Life in a Northern Town (Winter 1963) (00)

Layout History

This is my entry for the Peco Rail200 Diorama Competition

The task was to create a diorama using the supplied baseboard and length of 00 gauge track within certain criteria. I decided that, as my North Winterton layout, set in wintertime, always attracted good comments about the scenic work, I would do another winter-set scene. But what theme? I enjoy watching 70's and 80's music videos on YouTube, and one of my regular favourites was the 1985 song "Life in a Northern Town" by Dream Academy, which references the bad winter of 1963. So the scene was set - a northern town in winter, and more specifically a colliery branch line in the Co. Durham coalfields. I wanted to concentrate on the building and scenic work, so didn't feel the need to add any more trackwork. I also felt it was far more common to see the backs of houses from a railway line than the fronts, so that is what I chose to model. It was quite a challenge to fit an interesting scene in such a small space - I had to leave out the allotments I wanted to include! The height limit of 140mm was also quite restricting.

Layout Description

The main buildings and bridge are all from the excellent Scalescenes range of downloadable card kits. The low relief background buildings are venerable Townscenes sheets, and the barely visible backscene is from ID Backscenes. The scene was first finished with various green scatter materials and rubberised horse hair before being overlaid with Woodland Scenics snow powder. I wanted to represent a slightly thawed scene, so the snow is not laid on too thickly. The buildings have lighting installed but this is not activated for the competition. The signal was actually inherited from my very first, and long-since dismantled layout, "Huggate", with the home arm replaced by a distant