The St Agnes Railway
Freelance Canadian Railway Modelling in Australia and other Model Railway Pages - Trevor Gibbs
Welcome to my little Railway and the associated web page. A note from a previous host indicated it was about to close and after nearly 20 years, it was time to rebuild it. Some of the narrative is same but I will be adding different pictures to reflect what the railway looks like these days! I hope you enjoy it!
Above Left - An early view of a Westbound leaving “Ridgehaven” for “St Agnes”
Left - The same train arriving at St Agnes at the “other end of the line”
The lead loco is the very first repaint of an Athearn F7 that I had minimal illustrations to follow but it has held well for 35 years!!!!
The St Agnes Railway is based in the main on a plan by E. E. Seely in a Model Railroader way back about 1973. The track plan was so good in its operational outline that I have actually built three layouts to various points to much the same plan, once in HO extending the track work to a 4 x 10 plan at my parents house, once in N in 3 x 6 when I was newly married, and again in HO to 4 x 8 with an extension fiddle yard in a couple of different spots being added once it was located in my garage. My main limitation was space wanting to work in the larger scales. Operationally my layout does a lot! The layout as shown here was originally in the house in two spare bedrooms but the children strangely enough needed bedrooms!
The theme is a generic Canadian one as a bridge line of sorts but it could be anything... anywhere anytime with a discrete change of buildings, cars and rolling stock. And anytime, I want to go back to Canada, a few steps to what is now the train room and I am there! I have a lot of generic Australian and US cars as well and always a project or two to do. It will never be finished and I will probably never have the time needed to finish it. However it is a hobby, and the healthy part is that I can walk away from it for quite some time when I need to.
I still have a few steam engines which I will "Canadianise" such as a Life Like 0-8-0 and a Bachmann 2-8-0 which may one day become a Central Vermont 800 class 2-8-0 as well as a Mantua 2-8-4 which because of prototype may become a "could have been…" I believe the Toronto Hamilton & Buffalo had two 2-8-4's and they were the only Canadian Berkshires. The Mantua engine has been fitted with a can motor . What it misses in detail is certainly make up for in running ability and I do not have any problem equating it to an South Australian Railways 720 class!
Canadian Pacific SW8 6701 crossing a CP RDC at Ridgehaven West
This is a view of a SW7 suitably modified to an SW8 by Bob Boudreau and sent in my direction by my friend Byron Thomas , Byron also sent me the RDC which was decorated by his late uncle. The RDC has a modified Athearn Switcher truck and works very well on my smaller curves. I have always liked the older Canadian Pacific paint scheme and these units typify it.
Both Byron and Bob live in Saint John NB and it is a testament to our hobby that the friendship extends over such a vast distance in this world.
GN 0-6-0 currently numbered 207 is switching a number of cars while 8412 is doing a turn run to Banksia from Ridgehaven and return.
You can see the tail end of the train on the main line while switching and other activities are going on to keep an operator busy as engineer, signalman, train controller, conductor and brakeman... all in one!