MODEL RAILWAYS
The main web pages on the railway are based on the books by Ken Hartley. I have included model railways as they can give a good idea on what the line actually looked like in its day, and during the course of my reseaches I found that Ken was a model railway fan. He had a letter published in the Model Railyway News of September 1928, in reply to an article on the light railways in which he said " I alway find these small lines of great interest, and they certainly provide an ideal prototype for a model which realy is a true copy of a full size railway". He included photos of Esme and a wagon which he explained "should be extremly easy to model" as examples. (His letter Page 1; Page 2 )
While the Sand Hutton Light Railway as a model has been thought about for some 87 years and is also a common topic on Narrow Railway Forums, both real and model, I have found few details of actual layouts. The only prototype model found is of Sand Hutton Depot at its height by Peter Kazer.
Below are the other information/ pictures I have found.
Model loco and coach on non-prototype layout - from http://www.buccabury.co.uk/ltr/sandhutton.jpg
http://www.7mmnga.org.uk/archive.php has photocopies of past magazines one of which had an article on the railway and scale drawings of two locos, three wagons and depot buildings. The article held no new information but the drawings are to be found else where in this history.
The following pictures are from an O guage layout built in 2009. It would be polite to say it is in the style of the SHLR
A commercial kit of one of the SHLR wagons.
Smallbrook Studio O-16.5 Narrow Gauge Sand Hutton Railway Open Wagon kit includes resin and plastic parts with metal wheels to build a narrow gauge open wagon van. shown as supplied in the manufacturers original packaging.
Doesn't appear to
be as fine as the Smallbrook Studio one.
A wagon in 1/12th scale being built by John Chambers of Flaxton (Philip Orton 2012)
Commercially made WD Axlebox as used on the Sand Hutton Light Railway (manufacturer unknown 2013)
A resin driver figure by James-Artdotcom said to be based on George Batty
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As far as I know this vehicle was built in the
1920s by Robert Hudson and it ran on 18 inch gauge track, was 15
feet long and a mere 4ft 6 wide. The only two useful photographs
taken show it in a fairly new light grey livery which looks as dull
as ditchwater and evidently out of service, in a shed looking as if
it has been varnished. I far prefer the look of that. This image
also seems to suggest that the verandah end was at least faced with
a metal sheet gloss painted black.
 > I had made those Raif Copley one plank wagons from his excellent kits, but as I built the second one, I realised the potential of the undercarriage for building something a bit more exotic and appealing from a modelling point of view. I acquired the excellent volume by Mark Smithers called 18 inch Gauge Steam Railways. Though costing £19.99 when in print, you have to pay £65 for a copy now. I have to say that if you are toying with going 7/8ths and your track is 32mm gauge, this book is a 'must-have'. Its full of wonderful images of Chatham Docks and Woolwich Arsenal light railways but also has a good section all about the Sand Hutton Light Railway. Chris Bird has another book devoted to the same material and in that he found some drawings of this wagon. Heaven!  Once I had studied those drawings it became clear that the RMC chassis was very similar to that of the parcel brake. Whie the parcel brake wheelbase was 6 feet whereas raids wagon is a scale 5ft 6. It would do nicely, particularly as I preferred to model to slightly under scale so that it was less massive around my track. 
Raif supplies two sets of chassis spacers so that you may chose between 32 and 45mm gauge, simply by setting the Binnie wheel sets to the back to back measurement you want. Pity to let those gluelams go to waste. I used them to extend the chassis to the full length of the parcel brake. I chose to build the frame by making the long sides from 6mm square limewood rod and 12mm by 3mm strip, bought specifically for the purpose. I knew that I wanted the planks to fit neatly between the uprights and I managed that by using a newly acquired chop saw with a 60 tooth blade. In essence, I cut nine planks in one pass. The chop saw, one of my more intelligent purchases, gave me identically long sweetly cut planks which made for a very easy building of each side with long square section tops and bottoms. I assembled the sides on a pane of glass under which I had placed a print out of the scale plan, brought up to full scale using photoshop with its easy guides.  build a pair, of
course!
Because I was modelling the older, more
distressed version I elected to distress the edges of those very
accurately cut strips. Had I wanted the van to look new, I wouldn't
have bothered. As it was I sanded some edges and actually carved
away at some outside edges with a scalpel in a random sort of
way.  Once the sides were solid the sides were offered
up to the chassis and fixed with carefully cut cross members at both
ends. PVA is a great wood glue but it can fool you into believing it
is solid well before it is enough to hold under
pressure. The sliding doors were suggested merely by gluing more planks inside the shell, across the gap. I had no ambition to have working doors The ends were simple enough. The rear was nine
identical planks cut to fit between the end uprights. The front end
has a door and so I made that up separately first and fixed it in
place. That left a space to the left to be filled by three equal
vertical planks and since the gap was just too narrow for three full
sized 12mm wide planks, I sanded these down. All that remained was to carve five roof curve profiles to finish the ends and support the roof. I followed the shape illustrated on the plans, made a card template then marked out some 12x3mm planking. Limewood is a delight to carve to an approximate shape but I then clamped the five together and sanded them as a block to be identical. 
The roof is of 3mm ply, soaked and held to dry
bent round a former. I actually use dozens of rubber bands and a
round section wooden block we have in the kitchen to hold knives but
a couple of ground coffee tins would do as well. After the roof was
dry and fixed in its curve, I ironed on black solartex then lightly
sprayed the top surface with Ford Ivory, not thick enough to fully
obscure the black or leave a gloss finish. I saw no reason to gain
access to the interior ever again so I glued it firmly in place. In
this view, you can also see the door handle, a dollhouse wonder, and
the Talisman hand grabs from the 7/8ths section of their
catalogue.  It seemed clear from the photographs of the
original van that the construction of it depended on angle iron. To
simulate that I pinned L section plastruct onto the uprights. I
decided to spray them before hand with Halfords red primer then
satin black. Although the pinning was initially with brass snap head
rivets, once I had the Russian resin bolt heads on washers, they
were replaced. OK, so at a distance you might not see any
difference, but close up they look so much better.  The vehicle is a bit light so it could use a piece of lead between the wheels. I am now patiently waiting some castings from ModelEarth to make the brake wheel assembly that should protrude above the verandah end. That, incidentally, is being held on at the moment with black duck tape because I just know that if I complete the assembly before I mount the brake wheel, it will be a nightmare to manage a retro-fit.  Though you can't really see underneath, it
seemed necessary to acknowledge the fact that this was a brake van
with brake pads on all four wheels. I cut and assembled a pair of
silhouettes out of 3mm ply and used paint to suggest some of the
highlights. I think it works well enough.
  Similarly, the prototype looks as if it had
solid wheels, not curly spoked but, quite frankly, though I could
glue some backs onto the wheels, I really don't think anyone would
see that I had done so unless they were lying down next to the
track. Oh, I don't know. The more I look, the more it bugs me!
Where's that black plasticard?
Luggage compartment and Guard's brake cabin
interior from a different wagon 
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A painting said to be of Esme by an unknown artist - appears to have been copied from a photograph with a fictitious landscape.
