Jewal

Jewal line

The Setting

Jewal Line is a layout incorporating to fictional places Owls Wood Halt and Badgers Set Loop. Set in the late 1950's to early 1960's in the months before the line is closed by BR after being taken off the land owners when the railway was nationalized in 1948. The line is rural England and was built by the land owners as a way to get produce to market, passenger traffic was only put in by BR after take over. The old owner can be seen above the halt discussing if once close they are going to preserve the line and re-open it.

The Plotted History of Build

This is a project that has changed names many times over the last 4 years or longer not quite sure when this started. Think there were original plans for a OO9 test track and a OO test track. Construction began in early 2013 as a test track. For the testing of newly built wagons to see if they would run true and pass through finescale points. Also latterly a kadee magnet was added to the layout to see if the couplers worked on the wagons and the locos. As time passed on it became a test bed for DCC point control as well, this saved flicking the points every time.

In September 2013 after Emily lost her Grandma Jean. To help Emily get over this Neil decided we could dedicate the layout to her by calling the layout Owl's Wood, as during Emily's childhood her Grandparents had the nicknames of Owl and Badger from the Children's TV Series The Animals of Farthing Wood. The layout suddenly started to grow a station halt and a goods shed over the far end point testing section. Small buildings covered over the point motors that where on top of the layout, and the wiring was hidden under flock and ballast. This was then taken to Southport Model Railway show and exhibited as a working diorama on the Bolton and District Model Railway Club stand.

Post the exhibition a further few pieces of the same wood that the layout was built out of was found. It was then decided that an extension be added to the current layout. After much thinking and planning it was decided that this would be a passing loop with signal box. During the construction of the extension to the layout Emily then lost her Grandad Walt in February 2014 and with this came the first name change, now the line itself did not have a name but we knew it needed to incorporate Owl and Badger and we henceforth decided on Owl's Wood Station and Badgers Set Loop.

Then in June 2014 whilst organizing our wedding we decided to dedicate our wedding cake to Emily's Grandparents as their part in our day by naming the Fondant Loco which was to be our Cake Topper JEWAL this was the name of the caravan where Emily spent many many happy times during her childhood and is of course a shortened version of Jean and Walt. From this idea then came the plan to name the layout The JEWAL Line.