The Chelthwaite & Beccadale Railway was originally financed and built by two local businessmen to transport their products from the village of Beccadale down the valley to the town of Chelthwaite.

The principle traffic was treated timber from the creosote works and limestone from local quarries. The original civil engineering works were based on a proposed three foot gauge line but financial limitations meant that the lime was eventually built to its present measurements, allowing stock of generous proportions to operate.

Passenger services in the form of railcars were only introduced due to public pressure some years after the railway opened to freight traffic. The railway prospered until the nineteen fifties when competition from road traffic on improved highways caused it to close. The valley itself, on the border of Lancashire and the former West Riding of Yorkshire, now shows few traces of former railway activity and is rarely visited by anyone other than the local inhabitants, even the Ordinance Survey's map-makers having seemingly chosen to ignore its existence.

The section of the line depicted is that around Beccadale village and the creosote works.

The scenic base is expanded polystyrene covered in plasterer's scrim and filler paste, finished with several layers of scatter material. Trackwork is by Peco, with points controlled by hand operated wires from the baseboard edge. Buildings are constructed from a variety of materials ranging from plywood and card to modelling clay and wallpaper.

Most rolling stock is scratch-built from such things as fibre-tip pen barrels, pill tubes and plastic card. With the exception of trackwork, wheels and electric motors, practically everything else is scratch-built. It is far more rewarding in terms of the amount of pleasure gained in doing it one's own way. In reality it is, of course, a figment of the imagination which has helped its builder back to his trainspotting days!

Magazines:
Railway Modeller February 1996