Cleethorpes Coast Celebrates at 70

As mentioned in my previous post 'Shifting Sands' attended the 70th anniversary weekend of the Cleethorpes Coast Light Railway over the weekend of 14th and 15th July. This turned out to be a very enjoyable weekend indeed, aided by the visiting locomotives, frequent service and other attractions.

Star attractions were of course Katie and Sian, I was lucky enough to persuade the driver of Katie to line them up for a shot at Kingsway on the Sunday morning.

Alongside 'Shifting Sands' in the Griffin Hall building were displays from the local model engineers, G scale models and two narrow gauge layouts that were great examples of small space modelling. Firstly, in 009, was 'Dolwyn', based on the Glyn Valley Tramway and featuring some superb scratchbuilt structures based on examples in the locality.

(Photo courtesy Billy Hanner)

In O-16.5 'B.A. Cookes Engineering' was a busy industrial scene featuring a little standard gauge action alongside the narrow gauge. The 7mm Narrow Gauge Association was being well promoted too.

(Photo courtesy Billy Hanner)

I will admit to lurking by 'Shifting Sands' and listening to comments from viewers, I suppose it would have been nice to have operated it but the logistics might have proved difficult, as would keeping the right balance between playing trains and family time. I did however pose for a photo....

The eagle-eyed will see that the backscene is almost at the back of the glass case, in actual fact the fiddle yard was sticking out of the back of the cabinet and the back was actually a specially installed bespoke piece of hardboard in place of the usual glass doors. Fitting it all took a bit of pre-planning and creation of some adaptor pieces, taking it all apart again only took a few minutes!

I have uploaded my pictures from the weekend to Flickr here, my thanks to Billy Hanner for the pictures of the model railway layouts as I seemingly forgot to take any.

Colin