‘Britain’s Biggest Model Railway’, the 200ft-long Heaton Junction layout, on show at the Old Market Hall this weekend, evokes the railway that I remember from school cross country runs in winter. The River Calder was often the colour of the resin used in the model, occasionally tinted dull indigo, probably when they were dying textiles upstream at Dewsbury.
The construction team have gone to great lengths to capture the sights and sounds of the Calder Valley in the post-British Railways era but fortunately they haven’t added the smell of the local sewage works.
The wintry feel and rusty, oily ambience is just as I remember it. I’m looking forward to the Heaton Junction layout moving on to stage 2 as their next project is to recreate a marshalling yards based on Healey Mills, which lay at the foot of the slope alongside a section of the river that had been diverted to allow the construction of the yards. Scale models of the lighting towers will be included.