The Cheltenham & Cotswold Hills Railway company was proposed in 1811, to carry the products of the Stone Pipe Company fron Lower Guiting, to a junction with the Leckhampton branch to the horse-drawn Gloucester & Cheltenham Tramway and from thence, to Gloucester Docks. The act of parliament for the 3 ft 6 inches plateway failed at its third reading in May 1812 and the Stone Pipe Company also failed soon after, when installed systems in London and Manchester would not hold water!
Syreford Station is the upper terminus of the viable part of line, had it been built for him and survived the Stone Pipe company's failure. The line has been converted to a conventional, locomotive drawn, 2 ft 4 inches gauge railway and is depicted in the early 1950's, when tourism is becoming a significant proportion of the remunerative traffic
Track is hand built, using Nickel Silver Code 80 Rail and copper-clad sleeper strip. Buildings are a mixture of textured Das Pronto on plywood shells and scribed styrene sheet. Scenery is carved from a polystyrene blocks, coated with Artex and covered with commercial scatter materials, mostly from the Green Scene range, to simulate a vegetation. All the trees are home-made using twisted wire frames and Woodland Scenics foliage. The backscene is hand painted and is a view of Sandhurst Hill as seen from Sandhurst village near Gloucester.
Locomotives and rolling stock are a mixture of scratch-built and kit-built vehicles, some with modified proprietary components.
Passenger coaches are, at present, from the Peco range, while the larger proportion of freight wagons are from Wrightlines. The rest are scratch-built from styrene sheet. Locomotives are of various parentage; scratch built, modified proprietary, kit built and a variety of permutations, many improved with DS10 or Mashima Motors, two stage gearboxes and flywheels.
All of the models on the
layout, with the exception of the Platelayer's hut, have
one thing in common and that it is that they are all
based on a prototype, however loosely!