Elmham Market

Elmham Market is now a sleepy market town in Suffolk, but in the Middle Ages it was a prosperous borough built on the burgeoning wool trade. It was still sufficiently important in Victorian times for the Great Eastern Railway to include it on one of its meandering cross country routes but it hasn’t developed much since. After helping deliver fuel and munitions during the Second World War, traffic has fallen away again but in the 1950’s the line was still well served with through trains to Cambridge and Ely in the west and Colchester and Ipswich in the east.  Former GER locomotives still predominate but nationalisation has brought with it some incomers and British Railways is introducing diesel railcars as well as the occasional diesel locomotive.

In reality Elmham Market doesn’t exist.  The model is based on Lavenham but I have taken liberties with the track plan and so have created a fictional location, which also gives me the opportunity to run locomotives that wouldn’t have been seen in the real Lavenham.  It is still very much work in progress, and has taken almost fourteen years to get this far.  It is fully operational with only scenery left to be completed. The model is EM gauge, with the track plan designed using Templot and the track made with C&L components. Points are driven by Fulgurex motors but they are being progressively replaced by DCC concepts Cobalt classic motors. Locomotives are a mixture of etched brass kits and RTR offerings, regauged to EM and detailed and weathered as necessary. Carriages are also a mixture of D&S kits, Gresley coaches built around Bill Bedford etched sides and RTR offerings.  Wagons are mostly kit built.

 

Ivatt 2MT nears Elmham Market with a local passenger train.  This is a regauged Bachmann loco renumbered and with a Darlington chimney fitted.

 

46465 enters the station.

 

Royal Clauds meet at Elmham Market.  62614, a regauged and repainted Hornby loco, waits in the platform for sister engine, 62618, constructed from a Blacksmith kit, to clear the single line section.

 

The same scene as viewed from the over bridge at the end of the station.

 

A J15 shunts the daily pick up goods whilst a B12/3 arrives with a through train.

 

The B12/3 is held up whilst a late running J17 on a train of oil tankers arrives on its way to sidings serving airfields still in use during the Cold War.

 

An F5 leaves the station with a local service...



Whilst the J15 continues its shunting.



A Claud waits to depart with a local service

 

and a March based K1 heads back home with a fitted freight

A video has been made of the railway by my son, Tom, and is shown here:



He has also just completed a short taster/outtakes video and the link to that is shown here: