‘OO’ GAUGE LAYOUT DERWENTHORPE
Rolling back the years
Phil Mason and Ian Willis joined forces on a layout that re-imagines the final days of the Derwent Valley Light Railway in the early 1980s.
Words: Chris Gadsby Artwork: Andrew Mackintosh
What makes this layout great?
1
Photography: Chris Nevard
“
There’s a lot of detail at ‘Derwenthorpe’ to keep you looking in every nook and cranny, and the overgrown nature of the entire line comes through with grass between the rails, rather than the more traditional ballast on show.
”
2
The human brain has a fabulous ability to imagine and wonder about how things could be or might have been, often planting images as we drift off to sleep or daydream while sitting at our desks. Regarding model railways, this is quite a valuable skill, and the number of ‘what if’ layout scenarios we see shows that the imaginations of modellers up and down the country are thriving. There are some layouts which are complete fantasy and some which are a little closer to reality. Phil Mason and Ian Willis’s layout ‘Derwenthorpe’ falls more into the latter category, as although the Derwent Valley Light Railway closed in 1981, after traffic finally petered out, they have decided it was busy right up until its final day.