Departing Moor Street

Past the water tank.

Warwickshire Places (3) : Lillington

Lillington is a suburb of Leamington Spa. However until 1890 it was a separate village which had existed since Saxon times. Lillington is mentioned in the Domesday Book [1].

Since incorporation into Leamington, Lillington has been greatly expanded with a new centre at Crown Way. The old village centre is around the parish church of St Mary Magdalene which, although rebuilt in Victorian times, still has some medieval features.

Also in Lillington is the Midland Oak. This is an oak tree (the original tree has gone but a new tree has been grown from an acorn of the original) which is supposed to be the "centre of England"*.

Midland Oak park

St Mary Magdalene

Entrance of churchyard of St Mary Magdalene

Lillington

* Other centres of England are available.

[1] "Parishes: Lillington." A History of the County of Warwick: Volume 6, Knightlow Hundred. Ed. L F Salzman. London: Victoria County History, 1951. 161-164. British History Online. Web. 9 February 2019. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/warks/vol6/pp161-164.

BGLR : Rolling stock plan for 2019/20

The financial year from 2018/19 which has just ended was a big one for the Birches Green Light Railway in terms of motive power. If we include Black Beauty which arrived in early April last year there were four new locomotives in the year including Maggie as shown below. As well as locomotives there was another coach (to give a total fleet of seven), and a couple of new wagons added to the fleet including the standard gauge wagon trolley which arrived last week.

So what about the new year? The BGLR will probably not get as many new locomotives this year, though a railcar is high on the list. A works shunter for the HO scale tram line is also wanted. A short rake of heritage coach stock would also be nice...

Seeing a bit more of Hatton

I have been to Hatton in Warwickshire a few times but it's always been to walk the canal or stay at the station. So today I decided to actually see something of the village itself. I only got as far as Hatton Green as the main part of the village is actually quite a walk from the station but I did get to see the lovely church there which must rank as one of the loveliest old churches I've ever seen.

You can see my photos of Hatton here, including the railway there. You can see my photos along the Grand Union Canal at Hatton here.

BGLR : Little Big One

If you have a standard gauge wagon loaded with goods which are needed where there are only narrow gauge rails what do you do? You can transfer the load of course to a narrow gauge wagon but this is time consuming. One option is to load the standard gauge wagon onto a flatbed narrow gauge trolly and transport it that way! This happens on the Central European narrow gauge networks which Birches Green is modelled on and with the arrival of this new Roco combination it can happen on the BGLR too!

The standard gauge (HO) wagon is a bit wobbly though on the HOe trolly. It is also a bit heavy. Ruby is pictured with the wagons but was unable to make a lap of the BGLR loop without a little help from a 1:1 scale finger! The Bear was able to pull the wagons and this was it's final duty before joining the reserve fleet.