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Northley


bullit

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Right then, where to start? Firstly I have no intention of taking any credit for building this - that belongs to John Gough - a Warrington Club member. He has a knack for building interesting layouts with lots of operating potential. If you went to our 2009 show you'll have seen Bad Kissen and EFZ that he also built. Although never intending Northley to be an exhibition layout it went to the following shows in it's original incarnation:

 

2002 - Stockport & District Railway Exhibition 16th & 17th March

2002 - Romiley

2003 - Rose Hill School

 

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After selling Northley to another club member - Colin Rimmer some changes were made. A fiddle yard was added and the canal end was lengthened in order to use longer locomotives. Now the layout had a U shaped formation. In this guise it was exhibited at:

 

2007 - Warrington Model Railway Exhibition - 15th & 16th Sept

2009 - Stafford - 6th & 7th Feb

 

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I had a go at operating it at our 2007 show. Without any sort of schedule and with just 4 roads in the fiddle yard there was still so much operating potential - I had a lot of fun with it. It's such an interesting little layout to watch - someone else thought so too as it was to appear at Stafford in 2009.

 

I'd drawn up a quick plan with the notion of building a similar layout in 'N' however I would completely forget about this. Around the tail end of 2008 we were in the pub after a club night. Colin said "I'm selling Northley" or words to that effect "I'll buy it! - how much?" I said after I'd picked my pint up off the floor. Fast forward to a few Mondays after the Stafford show and there I was trying to shoehorn the aforementioned layout into my car after an undisclosed bunch of used fivers had changed hands.

 

So now the owner of Northley, what on earth was I going to do with it? A rumour that it might be wanted for the 2009 Warrington show in Oct didn't come to fruition so I started to build some better legs for it. Essentially the largest board was supported on a bookcase - which was included in the sale. I also wanted to get rid of the chipboard panel connecting the fiddle yard - especially after a Bachmann 57 - Lady Penelope went overboard.

 

I'd bought Northley to enjoy running trains whilst building another layout. I also wanted to update it and without ruining the original concept, allow continuous loop but also retain end to end running if required.

 

So back to the present day. It's Christmas 2010 and in the past few weeks I've managed to build a lighting rig and complete the boards for a continuous loop. Below is the plan for option A. 3 extra boards were created with legs for each, all bolted together. Shock! Horror! They all fit together!

 

The fiddle yard track hasn't been laid as I'm toying with the idea of painting the fiddle yard boards - so they're all the same colour. I had used some sundeala boards which I'd already painted a dark green and just like the idea of it not looking like the patchwork mess it is at the minute.

 

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So what about option B then? Well as mentioned before I was keen to keep the original end to end concept. By extending board 3 I can have the option of attaching a short board with a buffer stop on it along with some other relevant scenery - the best of both worlds.

 

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There's a list as long as my arm of jobs I want to do from improving electrical connections to making all the points wire in tube (not easy as I'm not removing them).

 

Era and controls? Well having grown up with BR blue (yes another one...) and the plethora of sprinters and what have you this is where I've decided to end up - mid 1980s. After buying an NCE powercab and a sound equipped Bachmann 47 (years ago) I finally tested them on Northley with no modifications to the wiring - they both worked perfectly.

 

So there we have it. A nice solid layout (that I didn't build!) with plenty of operating scope to keep me occupied. Who knows it might even make it out of the house again...

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