GE in Town and Country (2): Great Easton and Tye Green

Great Easton is my take on the rural aspects of the GE. Great Easton is a real place, just north of Dunmow. This layout rewrites history by creating Stansted Junction 100 years earlier than the current junction with the line heading due east to Great Easton. A branch runs from Great Easton via Tye Green to Canfield where  it joins the Bishops Stortford to Witham line. No airport in those

This layout lives under my Bow Locks line and is my take on the rural and small town sides of the GE system. It is laid out as a U shaped “terminus to fiddle yard” scheme with a branch line running in front of the main fiddle yard.

The scenic part of the layout is basically a U shape. The pictures now follow the route clockwise from the branch Fiddle Yard, through Tye Green, past the convergence of the branch and mainline and on to the terminus at Great Easton. The “mainline” Fiddle Yard sits behind the Tye Green backscene.


F5 (Gibson) and Ongar push pull set (Kirk) enter Tye Green from the Dunmow direction
Tye Green station is inspired by pictures of Cockfield. Further along, and glimpsed in later pictures below, is the level crossing, a Granary  inspired by Fakenham and a coal yard inspired by one at Romford. The line then climbs to meet the mainline from Stansted Junction. The backscene brick building is a stopgap.


J19 (PDK) lingers near the allotment. 


F5 awaits the right of way across the level crossing on its journey to Great Easton





Coal Yard
As a child, I was always intrigued with the coal yard I could just see from the train on a branch line on the left as we approached Romford on trips to london from Chelmsford. Only later I learned that this was the Upminster branch. The coal yard illustrated owes much to that memory. The Pelican Loader is a heavy conversion of an Oxford Models tractor





Drivers eye view
Imagine yourself on a DMU leaving Great Easton and climbing away towards Stansted junction. The branch to Tye Green and onwards to Dunmow, falls away to the left.


General View of Great Easton
Since taking this picture I have embarked on remaking the background street to look more like a mid-Essex town rather than an outer London Borough. This illustrates my “Innovation and Continual Improvement” approach to modelling. Buildings take a long time to make, so rather than have gaps in a scene I use quick kit solutions first and follow up with more considered structures at my leisure. The same goes for all aspects of my layouts from the track upwards.


Arrival
L1 (Hornby) has arrived in the bay with a local from Bishops Stortford to Cambridge. the train has come via Stansted junction and will reverse here back to the junction and onwards to Cambridge. The scene was based on the release crossover still extant at Enfield Town. Canopy valancing is etched brass by D&S. The platform buildings (not visible here) are self build using PowerPoint drawn and coloured overlays laminated and bonded to Perspex substructures. For those without CAD software, PowerPoint drawing capability is powerful enough to design and print model building components.


Station forecourt


A DMU awaits departure!
I do so hate picture captions where diesels are dismissed as "a DMU"  alongside pictures of steam engines described in great detail. All traction is equal, but I will concede some is more equal than others. Perhaps the relative age of the traction has something to do with ones historical view. BTW, this is a Cravens Unit (Class 105) from Bachmann. This model is fitted with a Loksound chip which, even with DC control, is superb..