No! Not that sort! - this sort of S&M;

I made reference in my first blog posting to my 2mm Golden Jubilee Layout Challenge entry which never made it as far as the Expo at Oxford. I’ve been asked if I would post a bit more information on it, so here goes….

The original idea came from Roger Carpenter’s book on the Criggion Branch of the S&M (published by Wild Swan) – idly re-reading this one Sunday afternoon just after the GJLC had been announced rekindled my enthusiasm for this delightfully decrepit and obscure backwater of the railway system and so a plan was hatched….

The location was based on Llandrinio Road – a simple wayside station just short of the terminus (and quarry) at Criggion, but with a slightly altered track plan to try and give a bit more operational interest (basically the siding was reversed and extended 'off-scene' to allow it to be used a part of a run-round loop).

The Criggion branch was a real backwater of the railway network. It served a roadstone quarry, which possessed it’s own shunting locomotive – a vertical boilered Sentinel - to shunt the quarry traffic. Passenger services were in the hands of the infamous petrol railbuses and the bizarre and delightful ‘Gazelle’, which operated with a former horse-tram as a passenger coach. There was a severe weight restriction on the branch line due to a bridge at Melverley which was in poor condition.

In my 2mm world, I assumed that the line was taken over by British Railways Western Region and the bridge strengthened to gain access to the quarry traffic. It's all a bit implausible, but I didn't feel quite up to the challenge of building some suitable stock to a deadline as well as the layout. In the event, things didn't quite go to plan....

The boards are for the most part birch plywood and of fairly standard construction. The scenic part of the layout is one board, and the backscene is integral with the board. The fiddle yards bolt onto each end of the main board and the whole lot drops onto the top of the legs. These and the shelves beneath the baseboards are Ikea ‘Ivar’ shelves, with metal diagonal bracing from the same source. Adjustable feet have been fitted to the bottom of the legs to allow for uneven floors and supports for lighting and a fascia fit onto the back of the legs.

The layout baseboards were almost complete by the summer of 2009 so I offered to take it to the 2mm AGM at Bedford in October 2009. Most of my spare time then promptly disappeared and a few evenings before the event I just about managed to lay enough track to get something moving on the layout – albeit only over about 6â€!

After that, the enthusiasm just dried up. The boards suffered a bit of cosmetic damage in the car on the way back from Bedford to York, and were unceremoniously dumped in the spare room at home. After a few months I put them back together (they took up less space assembled and the shelf space beneath was useful!) and used them as storage space for all my unfinished 2mm stock (and the space below for modelling tools and equipment).

I learnt a few things from taking the layout to Bedford (which was the first time I’ve every exhibited a layout in any form), namely that layouts are a lot of hassle to dismantle and move, especially when car parking is awkward/non-existent, and that having the fiddleyard at each end is too awkward for one person to operate. I suppose that's why I'm building a one-person shunting plank now!

One day the enthusiasm will return and it will emerge (and I'll have to find a home for all those part-built wagons) - anyone for a Diamond Jubilee Layout Challenge?!

Andy