Thanks Brian! No plans for a DRAG layout as far as I know, most members have their own individual or joint projects.

Whats the plan with Swaverly? Are we going to work on that?

Whats the plan with Swaverly? Are we going to work on that?

Swaveney is a bit of a conundrum, as there are differing views on how to proceed and how far to go, but we are talking about the restoration to exhibition condition of one of the earliest P4 exhibition layouts from the 1960s here...

Swaveney is a bit of a conundrum, as there are differing views on how to proceed and how far to go, but we are talking about the restoration to exhibition condition of one of the earliest P4 exhibition layouts from the 1960s here...

This sounds interesting. Care to share more details with the wider world?

This sounds interesting. Care to share more details with the wider world?

Perhaps we could photograph it on a weekend and then upload the info on here and the Scalefour Forum.

Nick

This sounds interesting. Care to share more details with the wider world?

Swaveney was/is a P4 LNER-based layout (branch terminus) built in the 1960s by the late Nigel Hunt, and latterly built into a larger home-based roundy-roundy P4 layout that used to live in his house near Cullompton prior to his sad death a few years ago. He (and later his widow) kindly let DRAG come and 'play trains' on the main circuit on several occasions, until his widow sold the house and moved on. We then inherited much of the circuit and also Swaveney (the viaduct featured elsewhere was part of the P4 circuit). Swaveney had not been electrically connected to the rest of the layout as far as we could tell, certainly after Nigel's death, we could not get it to work, but we had plenty of fun nevertheless, running trains on the main continuous runs.

After everything was dismantled, 'Swaveney', together with some of the surviving boards of the main circuit, were stored at one of our members properties, where it remains to this day. It is, frankly, not in particularly good condition and would require a lot of work to all parts of it (track, electrical, buildings & scenery) to make it fit for exhibiting.

Our current priority in DRAG is to complete TT2 and it's associated new trailer, and then probably to relax a little and enjoy the new test track.

We also all have our own individual modelling projects, which reduces further the amount of time that we are likely to be able to give to restoring Swaveney, but 'never say never'. It is an asset, which does still have the potential to be an interesting and popular exhibition layout, in my view.

I'm sure a S&DJR 2-8-0 will fit under the narrow overbridge on the approach to the station throat, LNER notwithstanding!