I find when building micro layouts and operating them at exhibitions one need to think carefully about their design to make them more interesting to watch and operate. On Clovelly Road I have decided that I'm going to have working catch points on the entrance to the goods yard.

On the prototype these were installed to prevent runaways. These were wagons who had not had their manual brakes properly applied running away down the gradient and causing problems further down the line. This was a serious and every present risk before the introduction of continuous braking on goods trains in the early 1970's.

The catch points simply derailed such a wagon or collection of wagons before they got onto the main running line, by derailing them. They are not often modelled and very rarely are they operational on model railway layouts.

On Clovelly Road, I am using a cut-down Peco LH Settrack point to model the catch point. This has the advantage that the catch point is sprung, in the same ways as normal Peco points and can be operated using the same technologies.

It has the advantage that the cut-down point can be made shorter than the ready made Peco catch points and therefore take up less baseboard space. This is critical on a layout like Clovelly Road.

The goods yard entry point and the catch point will be worked in tandem, just like the prototype.

Julie