GRANTHAM

Thursday, June 30, 1938, was a high-profile day for the LNER. Its ever enterprising publicity department put together an imaginative way of launching the new ‘Flying Scotsman’ coaching stock due to enter service the following week by resurrecting iconic GNR Stirling ‘Single’ No. 1 and assembling a rake of ancient six-wheeled stock to recreate the train from 50 years previously to highlight progress.

Three days later, this time under a cloak of secrecy, A4 ‘pacific’ No. 4468 Mallard hurtled down Stoke Bank to attain an unprecedented speed of 126mph – a record for steam traction that stands to this day.

Within a breathless week, the LNER had both wowed the railway press and stunned the world at large with its engineering achievements. It is this pinnacle of a remarkable era of railway history that we have sought to recreate with ‘Grantham the Streamliner Years’.

Resumé

The layout last appeared in the pages of this magazine in March 2014 and much required to be done at that stage. Eight years and more than a dozen exhibition appearances later, ‘Grantham’ is now finished, or at least as finished as it’s ever going to be. There has been one last ‘final push’ to get the layout ready for the Festival of British Railway Modelling, where Tony Wright (de facto official photographer for the project) took the majority of the photographs that accompany this article.

Although I’ve undertaken a lot of the layout construction work myself, I’ll be the first to acknowledge that it has ultimately been a team effort. Joining RMweb and starting a layout thread proved to be one of the best things I did – through this link I met a remarkable group of like-minded modellers who have become key members of ‘Team Grantham’. Each has made their own unique contribution to the layout, which I hope to give due credit for in the following.

The trackplan for the layout is based on the pre-war track layout at Grantham station and its derivation was described in the previous (2014) article. Despite the apparent complexity of the trackplan, it was an early decision to make use of the Peco Streamline Code 100 trackwork system (partly for exhibition robustness). Most of the formations are straightforward combinations of standard Peco pointwork and only one item had to be handmade.

Notwithstanding, the full layout occupies a hefty 33ft by 17ft footprint. Fortunately, a significant 2012 house move resulted in the acquisition of a former Methodist chapel and school house. With the latter providing comfortable living accommodation, the chapel