Roughly halfway along the Northern shore of the Camel Estuary is the fishing village of Portwenn. This is at the end of a line from Camelford; the line being built to serve quarries extracting granite and slate (it’s not just Wales that has a slate industry!). These materials come from Bodmin Moor and Delabole respectively. The line is also used to transport as well as fish brought in from the sea.

The railway enjoys good trade, especially with the mainline connection at Camelford and goods going by sea. Passenger services serve stations further up the line at St. Miner, St. Kew and St. Teath as well as Delabole and Camelford. In reality, you may recognise the name from a TV series featuring a rather bad-tempered and matter-of-fact G.P.!

This layout first appeared in an issue of Railway Modeller as a track plan by David Wright who used the name ‘Porthwenn’ as a slight adaption of the fictional setting of ‘Doc Martin’. It has since been published in a book by David titled ‘Modelling Ports and Inland Waterways’ – a bible on that subject.

This layout was built by members of the Crawley Model Railway Society and first exhibited in 2015 before coming up for sale when it was bought by its current owner. It was very much a complete plug-and-play model railway but with room for modifications and scenery improvements which are ongoing.

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