Carlyon Dock

Gauge: OO (4mm to foot). 

Size: 12ft by 2ft 6ins or 3.66m by 0.76m (not including operator’s area).  A total depth of 6ft (1.82m) is required to allow for the operators and stock table

Insurance: layout and stock insurance need cover to the value of £2000.

Electrical supply: a double 240-volt socket.  Usage: 3 amps Max.

Table and Chairs required: one 6’x 2’ stock table (or equivalent) and two chairs.  

Operators: Two
 

Carlyon Dock is a fictitious OO gauge layout loosely based upon the entrance to Par Docks in Cornwall.  The layout was first built by a great Cornish modeller, Bill Douglas, and purchased and modified by myself.  I know the Par Docks area very well, having grown up in the area and spending much time filming trains as they enter and leave the Docks complex with wagons loaded with china clay.  A weekly working continues to this day, supplied by a service from Bescot Yard. 

The basis for the layout is the facilities for the shipment by train of dried clay and clay slurry to the docks at Carne Point, Fowey, the Potteries and the Scottish paper mills. Clay is piped into Carlyon Dock from the various mines above St Austell and then refined and stored before onward shipping.  Trains additionally arrive from Carne Point before running round and heading through St Blazey to the clay loading facilities at Ponts Mill and Goonbarrow.  The reverse of these services also run regularly.

The layout features a small branch station that services the dock workers as well as patrons of the nearby luxury hotel at Carlyon Bay.  Both DMU and loco hauled services are featured.   

  The track is a mix of hand built and Peco code 75. The points are all motorised using Tortoise slow acting motors.  Control can be switched between DC or DCC, both using Gaugemaster controllers.  Working colour light signals and shunt signals are used on the branch.

The layout can be run in various periods from the early 1980s to the present day.  The stock includes all of the loco classes that have run regularly in Cornwall (plus associated DMUs) together with a wide variety of wagons that have run on Cornish clay services.