Watchet - West Somerset Mineral Railway
by David Fouracre

I've been fascinated by this little-known real life railway ever since I learned about it in the 1980s. It ran from Watchet on the West Somerset coast up to the Brendon Hills ridge via an astonishing 3/4 mile long 1 in 4 cable-hauled incline. The line was started in the 1856 and finally ground to a halt in the first ten or eleven years of the 20th century, when Spanish iron ore became cheaper to import directly to the blast furnaces of South Wales just across the Bristol Channel.

As I come from the village of Milverton, some 14 miles from Watchet, the line became a prime candidate for a model. Most of the locomotives and rolling stock items were at best second-hand, from a variety of sources even including a 4-4-0 ex-Metropolitan Railway condensing tank engine. The line had no link with the GWR Minehead branch other than a temporary one erected to transfer stock, so was more or less self-contained and in its operational era passed under the GWR line just south-west of Watchet. I decided to concentrate on the WSMR station at Watchet, with some linear compression, particularly with respect to the distance from the station and goods buildings to the locomotive shed.

The prototype layout is pictured below – the red rectangle area is what I’m trying to represent – with some compression, particularly regarding the loco shed location.

I started in the back garden by making lots of sawdust, ripping up 8x4 sheets of good quality 9mm ply (Somerset Panel Supplies, Taunton – very good, very helpful). Fixed small vertical battens along the back wall to anchor the cross-members, levelled pretty well but not final. The front of the cross members was supported by whatever they happened to be crossing: old kitchen units, jerry-built storage shelves etc. This makes the final structure absolutely immovable and also just as importantly makes good use of the under-layout space. I’ve set an unusually high track level: 1330mm/52½” above floor. This means that I’m looking at the models rather than down on them – crucial for realism I feel. The fiddle yard has been constructed to the left against the end wall just below the window frame.
The recess near the camera is to receive the control panel. In the next shot you can see the trackbed ‘risers’: ply with stripwood tops which support the final 9mm trackbed. This is where accuracy on levels is important, and with glue, screws and quick-release clamps the levels have turned out well and without grief. By the way, the hole at the end wall is ready to adventure into the garden, whenever that might be!

Fast-forward a bit now. I decided I wasn’t much of a Turner or a Constable, yet wanted to set the scene for the railway. Now the lovely folk at ID Backscenes couldn’t have been more helpful, and before you could say paintbrush had despatched two tubes each containing two 1.5m long sections of self-adhesive backscene photos, not too dissimilar to the Brendon Hills in that part of Somerset, and producing a total length of 6.0m of rolling moorland hills. My workshop length? 5.9m! Fixing these super backscenes onto suitable board is not for the faint-hearted, and definitely not to be attempted after a night on the sauce. Anyway, I mounted them on signwriting boards laid on the floor - much easier than sticking them in situ on the wall - and which were then glued to the painted block wall with NoNails. Voila! As far as the track was concerned, I wanted a thin underlay to reduce to some extent the rumble of tiny wheels, so opted for 3mm thick EFP30 closed-cell foam, available in many lurid colours and sizes from eFoam.co.uk. Watch the prices: the more you order the more the price per meter reduces drastically! I think two sheets 1m x 2m cost around £20. I used Screwfix contact adhesive to fix to the boards, as the adhesive retains its flexibility. As far as the track itself is concerned the WSMR was a light railway, so I bit the bullet and bought Code 100 N/S FB rail from Marcway, together with copperclad strip for sleepering. The final track is to be ballasted over the sleepers, so I decided life was too short to commission Chris Ward to 3D–print hundreds of the rather idiosyncratic chairs used on the original line.

I think that’s about all for the time being – I’ve been distracted by a 20-year-old project to scratch-build ‘Jane’, the diminutive Wantage Tramway 0-4-0 loco. No great rush then … Since 2021 I've completed models of the two goods sheds, the water tower and the locomotive shed. Just have to complete the ballasting with kiln-dried sand now!
February 2021, updated February 2024