have a short fiddle yard each end as I don't have the strength (or transport) to exhibit the full layout . The stock will be a varied section of heritage and foreign trams, such as those that can be found at Crich and other tram museums. I also assumed that Lytham windmill wouldn't survive post Victorian times (there was a lot of protest at an "industrial" unit on the green and the windmill was abandoned for years) and planners would allow building on the Green. In real life, luckily they didn't! and the tramway ran through the centre of the town not along the green and the windmill was recently restored!!!
I acquired this layout from an advert on the East Lancs Model Trams website from a gentleman who wanted to find a good home for the layout, as he was retiring from tramway modelling and was relocating. So, after a long drive to near the Dartford Bridge on the M25, fully loading the vehicle up and driving back through a snowstorm, the layout was relocated to north east Wales.
It is based on the Blackpool Tramway and represents the tramway from Fleetwood to Lytham St Annes (where I used to live!) and features Lytham Lifeboat Station (now a museum) and various buildings from Fleetwood. As it's not an accurate model of the tramway, I decided to name it "Woodfleet Tramway" and will eventually represent a tramway museum, along the lines of 'Heaton Park' or 'Crich'
Because of its size (12 foot by 4 foot) and the effort it takes to assemble it, it doesn't leave home and resides in my spare room. It still needs some restoration after its journey and checking/modification of the electrics.
The layout came without stock, but I have slowly been building up a small collection of working trams - some Corgi models motorised using Bachmann chassis and various motorised plastic and whitemetal kits, so hopefully, one day it will be fully working again!