Chelwarton

In use from September 1996 - February 2024

Chelwarton is built in OO gauge to a scale of 4mm to 1 foot. It is the successor to the club’s highly successful Ashdean layout and is built mostly on the same baseboards.

The opportunity has been taken to enlarge the whole operation and incorporate bigger and more flexible storage sidings (called the fiddle yard) on the back sections of the layout.

The design of Chelwarton is our version of a section of the former Great Central Railway London extension featuring the station at Charwelton, which was situated in a rural area south of Rugby on the border between Warwickshire and Northamptonshire.
We have changed the name of our version of the station as it is really only based on the original and not an exact copy.

The small town of Charwelton was a centre for iron ore mining and the Charwelton Ironstone Company operated a private siding from the station. Otherwise the town was typically rural with livestock farming in the surrounding countryside.

The tunnel was constructed instead of a cutting purely at the wishes of the occupants of Catesby House (descendants of the notorious Robert Catesby who was executed along with Guy Fawkes for his part in the Gunpowder Plot) who did not want to see the railway from their home.

A representation of Catesby House appears amongst the scenic effects on the tunnel end of the layout.
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