During our 2014 UK holiday we found a place to camp in Wallingford, a cute town just fifteen car minutes from Long Wittenham, a place made world renowned by the Pendon Museum.
1 The first layout to is the Dartmoor scene which is completely dominated by a timber viaduct
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4 A demonstration was given how freight train reared up to compress the train for a start uphill. It was next to impossible to make decent photos. The lighting is very difficult both in colour temperature as well as in lighting level. As the floor was made of wood my tripod was as good as useless. All other visitors kept moving around and the floor transmitted every single movement into the camera.
5 One of the few sharp photos I managed to make
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10 A 5600 lingers on the turntable. The 200 members strong 0-6-2T GWR 5600 Class was built between 1924 and 1928. All had been retired by 1965. Nine survived into preservation. This model shows apparent signs of intensive use, very much like real life.
11 To quote Yoda: A typical UK wheel arrangement, this 0-4-4 is. Built between 1897 and 1911 the 105 members of the M7 class served well on the intensive London network of the LSWR, later to be added to the Southern Railway fleet.
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16 Construction of the GWR 2800 series started in 1903 and continued until 1919 resulting in 84 members in total. Churchward designed them for heavy goods traffic.
17 And heavy this goods train is, arriving over the viaduct into the station.
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20 An autotrain, an early attempt to simplify operations and reduce costs. The locomotive was remotely controlled from a cab in the coach. The fireman would remain on the engine in order to stoke the fire.
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22 The Vale scene is the centre piece of the museum. Actually it is not so much a model railroad but much more a scale model of an area, more or less incidentally comprising a railroad.
23 Again the lighting was substandard so the colours are a bit off. You will hardly see photos of train. For one there were few, and if any they were moving all the time.
24 At the left part of the Vale is still under construction after decades of work.
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26 The buildings of the Vale are the main attraction of this layout. The Pendon construction method is about as far as you can go in this scale, with many building taking as much as 200-300 hours to build.
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28 Look at the incredible detail.
29 Every single roof tile separately applied.
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32 Not too sharp a photo but I like the scene so much I still want to include it.
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35 The thatched roofs are extremely labour intensive and probably the best in their class.
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98 The museum also houses a large collection of models
