BR Totem: Ashbrook Dale

This 00 gauge layout was built and owned by two members. It depicted the station, goods yard, and stone loading areas of Ashbrook Dale, a fictitious terminus station in Derbyshire, on a single line branch of the LMS, off the main line to Manchester.

The railway was supposedly instigated by the local quarry owners as a way of gaining more markets for their stone, and the automated stone loading facilities were a feature of the layout. With the coming of the railway the village of Ashbrook has thrived and the framers now have a dairy for the onward distribution of their dairy products and milk.

The layout was set in the 1930s and reflected the LMS locos and rolling stock of this period. Much of the stock was kit-built, and included experimental diesel-electric locomotives that were trialled by the LMS at Derby. The working of the layout was designed with the public in mind, so that there were varied movements with typical rolling stock of the period.

All the buildings were typical LMS style and were scratch-built from plasticard. The exception was the signal box, which was a Churchill Brass Kit.

The layout has now been dismantled, and parts of it incorporated in a new layout, Ashbrook Dale II.