Although not a railway modeller myself, I do enjoy attending model railway exhibitions as and when the opportunity arises. The ingenuity, modelling skills, indepth research and attention to detail of the modelling fraternity never cease to amaze me, and I doff my cap to you all.
As with a visit to a heritage line, exhibitions can be a time portal to the golden age of railways, rekindling fond memories of steam for some, the sectorisation and privatisation years of the 1980s and ‘90s for others, or, for the likes of myself, the BR blue and green/two-tone green era of the 1970s, at a time when I was in my teens enjoying days out spotting and depot bashing with like-minded mates.
A couple of my favourite layouts covering this period are Black Country Blues and Shenston Road (both have featured in BRM), as they perfectly depict the gritty industrialised environment I recall from my youth, that of living in the Black Country region of the West Midlands with its monolithic gasworks, steelworks and power stations dominating the local landscape – all gone now, of course.
Indeed, there are several locations in the Black Country that I have often thought would make for interesting ‘modern era’ (i.e. 1970s, ‘80s, ‘90s) modelling projects, one of which is the once busy general rail freight terminal at Pensnett, hence the reason for this feature.
The main purpose of this article, and its accompanying images, is to hopefully provide a reasonably detailed account of what Pensnett had to offer in the way of modelling potential – trains, wagons, motive power, etc – and to suggest what other traffics could
