The Mucking Flats and Fobbing Marsh Light Railway

During the recent TV series LITTLE TRAINS WITH BIG NAMES WITH PETE WATERMAN, one thread ran through all four programmes … that railway modellers often build layouts that in someway reflects an aspect of the builder’s life. Jools Holland’s layout includes many buildings that can be found in Southeast London and Eddie Izzard’s are models of Bexhill-by-Sea. In both cases, these are the areas where they grew up. All of Pete Waterman’s model railways seem to be set in the Midlands (he was born in Coventry, Warwickshire) and Francis Rossi is starting his first layout based around the railway he used to use to get to school in South London.

Following on from this lead I looked at the railways that had featured in my life as I was growing up. These include the Metropolitan Underground line, the District Underground line, the Upminster to Fenchurch Street mainline, and the single-line Upminster to Grays branch line. Only the latter was really suitable for my first railway layout … but the original was a standard-gauge railway and not a narrow-gauge one.

After giving the matter some thought, I came up with an imaginary narrow-gauge light railway that was located in the marshy area on the Essex side of the River Thames estuary. It was an area that I visited several times during my secondary school education, and the names of two places in particular had stuck in my mind, the Mucking Flats and Fobbing Marsh … and as a result, the Mucking Flats and Fobbing Marsh Light Railway (MF&FM Light Railway) was born!

What made the prospect of building a light railway in that area more interesting is the paucity of roads and the presence of a coastal defence fort (Coalhouse Fort) at the western end of the Mucking Flats.

A map showing the location of Coalhouse Fort and its relevant position to Cliffe Fort (on the Kent side of the River Thames) and the Coalhouse Battery. The Mucking Flats are just to the north of Coalhouse Fort.

Coalhouse Fort, as seen from the riverside.

Having decided on a location and a name, all I need to do now is to get myself a baseboard and I can start!

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An aside ... When I used to travel on the Upminster to Fenchurch Street mainline back in the late 1960s, it was notorious for both the poor timekeeping of its trains and the quality of its old 'slam door' rollingstock. This was still the era of individual compartments seating about a dozen passengers (plus more standing) and the line was given the nickname of 'The Misery Line'. It is now run by C2C franchise, but I've still heard that some people refer to it by its old nickname.

Bearing this in mind, I decided that my model railway needed a nickname. So far, I've come up with 'The Birdwatcher Line' (it's a well-known birdwatching area) and the 'Palindrome Line' (due to its initials being the same both ways).