The embryonic Upwey and Broadwey Model Railway Club
received its first press coverage by the Dorset Echo on 21st November 1986.
The edition included a picture of the “Up” sidings board of the layout. Phil
was quoted in the accompanying article as saying that the construction of the
baseboards and the laying of track were almost complete. Time was to prove him
wrong in that the thrusts for authenticity and improved operation resulted in
quite a bit of re-design. However, Evercreech Junction was as much an enjoyable
learning process for everybody involved as anything else! Its legacy is a strong,
high profile model railway association providing a beneficial service within the
local community.
With the Echo press coverage, the scene was now set
to formalise the “club”. Consequently the 10th March 1987 saw the
Upwey and Broadwey Model Railway Club come into existence under the chairmanship
of Derek Stanhope with Phil Crocker as treasurer, Roger Bartlett as secretary
and Andy Marriott as vice-chairman. Additional committee members were Gerry Fusco
and Dave Riches. The membership subscription was set at £5 per annum and a
weekly contribution of £1. The agreed main aim of the club was to build an OO
gauge / 4mm scale model railway representative of the old S & D’s
Evercreech Junction as it was in BR days – the concept having originated by
the founding members Phil Crocker and Roger Bartlett – and thereby providing
plenty of scope for modelling by the membership.
With the increase in membership to around 20, Phil
concentrated his efforts on developing his scenic skills, whilst Roger proceeded
to expand the club’s collection of photographs and to study, in detail, the
numbers and classes of locomotives that ran on the S & D in BR days. These
proved to be extremely complimentary and effective, as Roger insisted on things
looking right and Phil had the skill to make them so. Derek ably supported them
in their tasks on the track-work side with his eye for sweeping curves –
although not to scale, the effect was uncannily credible.
Roger’s
formidable weapon in his strives for correctness was a newsletter called the
“Binliner” that he produced. This medium afforded him the opportunity to
criticise and steer the work by a mixture of gentle chiding and humour.
Literally, you didn’t dare do something wrong as you knew full well Roger
would make good mileage of it in the “Binliner”.
Such was the state of the club when Geoff Youell and myself joined in September 1987, following attendance at the club’s Bar-B-Q held at the Victoria Arms, Knights-in-the-Bottom; the highlight of which, according to Roger, was Jimmy Malcolm’s rare beef burgers! Geoff spotted the advert for the event in the Echo and mentioned to me that he quite fancied getting involved in some railway modelling having dabbled, in the past, with model ships and aeroplanes. Together, Geoff and I served our apprenticeships developing the scenery on the “Up” sidings board. Over the years, Geoff and I acquired a love/hate relationship with this board. A love because we’d worked on it, and a hate due to it’s three sets of ex-army table legs that it sported, which took a demonic delight in trapping fingers. It was also extremely heavy, requiring 2 strong men to move it more than a few feet.
Dave Samuel and his son Alan (then 12 years old) followed in our wake, and many was the night when young Alan went home covered in a mixture of expanded polystyrene nodules and Plaster-of-Paris. Geoff had launched into construction of the buildings under close scrutiny by Phil and Roger, whilst I got involved in the track work with Roger and George Dyer, and also helping Derek who had taken on the bulk of the work on the electrics from Lew Peters. Thus, organisation was coming to the project, however no job was started without discussion with Roger and Phil and study of the rapidly expanding collection of photographs.