Yorkshire Coast Line

The Yorkshire Coast Line is an OO scale railway built by Russell Swinnerton in the USA. It is loosely based on the area between Scarborough and Whitby in Yorkshire, England. It’s what’s called “Proto-Freelance”, which is to say that it’s made to represent real places and operational practices but adheres to no prototype location specifically. For instance, the line from York to Seamer actually exists in real life. In the real world, this line continues on to Scarborough and is operated by TransPennine Express. On my layout, the YCL breaks off at Seamer Jct and serves the (real) town of Sewerby and then the fictional towns of Lower Uncton and West Anchor-On-Sea. The fictional towns are the ones portrayed on the layout. Also serving this area is the Vale of Yorkshire Railway Museum, a fictional museum that on the layout allows operation of heritage equipment. This operationally is based on the North Yorkshire Moors heritage railway who operate over Network Rail from Grosmont to Whitby. Basically this allows me to run whatever I want as “heritage equipment”. More on this later. You can also find more about the build progress on the railway’s Facebook page (linked below). This writeup is to explain the background of the layout so that operations and scenery make sense.

History

The history of Britian’s railways is the long and varied and it’s important to convey how the Yorkshire Coast Line came to be. The YCL was built in the late 1800s to carry freight and passengers from Seamer to the small towns in eastern Yorkshire and split to a north-south line between Scarborough to the north and Hull to the south. The line’s purpose was three-fold. Regional passenger service was quite important to rural Yorkshire and allowed the local people to travel to the fish markets along the sea and the larger markets in York. Regional wagonload freight was also big business with freight such as slate, building materials and coal coming in from all over Britian. Chief exports along the line were fish from the