Grenfell Town
OO Gauge by
Robert Ellis
Grenfell Town MPD is a small, 6ft x 4ft 'L' shaped
layout, set in South Wales in the late 1950's, ostensibly at the
southern end of a long ex LMS cross country route from the fictional
border town of Offaton. The aim is to capture the movement of
locomotives on and off shed as they pass from the roundhouse (which in
fact is a scenic break) to the road bridge at Inkerman street, and vice
versa.
The layout is extremely simple, sectional Hornby and Peco trackwork is
used throughout and power comes from a Gaugemaster Combi controller. All
points are manually operated. Peco locomotive lifts are used to store
locomotives that are being held 'off stage' in the fiddleyards.
Buildings are mainly from the Metcalfe Models range, either built
largely as per the instructions, or heavily modified to suit. The low
relief building that can be seen behind 'Black 5' number 44762 is
supposedly Grenfell Town Central Goods depot, and is made up from parts
of two Metcalfe Models engine shed kits. The facade of the roundhouse
consists of off cuts of wood stuck together and covered with Metcalfe
Models brick paper.
When the layout was designed,
I had in mind that the physical structures should be as
location neutral as possible, so that by simply changing the locomotive
stock, the layout could be moved to (say) the north east of England or
the West Country. Given that, of the pre-grouping railway companies, the
LNWR, Midland, NER and GWR each had at least one roundhouse, and the
LSWR/LSBC shared one, there are plenty of options are available.
The layout has a capacity of around 36 locomotives (depending on size),
although at present there are only 17. Efforts to develop an operating
schedule based on working timetables for the Central Wales line have
failed miserably, so the locomotive stock is instead shared equally
between the shed (including the 'roundhouse' fiddleyard) and the main
fiddleyard beyond Inkerman Street bridge. Locomotives then swap places,
arriving on shed via the line at the front of the layout, being turned
in the roundhouse before being stabled there or in one of the 3 sidings
in the shed yard, and exiting via the line at the rear of the layout.
When all locomotives have swapped places it is assumed the halfway point
in the working day has been reached, and when they are all back at their
original starting point, the day is ended. As none of the movements are
written down, it requires quite a lot of though to ensure that
locomotives are stabled in the right order in the shed yard, which makes
things interesting !
Robert Ellis
|
Click on the pictures to enlarge. Hit
your browsers back button to return.
You can see all the model railway layouts featured at SimplyTrains on the layouts page. [more]
If you would like your pictures of model
trains or model railway layouts to appear
here then please email us or check for more details. [more]
Email us.
-
-
-
-
|
Click on the pictures to enlarge. Hit
your browsers back button to return.
 |
