Prescot & District Model Engineering Society, Sunday 4th August 2002, Members' Running Day

Prescot & District Model Engineering Society, Sunday 4th August 2002
Officially supposed to be a ‘Members' Running Day’, but because of the intermittent rain, nothing was run. The only locomotive present was Norman Matthews’ Ivatt 2-6-2 tank loco, but it wasn’t steamed. This is a model of the full sized class 2 Ivatt design, loco number 41286 that used to run through St.Helens Shaw Street station, from St.Helens to Liverpool via Thatto Heath. This is a 3 1/2 inch gauge model, coal fired, passenger hauling. Norman also designed this model and built it himself. It has the BR late logo livery.
This is Prescot in North West England. There was a 330 feet oval of track there from 2001 until about 2008 when the BICC / Prismian / Pirelli Cables Social club and Leisure grounds at Scotch Barn Lane, Prescot that we were "leasing" part of (a long disused tennis court in our case) was sold to developers to build houses on, then we were told to vacate the grounds, and our track got put into a large Council container stored away and our club house was vandalised and burned down. A terrible shame and a major loss to modelers in the North West. You can still see a historical image of where the track was on Google Earth, using the time rewind facility, from 2005, on the corner of where Scotchbarn lane meets Sinclair Avenue.