Fawley

The layout is 16ft by 2ft with operators positioned at the rear, space required for operators is an additional 4ft and the rear.

We are happy to attend local one day shows and two day shows further afield. Over night accommodation for 3-4 operators will be required if more than 50 miles from Southampton.

Transport is usually 2 cars

This is the clubs first venture into EM, the layout was built by Martin Wales and was purchased by the club after it had been extensivly exhibited in the north of England

A little more of the fact and fiction surrounding Kinmundy

During the early part of 1915, the Admiralty decided to locate an airship station, close to the nearby village of Nether Kinmundy, some 8 miles west of Peterhead, ostensibly to protect the Fleet at Scapa Flow from potential Zeppelin air attacks. A junction was put in by the GNSR at Longside on the Peterhead branch, the earthwork of which can still be seen today, and no expense was spared (total costs were estimated at £500,000 at 1915 prices!). Some buildings on base were even constructed in the classiscal style and eventually included powerhouses, a gasworks, waterworks, engineering shops, various canteens, messes, living quarters, garages, afire station, two cinemas and a church all dressed in the local Cruden brick. When construction was complete RNAS Lenabo was a sizeable affair with an establishment of some 500 ratings-operational crews following in due course.

The branch proper, completed in 1916, was used for passengers and goods in connection with the site until the Autumn of 1920, meanwhile with the cessation of hostilities in 1918, the RAF as successor to the RNAS, took over the site, but it proved to be unsuitable for fixed wing aircraft training and was relegated to the Admiralty Disposals Board in late 1920, Derelict by 1927, the site was cleared in the early ‘thirties. However, local visionaries saw in Lenabo a magnificent ready made base for industrial scale peat processing, another the potential for a canning factory (Crosse & Blackwell had a prescence at nearby Peterhead-indeed their facilities were englared after the cessation of passenger taffic in 1965). Another proposal was to create a pastoral precinct and name it ‘New Kinmundy’. The sit of the WW1 terminus is now under a Forestry Commission plantation.

The branch was approximately 3 1/2 miles long, terminating close to the village of Kinmundy. Just SE of the branch junction at Longside was a three arch 60ft long masonry bridge on a skew alignment climbing thereafter to cross the A950 Mintlaw to  Peterhead road by means of an ungated level crossing. From here  the earthworks were minimal the line followed the contours as required.

We now fast forward to the late 1960’s (it is early Spring 1968) and despite the fact that the rest of the Buchan lines together with the Speyside network have lost their passenger services in 1965, the flourishing RAF station , now given over to fixed wing aircraft and an Air Sea Rescue helicopter unit, have together with a costly 1950’s Cold War upgrade, have together with other local industries, kept the line open past the carnage of the Beeching years for passengers as well as freight. 1968 was a year of momentous change worldwide and the branch may be living on borrowed time.