To Caistor and Cleethorpes

I thought some railway content on the blog was in order after a few weeks of  Doctor Who. On Sunday, with clear skies after the stormy weather of the previous days, I headed across Lincolnshire to Caistor for the annual model railway exhibition. Despite many flooded fields I found that the roads were largely clear, the only bit of surface water encountered being a big pool on the A46 (although I discovered on my return home that the outgoing route I had taken via Bawtry was now closed due to flooding).  

Town hall shows can bring a mixed variety of layouts, the highlight for me being Paul Windle's 'High Stamley', an atmospheric 009 layout placing the railway in the landscape in a relatively small space. It also runs very well to a pattern that the operators know and provides movement most of the time, including on the road. There's also a very large dog from a popular animation hiding in a corner!

Further narrow gauge interest was 'Welton Park', the O9 layout from the Market Deeping club that was at Narrow Gauge Now back in July. On the standard gauge front two layouts representing the BR blue era caught my attention, 'Boston Frodsham' and Ken Gibbon's 'Lapford Road', which I hadn't seen for a  few years. What was noticeable here was that with a few exceptions most of the stock was of an older generation sensibly detailed up, including Triang-Hornby Mk2 coaches, an Airfix class 31 and Airfix kit brake vans. Other layouts were full of the latest toys but perhaps lacked the consistency across the board.

It is not a huge show and after an hour and a half, (and a small expenditure on some narrow gauge items from a trader) I opted to head the relatively short hop to the coast to Cleethorpes to call in on the Cleethorpes Coast Light Railway. The Guest 0-6-0DM 'Rachel' was in charge, and do not worry, giant spiders have not attacked her, she was dressed up for the Halloween season. After a train ride and some lunch I walked up the floodgate to get a couple of photographs.

To be pedantic you are beside the Humber estuary at this point and the actual sea is tantalisingly in the distance, so as the weather was so nice I walked up the marine embankment to a point just past the currently disused CCLR Humberston station, from where I could see the sea, Spurn Point and both of the Humber forts. Ironically exactly a year ago to the day we had stayed in a caravan just here and I had watched and photographed the sunrise from the balcony. I regretted not having my "proper" camera with me on this visit, but the picture below from my phone has turned out reasonably well.

(Click for larger version)

The days that followed have turned to much less pleasant weather and the brief trip to the coast has allowed the longer days of summer to stay fresh in my mind for a little longer. As the nights draw in and the clocks go back I tend to find that these memories help. What will also help is working out what the next modelling project will be, that may take a little longer but don't be surprised if an influence from Caistor creeps in...

Colin