Ideas and The Story

NB: The history on this page is a mixture of fact and fantasy - I'll plop relevant links in to the real world as and when!

In order that any model railway isn't simply a toy train trundling round and round in pointless circles for ever more, it needs a reason for being, a story if you like. Why does the train leave that station with those wagons and go over there?

My ideas and story currently centre on the village of Helmdon in south Northamptonshire. Why? For one, I used to live there and know the area quite well. Secondly two railway lines crossed there without actually joining, and the village though small, had two stations. Third, it is ripe for fantasy twisting of history! Read on and it'll come clear (maybe!). Look this all makes sense to me, and frankly that's all that is important!

Helmdon was apparently a source of fantastic quality building stone, a breif search on Google should lead you to find several big houses constructed of the stuff. The stone was quarried from an area just to the northwest of the village from the 13th century until sometime around the middle of the 20th century (according to Helmdon.com). I can find no other proof of this, so I'll trust their info, and I'll use that knowledge anyway, as an excuse for a private industrial line to feed into the broadly east to west running railway line initially formed in the mid 19th Century as the Northampton and Banbury Junction Railway. This line was eventually, through various mergers, part of LMS, then BR. In reality it closed in the 1950's, but in my fantasy world it still exists, as do the quarries.

At the dawn of the 20th Century the Great Central Railway (GCR) carved its way through rural Northamptonshire, creating tunnels and long viaducts to level its course. Tunnels and viaducts always look impressive on a model railway, so their frequency on GCR will be exploited.

The line needed various yards and junctions with existing lines in order to survive and a huge yard was built near Daventry at Woodford Halse (it was called Woodford and Hinton at that time). And a few miles south of there the line branched off at Culworth junction on a new line built to join up with the GWR at Banbury. In my fantasy world, this didn't happen. The N&BJR was already in place at Helmdon, and in reality had been built to accept two lines, so in my parallel universe GCR's main man, Watkin, came to an agreement with LNWR to improve the existing line from the Midland Railway junction at Northampton all the way to Banbury. By the time GCR came LNWR ran the line from Blisworth near Northampton to Banbury via Cockley Brake on the Banbury to Verney Junction line, which had also passed into LNWR control. I know, looking at relative positions of the towns on a map, it doesn't make sense for GCR to have done that, but hey, in my world, Banbury is 10 miles south of its present location! As part of the agreement, the route from Cockley Brake to Verney Junction via Brackley and Buckingham was also much improved¹.

As a direct result, the huge yard at Woodford never existed in my world. Instead the yard was built at the more significant town of Brackley, were the LNWR railways provided links to Northampton via Helmdon junction onto LNWR, Oxford via Banbury to Verney Junction link run by LNWR, to join GWR at Banbury. Also to Buckingham by traveling east at Brackley Junction onto the same LNWR Banbury to Verney Junction line. Actually now I've invented all that I can't figure why the junction and yards were built at Woodford at all - all that was needed was a big rope to drag Banbury south a bit, and a bottomless pit of cash next to Mr. Watkin. Simple.

To summarise, my twisting of history allows me to legitimately run a huge array of differing engines and company stock over my railway. GWR up from Banbury, LMS down from Northampton, and of course the LNER along my pet favourite line, the London Extension of the GCR. And nearly forgotten, the industrial (possibly narrow gauge) railway at Helmdon quarries. Plus I have the added bonus of not having rivet counters tell me what I've got wrong, because it's all fantasy, so it can be what I want. Muhahahahaha!

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