The following layouts are booked/expected for the 2020 show on 7/8 November
CORWENNA
4mm Scale/OO Gauge
Phil Waterfield
A fictional location inspired by the branch line from Boscarne Jnc to Wenfordbridge. The buildings although much reduced in scale purport to give a flavour of operations at the clay dries served by the Beattie well tanks and GWR pannier tanks from Wadebridge shed.
ELLESMERE
4mm Scale/OO Gauge
Phil Greaves
A scale replica of Ellesmere station, situated on the Cambrian main line between Whitchurch and Oswestry in Shropshire, which opened in 1864 and closed in 1965. Train services were essentially local in nature although there were through trains to Aberystwyth on the Welsh coast. There was also a branch to Wrexham from Ellesmere. A variety of smaller GWR Locos (including Manors) and some BR standard classes provided the mainstay of services in the 1950s and ‘60s. The layout is operated to a sequence representing a typical day of the period.
AMIENS 1918 – Tracks & Trenches
4mm Scale/OO9 narrow gauge
Callum Willcox
The Battle of Amiens marked one of the final major battles of the First World War, with the opening phase the Allied Offensive, which began on the 8th August, 1918. The Battle, later known as the Hundred Days Offensive, ultimately led to the end of the First World War. With over 75,000 Troops, 2000 Aircraft and 500 Tanks, the Allies advanced over 8 miles on the first day alone, re-capturing German held fortifications and equipment.
Set during the Battle, this scene depicts a re-captured Artillery Battery, now an Allied field headquarters and supply depot, where Troops and Tanks are prepared for the next offensive, served by a Narrow Gauge Field Railway. Supply trains hauled by a mixture of British, US and French Locomotives, as well as captured German Rolling Stock, stream through the Battery with tons of equipment and material, that will ultimately lead to victory on the Western Front.
CATO PASS
4mm Scale/OO Gauge
Laurie Calvert
Welcome to the world of Steampunk, a Science-Fiction underground sci-fi missile silo/rocket launch bay in a cavern, based on a Saturn moon called Enceladus. As the Steampunk brigade operate Cato, the warring alien factions on the surface prepare to dive in through the launch hole and mount an attack on the base. Some of these aliens have owned Cato before, hence the different architecture inside the underground cave. Who will get Cato next?
BRADWELL POINT
4mm/OO Gauge
Marcus Lambert
A DCC modern image layout based on a nuclear flask unloading point. The layout can be seen running traction from The early 90s through to the mid 00’s. The layout consist of a 6ft x 1.5ft scenic area & 2ft fiddle yard.
BRANDGEIGHT
4mm Scale/OO9 Narrow Gauge
Peter Hardy
Brandgeight depicts all that remains of a 2ft 3in gauge light railway built by a late 19th Century industrialist Willson Henry who made his fortune by developing new techniques for casting and refurbishing church bells. He later acquired extensive farmlands in Leicestershire and Derbyshire and built the railway to link the small villages and hamlets in the area. Willson Henry later diversified into manufacturing small saddle tank locomotives for the many small mining and quarrying companies around the country. Today only Hector and Lady Jane survive and with extensive rebuilding by the volunteer staff, now provide the prime locos on Brandgeight, being supported by an eclectic mix of locos from the many existing narrow gauge lines in the UK.
LAW JUNCTION
2mm Scale/N Gauge
East Neuk Model Railway Club, Fife
Law Junction is a model of the a real location on the West Coast Main Line between Carstairs and Motherwell where freight trains for Mossend yard and local passenger trains via Wishaw diverge from the main line. The layout includes the freight terminal next to the junction and is set in the approximate period 2003-2006. Most of the layout is built accurately to scale although some compression of length has been required in the junction area.
The layout shows a railway in the landscape, rather than just the railway itself.
Features to look out for include the buildings, all scratchbuilt from photographs taken at the site, the overhead electrification equipment, which is non-functional in the model, and the operating colour light signals which are controlled using modules by Heathcote Electronics.
HARLYN PIER
7mm Scale/O Gauge Finescale
Peter Beckley
Depicting the terminus of an imaginary (ex-LSWR) branch line on the north coast of Cornwall not far from Padstow in the BR period circa 1960. The station is set on a quayside that connects to a ferry service from the adjacent dock, similar to the arrangement at Lymington Pier, which was the inspiration for the layout.
The trackwork is all hand-built from TimberTracks/C&L/Exactoscale components whilst the majority of the buildings are scratch built and based on examples from the Cornwall or Devon area. The signals and level crossing gates are all operational and interlocked with the points, which hopefully avoids wrongly signalled movements.
The majority of the locomotives and rolling stock have been constructed from kits by the layout operators. We try to feature stock that operated in the north Cornwall area during the period 1955 to 1965. However, it is not unknown for the occasional interloper to appear. The layout is run to a sequence which represents a busy summer Saturday. In reality this is much busier than would have been the case but it keeps the public (and operators) entertained.
The following layouts are booked/expected for the 2020 show on 7/8 November
LEICESTER SOUTH
4mm Scale/OO Gauge
Shipley Model Railway
This is a model of an actual location a few hundred yards south from Leicester Central station, as it was in British Railways days. The infrastructure has been modelled around the mid 1950s period but stock running on the layout covers a period from 1948 to 1963. This period spans control of the line by both the Eastern and London Midland regions. One of the most interesting features of the line was that it provided the most direct cross country service between the North East and South West. The resulting inter-regional traffic produced rolling stock and locomotives from the Big Four as well as later BR designs.
The ‘London Extension’ carried more goods than passenger traffic and the large goods yard was well used until the late 1950s. Wagons were moved around the goods warehouse area by ropes wrapped around hydraulically powered and non-powered capstans. Wagons were moved from one line to another by means of wagon turntables positioned at the front and rear of the goods warehouse. We have represented these movements using powered vans and our wagon turntables are fully working models.
The layout is operated using a sequence drawn from Working Timetables and Carriage Working Books. This provides a representation of the services that worked on the line.
VILLEFRANCHE-LA-CHAPELLE
French SNCF c.1990
3.5mm Scale/HO Gauge
Carshalton & Sutton Model Railway Club
Villefranche-la-Chapelle is a small layout designed to show a shunting yard in a fictional French town in the 1990s, serving a few industries at the same time, and based on memories of traditional French railways, sadly mostly now gone. The area to the right was possibly once a quarry, but is now used to handle local timber and stone traffic, while the sidings to the left serve the industries of the small town on the hill behind. There’s also a higher level line in and out of a platform, to allow an Autorail or two to be run.
The idea was to create the atmosphere of a typical French small town and its still-active rail system, something that had disappeared from the British rail scene in the 1960s, but which could still be enjoyed in France for many years afterwards.
With the addition of catenary in parts of the shunting yard, it’s now possible to see AC or DC electric engines, as well as diesel power.