Cliddesden Station

Cliddesden Railway Station (1916 & 1925)

Cliddesden Railway Station, on the Basingstoke & Alton Light Railway, is the first layout we built in N gauge. The project was initiated by Edward Smith who discovered the track bed remains whilst cycling near Cliddesden. He thought the station would make an interesting model and called upon his dad David, who has years of railway modelling experience, to assist him in making the layout.

The model railway was built between October 2011 and October 2012 and its whole development was reported as it happened via postings on this Blogging website.

Cliddesden Station (L&SWR) was one of four stations on the B&ALR serving sparse populations between Basingstoke and Alton. The period of the model railway is August 1916, a few months before track was lifted and sent to France for use during the great war of 1914-18.

In 1924 track was relaid and service resumed. It closed forever in 1936 as it was not a profitable venture for the Railway company. Today, the railway and station have returned to nature. The houses are still there, albeit much modified for 21st century needs.

The entire station area scaled to N gauge occupies only 4’ x 3’ thus lending itself to being a portable layout. A follower of our Blog suggested we exhibit the layout at his clubs annual exhibition and so it was we found ourselves showing it to the general public at the Farnham & Distict MRC exhibition in 2013.


Basing a model railway layout on a real place demands much research. It would have been difficult to do this without recourse to the two books published about the line. The first and most comprehensive volume is ‘The Basingstoke and Alton Light Railway’ by Dean, Robertson and Simmonds. The second is also titled ‘The Basingstoke and Alton Light Railway’ by Edward Griffiths, an earlier publication that has more anecdotes and stories about the railway staff that enabled us to recreate events on the model.

Track Plan