Scale / Gauge	4mm Scale, 18.83 P4
Location / Era	Staffordshire / around 1912
Owner	John Sherratt and Jeremy Suter

Presented by John Sherratt and Jeremy Suter.

This railway was built by our friend Peter Heald who passed away in 2025. His railway came into our possession and we are presenting it at this exhibition as a tribute to him.

The work you see here is his although some of the rolling stock was built by us and some of Peter’s other friends. Gillow Heath lies just to the north of Biddulph towards Congleton and the model you see is based on a fictional location on the North Stafford Railway Biddulph Valley Railway which ran from Stoke on Trent via Milton and Ford Green to Biddulph and on to Congleton Brunswick Wharf with a link on to the main line to Macclesfield.

The model depicts a single track line which carries mostly goods from the industries around Stoke and the Biddulph area and exchanges wagons with a private line which goes off to a local Mill or other industry. Access to the exchange sidings is by the lever frame you see at the front of the railway whichis unlocked by the single line token. There are no signals or signal boxes on this railway.

The model is built to 4 mm scale and a gauge of 18.83 mm (known as Scalefour) which gives a more accurate relationship to the scale of the model and track gauge than 00 gauge does.

All the rolling stock you will see is hand built from kits or scratch built. Control is by two Gaugemaster 12v analogue hand-held controllers and the points are worked by servos.

We hope to show you a representative selection of North Staffordshire Railway, trains which would have been seen in the area around 1912 and before the North Stafford Railway became part of the LMS, together with stock owned by neighbouring railways such as the Midland, London and North Western, GWR and Great Central as well as the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway which was another interest of Peter’s.

You will also see a selection of private owner coal wagons from the area including those of Sneyd, Chatterley Whitfield, Foxfield and Norton & Biddulph.

Most of the trains you will see are goods trains which reflects on the prototype Biddulph Valley (where passenger trains were always infrequent) but you may see a passenger train if you wait long enough.

We will be happy to answer any questions you have about the North Stafford Railway or modelling to Scalefour.

JS October 2025