INTRODUCTION
The crest of the London & North Western Railway Company
Mardale first started out as a test track in our model shop we used to own in Workington, Cumberland, (later to be renamed Cumbria). My father built the test track in 1971. Later he expanded it into the usual oval that would accommodate tail chasing trains for running in our shop. After several years as a plain test track, it was altered again and rebuilt into an a portable exhibition layout as shown in the photo below. We built a simpler test track for the shop that would take up less room. In this early form the station was not named. After rebuilding the station buildings, signal box and goods shed were replaced by LNWR design buildings.
The layout
before rebuilding as Mardale. It is shown here at one of Derwent
Railway Society's Open Days in the infancy of the Society. In the
version here the layout had no name and was set in LMS days. Sorry for
the low quality photo but the original slide deteriorated in
quality.
Mardale was the first 4mm scale layout to be built by me but it still used PECO code 100, flexible 00 gauge trackwork. Instead of it being of the continuous oval form it was reduced into a "U" shaped layout with a fiddle yard comprising a six stage sector plate. My modelling preferences were leaning towards the Western Division of the LMS after getting inspired by articles in the Railway Modeller by David Jenkinson and seeing his new Settle and Carlisle layout at the York Model railway exhibition. I bought a book by OS Nock about the LNWR and was intrigued by his account of the building of the West Coast main Line. He stated the route should not have been taken over Shap fell but to take a simpler route though a tunnel and emerge on Mardale Common and skirt the western shores of Haweswater and continue to Penrith. I looked at a map of the area and decided I would build an imaginary line using OS Nock's preferred route. To sum up; we had the railway era, the company and it was to be an ex-LNWR branchline terminating just north of Mardale. Later it was to be expanded north of Mardale into an alternative route to the North but it never progressed further than in the track plan on the layout page. Then for some unknown reason I jumped back in time and decided to have only LNWR period stock so all the LMS engines that were suitable for use in LNWR days got the makeover treatment.
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