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The Story:
The year is 1912 and Kingston Regis is having yet
another glorious sunny day with the railway and town very busy, as usual. It is
reputed, or so local folk lore says, that the Prince Regent once stayed at the
Crown Hotel a former coaching inn, and in honour of this event Kingston had
Regis added to the town's name.
Although a prosperous small town, the major
railway companies had bypassed Kingston Regis, so in 1902 the local business
men decided to build an eight mile 2 foot 3 inch narrow gauge line to connect
the town to the nearest main line railway. The railway, unlike many, has an
excellent passenger and goods service and has rewarded its shareholders
extremely well which can be seen by the large amount of traffic on the line.
At the church a wedding has just taken place and the newly weds pose for
photographs whilst their carriage awaits to whisk them off for their honeymoon.
The Facts:
The layout is built to 4mm/ft (1:76) using 9mm
gauge track, commonly known in the UK as '009' and represents a 2 foot 3 inch
narrow gauge railway serving the fictitious small English town of Kingston
Regis. All the track work and points (turnouts/switches) are hand built from
SMP phosphor bronze Code 75 rail using 3mm or 4mm wide strips of printed
circuit board as sleepers (ties). The layout is 12 foot 3 inches long and 18
inches wide with a 'fiddle yard' located at 90 degrees to one end. The rolling
stock and locomotives are all constructed from a variety kits. Although
Kingston Regis is fictitious most of the buildings have been modelled from
actual buildings from around England. For example, the station building is
based on Portsmouth Arms on the Exeter to Barnstaple line, and the Crown Hotel
on the hotel of the same name in Wells, Somerset. The church is loosely based
on the one at Caldecott in Leicestershire. All the buildings have been built by
Jane using the now, regrettably, unavailable Linka Casting System. The
backscenes have been handpainted by Jane, using artist's acrylic paints.
(update July 2005 - Linka reintroduced - go to
Linka page.)
