It's Wycrail this weekend, so Catcott Burtle has been set up for the last week or two sufficiently high off the ground to hopefully avoid the various scenic details being chomped on again by the cat who has a taste for white metal, brass and plastic card.
The happy snappy above is of Catcott, the ficticious (maybe more 'faction') scenario depicting a mixed train off the Bridgwater Branch which regularly featured such trains. It's unlikely that an ex-GWR wheeled coach would have been used in this service, but I hope you'll agree it looks the part. The Morris 8 Series E, suitably grottied up adds a little depth to the shot. I'm guessing it's the photographer's car.
Another dose of the pedants; the other day I received 'one of those armchair' emails that pops through from time to time with some chap taking great delight in telling me that I've got it all wrong because Catcott never had a halt and sidings. He'd even been on Google Earth to point other bits out that are different to the actual location. Well I know that of course, and because my parallel universe version is so different it's pretty obvious that this is a bit of fiction! This hobby is full of people with little imagination sadly, who only see things as black or white. I do wish they'd spend their time more contructively and actually do some model making rather than stating the obvious and wasting internet bandwidth. I consol myself in that he's probably a traffic warden with aspirations of being a lion tamer - he'll almost certainly have a squeeky voice and definately share a bed with 'mother' despite being 64 years of age.
If you're the pedant, because I'm sure you read this blog and because I'm not known to suffer fools too well, here's what Catcott Burtle is all about (again):
'Catcott Burtle, a could have been scenario which is heavily influenced by the BBC TV film Branchline Railway, and having been taken in by the wild open feel of the area much dominated by willow, water and big skies. Many roads in the area crossed the railway via manned level crossings rather than bridges, with each crossing having its own crossing keeper and railway cottage. Several of the cottages had no running water or electricity right up to closure in 1966, the water being delivered by rail in milk churns! Catcott, one of the many crossings on the line never was a halt or had sidings. In the parallel universe world here, imagine if to serve the local peat deposits things had been very different?'
- Find out more about Wycrail here