Burghead

Burghead was built by the Inverness and Aberdeen Railway and reached the village of Burghead in 1862. It was the only branch line to have been opened before the Highland Railway was formed a few years later. In 1892 the branch was extended to Hopeman and the harbour station was closed and a new station was built at Burghead on the new line. The Burghead and Hopeman branch was closed to passengers in 1931. The line continued to be used for freight well into the 1990s with grain traffic to the malting.

In the model I have reopened the harbour station for passengers. Freight traffic comprises of fish traffic, coal, oil, timber, fertiliser traffic for the factory and materials for the North Sea oil explorations, which were just starting. The harbour was used by fishing boats, pleasure craft, timber from the Baltic and the new oil industry supply boats.

I have modelled the period 1960—1970 so that I can use steam and diesel locomotives. I have used N Gauge Fine scale track, ballasted and weathered. The scenery is on a foam board base. Most of the buildings are scratch built and are made from card and paper. The locomotives are from Dapol and Grafar. Rolling stock are a mixture of kits and ready to run, nearly all are weathered. The ships in the harbour are of types found operating around Scotland are mainly scratch built from card and plastic. I have also built some ships from resin kits. .